HNDY04 - AWD - Grumpy Old Men of AW
A continuation of the series of AW tiny map games HNDY03-AWDG (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=87859)|HNDY02-AWE (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=85204)|by the Grumpy Old Men of Always War. :hammer:

Level: Deity
Variant: Always War
Civilization: Sumeria
Continents: 70% Water
Size: Tiny
Age: 5 Billion [I think :) ]
Temperature: Temperate
Climate: Normal
Barbarians: Sedentary
Rivals: 3 Randomly Selected
AI Aggression: Normal
Victory Condition: All are enabled.
Culturally linked starts: Off
Respawn: Off
Preserve Random Seed: On
Cultural Conversion: On
Patch: 1.15 C3C

EDIT Can't believe I forgot the secret weapon. The lucky candle. :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY02_luckycandle.gif

Opening Plans
Settle on the hill
Research Masonry for walls -> Math for SoZ
Ideas & Opinions welcome from AW lurkers.

>> Sumeria 4000 BC Save << (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Gilgamesh_of_the_Sumerians,_4000_B_4.SAV)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_AWD_Summeria4.JPG

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom

Greebley gave the knock out blow in HNDY03, so we start @ the top of the order in this one.

The Boilerplate
The game Always War. You may only trade when you first meet a civilization, and must declare war on the same turn after trading is complete. If you see a new AI unit, you must make contact & declare war that turn. Absolutely no GPT trades allowed. If you see a new face on F4, you are obligated to declare war that turn (after trading). Players must declare war if they are exploring and see AI units, but are not required to actually attack the units they come in contact with. No peace treaties, ever. You may check F4 as often as you like to spy on the AI's tech, resources, luxuries & city count. We are not allowed to build embassies.

Discuss any move that seems exploitive before doing it with the team. Although there are not too many exploits available in AW, we’ll follow the forbidden blatant exploits banned by GOTM and RBCiv such as no "Free Wealth". Other normal game exploits such as "Baiting the AI" with an empty city to create a kill zone are an AW tradition and are allowed. Also, you ARE allowed to initially keep a city, move a settler to the same spot as the city, and then abandon and immediately resettle. This is considered an exploit in RBCiv rules, but is okay in this AW game. In addition if you need to build a city one square deeper into enemy territory just to move borders to steal a resource, go for it. We may keep or raze cities, and can keep slaves. You may whip captured cities or cities where all citizens are unhappy.

SG Stuff
This is a low pressure SG, so you have 24 hours for an "I got it" and 72 to play. If you need a one day extension, then mention this before the 72 hours are up. Players can work out skips between themselves, just post a message to the thread. If you can't play within 72 total, the team players can switch places, or you can ask for a skip. We will play 10 turns at first, and possibly fewer later (5) if the turns begin to take too long. If you need to go over a turn or two to complete a major campaign, that’s okay too.

Isn't 5 billion more mountainous. It kinda cramps Sumerias agri trait. I would think 3 billion and warm and wet would do us better. This will be a true challenge with MM'ing at a premium. I'm not quite sure not mining the BG's is right though. Wouldn't we want the 3 shield per tile in GA? Is there a despo penalty?

There is a penalty. Mined or unmined they are the same.

Mining all depends on whether we meet someone so we need to be flexible. I think roading the BG first and then going back to mine if we still don't know anyone. If we do meet someone then mining normal grassland is a good idea.

I thought a young world was more mountainous? Is it also more riverous?

Actually I really don't know what the traits do. Wet would be more rivers right? Hopefully normal will be ok and we have some water.

Also it might be worth growing a bit larger rather than making a settler immediately. You get more shields that way early on if you don't make the settler when size 3, but wait for 4-6. Waiting for size 5 might be best. We would want a granary asap of course.

Isn't 5 billion more mountainous.

5 billion is oldest, so it has the least mountains. I guess we should have gone for arid since we can get 2 food from irrigated desert & the AI gets only 1. We'll have to remember that for AWS.

Wet would be more rivers right?

Yes.

Testing out the attach small jpeg file to see if it displays. Cool, it works if the pics small enough. :D

5 billion is oldest, so it has the least mountains.
I thought it was the other way around. At work so I can't check. I thought the mountains wear down over time. I know SirPleb loves 3Bill, wet and warm for max food and early expansion since he mm's and the AI does not.

From the manual: 5 billion years - This option produces an old world, one in which the tectonics have settled down somewhat, allowing erosion & other natural forces to soften the terrain features.

So more erosion turns mountains to hills, hills to grassland. I'm pretty sure Moonsinger, Sir Pleb & the map milkers all play wet, 5 billion, warm since it has the most food and can support the highest population.

All righty! Lets get it on. Hoping for a cow over on the plains. Get your lucky candle out Handy!

I am hoping we do not get germany as our closest neighbor.

I realized I forgot something. We don't have alphabet either so we have 2 techs to get before Mathematics

Not sure if this changes our decision on Mathematics.

Good luck fellas.

I tuned into the last game to get an idea of what an AW game entails, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Well done.

Needless to say, I'll be watching this one w/ much anticipation.

Thanks for your well wishes :)

AWD on a tiny map has been successfully done before so there is hope we can pull it off. A lot will depend on our start and number of neighbors. I think. Two neighbors is bad unless they fight in which case it is good. :crazyeye:

Turn 0 4000 BC
Settler moves to hill
Worker moves to road BG
We spot 3 tobacco farms to help the economy.
See lots & lots of grasslands. :D Even without water we have some decent food tiles

Turn 1 3950
Found Ur, which is much easier to type than the Aztec capitol.
Begin a 5 turn E warrior
Research to Masonry in 36 +0gpt
The worker starts a mine, not a road. Forgive me Greebley. I’m an old dog, and building roads before mines is a new trick.

Turn 2 3900
:sleep:

Turn 3 3850
:sleep:

Turn 4 3800
:sleep:

Turn 5 3750
:sleep:

IBT
Ur – Enkidu Warrior (EW) -> EW

Turn 6 3700
Warrior exploring to the NE

Turn 7 3650
Fresh Water Lake :D
Mine done, road started

Turn 8 3600

Turn 9 3550

Turn 10 3500
Move to road the lux so we can keep research high
Choke? – Discover a 1 tile wide land bridge to our NE. It may just go to a dead end part of out continent. Don’t want contact yet, but may explore out a little further.
Border expansion reveals lots of BG and a good hut to the south. I’ll leave that until we have a spare unit in Ur.

Turn 11 3450
Bump lux tax to 20% so second warrior can explore a little.
Not sure if the continent will expand NE or NW.
Second warrior is moving NW
Masonry in 26
Pulling 4 spt
Ivory road in 3

Turn 12 3400
Wine spotted to the NE past the land bridge. Another lake & plains over here.

Turn 13 3350
There are narrow defensible land bride type areas both the NE and NW.

IBT
EW -> barracks

Turn 14 3300
Road to ivory done.
Palace gets steps.
Lux tax to zero.
Masonry in 17

Turn 15 3250
Exploring – lots of good land down here. If we can determine which side NE or NW the Ai is, we can defend the narrow area.

Turn 16 3200
NW getting more narrow

Turn 17 3150
NW peninsula is a dead end

Turn 18 3100
Get 3 warriors from a hut in the E.

Turn 19 3050
Barbs leave EW alone, so he moves off

Turn 20 3000
EW exploring the east hits a dead end. Perhaps the bridge is N of the wines?

Notes:
Masonry in 11; +0gpt.
We grow in 1 turn, check happiness.
Mine in 1 will give you 5 spt.
I guess you could switch the barracks to granary and we could play the AW farmer gambit. :mischief:

Possibilities
1. We are on a “U” shape and the SW is the low point of the “U” & then turns north.
2. There is a 1 tile land bridge we cannot yet see N of the wines, or perhaps somewhere else such as NNE of the ivory.
3. We are playing as Australia.

3000 bc


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_BC3000.JPG

Good luck fellas.

I tuned into the last game to get an idea of what an AW game entails, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Well done.

Needless to say, I'll be watching this one w/ much anticipation.

Thanks! :D So far so good. At least we have food & water in this one.

I realized I forgot something. We don't have alphabet either so we have 2 techs to get before Mathematics

Not sure if this changes our decision on Mathematics.


I saw that on the tech tree, but decided we should go ahead. We need masonry for walls anyway, so it's not a waste if we decide to go for IW. Alphabet, which we also need for Math, let's us build dink boats if we want to cruise our continent. I think the sure thing of Acav is still the way to go. I played one AWE tiny map where there was no iron on the entire continent! SoZ made the difference.

Should we try for the Glib in this game?

One of these days we need to play the Celts. Fun UU.

Roster:
Handy
Slinger <- UP
T_McC
Greebley
Yom - MIA with laptop issues.

I think I'm liking the granary switch. I made a quick dot map to comment on. I know that the two on the lake are 2 tiles apart but they can get over 7 for unit support with aqueducts. That will help. Hopefully I don't meet an AI until after masonry comes in. We should be able to garner some techs from him/her before declaration. I'm thinking the Ai is NE of the wines. I don't think I'll be getting a settler out because it will be Rax after granary unless an AI pops our bubble and comes out of the fog. I'd like to get the pop up a little too. EW's should hold fine and we will have a lot of them at 10s@. The SE EW will clear the balance of the fog NE and W of his current location and then sneak home. I'm almost tempted to go meet the AI so we can get something out of masonry before he researches it. See how it plays out. The NW warrior will go see what lands we have SW of UR.

My take on a dotmap-

Sheesh, I'm checking in already Handy. :rolleyes:

:lol:

I knew if I threw that term around in enough e-mails, we'd eventually use it! GOMAW! (although to be fair, Yom is only 17 or 18. Without him, I'd be the baby of the group!)

On a side note: Every time I see that picture in the first post, I think it says "Fart Luck".

I wouldn't have picked this start, killing our unique trait like that, but if we're alone this will make for an interesting game. Problem (?) is, even if we are on our own continent, Tiny maps tend to break that a Seafaring civ (or anyone who get the GLighthouse) can reach us by Map Making. So do we run to Zeus, or try to set up to build the Great Library?

I'll wait for all comments and play when I get home in around 2 hours. Zeus vs Glib. I would tend to vote Zeus for the units. We may only have 1 AI on our continent with 2 lux showing. We'll have to see how quick we can get some cities out and get one started on prebuild for either.

I lean towards Zeus as well. If we don't find anyone else by the time we research Math (we want Cats anyhow), we can push towards Lit and try for the G.Lib. If we do find someone, we'll probably want to research military techs before Writing.

On the dotmap: I'd try to build on the gold hill, both for defense and because then we're working the trade bonus tile every turn.

Zeus also. There is a chance we can get both as sometimes the GLib is ignored.

One interesting fact: The faster the AI can research the less likely they are to pick Literature as their tech to research. If they research fast enough, then Literature will be least likely tech for them to pick.

So it might be worth getting zeus and then build the GLib switching to FP or HE if we fail.

[Edit: My main reason for choosing this start is that it is the first one. There is something very satisfying about winning a random start rather than waiting for a town with 20 cows. [Edit2: That was an attempt at a joke. I know you meant wait for a river and not 20 cows].

Is this better?

Why not slide #1 another tile SW? Then we don't get 1st ring overlap. City #1 also gets 3 Tobacco in its first 8, which can produce 2f/2s/2t when mined in a Despotic GA.

Lets make #1 there 1 NW of the center tobacky. We probably want to see what is under the fog in the SW before we can see where cities will go there. What do you think of 2 cities on the lake?
Also, I think we should wait on the choke. I don't see us losing the race to it even if it is the 4th or 5th city and getting productive 1st ringers will help more.

Handy04 – 3000BC –

Preturn – Well, diety. So the Ai has about 3 cities and 6 techs by now. :lol: We’re heady for masonry in 11 which I may or may not see. I swap to granary in 9 which will drop to 7, I think, when mine completes. Even lower since a pop ill be added next turn.
IT – Mine completes. We have growth.
[1] 2950 – Granary in 5, growth in 10. I moved endiku to face only one warrior. Moving both EW’s to bust more fog.
IT – zzz
[2] 2900 – zzz
IT – zzz
[3] 2850 – zzz
IT – Road completes.
[4] 2800 – Move to road and mine next bg. Granary will complete with zero waste. Just luck.
IT – Barb attacks, we win without a scratch but no promo.
[5] 2750 – Begin mine.
IT – Granary completes. Set to rax in 7.
[6] 2710 – Masonry in 4 at 70% and breakeven. The AI, if any must be S of us.
IT – zzz. Barbs are fortified.
[7] 2670 – Coasts are coasts. No more land to look at except NE of wine and deep south.
IT – zzz
[8] 2630 – Fog busting.
IT – zzz
[9] 2590 – Same. Can’t move slider for cash.
IT – Masonry>Alpha
[10] 2550 – There is no more land past the wines. All that is left is south and not looking good. We may be alone. If we are perhaps we should go for Glib and prebuild next to the lake. The forests are good shields and we can irrigate for growth and merge workers.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Handy04-2550BC.jpg

Also, disregard my dotmap. I can't see the bg's from the picture at work. :crazyeyes: That's the last time I attempt that.

If we're alone, we should go with a less dense build (not 3 tiles apart) and should DEFINITELY build the GL. I can't imagine how we'd keep up in tech otherwise. We may want to build a couple dink boats after Ur finishes its barracks, settler and escort.

Ya, I am more inclined to go for the GLib as well since we have no opponents. I would make this a top priority; we will be way behind otherwise and the game will be much more difficult

We may want to build a couple dink boats after Ur finishes its barracks, settler and escort. This would be fine for suicides. If there is a path across that the AI can use I would steer clear. It would be nice to expand unencumbered and then use the GL to blast our way ahead.

I am very leary of exploring until we get bigger. A suicide Galley only works if there is NO path across which is hard to judge and unlikely on a tiny map (with GLighthouse). I suspect the AI will cross soon enough to settle our lands.

I would rather not build much military yet. Just basic defense. Lets grow first.

HNDY04 - Won't Anybody Be My Friend?

2550 BC (0)
Let's see ... we're alone on an island. There is one (count 'em, one) bonus food tile on the island, and it is about 5th ring to our capital. We do have two lux and cheap spears so we should be able to keep the populace appeased fairly easily. I think this start calls for a pseudo-gambit, where we push workers/settlers much heavier than military.

Ur is working the proper tiles, and it grows to unhappiness next turn. I think the Barracks will complete in 2, not 3.

2510 BC (1)
Bump lux to 10%, Alphabet in 43 now.

I think I'll build a settler after the Barracks, we need some more unit support.

2470 BC (2)
Would you believe the advisor suggested we build Wealth in Ur? :rolleyes:

I'll go for a settler timed for growth to size 5, and work a different tile to get another light bulb.

2430 BC (3)
Nothing.

2390 BC (4)
Road completes, start on road to new city.

2350 BC (5)
Nothing.

2310 BC (6)
Settler completes, science turned down to break-even.

2270 BC (7)
Settler in position.

2230 BC (8)
Sumer founded, starts the Pyramids. We're going for the Great Library here. City will have 4 BG when cities are founded around it. Adjust sliders and Alphabet is due in 21.

2190 BC (9)
Nothing.

2150 BC (10)
Ur completes an Enkidu. The lack of food is really a pain, the city is still size 3.

Final Notes:
The only bonus food we have are the city squares adjacent to the lake. Those cities should produce workers for us, and improve the lands around the other cities to build military or infrastructure. This is a lousy start, but if we're left alone until Astronomy we can win.

Ur should not produce any workers, its the only place we can reasonably build settlers for a long time. Ur can also build enough Enkidus for the entire empire. I think the cycle will be 3 EWs and a settler in 10 turns.

Once we get a couple more roads and mines on the tobacco tiles, it will be an MM-fest between Ur and Sumer. We don't need to build 14-shield EWs.

On a side note: Every time I see that picture in the first post, I think it says "Fart Luck".

yeah - fart luck, fast luck, we'll take either. :)

Would you believe the advisor suggested we build Wealth in Ur?

I hope this guy is advising the AI also. :mischief:

I'm up for Glib since we are now playing as Australia.

But, Do we want to explore so the AI will start building boats & send units our way? Other wise, no leaders for us. Since they are so bad at naval landings, we may get leaders this way we could use to rush FP & HE. If we get the GLib, we'll get MM and can send an army overseas to pillage the AI. Also, if we make contact early we may get a tech or two from trade. Wait too long & we'll have nothing to offer. Also, if we wait too long, we won't even know where to insert the pillaging army. So, I think exploration & making contact for leader fodder may actually help us here. Thoughts?

EDIT If all 3 civs are on the other continent, a pillaging army sent over on galleys could really tip this game our way. it will take a long time to win, but pillaging would ensure we have an excellent chance @ the win. Seems like even more reason to explore now while we can. I don't fear their naval landings very much given our 1/2 price spears.

If we don't have iron to upgrade our spears, that's gonna get bloody. We'll need a lot of cats. I hope we get either horses or iron. If we have neither, it's going to make it way hard! END EDIT

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley <-UP
Yom - MIA with laptop issues.

Another shot at a dot-map:

I think the next settler should head for the lakeside dot, and start to build some workers. We do need to put two cities on that lake, and may have to squeeze in three. :eek:

In the SW, I'd just as soon burn the desert and leave the hill for mining, but we're only going to get 1 city/turn unless that hut pops a settler. Even on Deity it might be worth going for it, we can hold both high-ground spots with vet Enkidus that don't have anything better to do.

I think we should make the blue dot just north of the lake our GLib location. It is the only one that can grow past size 6 which improves our chance of bringing home the great library. It has a lot of BG so will make a very good wonder town.

[edit: got it]

I think we should make the blue dot just north of the lake our GLib location. It is the only one that can grow past size 6 which improves our chance of bringing home the great library. It has a lot of BG so will make a very good wonder town.


Yes - chop a temple to get all those BG in the city borders & start a pre-build.

I think we should explore after we get 5-6 down. Our prebuild for GL, Zeus rolling, and a core with wines in. Right now I would wait on a dinky. Settlers, WORKERS, enkidus. I would also barb farm with the enkidus and horses when we get them. Leave some fog in the far SE so we can monitor the AI tech pace somewhat and farm some gold.

I like the blue N dot for the GL too for the reasons Greebley mentioned. We can prebuild with both. One for GL and one for Zeus. Palace and pyramids. As soon as we get math we can swap the current palace prebuild to Zeus. It can't have that many shields in it and being above size 6 may help get the GL sooner even with the delay. For the hut, before popping it, make sure all builds are off settlers and military. It will increase the chance of getting a settler or a tech.

If we try to have 2 cities dedicated to building wonders, we'll have 1 worker until our 4th town is settled. Which is an excellent recipe for losing.

The town already settled cannot grow beyond size 6, but it can work 6 BGs at size 6. [3 of these are already mined!] On the inherited IT it can poach a mined BG from Ur, as 7 spt does us no better than 5 spt in Ur. Once we go for the settler out of Ur, the MM is more tricky.

Either way, the important thing is that somebody has to start spitting out workers. It may be worth a Granary somewhere if we can get to 5-turn workers instead of 10.

Yeah, after looking at it, it's probably easier to try for the G.Lib in a lake city. The blue dot can get 5 BG's and a forest at size 6. I may not build a Temple there, though. A) We don't have Ceremonial Burial B) For the same 60 shields we can double our growth rate. We really aren't set up well to merge workers into a Wonder city without it being an all-or-nothing gambit.

Edit: Dumb joke removed

Preturn: As we sort of discussed I change everything. I switch our capitol to a Settler and Sumer to a worker.

My plan is to found our "wonder city" and then plant a city to the North to expand borders rather than going for a temple.
I will probably oscillate science so we stay near 10 gold.

IBT:

2110 BC: Going to explore the last of our isle.

IBT: Settler->Settler

1990 BC: Meet the Barbarian twins

1950 BC: We lose pathetically vs a Barbarian.

IBT:

1910 BC: Found Lagash which can be our wonder city.

IBT:
Sumer: Worker->Barracks

1870 BC:

IBT: Settler->Enkidu

1830 BC:

1700 BC: Madrid builds the Colossus, and I bet I was supposed to stop at 1750 BC. That is a problem with the turns when they are so short.
Build Kish on the gold hill

Notes:
I would concentrate our workers around the wonder city at first simply to keep up with the growth of the city. Kish does not need immediate improvement as it is going for another worker to help get our economy going.

We have a nice number of BG!

Good Luck Yom (your comp is currently working right?)

Here is a picture of our land. I am going for the famous AW farmers gambit.

Last I heard Yom's CD was still not working. I saw him post that it was broken in a PTW SG he is in. If Yom misses too many rounds it may be best to drop from this game & pick it up later. It's hard to come into the middle of an AW game.

I can't play until Satruday night, so Slinger - if you want to swap with me & play on Friday that's fine. Either way I plan to pick it up Saturday night.

Roster:
Handy <- up Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom - MIA with laptop issues.

Not sure about the Barracks in Ur. Do we need another troop producer right now? I'd think about a Granary, so we have a 2nd potential source of settlers and a less-painful place to build workers.

Watch for the last-turn to growth trick at Lagash. You may be able to work the forest for a cheap shield. (Likely not this time, but maybe on the 2->3 transition.)

Not sure about the Barracks in Ur. Do we need another troop producer right now? I'd think about a Granary, so we have a 2nd potential source of settlers and a less-painful place to build workers.

(Likely not this time, but maybe on the 2->3 transition.)

Roger that. Let's switch to granary.

Ya, looking at it I agree also - a granary does seem better. We have a lot of land to settle.

One thing to watch out on TMcC's trick; You want to do it earlier rather than later. I went to do exactly that, but realized the mine was finishing the next turn and so there was no point. You need to do it at size 2 before the 2nd mine is built to gain anything.

I've temporarily gotten my Conquests CD to work (it's still on/off) and can get it now. That is, unless Handy is already playing.

Edit: Plus, school's out, so I'll have more time to play :D.

Yom, if you can play tonight Handy can play tomorrow night and I can play Sunday morning or late Sat night. If you can't play tonight I'll play it tonight. I'm right in the middle of COTM. Man did I pop a lot of tech huts. I'm like 6 techs up. Arabs are gone and heading for the souther 2. I'd like Sumeria to build some wonders first though.

I'm a bit tired tonight, so I'll play this tomorrow around noon.

I have been thinking about it and I think going out exploring is a bad idea. It means we would have to build up Military instead of expanding and would also trigger our golden age earlier making it less valuable. Ideal would be to meet them when we have the GLib so we can instantly switch to monarchy. Then our Anarchy would be during the time before the AI main attack. If we worked to put off an Enkidu win until arnarcy ended we would win big. Even if our anarchy overlaps with the GA by a bit it is still a win. Otherwise you don't get 3 shields from mined BG

Turn 0 - Change barracks in Sumer (I assume this is what T_McC meant by Ur) to a granary.

Turn 1 - I road tiles before I mine just in case we meet an enemy on my turns.

Turn 2 - Ur:Enkidu->Enkidu

Turn 3 - Nothing

Turn 4 - Ur:Enkidu->Settler

Turn 5 - Alphabet comes in, set research to Math in 20 at -1 gpt.

Turn 6 - Nothing

Turn 7 - I would have used the growth trick, but the BG mine just finished, making it useless.

Turn 8 - Emphasize production somehow selects a BG over a forest on Lagash's growth, essentially losing a shield. Settler due in 1 (as is Ur's 100 expansion, which will pop the goody hut).

IBT - Pray for a tech and... barbs...

Turn 9 - Ur: Settler->Enkidu. With the Barbs showing up, I decide to send the settler up North.
I cover a mined grassland with an enkidu to prevent the barb warriors from moving onto it and pillaging.

IBT - Barbs fortify in place.

Turn 10 - Kish: Enkidu->Barracks.

I left all units unmoved this turn so that you can move the settler West if you want, or keep sending it north with the Enkidu from Kish as defense.

Edit: Btw, someone should make a dotmap including our Western and Southern lands.

Edit2: One more thing...I would keep the workers improving Lagash to get Zeus done faster and immediately start it on a prebuild for TGL. With all BGs mined, a forest and 2 mined plains, it can make 16 spt before corruption (probably 13 or 12 after).

One more Edit: I just realized that we can only have 2 mp in despotism, so we will need very high luxes to keep Lagash happy at high populations and it won't complete Zeus as soon as we discover Math, so maybe we should start a prebuild in Kish or our next city.

Lets build the GLib before Zeus. The reason is that we have exclusive control of the Ivory and are close to guaranteed to get it (Lux appear only on one landmass).

Missing out on the GLib is both possible and painful.

Yeah, I thought we decided GL was the build? Did I miss a post?

I thought Yom was going for Zeus first... I just quickly scanned his post though, so i may have been mistaken.

Also the point that noone else can build zeus but us occurred to me just now and is a strong reason on the order we chose.

Yes, we should be building the Great Library. We may be cutting it a little close by researching Math first. There are 65 turns on our Palace pre-build, and we are 15 turns away from Math. Writing would take 20 turns from scratch, and then we need Lit. Our pre-build will go down in turns as Lagash grows, so I fear we must dump the 5 turns on Math and switch to Writing now. Our research time will go down as well, but I cannot say when our Palace moves to 400 shields (it's currently 300). This is definitely a gambit.

On the MM, Lagash can steal us another couple of arrows by giving up a shield it is losing to corruption anyway.

Sumer needs to be looked at for tile usage. It will be an every-turn juggling act between Sumer, Lagash, and Ur for who uses what tiles. Ur doesn't need more that 5 spt, but we want to maximize trade and the speed at which the other two cities complete their builds.

Kish should be building workers, not regular Enkidus. We don't need any city other than Ur building military so long as barbarians are our only opponents. We are already in a hole, to get out of it we need to maximize our improved tiles. We do that by building lots of workers.

I think the settler should go on the lake, 2 SE of Lagash. That spot allows the city center to produce 3 food instead of 2. The new city should also be building workers. It should be possible to complete a worker every 7 turns. The extra Enkidu in Lagash is a fine escort. The regular Enkidu in Kish should flesh out the coast in the SE. Those cities won't be that far from our Capital, so might be useful eventually.

My fault on the prebuild. I remembered talking about going for Mathematics and Zeus so I assumed the prebuild was for that.

Edit: As to Kish building regular enkidus...I'm not sure how that happened. I didn't change its build from turn 0, and in the screenshot Greebley posted it shows Kish building a worker :confused: ...

@Yom - I kind of figured that happened. Greebley saved the game, and then did a final round of MM. The EW was the Governor's suggested build.

Here is a DM of the south. Some dots could change if we see bonus food in the sea tiles. Red dot is where I think the active settler should go, and Pink squares complete our 1st ring. The blue dots are longer-term projects, maybe after we secure the wines in the East.

I don't like our capital being size 2, but I can live with it. We are on a 10-turn cycle of 2 EWs and a Settler timed with growth to size 4. We could get more EWs if Ur is allowed to grow, but we can't get settlers any faster.

Sumer may be on a 5-3 Settler cycle, maybe without an EW mixed in. Have to check the MM possible after the Granary is built. In any case we should be able to get at least 2 settlers and 2 vet EWs every 10 turns, which should be enough military until we meet someone. The eastern pink square can become our 2nd military city, it has access to 4 BG upon founding, while the other new cities should concentrate on training workers. If we are isolated until the other civs get Astronomy, we should be the largest civ in the game upon contact, and have a late GA with an UU that is available from the start of the game.

The dot map should hedge a little towards the wine. At diety it will save us some cash if we can get over there and get that canal town.

The dot map doesn't extend towards the wines because (A) It wouldn't all fit in one picture, and (B) We should settle out first ring completely before reaching for any second ring sites. We aren't in competition with anyone for the wines, and we don't need them until a city gets to be size 5.

The other problem is that the map gets a little awkward around the wines. One cannot get a single city that both serves as a canal, and claims the wines without a border expansion.

I got it. I'll switch research to get us started to Lit for Glib.

Strange - the Kish build is barracks in the save, but the screenshot shows worker. I switched it.

Pre-Turn
Switch research to writing.
Switch Kish from barracks to worker.
Regular EW in Kish has nothing better to do than stroll around our coast on a whale watching expedition, so off he goes.
The settler heads towards the lake’s red dot location.

IBT
Ur – EW – EW


Turn 1 1425
Workers start mines.
Settler arrives @ red dot.
Found Umma –> worker -> I love these Sumerian city names. Easy to type. :D
Never knew Umma Thurman was named after a Sumerian city. :lol:

Turn 2 1400
Sumer & Ur swap some tiles.

Turn 3 1375
Not much.

IBT
Ur – EW – settler. This will bring us back down to size 2 when he pops.
Babylon finishes Pyramids

Turn 4 1350
Sumer & Ur swap tiles again

Turn 5 1325
Not much

IBT

Turn 6 1300
Zero

Turn 7 1275
Mines complete.

Turn 8 1250
Lagash will need some lux tax soon.

IBT
Ur – settler – EW
Settler will move towards T_McC’s eastern Pink dot. (South of Ur)

Turn 9 1225
Writing in 9 +1gpt
Prebuild has 36 turns left on a

IBT
Summer – granary – settler
Kish – worker – worker
Umma – worker – worker

Turn 10
Ur & Sumer swap tiles to get the settler in 6 and grow in 6. Ur's EW is in 2.

Notes:
Lagash will need lux tax in 2 turns.

Roster:
Handy
Slinger <-UP
T_McC
Greebley
Yom - laptop working again.

We're sliding along here.

Took a peek at the save:

The MM is messed up between Ur and Sumer. Ur should be getting 5 spt, every turn, or we'll either lose one of the Enkidus, delay the settler, or possibly take our capital to size 1.

Keep an eye on Umma, you can build workers in less than 10 turns, but you need to swap tiles on the appropriate turn.

There are barbs on one of the potential canal tiles, I propose founding 1 city a tile SE of the barbs, on the lake. It is still a canal. A second city can be founded NE of the lake on the desert. That will claim the Wines. Might as well take all the 3-food tiles we can get.

After that we can found a city south of the Wines and start the FP.

Then after we get Lit we can research a tech so we can build something besides Workers, EWs, Settlers, and Granaries. Temples would actually be nice, as would finding out if we have any resources on this island.

It shouldn't come up on Slinger's turn, but just to remind myself: We may need to run a scientist or two to get Lit on time with our Pre-build, unless our Palace goes to 400 shields.

We're sliding along here.

Is sliding along a good thing or a bad thing?


Took a peek at the save:

The MM is messed up between Ur and Sumer. Ur should be getting 5 spt, every turn, or we'll either lose one of the Enkidus, delay the settler, or possibly take our capital to size 1.

Oops. I swapped the tiles to get a settler in Sumer in 6 instead of 8, which caused the EW in Ur to go from 2 to 3 turns total (2 left).

I was thinking sooner was better than later on getting the settler out of Sumer. I was gunning for Sumer to grow the turn the settler came.

Sliding along means I really can't say whether we're doing good or bad. I think we will be able to build the G. Lib, but if anyone pops by in the next ~40 turns, we only have Enkidus to throw at them. The picture will be much clearer once we get to Lit, and can at least aim for Warrior Code to build an offensive unit. (Or Math, for our free 3.2.2s). I'd actually go for a tech or two before Math, and let Lagash pre-build with the Palace again, once we get the G. Lib.

Sooner is better, but Sumer cannot replace the lost population in less than 10 turns (and I think it can pull more than 3 spt at size 2). Bottom line is that if we don't delay two turns at Sumer, we may end up having to delay two turns at Ur.

Actually, taking another look at it: Ur and Sumer can split 3 two-shield tiles between them. Lagash must have the other two-shield tile. We could get a settler in 6 at Sumer, then a 7-turn settler in Ur, but the MM has to be watched. Possible after the worker finishes mining the tile NE of Sumer.

So do what you want, but don't drop Ur to size 1! :)

Lurkers comment, yet again...

I think you guys are just so used to being so far behind, fighting so many people that you don't know what to do with a... gasp!... builders game. Have fun.:)

Lurkers comment, yet again...

I think you guys are just so used to being so far behind, fighting so many people that you don't know what to do with a... gasp!... builders game. Have fun.:) :lol: I was having trouble with an earlier practice session wondering what cathedrals were for. this is definately a twist on our usual game. The diety AI are building culture I am sure waiting to hit the waves. It will be a new twist. Playing now.

Handy04 – 1200BC –

Preturn – Looks like the turn count is slightly messed up. I’ll play until 1000BC (8turns). Have a loo at Ur to get it back to 5spt. On Umma, it needs 18f to grow and we’re making 3 fpt which is 6 turns. The food box does not empty, so after a few workers it will be up to 2pop. I will keep a special eye on it for that correct turn to swap tile though. Lagash has 91 shields making 6spt with that rising over the next few turns. The workers will be done in 4 which should raise it to 7, perhaps 8. @ 7spt we are 44 turns from GL. At spt 39. Kick up the sci-sli a notch to get writing in 7. I know the initial math does not work out but the last turn it gets turned down and even the last 2-3 turns if you monitor it. We’ll see. I think Ur is making an MP for Lagash and will continue to make necessary MP. The only other option is walls or wealth. I see Sumer is working the non roaded tobacky. Going roaded gives writing in 6 but we will be down to 2 pop if I do this. Hey, the food box does not empty. It will be right back where it was in no time and writing sooner.

IT – EW from Ur. Enkidu for now.

[1] 2004AD – having a beer. 1175 on an island. Wondering how I will survive. It would be better if we just could keep this island to ourselves and lay on the beach all day. Why would you need defense if you knew no one else? Slide the settler over for the bg spot. Lagash goes on the forest, with growth in 1. We’ll starve it if we gotta. The GL is ours. Even with time to lit at 50 at min we are running 90%. It should be well under the 29 turns to palace.
IT – Spanish complete the Oracle. No builds.

[2] 1150 – The new MP pulls into Lagash for the growth and it does not help. However, raising the lux tax it stays at –3gpt and cures Lagash. Now to find some cash. BTW, Lagash went to 7, not 8. Bad-tiber, now named Bad-time-4-AI plops and starts another worker in 10. The EW escort takes off to MP somewhere. Actually inviting the barb in for farming.

IT – Enkidu in Ur and set to wealth for the moment.

[3] 1125 - The new mine in Lagash is complete and still we are at 7spt, damn. I think a road is order due to cash strappedness. New word?! Play chess with the barb to try to get him off the hill. Let’s see. Keep Ur at wealth. We’re at 10g @ -2spt set like that. Next settler due in 5 and growth in Ur next turn. The Umma swap is not yet from what I can foresee.

IT – Complete a road to get to –2gpt. Wait, we’re not using that road.

[4] 1100 – Kill that doggone barb losing 1hp. Mp pulls into Lagash and lux-sli goes down a bit to give us 1gpt with 8g in the kitty. I thnk that was my bad cause’ I just read that despo MP is 2 tops. I was running an extra 10% lux. My bad. Fortunately looking at the sliders I elect to get writing in 3 with an extra sci-sli nudge and we are at –2gpt with 8g. Umma goes to worker in 3 and growth in 3 just like T_McC suggested, that was easier than I thought. Those food 3fpt can be tricky. GOTTA watch the box. Move lagash to the forest to get Palace in 23. Writing in 3.

IT – Road in Lagash completes.

[5] 1075 – Writing in 2 and we’re at –2gpt with 6g. Ur gis still on wealth. Lagash won’t be helped until wine, so we can lower the lux tas and the other cities are fine for a while. I would hate to lose a granary, it’s happened. That’s random, the way the game takes units, IMO. Ur grows in 4. Sumer a settler in 2 with growth in 2. Umma, worker and growth in two too. Just checked the space race, all even.

IT – A road completes.

[6] 1050 – I’m going bonkers trying to get 1 gpt more. It does not matter where I put the guys and gals, it is still –2spt and when I go EW in Ur it is –3spt. Fortunately we pick up +3gpt on writing coming in next turn. That is a frikin’ relief. Time for a abeer swill. { 30 second pause having aswill and looking at our lands, thinking about the beach I could build 1 NE of Lagash) That was fun. ----- Some more workers go to build a GL. Back on EW in UR. We have a settler and a worker due next IT. That will kill my gpt. +1 on worker and one less pop…. Does nothing except less 3 shields on initial inspection..

IT – Umma completes a worker and Sumer a settler.

[7] 1025 – I move 2 EW from Lagask, out of 4 to deal with the barbs on the wine/choke hill. Worker moves to road forest, maybe. Settler goes to desert spot. Lit in 23, palace in 20 at +2gpt. Moving sci-sli 1 notch gets lit in 17. I think we will make it, especially after founding of new town. I’m glad I didn’t run for wines like my gut told me.

IT – Ur-EW> Wealth. Kish-Wkr>Wkr.

[8] We’re at4g and-1gpt and that is that. I’m hoping the barbs attack. They may take some prodding when you have 3 there in the forest.

QSC Diety – 6 ities – 2 granaries and a rax with a settler for 7 next turn.

I really didn’t know what to do about the cash. Wealth seemed the only option.

Lurkers comment, yet again...

I think you guys are just so used to being so far behind, fighting so many people that you don't know what to do with a... gasp!... builders game. Have fun.:)

I appreciate lurker comments. :)

Ya, I think this is the first builder game we have had together....

One disadvantage to having such a low pop capitol is the lack of gold. I don't think switching to wealth is that bad of an option in that case though you want to avoid it if you can. I think we will be doing ok if we can get the GLib, but will have a really hard time if we do not. We can assume the 3 AI are all trading techs and fairly advanced.

Has the Great Lighthouse been built yet? We may get contact shortly after it is built.

I think the solution to our problems is building more settlers and founding more cities. Sure the initial pop. lost will hurt a bit, but the new cities would quickly grow since we're agr. and produce cash. Plus, each city raises the amount of free troops we get by 4.

I got it and already played.

HNDY04 - This Wasn't Boring.

1000 BC (0)
Well, this is a mess. We have 2 cities running Wealth. Let's see what I can do about that. Nothing at the moment, except slow the pre-build to 22 turns to gain a buck. Next turn when the latest settler founds, we'll do something about the situation. Bad-Time swapped to Barracks, it can be a solid military producer (4 BG's).

In 3 turns Kish will run a scientist, which should balance things out a bit.

We have 1 settler active, and 0 in production. That will also change.

IT - Two barbs attack and we have an elite Enkidu.

975 BC (1)
Found Agade on the desert square where the settler stood. This completes our first ring. I'm going to reach for the Wines now.

Lit in 14, Palace in 21. The Palace can be sped up, but for now I'll stick to allowing Lagash to grow next turn. We'll have to raise the lux tax, but it'll be worth it.

Science down to 60%, Lit in 18. This will be a juggling act for all of my turn.

Sumer and Ur both go to Settlers. Sumer is timed to growth in 8, Ur is also timed for growth in 5.

950 BC (2)
Uhh, this is significant. Note a Spanish settler pair in the middle of our Eastern wing. Sending all 3 active Enkidu to intercept.

Lit in 16, Palace in 17. 5 gold, losing 2 gpt.

925 BC (3)
Lit in 19, Palace in 16. Kish will run a scientist for 7 turns. I'll let Umma grow and run a scientist there for 3 turns. I repeat, this will be a constant juggling act.

Oh crap. We're going to have a Despotic GA here, let's see what MM we can do then ...

Contact Spain. Who is in a GA(?, Colossus + Oracle, may already be over), and has the Great Lighthouse. They are already Furious with us? We actually have more cities than Izzy, and that will only get worse for her. No deals to be made, declare war. Now please found a city so I don't have to attack into a forest.

IT - They don't found, and the chase is on!

900 BC (4)
Lit in 17, Palace in 15.

IT - Zaragoza founded.

875 BC (5)
Zaragoza razed, and our GA is started. :( I really thought we could get into Monarchy before this happened, but the only Seafaring civ in the game got the Great Lighthouse.

Now to re-MM.

Have to give up 2 trade for 1 turn in order not to drop Sumer to size 1.

Lit in 8, Palace in 12. We will just about finish the Great Library during our GA.

850 BC (6)
Ur pops settler, goes to EW. I think we want 2 in every city, and a few spares.

Umma gets a temporary scientist, Lit in 6. Oh, and somewhere back there we got the FP message.

825 BC (7)
Lit still in 6. Umma build worker, starts Granary. Have to get some infra during the GA.

800 BC (8)
Settler moving into position for Wines. Lit in 5, Palace in 9.

775 BC (9)
Sumer builds Settler, goes to Barracks. Lit in 4.

750 BC (10)
Erech founded, claims Wines. The other settler has an EW escort and is headed for the plains tile SW-W of Erech. That is both on the lake and a canal.

Lux up to 30% for Lagash. Lit in 3 at -3 gpt with 19 in the bank.

Final Notes:
After Lit completes, I would strongly urge we research WC. We need some offense if the Spanish ever decide to land some troops.

The Palace pre-build expires in 6 turns. We have 238 shields in and make 12 spt. That means ... 14 turns until we complete the G. Library. Once Lagash completes the Library, it can go right back onto a Palace pre-build for Zeus. Next couple of leaders have decisions to make on how quickly we turn to Math. It would certainly be possible to hit it right after WC, as we can always use cats. Just so long as we have the tech before we go much over 200 shields in Lagash.

Our GA is not really speeding up the builds in Lagash, so we're about 35 turns from the SoZ. Fight a holding action until then, pop a leader for an instant FP in the East, and we're golden. We'll be backwards as all hell until someone else gets Astronomy or Printing Press. The advantage to having 3 AI on a single continent is that we should dwarf any one of them. We have room for about 10 more cities on our island, and no one else should be able to keep even one.

Good turns T_McC. Too bad on the despotic GA, but there was nothing we could do. Do you think you could post a map, and what techs does Isabella have that we don't?

Here's a map of the Eastern half of our empire.

The blue dot is where the active settler should go. The red dot is a good location for our FP, and the pink dot keeps good spacing.

Izzy is still in the AA, so that's not too bad. I can't remember whether she had Lit or not. Highly unlikely as our meeting did not reduce the turns to discovery. I didn't mention it in my log, but the ToA completed late on my turns, and there wasn't a cascade to the Great Library.

Emphasize roads during the GA. There are two groups of 3 workers, so they can do a tile every other turn. We have two additional workers and one in production. It is awkward to build workers or settlers during our GA, but watch for the opportunity to time a settler with growth to size 6 in Ur. The other things to emphasize are irrigating plains and mining regular grass.

Remember: Every-turn MM. :)

Good turns T. Yeah, that cash juggling act was a pain. Bummer about the Spanish showing up. Fortunately they are in the AA so we are probably the first folks they have met. Unlucky for them though. It seems the GL is in the bag now. Since the Spanish came from the East, we should head west for another contact when prepared. Top priority now is the wines to lower lux and I completely agree with T, Warrior Code to have a semblence of any kind of offensive unit.

Well it's about time this game got interesting. :D

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley <-UP
Yom

And, on the bright side, we didn't have a 1 city GA. :thumbsup:

ok, I got it. Will play tomorrow I hope.

:bump: Any progress Greebley?

I was pretty tired last night and decided it would be unwise to play this. I will get to it tonight. Sorry for the delay.

No problem Greebley, it hasn't even been 72 hours yet. And I'd cut you slack anyway. Thanks for letting us know though. :D

Preturn:
My only changes are Erech which I switch from a Reg Enkidu to Walls and Kish to a Settler. We have a decent number of Workers and I would like to get our island settled.

IBT:
Agade: Worker->Walls

730 BC: This turn only I hire 2 scientists. This gets us Lit next turn.

IBT: Lit->Telephone Sanitization (we would go for the wheel if we could decide what color it should be)
Hmmm... maybe warrior code would be better. We can get it in 4 at +1 gold
Ur: Endkidu->Settler

710 BC: GLib in 12. I may try to speed it up.
That hill next to the blue dot is tempting for several reasons, but I decide to go with TMcC's site. We may want to but a unit on the hill so that the AI doesn't land on it. So, I build Isen on TMcC's blue dot

IBT:
Bad-time: Barracks->Enkidu (our forest chop got a BG too :) )

690 BC: We connect the Wines and can lower lux. We are now pulling in 12 gpt.

670 BC: Zzzz

IBT: A boat Is the the same peoples we have seen? Yep, its Spain. (Had to look up who we had met). She looks distinctly Medieval.
Sumer: Barracks->Enkidu

650 BC: I put some units between cities in case of landings. I also merge in 2 workers to speed the GLib by 2 turns Spain does not have Literature.

IBT: Mausoleum of Mooses is built by the Spanish. The spanish boat drops off a dread Archer
Ur: Settler->TSanitizer err... Archer ... Really. You can trust me :D
Bad-time: Enkidu->Archer

630 BC: I put another unit in Kish to try to hold off said dread archer. One good thing... We have the FP to fall back on if the GLib fails.
Ok, I am going to trust to luck. Science is turned off completely. Sumer is switched to a Curragh. We can always boost science and spend the money created if we so desire.

IBT: The Archer kills our Vet Enkidu. Spanish complete the Hanging Gardens.

610 BC: A regular Enkidu attacks the archer and Promotes to Vet. I switch Kish to walls if that is going to be their point of attack.
I look at F7 and someone is constructing the Great Library!
Oh, wait thats us :blush:

Spain is not constructing any wonders. Am I wrong and she does not have Construction?

IBT: Sumer: Curragh->Curragh
Uh oh, the Spanish just started the great Library! Will the library slip through our fingers by mere turns? Only four more.

590 BC: Off got the Curragh...

IBT: Noone builds the Great Library.
Ur: Archer->Archer.

570 BC: All is quiet.

IBT:
Sumer: Curragh->Curragh (it can build one every 2 turns during our GA)

550 BC: Still quiet. The potential FP settler is near his spot.

Notes:
Only 2 turns to the GLib! Other civs have the tech and someone could have cascaded to the GLib and would build it this interturn. It has happened before. We can't even switch to Zeus without math.

We need the FP (and Monarchy). Corruptions is very high (it being a tiny map and all).

Here is a picture of our fine empire:

Why are we not researching?

We only know 1 civ, so it is fairly likely the G.Lib won't give us anything until someone besides Spain gets Astronomy.

After the Library completes, Lagash can go right back onto the Palace for the SoZ.

I'd assume we are intending to try suicide Curraghs until we meet someone else. We should still be researching until we do make more friends, excess cash won't do us much good in Despotism, and we could use Horses and Swords (and Monarchy, and Math ...).

We should be able to get math in the same 13 turns it would take to research it by crossing the ocean. I didn't think it worth wasting the cash on it. We should be a monarchy in 20 turns and can use the cash then.

What is a telephone sanitizer your building?

I look at F7 and someone is constructing the Great Library!
Oh, wait thats us

:lol:

Is a telephone sanitizer a worker? :)

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom <<< UP Yom - let us know if the laptop is up.

Archer actually. TMcC was so emphatic about going for Warrior Code :wavey:, I had to go for some other tech.... Telephone Sanitizers is from Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (radio version only? - was it in the books?) and seemed like a fine tech. :D

(In actuality, I agreed with him on the tech choice).

I really scared myself with the library building for several seconds.

:lol: That telephone sanitizer confused me too. I doubt anyone will get the Glib. before us, we've been building a long time and Lagash is a pretty strong producer. They would have had to have started in their Capital a long time ago and not gotten any wonders to snatch it from us.

So, before I play my turns, do we all agree on not researching or should we just research Math?

Great, I've become a living joke. :cry:

:lol:

Never read the Hitchhiker's Guide (I even have the 5-in-1 book), but somehow I knew the Telephone Sanitizer was from there.

Agreed not to research. We'll meet someone else soon, we'll just keep launching men to their death until they make landfall. Just think of it as sending the Irish to Australia. :cringe:

I think the polynesians did it in real life. I wonder how many they lost?

And the king spake and said, "Send boats to all corners of the earth. Bring back knowledge with which we can fill the greatest of libraries ever built by man. Let no written work remain unknown." And so it was.

Personally if I was a curragh captain, I would slip the Spanish galley captain a few bucks, go camp on some island for a few months, and then victoriously row back when the galley returned with the books.

When I played, 2/3 of the time was spent playing the game and 1/3 of the time was figuring out how to modify the image so it said "Telephone Sanitizer" under production and looked fairly reasonable.

Turn 0 - Hmm...I notice a lot of roaded, but not mined BGs in the south around Bad-Tibra.
On the diplo front Spain is up a TON of techs :o!
Namely: The Wheel, Ceremonial Burial, Iron Working Mathematics, Philosophy, Code of Laws, and Map Making.

IBT - No AI builds a wonder so TGL will be ours next turn
Bad:Archer->Archer

Turn 1 - Found Akshak, set to Curragh. I send out our first Curragh and we find an island (marsh poking out). If it survives, we may get contact soon.

IBT - Ur:Archer->Settler
Sumer:Curragh->Curragh
We get The Great Library
Lagash:TGL->Barracks
Agade:Walls->Enkidu

Turn 2 - Our Curragh didn't sink :D. It reveals blue borders nearby: presumably the Germans (according to f10).
Hmm...now that I look at Isabella more carefully, I realize she's not wearing her AA garb! If she's in the Middle ages, the other AIs probably are as well. Let's hope we have horses to get Knights.

Turn 3 - Whoah, forgot how much Culture TGL gives as Lagash already expands its borders. We almost reach the Germans' borders but fall short. The Marsh Island looks like it would be a good beachhead in the future.

IBT - Sumer:Curragh->Archer (I feel we have enough curraghs for now).

Turn 4 - We contact the Germans, who are still Ancient, but are up every visible tech. They have no gold to trade for Literature, so I declare war.
Wow! Corruption is killing us in the West. Erech loses 7 of 8 shields to corruption! I hope we get Monarchy next turn. We may want to build the FP soon as well. Also, I realize Lagash can complete a barracks after Zeus before the construction of the first AC, so I switch it to the palace.

IBT - A spanish Galley darts out of the Fog near Sumer.
We learn: The Wheel, Ceremonial Burial, Iron Working, Mysticism, Mathematics, Philosophy, Code of Laws, Map Making, Horseback Riding, Polytheism, Monarchy :D, and Construction! That was the most techs I've ever gotten from TGL at once.

Turn 5 - Good news :D (and no, I did not just save a bunch of money on my car insurance) - We have Iron and Horses The Horses are near Lagash, already hooked up, and the Iron is in the 2nd farthest Hill in the West.
I notice Agade is building Enkidus without a barrack, so it's switched over immediately.
I decide to try and run a blockade of the Spanish Galley. Its long range allows it to reach as far as the hill next to Agade. I use some Unit shuffling to cover the hill with an Enkidu (thank goodness for Cities spaced 3 tiles apart).

I'm posting a save here for now. I'll finish my turns tonight. The question we need to consider is: Do we revolt now or after or GA, or maybe after we get Zeus? Sorry, no pictures as my laptop only saves in .bmps, which are too large to post (attachments are limited to 500 KB).

I think we should revolt right away. Noone else should have ivory so we won't lose Zeus and as you say the corruption is terrible. After we are a monarch I think we will want both Zeus and the FP. The spot TMcC suggested seemed pretty decent.

The reason for no mines was the GA. We can go back and add them without requiring extra worker turns as the road is already there.

You may want to start irrigation grasslands during the Anarchy period. The biggest thing slowing us down is our slow growth and we don't need the towns to be at max shields at the moment. After we grow we can remine.

Whereever we decide the FP should go we should start dedicating workers to it. I think we want it up as soon as we can to remove the corruption.

Firstly, revolt once the GA ends. I think the GA will end on turn 6. We need the extra food more than we need the unit support.

Agreed that we are the only ones w/Ivory, so our free Wonder can build after the revolt. Doesn't hurt to put Lagash on the Palace to start building already. Lagash is our only city capable of building Wonders. After Zeus completes, Lagash should build a Temple and a Settler to get back down to size 7. (It may not need the Temple since we can use a 3rd MP.) We can reduce the lux tax by 20% that way, our economy will well and truly suck once we hit Monarchy.

If we have money, the city that will build the FP should first get a rushed Courthouse.

Turns Continued...

Before I hit end turn, I notice that GA production has ended and Lagash needs the lux tax upped to stay happy.

IBT - Spain drops off 2 reg. Archers North of Sumer, next to our fortified archer. The Galley then loses 3-1 to our curragh.
Our GA has ended.
Ur:Settler->Archer (Argh!, thanks to the end of our GA we can't make the Archer this turn in Sumer by 1 shield, rearrange to avoid wasting shields).
Bad-Time:Archer->Archer
:mad: Lagash riots despite me having adjusted lux to make it happy! Does anyone know how this came to be?
MM and get Umma's Granary to come in this turn, set to Archer

Germans complete The Great Wall (bah, and they're pretty close, too bad Conquests changed its effects).

Turn 6 - Our Telephone Sanitizer becomes Elite after killing a reg. archer and is now 3/5.

I revolt and draw 8 turns of anarchy. Harsh.
Lagash isn't even near happy now, we're going to have to alternate between rioting and starving (actually, since it has no buildings other than TGL, is it possible to keep it rioting?)
The rest of our cities aren't in danger of starving.

IBT - The archer dies attacking Sumer, doing 1 point of damage and we get a palace expansion during anarchy :crazyeye:

Turn 7 - Our Curragh meets a German Galley in their bay, hopefully it won't attack.
Rather than risk the loss of our Great Library, I set Lagash to starve this turn.
I also notice Coast sticking out just NW of Erech. The next player should explore this area and hopefully find our other two opponents' homelands.

IBT - The German Galley ignores our curragh and moves for our lands. Not a good sign.
Another German Galley comes out of the fog near Erech and moves near our fog-busting Archer and Enkidu but doesn't unload its cargo.

Turn 8 - I shuffle troops to cover our new settler and prepare for the German invasion.

IBT - %$#@!!! The Germans unload a Vet. Swordsman and a Settler.

Turn 9 - I have an odd decision here. Do I attack now with the vet. Archer and follow up with the vet enkidu in case it fails, or do I retreat, coming back later with a larger force?
I consult my Combat calculator, and the odds of the Archer winning are about 45% and the Enkidu's chances of winning against the swordsman are 78% and 50% if it has 1 or 2 hp and just 28 if the Archer just does 1 point of damage.
I have a bad feeling about it so I hold off on getting a few more archers and enkidus to the front.

IBT - We learn currency and enter the Middle Ages. We learn Engineering, we learn Feudalism! The tech pace is flying! The Spanish are building Sun Tzu's.
Argh!!! The German Sword/settler pair retreat into the fog to a forest tile and another German Boat shows up! This is not looking good, especially with that long anarchy. It looks like we'll need an archer rush to secure the Iron. I wouldn't expect any offensives until Cavalry.


Turn 10 - Retreat and found Zabalam, set to Walls.

Once the Anarchy turns are over, I'd pump Enkidus and Archers until we have about 5 extra archers and 2 Enkidus and overwhelm the Western German city. While we build this invasion force, we could build the FP and Zeus (btw, I think I kept Lagash on starvation 2 turns in a row on accident, so let it riot this turn).
After that, we can consolidate our Gains and start building Iron Age units.

Pretty solid! :goodjob:

Next leader gets 4 turns of Anarchy, then we can finish filling up our island. We aren't going to be too badly off on units, we could support 26 right now and we have 31.

This is an excellent opportunity to push infrastructure, we have a good start towards an Island defense force, and we don't need to try an Archer-rush on another continent. We could also use more workers, we are at -2 on the worker count since the end of my turns. Probably wasn't worth it to lose pop during our GA, but now that's over. :)

So (since the last paragraph is hopelessly self-contradictory), corrupt cities where we don't want to build the FP can build workers, and our Core cities can take turns building infra.

I still like Akshak for the FP, and I still think we should have a chop-assisted Court before we start the FP build. Hopefully we can pull a leader before too long, and just rush it.

I didn't mean an archer rush for the next continent. I meant an archer rush into the West to make sure the Germans don't get a strong base there. I'm a little freaked out by the Vet swordsman and the Galleys near our lands. Plus, I'd go with an army over an early FP. Sure, we need an FP soon, but we also need workers to get our lands more productive in the first place. With an Enkidu or Pike army, we could pillage the AI back into the stone age.

I agree with Yom that allowing the AI to establish a beach-head on our continent is not good and we should build some military to prevent it. Other than that, I agree with TMcC in that we want to get our infra up and running.

Agree on a courhouse first. I don't think we can count on having a leader free to rush the FP when the AI has to ship units across the ocean. It is always slow to do so at first due to limited number of boats.

For crosssing to the other continent I think we should wait for the "new improved ancient cavalry army with 50% more pillaging action!"

More seriously, the extra movement point makes Ancient cavalry (or knights) the better choice and it is not long until we have one or the other or both.

One thing may be problematic with getting a pillaging army to the other continent. Is there a safe Galley passage? There isn't one to the West, but there must be one to the east if the Germans reached us. The first chance we get we should try to follow a German Galley back to port.

Otherwise, I'd agree that 1st leader goes for an army. We can build an FP without a leader, but we can't build an army. Only difficult thing about an AC army is that we are about 40 turns away from being able to form one. (Anarchy + SoZ build + 15 turns for 3 AC.) We could get a pike army sooner, but we'd have to give up our 10-shield spears. We'll just have to play it by ear, the army may end up being knights.

We should try to meet Babylon ASAP. As it stands, we are the most advanced civ we know. No one else knows Engineering.

There is one to the East. That was the coast peaking out I was talking about that the next player should explore. It's even safe for Curraghs. As to the Western passage, we should still be careful because the Spanish have boats that move 5 squares per turn and can come from almost anywhere (I know seafaring gives +1, so I guess they have The Great Lighthouse as well).

As to the Army, we might not even get a leader in 40 turns. We only have 1 offensive elite units, and we'll probably only get 2-3 landings per player turn at the most. If we do get a leader, though. We should definitely go for an ACav army unless Chivalry is available (or both mono and Feudalmism have been available for a while). I agree that we should probably play by ear and not plan to far in advance though.

A lot depends on when we get the leader. We will have to play it by ear.

It occurs to me that you have a point on the statue of Zeus. I need to remember to add the 15 turns to build them.

I don't think the statue will benefit us very much if we already are building knights already. Still worth building though, but the ACav will probably be sent to guard against incursions in the backlands rather than being at the forefront of the assault. (i.e. their biggest use will be to free us up from needing knights to protect our cites).

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom - MIA with laptop issues. <- Just Played

Slinger I cannot play until Sunday since I'm leaving after work for a quick out of town trip. If you want to swap, go ahead. Remember though - you'll get anarchy - so you may want to wait.

I'll play Sunday if you don't want the anarchy. ;)

I miscalcualted when I set the play order. T_McC was supposed to get all the anarchy. :mischief:

Yeah, what happened to the tradition of T getting the anarchy? :lol: I'll play before Sunday. I think it is only 4 turns of it. I'll play tomorrow.

(Psst Barbslinger, you blew it. You were supposed to be "out of town" too) :D :D :D :D

I hate all of you.












:lol:

I hate all of you.
:lol:


I just pictured this little simpson guy saying that... Almost like Moe.:p LMAO!!!

I think he is role-playing the grumpy old men bit. :D

He just needs the "Why back when I was young we treated people with respect" or something like that. :p

(Just teasing TMcC, I suspect I am older than you are :) You can be grumpier though if you want )

=================================

Almost forgot: I have a trip coming up. I am visiting a gaming friend, but he is getting married. Will I have time for Civ? Unkown. I am hoping I can at least post though. I will be leaving the wednesday and come back Monday. In other words, I might need a skip if my turns come up, but am not sure yet.

Not sure what to do here. :confused:

I don't see an "I GOT IT" from Slinger, but in an earlier post he said he'd swap.

Slinger - if you're out there - let me know if I should claim the game, of if you already have it & have played.

I'll go play a little COTM01 & check back later.

Slinger said he'd play it by today. Maybe he just forgot.

What's COTM01?

Conquest Of the Month. It's the conquest version of the GOTM...

Guys, if it bothers you having me delurk this much, and never be brave enough to join one of your games, let me know and I'll go back to lurking until I'm ready to jump in one day.;)

Conquest Of the Month. It's the conquest version of the GOTM...

Guys, if it bothers you having me delurk this much, and never be brave enough to join one of your games, let me know and I'll go back to lurking until I'm ready to jump in one day.;)

Doesn't bother me. :)

Whoops, I'll play right now. Or, if Handy is ready you can go ahead. I'm trapped at work at the moment.

Been on the phone. Father's Day you know. :)

I'll play Monday night. If you can play before then, go ahead, otherwise I'll pick it up about 8:30pm CDT Monday.

Handy04 – 350BC –

Preturn – Mil Advisor says that we are strong to the Spanish and weak to the Germans. We’re strong to someone? Wasn’t expecting that! 4 turns of anarchy left and then into Monarchy. Wondering what our cash will be like then? Lagash has a serios food problem running 3 clowns. I may let it riot 1 turn.

IT – Spain drops an archer off north of Umma and we learn republic.

[1] 330 – A babylonian oat is over near Germany. He is up invention and no deals are possible. I declare and move the curragh 1 tile and fortify. The German boat that was off our coast looks to have dropped off a sword and settler after I move an archer out of Zabalam to have a look south. He’s vet and on a hill. We barely beat the archer in the woods near Umma, down to 1hp. That was close.

IT – The sword and settler head south towards the wheat and Ur and Akshack riot. MY bad.

[2] 310 – The babs galley went around us so I continue to map the coast. I’m going to let Lagash riot this turn to get enough food to ride out the anarchy.
IT – Lagash riots.

[3] 290 – Not much. Find Berlin on the north coast of Germany.

IT – Monarchy is here. Germans building Leos.

[4] 270 – Zeus comes in 13 turns using both forests but 60% lux to keep it happy with 0gpt, or I could go 14 turns and make +11gpt. I think sooner rather than later. Actually I slide the 2 enkidus from Umma to Lagash for MP and we get +11gpt now. Wake the elite telesanitizor up to head to where the action has been happening. The Germans settled Stuttgart S of iron hill. I swap Sumer to a horse. We’re probably going to have to be pretty mobile. We’re average to Babylon.

IT – Nothing.

[5] 250 - Wondering what to do with these 3 curraughs? We are through with contact so I’m going to store them for future galley upgrade in Kish. German excursion curraugh spots Babs border. He is due to get shot out of the water any turn now. BTW, the galley builds in the south were swapped to wall builds. We’re #4 in land. Not a good sign. I rush 2 wall builds, the horse and an archer. We have 201g left.

IT – Sumer-Horse>Walls, Umma, Archer>Rax, Erech and Isin-Walls> Rax. The corruption is bad down there. A german galley shows west of Akshack.

[6] 230 – Rush the Akshack walls for 52g. Germany or Spain do not have invention yet. LB’s would be nice. Erech gets just 1 of 6 shields. Courts may be in order.

IT – The germans float north and then turn around with no dropp off. Kish-Walls>Rax, Akshack-Walls>Rax.

[7] 210 – Swap tiles in UR to get growth and settler in 3 turns. Swap another archer build to horse in Bad-time. Bg’s are being completed there. We’ll be getting 6spt from there in 3 turns.

IT – Here we go. The sword pops from Stuttart to stand on Iron hill.

[8] 190 – Back the archer off.

IT – Sword heads towards us. Sumer-Walls>Horse. There is 3 enemy galleys near Bad-time.

[9] 170 – Bring in the barb watchers just in case. Rush the Bad-time horse for 40g.

IT – Babs drop off a spear/settler in the tundra south of Bad-time. Sword comes right up to the E archer and vet horse I have in the woods. Spain drops an archer next to Ur.

[10] 150 – Enkidu from Lagash takes care of the Spanish interloper. Have to put a taxman in Lagash to cover the MP loss but it did not affect Zeus build time. Good, it’s due in 7. Now I’m hoping the horse will retreat and the elite will pop a leader on this sword. The horse wins outright. He could have retreated but went for the win instead. Brave stallion. I have 3 archers headed to Stuttgart. Perhaps they can capture. It is already pop3 with that wheat and diety bonus.

Curraugh is still mapping. I have a feeling that Handy will have his hands full soon. I left the settler in Ur unmoved so that you can send him where you like. I was going to do north.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Handy04-150BC.jpg

Good turns, Barbslinger :D. I agree on our need for horses. Our Western empire is a bit too far from the core to be protected by Archers. I would bring 2 horses and 3 archers to Stuttgart to be sure of victory (it's on a hill, has a swordsman, and will probably whip a spear by the time we get there). I would keep Stuttgart b/c it fits into our dotmap okay. We can build 1 city 1N and 2W of it and another 1N and 2E. Both would be 3 moves from Stuttgart and 3 moves from our two most recently founded cities (can't see the names from the screenshot for some odd reason).

I wouldn't be overly concerned with lone cities other civs can found on our island. They are 1/1 for their owners, we can be patient with attacking them. It's not like those cities can generate an attack force on their own.

We need more workers. :) Cities that pull 1 spt for us shouldn't be trying to build 40-turn Barracks, I'd rather have the 4 workers.

If we are serious about building the FP in Akshak, we should be able to get a chop- and cash-assisted Courthouse there, and then move on to the FP.

We're in a weird position. If the others don't get us in the next 20 turns, they aren't going to get us. But we are way behind in infrastructure. Rember that Libraries are cheaper than Temples for us, if we just need an expansion to get better tiles. Or to poach an Iron from a foreign city. :mischief:

We can also help our economy a great deal by having Lagash spit out a Settler once it completes Zeus. The extra two pop there are costing us a lot of money. Also consider the need for Aqueducts in our core.

Looking at the save I think we should start the FP immediately. Corruption is killing us. At this point I would even consider a near town like Umma. I feel we would benefit more from getting the FP up quickly than a single town having lower corruption.

Erech for example is 100% corrupt and trying to build a barracks. I would build workers or settlers instead. Lets get our towns laid down so they can start growing. I think I would switch Erech to workers and Kisch and Isen to settlers.

Victory is 1 leader & 3 tiles away

Pre turn 150 BC
Rename Zabalam -> Zabalam-a-ding-dong. Rename Isin -> Isin da bag. Rename Kish -> Kish my… Rename Umma -> Umma Thurman. (Couldn’t help myself).
MM stuff:
MM Sumer to get 8 spt net.
MM Bad time 4 Al to get to 6 spt net.
Umma 4 spt net
Akshak switched to courthouse, which I’ll start a chop on with FP after that. MM for faster growth since we only have 1 spt.
Erich – 1spt - switched from barracks to worker.
Isin – 1spt switched from barracks to worker
Kish – 2spt to worker. This worker can improve Kish to a decent town.
Iron seems like a good thing to have. I’ll send the settler to either poach the iron, or build on top of it if we raze the German town before then. That’ll be a decent kill zone location after we chop the forest.

IBT
Babylon found on the ice in the south.
Isin – worker – worker
German city sends out an archer

Turn 1
Move some units into forest near Germany
Move units into position near Babylon.
No need to hurry and attack these as T_McC mentioned earlier.

IBT 130
Babylon founds a second city on our homeland. This time up north.
Getting the iron had become even more important. Hope we get knights soon.
Kish – worker – barracks. (We can chop this & get EW’s every 5 turns.)
Isin – worker – worker
German galley is following our dinky boat.

Turn 2 110
Attack & kill 1 spear in Southern Babylonian city. I guess they cash rushed an extra spear.
Elite archer kills German archer. No leader.
Stuttgart is size 3, so if we get it we can keep it.

IBT
Another German Archer pops out from Stuttgart.
Sumer – horse – horse

Turn 3 90
Attack & kill 2nd spear in Southern Babylonian city. There is another spear left. Geez, are they cash rushing one on each IBT?
Archer kills the regular unfortified IBT rush spear & the city burns.
We take Stuttgart, and rename it Sumer of 42
F11 reveals we are #1 in pollution!
Spend 23 minutes deciding if I should to rename Erech. Decide I don’t want to get banned from the forum, so I hit enter.

IBT
Babylonian boats circling our island like sharks.
Ur – walls – horse.
Agade –> barracks –> EW
Zabalam-a-ding-dong -> worker -> worker

Turn 4 70bc
Not much.

IBT
Spain wants to talk. She lacks horses.
Bad-Time – horse – horse
Northern Babylonian city sends out a Longbow.

Turn 5 50
Horse kills LB @ N Babylon.
Settler arrives & will settle next turn
Switch Ur to settler. Finishes in 5 and we grow to 6 in 5.
Bad-Time switches to building 2 turn EW’s while we still can. We’ll need a stack of them to survive the IBT when we try to insert our army. Others are all building horses.
The SoZ is due in 2. We only have 4 horses, so that will help a lot with homeland defense.
We have 4 units in Sumer of 42 (size2) and there is still a citizen in rebellion.

IBT
Babylon drops Bowman near the SoZ
Erech –worker – worker

Turn 6 30
Found Kisurra. I’m not making this up, that’s really the name. Avoid temptation to rename it to the obvious – walls.
German Unit still resisting. :mad:
Horse barely kills bowman on forest near Umma Thurman.

IBT
We learn Monotheism & Invention
Sumer – horse- horse
Bad Time – EW – 2 turn EW
Lagash - >SoZ -> BARRACKS (After that settler)
Umma riots since I used the MP last turn. Oops. :sad:
Germany starts Leo’s

Turn 7 10 BC
Kill another Babylonian LB
We can reach the other continent from Erech in 1 turn. There is a nice mountain to drop our army on whenever we get one.
Workers are in position to chop some more courthouse @ Akshak.
We are really light on workers in the east. I rushed 3 workers for 20, 32 & 36 gold. We have 177 left. I want to get roads down for our horse units to travel. It is going to get very busy pretty soon I think.

IBT
Umma Thurman – barracks – settler
Erech – worker – worker
Isin Da Bag – worker – worker
Zabalam-A-Ding-Dong – worker – worker

Turn 8 10AD
Perfect army insertion point to the east of Erech It’s jungle with no roads so we would be safe on the IBT. If we can pop a leader before the AI gets roads down in the jungle we have this game won.

IBT
Ur – settler – horse
Bad Time – EW – EW
Babylon sends out another LB in the north
Spain drops 2 archers @ Umma Thurman Umma seems to be very popular because of the nice rack – hey I meant the ivory! And the nearby SoZ.

Turn 9 30AD
LB defends & offs our horse.
Second horse puts away Babylonian LB & promotes to elite.
Chain EW’s from Bad-Time up to Umma.
Spear 1 Spanish archer near Umma.
Settler heads south towards the last hill on T’s dot map that is unfounded.
We are down to +5gpt

IBT
Umma EW wins & Promotes.
Spain start’s Leo’s

Turn 10 50ad
Nuthin’


Notes:
EDIT -> T_McC You need to MM Umma Thurman to get the settler in 4 turns working a forest.
Just pop a leader & the game is over. Not over quickly, but over.
We do need a harbor somewhere to upgrade our dinky's to galleys.
We may want to build 2 turn EW’s in both Bad-Time & Ur before we hook up the road to the iron and are forced to build pikes. We don’t really need the Iron now that we have Acav on the way until we get chivalry. I’d build roads all the way up to the iron though, and keep workers nearby.
Kish My… can be productive with some mines.
Umma needs a Temple or Library chop. Then water the plains.
Sumer’s mountain needs a mine.
AkshakYou can rush the courthouse for cash now, or do 1 more chop that may go somewhere else anyway. Maybe you should rush before you hit enter.
1 tile corrupt cities building worker Watch for growth. The new citizen always goes to a forest, which is of no use. Reassign to a food square.
Sumer of 42 is still resisting. That’s why it’s building a worker instead of walls. When the road reaches the city, resistance should end.

Picture follows...

50 BC

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_50bc.JPG


It's Uma, not Umma... don't you Sumerians know anything? :rolleyes:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_uma.JPG

Good work, but I'm cautious about landing an army next to a volcano. We don't want a freak accident to decimate our invasion.

I'm the Leader!

Play tonight. Not too worried about landing next to a Volcano. You always get a warning before the Volcano blows. If there's sparks flying when we get there, we'll just find another mountain.

@Greebley - Yep, I'm the only one of the group for whom it would be a lie to say, "I'm old enough to be Yom's father". Barely. Now Cuivienen is a couple of years younger than Yom ...

Though we'll get a warning, wouldn't it be better to land on the Bab's iron and pillage that right away, or is another source visible? You might want to check that in the diplo screen, T_McC.

(And I'm not THAT young :lol: I saw that some members at CFC are just in 5th grade:eek:!)

(And I'm not THAT young :lol: I saw that some members at CFC are just in 5th grade:eek:!)

It's not that you are that young, it's that we are that old! :p

(Although we really need to hook the RHVR Bede into one of these games, 'cause he makes the rest of us look spry.)

The Mountain adjacent to the volcano was suggested because it is within 3 tiles of Erech, so there would be no chance of an enemy boat sinking our Army. The other nice thing about that spot is that it seems to be surrounded by unroaded squares. If we're heading over on a Galley, our Army can only have 1 member in it before landfall. We really don't want to land on a square where we can be attacked before the other members are added.

T_McC The AI's favorite landing point appears to be the forest N of Umma that is next to Lagash & the SoZ. I chained some EW's up there, but a little more defense wouldn't hurt. Chopping that forest around Umma would also be a good idea after the workers in the south get some roads down.

CATS We should also get some cats going somewhere. IIRC, either Erech or Isin Da Bag can pull 2 spt with some growth for 10 turn cats. Pretty soon the AI will be dropping defense 3 Pikes & Knights on the forest N of Umma. Cats will help our Acav & horses kill off these interlopers. :D


It's not that you are that young, it's that we are that old!
I may be old, but at least I’m immature. :lol:

Btw, have we built an FP yet? If not, I'd start one in Lagash right after that barracks finishes for our Vet. ACs. Corruption is killing us in the West and the reduced corruption in the FP city isn't worth placing it far away.

HNDY04 - Distant Shores.

50 AD (0)
Goal is to improve our economy. We'll never be able to research anything at this rate.

Two things are killing us: Having to run 40% lux for Lagash, and only having 1 city over size 6. We'll see what we can do.

Bad-time needs a Courthouse and an Aqueduct. We have cheap Aqueducts, remember. Sumer needs an Aqueduct. Lagash will produce a (veteran) Settler after the Barracks complete. Settler in Umma gets vetoed, we need it to grow to size 7. Agade needs a Harbor and an Aqueduct. Isin da Bag will be the beneficiary of some forest chops and irrigation, to produce Trebs. Unfortunately, I have to say that Akshak is a lost cause for the FP unless we get a leader. The city is at least 80% corrupt. We'll make a decision after I rush the Courthouse. Most of our army is in the primary flip risk city. :crazyeye: They have 1 turn to end resistance, then I'm leaving.

Kish my ... goes to Settler, to replace the one I vetoed in Akshak. We need maybe 4 more to fill up our lands. [One is active and will found on turn 2.]

We have 204 gold, making 9 per turn. I rush the Courthouse in Akshak for 188 gold.

IT - Good Lord, there are a lot of Galleys in the water.

70 AD (1)
Sumer: Horse --> Aqueduct
Bad-time: Enkidu --> Aqueduct
Lagash: Barracks --> Settler
Agade: Horse --> Enkidu
Akshak: Court --> FP at 3 spt. This will work, it should get up to 5 fairly easily.

Resistance ends in Sumer of 42. Everybody out!

We now only make 3 gpt.

IT - We learn Chivalry. No need to hurry with the Knights or the Iron hook up.

90 AD (2)
We get a vet AC.

Kish my ... : Settler --> Treb

Der founded, starts on Walls. Built on a hill, with a double-Enkidu garrison. Very safe.

Freshly-built settler heads south.

IT - Nothing special

110 AD (3)
Assault on Shuruppak: Vet AC wins, Elite Horse wins. We get no leader, but we do get 36 gold.

Archer defeats LB.

IT - None of these boats wants to drop anything off ???

130 AD (4)
Ur: Horse --> Aqueduct

Lagash: Settler --> Enkidu

Lux tax down to 20%. Income to +14 gpt.

150 AD (5)
Troop shufflng.

IT - Blow the Germans off. Learn Gunpowder. We have salt at Ur.

170 AD (6)
Lagash continues with 1-turn Enkidus.

IT - Babylon drops off an LB. Get another vet AC.

190 AD (7)
Agade: Enkidu --> Aqueduct
Sumer of 42: Worker --> Walls (Stupid forest chop went the wrong way!)
Sumer: Aqueduct --> Temple
Bad-time: Aqueduct --> Enkidu
Lagash: Enkidu --> Temple

Build Kua. Actually back the other settler up, there is more fruitful terrain in the East.

Whack LB with Elite AC. No leader.

IT - Alright, Spain is trying to participate. Two reg Archers dropped off in our SE.

210 AD (8)
Resistance ends in Shuruppak. Taxman created.

Archers killed by AC and Horse.

It's about time to hook up the Iron, but after I finish tweaking the FP area.

IT - More crap from Izzy.

230 AD (9)
Dismiss the reg Spanish Archer. Doesn't anyone else have Iron? Or are they fighting amongst themselves?

IT - Krauts finish Sun Tzu's.

250 AD (10)
Shuffle workers.

Final Notes:
The FP site should be up to 5 spt very soon. In fact, we should consider merging a non-German worker into the city when it grows to size 5, I think it can make 7 spt at size 6 and break-even food.

No unit losses, so despite the gains in population and unit support, we are still at +13 gpt. I fear for our capacity to research. Might be a good time to put the outliers on Courts or Walls, once this batch of workers completes. We'll have over 20, with a fairly developed empire.

We need those Temples to support size 8 cities. We could also consider Courts in Bad-time and Agade to perk up our production capacity.

We are just about immune from attacks. We have 2 AC and 8 Horses running around, so landings can at least be met by volume.

I think we have just about all the MP units we can use, it may be time to hook up the Iron and start to build Knights. I definitely would not hook up the saltpeter until we have Metallurgy, or maybe even Military Tradition.

Nice job. We are due a leader.

This is going to be a defensive game for a while now. Did you have a chance to sneak the Dinky Boats over to the ship off point? Forgot to do it myself & didn't put it in the notes.

If not, Next leader should move them in as a three stack by moving 1 turn, fortifying, moving 1 turn, fortifying, etc. Galley's probably won't attack a fortified dinky boat 3-stack. We need to move them to Erech now before the AI builds Caravels.

Go ahead and skip me. I need to head to sleep tonight and will traveling all tomorrow. After that chances are that I will be too busy to play.

Go ahead and skip me. I need to head to sleep tonight and will traveling all tomorrow. After that chances are that I will be too busy to play.

Bummer!

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom <- UP

@Have a good trip and welcome to Los Angeles. If I wasn't going to San Jose for the weekend I would have asked if I could buy you an imbibement. Enjoy the weather here. It is pretty nice right now.

I read in another thread that Yom is having disk trouble again.

I am :(. I'll see if I can get it working, but I doubt it.

I am :(. I'll see if I can get it working, but I doubt it.

Okay - I'll put you on autoskip :( until you check back in that your disk is working again.


Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley <-UP
Yom <- Autoskip due to disk issues

Oops posted Sling3 turnlog to the wrong SG :blush:

There's nothing here...move along

Roster:
Handy <- playing
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley <-out of town
Yom <- Autoskip due to disk issues

Well... since Greebley's playing Sling3 tonight... and since Yom's CD is broken... and since I want to move this along because I leave on vacation next Thursday...

I GOT IT

Building Infrastructure :coffee:

Summary
I hardly build any military, mostly temples & Libraries.
No leaders but we do have a few Elites now.
Started the Dinky Boats towards Erech, which is building a harbor.

Pre-turn
Defenses look good, so Kish changed to aqueduct from treb
Kisurra & Der switched from walls to court. I did this only because we seem to have a pretty good & fairly mobile homeland defense, and the AI must use naval landings.

Plans
Irrigate & mine core tiles.
Get some libraries built since we are nearing the self-research phase
Start courts after the current worker builds complete
Courts in Bad-time and Agade.
I’ll hook up the Iron, but wait on the salt.

IBT
Ur – aqueduct – Temple & after that Library
Babylon begins Leo’s.
Babylon starts Knights Templar
Babylon finishes Knights Templar. Boy, that was fast.
Spain begins Sistine.

Turn 1 260
Not much

IBT
We learn theology
We learn Chemistry
SOZ pops AC
Babylon building Sistine
Spain completes Leo’s

Turn 2 270
Shadowing galleys with our rapid response team so we can attack after they land.

IBT
Germany drops a sword off S near iron.
Babylon wants to talk. They have Iron, 3 luxuries & Metallurgy.
Lagash – Temple – library
Shuruppak – worker – court
Babylon starts Sistine
Germans start Sistine

Turn 3 280
I’m working on chopping the coastal forest to take away the AI’s defensive bonus on the turn they land.
AC hammers German Sword
Time to hook up the Iron so we can get knights to battle the swords & pikes that are sure to be on the way.

IBT
Germany drops off 2 swords near the Iron. I guess this is where the Ai wants to attack because they are certainly traveling a long way to get there.
Sumer – Temple – Library. Need some mines near Sumer and Ur.
Bad Time – Temple – Library
Umma – Temple – market

Turn 4 290
AC kills sword
Horse offs Sword
Elite horse nails Spanish LB dropped in the north near Kish.

IBT
Babylon finishes Sistine
The road to the Iron is complete.
FP is due in 24 turns

Turn 5 300
:sleep:

IBT
LB drops near Kish My
Lagash – Library – knight
Can’t remember an AW game where we had soooo many infrastructure builds going at the same time. After the Libraries complete I plan to have 2 cities building markets while the others build knights.
Agade – aqueduct – temple
Sumer of 42 – worker – courthouse
Kua – worker – courthouse

Turn 6 310
AC offs LB
I forgot to do this earlier, but I begin the tedious task of moving the currahs to Erech which is building a harbor so it can upgrade the currahs to carry the army over that we hope to get soon. Taking the southern route.

IBT
Isin da Bag – worker – court
Zabalam-a-ding-dong – worker – court

Turn 7 320
Worker stuff
Move our Dinky Fleet
IBT
Babylon drops 2 units @ Kish my and Spain drops 1
Ur – Temple – Library
Sumer – Library – knight

Turn 8 330
Battles @ Kish
Elite horse wins. No leader
AC wins and Promotes
Horse wins & Promotes
We now have 3 elites @ Kish.
Kish needs a barracks after the aqueduct & Temple completes so these guys can heal faster. Attacks are not too frequent right now since the galleys have to travel so far. They are using the barracks in to heal Sumer if redlined. If they are just nicked a little they heal next to Kish.

IBT
Our galleys are taking the southern route to avoid the AI boat traffic, nevertheless they are attacked and win against a galley.
Bad-Time – library – market
Kish My – temple

Turn 9 340
I’m dragging water from Ur over to the plains near Der. We can mine over the irrigation after the water gets to Der.

Turn 10 350
worker stuff.

FP now due in 24 since it is working a mined grass for population growth.
Rotate core cities to Marketplace builds. Probably should have 2 core cities building markets at all times. Rest of the core can build knights (after they get Temples & Libraries done).
We’ll probably get education pretty soon and have to self-research, which will be tough on 6gpt. :lol:
Keep the Dinky’s sailing towards Erech.
Maybe we should build a quick harbor in Ur :hmm: to upgrade the Dinky’s after the Library completes. Getting an army to the other side ASAP is our best way to win. harbor in Erech will take way too long. We’ll need 2 galleys, assuming the mountain drop off remains un-roaded.

I think we have a good shot at this game. If we get an army to the other side soon, we have an excellent chance. I think I’d go for an AC army to pillage more tiles each turn. Wouldn't bother to attack with it, just pillage.

Roster:
Handy
Slinger <- UP
T_McC
Greebley <-out of town
Yom <- Autoskip due to disk issues

Greebley - Cut in if you have time to play since we skipped you

350 bc

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_350ad.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_350ad2.JPG

:D Great turns Handy! It looks like we've got our starting island completely under control. The only question now is when to go on the offensive. Once we get our infrastructure built, I say we go on the offensive immediately. That way we can still get some use out of our knights and AC before Muskets appear and establish a beachhead. Then we can play defense until Cavalry and then just use our already established beachhead to push forward with cavalry and win ;).

One question though: What's the use of building the FP in Akshak? The lower corruption in that city isn't worth delaying it that much. IMHO, we really should have built it in Lagash after the SoZ.

Concur on the great turns Handy!
I'll play tonight and then I have to be skipped until Monday night. I'm coming into work early tomorrow so I can leave for the weekend to San Jose for the 10th annual Meathead Golf tourney. It's all my buddies from up there and I'll be coming home Monday afternoon.

The reason we are building the FP in Akshak is because the FP does effect the cities around it. We will recover more shields and gold this way.

Lagash could have built it about 15 turns sooner than Akshak, but by not building the FP, Lagash provided plenty of military cover so our other core cities could build aqueducts. There's always a trade-off, but we certainly could have done the FP there.

On a related note: Akshak can't grow larger than size 6 without an aqueduct, so it should be configured for max shields and break-even food. We should score another shield that way.

A Harbor in Ur is an excellent idea.

Is anyone else terrified by the fact that we are making 6 gpt with science set to 0%?

1. On a related note: Akshak can't grow larger than size 6 without an aqueduct, so it should be configured for max shields and break-even food. We should score another shield that way.

2. A Harbor in Ur is an excellent idea.

3. Is anyone else terrified by the fact that we are making 6 gpt with science set to 0%?

1. Good catch - I missed it. Barbslinger please take note.

2. I agree, let's do it.

3. YES!! Perhaps I should have built a couple of markets before libraries all over the place. :hmm:

@T_McC: I'm pretty sure that FP location has no affect on the corruption than the cities around it. It just lowers corruption in the FP city (max of 10% corruption before courthouse and Police IIRC) and increases the OCN by 50%.

HNDY04 – 350BC

Preturn – The way I see it, and correct me if I’m wrong, markets should always come before libraries. 1) You get the cash boost, 2) Once the library is built there will be more research income that is up 50% and 3) in our case since we can not yet afford to research the libraries will have little effect but a couple extra beakers when we finally go to 10-20%. The markets will pay themselves off sooner and give us needed money sooner that we can then partial rush the libs. For those reasons Ur building a lib without a market is swapped. Babs have Ed and Metal and I’m hoping they trade metal first but I’m sure it will be Ed being the cheaper of the two. Hoping for a leader while building and get one over to the other side.

IT – A LB is dropped off near Kish my... Leader chance. 3 forests are harvested.

[1] 360AD – Kill the LB with E horse losing 2hp and no leader. Adjust Akshack to get FP in 19. Putting the pop on both forests loses the extra shield to corruption and then requires more lux so it will keep +1 food. Do some MM to lower the market builds.

IT – Education comes in :sad: Germans drop off a sword in the south near Marad. Babs are build Copes.

[2] 370AD – Kill the sword with an AC. No promo. Wondering why our 1st ring has such bad corruption. Lagash is 25% and Bad-Time is 40%??? We’re going to need courts in our first ring? Single science has been on Metal for 2 turns. We don’t make enough cash for raising research. At –11gpt is drops to 47 from 48. At –17gpt it drops to 33T.

IT – We get another LB for a leader shot.

[3] 380AD – No leader luck again. Finally get the MP right to drop lux and go to 9gpt. I’ll have to watch it when I attack. I have tried to slow growth a bit to wait on workers improving tiles. Wondering why we have 2 irrigated grass near Ur and Lagash. I can understand the one to offset the salt/desert tile but the one between the 2 cities will get a mine. I’m swapping Bad-time to a court. It will pay off over the long haul and will build everything quicker after that. Due in 6.

IT – The germans try a sword, E archer landing near Marad. A LB lands near Kish my... Lagash-Knight>Market.

[4] 390AD – We lose an AC but gain an elite against the sword and E archer. The LB goes down with no leader. Another irrigated grass appears near Bad-time??? I don’t get it. We can barely keep our pop happy as it is. Is there a reason for wanting this accelerated growth? I move a couple more units towards Marad in anticipation of increased frequency of landings there.

IT – No landings, but it looks like a Kiss my double landing coming up. Could some of the irrigation be heading towards Agade?

[5] 400AD – Moving workers and adjusting troops. The knight is in Marad now.

IT – 3LB’s and a spear N of Kish my…

[6] 410AD – Kill all 4 using 3 elites including an Endiku on the last 3/3 LB. No leaders. Working along. Taking irrigation through to Agade.

IT – Flamed Kisurra. No landings. Sumer-Knight>Market. Umma-Market>Lib.

[7] 420AD – Lagash gets the single science because of overcrowding and can’t get the market quicker. Agade is getting its irrigation.

IT – Babs means business landing a knight and a MDI, both vets, N of Kish my…
Ur-Market>Lib for now. Due in 3 after MM.

[8] 430AD – Figure I’ll see how our new knight fares and he loses to the Bab knight taking him to 1hp. Kill the MDI with an E AC and then our E horse takes down the knight popping the leader Lugalzagesi. He heads SE to become an army and picks up an AC and is now in Erech. I have had the curraughs coming around and they should be in Ur in 3. You can wait for a harbor there. Changed my mind and swap Ur to harbor, MM for it in 4. Umma goes to Knight.

IT – Bad-time-Ct>Market. No landings.

[9] Workers going at it.

IT – No landings but it looks like some are coming.

[10] Continue working.

Metal in 40, but a few libs and we may be able to start self research. I’m wondering if it should be a knight army at 3 defense. The Ai will have cavs soon so as soonas the army gets there we should take out babs iron. Good luck over the weekend. Hope I can see a computer while away in the mountains.

Agreed the Army should be Knights, 33% higher defense is worth it. Before we try to ship the single-member army over, we should have it kill an LB or something red-lined so we can build the HE. Or it may be advisable to wait until it reaches full membership on the other continent and let it pick something off.

The FP provides a second center for distance corruption and a boost in OCN (which indirectly affects rank corruption), in addition to serving a corruption-fighting role in the city where it is built. On a Standard map, building the FP somewhere long-2nd ring or short-3rd ring is about the best you can do. This being a Tiny map, Akshak is a short-2nd ring city, so we should recover some trade/shields from the cities farther out in the east. Whether that makes up for a ~20 turn delay ....

Heavy irrigation outside the 1st ring is not a bad strategy. We will want to run lots of scientists to do research. We can always mine over an irrigated tile that was just serving as a gateway for further irrigation.

Wondering why we have 2 irrigated grass near Ur and Lagash... Another irrigated grass appears near Bad-time??? I don’t get it.

Look @ my map & notes. I was dragging water to the plains near Agade & Der, and mentioned we would want to mine back over the irrigation after we got water to Der. From Der we'll want to drag water to the southern corrupt cities to grow specialists. :)

HNDY04 - Land Ho!

450 AD (0)
Turn research up to 40%, Metallurgy in 29 at -9 gpt. Specialists and completing the FP will help quite a bit. I will also consider Cathedrals for our larger cities, even for 160 shields they should be cost-effective. Wake up a few workers that are unnecessarily mining, set them to work creating specialists.

Ugh. The army already has a vet AC in it. That costs us a point on attack until we either build the Pentagon or the Military Academy. Defensively, it won't cost us a point until we build the MA or the Pentagon.

Make another couple of Scientists and Metallurgy is due in 25 at -11 gpt.

IT - Lots of stuff lands.

460 AD (1)
Kill LB, Warrior, Pike, Crusader, LB without loss.

MM cities. Now Metallurgy is in 22 turns at -11 gpt.

470 AD (2)
Ur completes a Harbor, moves to a cheap Library. MM possible off of 15 spt.

No landings, spend 135 gold to upgrade to Galleys.

480 AD (3)
Kill 3 more Babylonian units: Knight, MDI, LB.

IT - Babs start Newtons.

490 AD (4)
Nothing dropped. Create 3 more scientists, Metallurgy due in 14 at -9 gpt.

500 AD (5)
Create another scientist. Start on Cathedrals for our core. Cities that have Markets are net cash-positive with Cathedrals.

Fish on an LB, no bites. What to put in the Army? I don't suspect we'll be attacking much, so 1 Knight and 2 ACs can net us 15 HP, a defense of 4/3/3, and attacks of 5/4/4. Both our existing Knights would net us 13 HP, defense of 4/4/3 and attacks of 5/5/4. I'll go with the higher HP option, which also leaves us a bit ahead on the home front.

510 AD (6)
Off a German Archer. The landing party is loaded and sails next turn (and makes landfall!).

Make another couple of Scientists, Metallurgy in 9 at -10 gpt.

520 AD (7)
Win one, lose one with AC. Clean up German Knight with our Knight.

We land on the Mountain adjacent to a Volcano.

IT - Bunch of stuff lands, Babs come 1 tile short of being able to attack our Army group. Last chance, toots. :smug:

530 AD (8)
Kill 2 German Archers. Pillage my first tile. Decide to go one more square and leave Army on flatlands that are not really approachable by anyone other than Spain.

Babylon is Industrial, but the Germans are the only ones who can build Cavalry. No one has researched Music Theory, so if we wanted to try a gambit ...

IT - Nothin'

540 AD (9)
Kill an LB. Pillage 1 square, can't really say what I'm looking for here. :confused:

IT - Another clown joins the circus on our shores.

550 AD (10)
Dismiss said clown. Pillage 3 tiles, possible denying Spain two lux. They should be the softest target, but I think Babylon has an island SE of us.


Final Notes:
FP in 1, Metallurgy in 4 at -6 gpt. Check out how many scientists we are running, that is what Ag + copious irrigation gets you. :salute:

We need those Cathedrals so our core can work all available land tiles, and possibly reduce the lux tax. Two or three cities on Cathedrals, two or three on Knights lets us advance in a fairly balanced way. We could really use another leader, but even with a kill ratio of 16 - 1 (and probably 14 Elite wins in there) none was forthcoming on this turn..

Pictures to follow.

This is where we made landfall. The Spanish have a lousy shape to their empire, so we may be able to make short work of their core before moving on.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_Landfall.JPG

Here's a bigger picture:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_Landfall2.JPG

The Bab island is in the south of this map. We'll need Astronomy to get there safely, unless we want to sail a really long way. Our army is in the red circle.

I wouldn't even bother pillaging the Spanish so much. with only 3 core cities, they don't have much production capabilities. Perhaps it would be more efficient to just pillage Seville and Toledo and head straight north for Babylon. OTOH, getting it out of the way might be smarter, but Spain's most likely going to be our first target and the first to bite the dust.

Well done Slinger & T!

This looks great! :)

Markets & specialists for us + pillaging the AI will help us catch up. No resources for the AI means lots & lots of Longbows and rifles to kill. We can deal with that.

It will take a few turns, but as long as we just pillage with this first army, our victory is pretty much assured. [dance]

Another couple of lux would sure speed up the victory.

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom - MIA with laptop issues.

Greebley & Yom let me know if you can play

I haven't checked if my CD is working for a couple days, but I wouldn't be able to take it tonight anyway. I'll let you know if I can get it working by tomorrow around noon.

My last post until after Meatheading in the golf tourny. Get Babylon!

No dice on the CD :(. Looks like it's time to get out my wallet. I'll buy it today and play later tonight.

I can try to play it if noone else has got it at the moment. Tell me if I shouldn't play.

Yom, when is night for you? US time?

East coast U.S. time. Go ahead and play now if you can. I'm up in another SG as well.

Preturn:
Looks good. I don't change anything

IBT:
Kish: Temple->Trebuchet (we have none)
Akshak: FP->Aquaduct

560 AD: Start army toward Babylon, pillaging as I go. I agree Spain is the lesser of three evils. With the FP, I switch some builds and MM the cities. I think we will want trebuchets. We have none at the moment.

IBT: Copernicus is completed by Germany. Spanish switch to Magellan.
Sumer: Trebuchet->Trebuchet
Agade: Temple->Library

570 AD: Pillaging army enters Babylon territory.

IBT: Quiet

580 AD: I was looking at the TMcC's notes to see if Babylon has landed Riflemen yet. They definitely have them; there is one guarding the city. Trebuchets are going to be very high priorty. We don't have high enough attacks to kill Rifles without damaging them first.

------------------------
Aside:

TMcC,
I notice in your notes you seem to think attacks are always integers (1,2,3, etc). Do you have reason for this belief? I always assumed armies would have fractions so If you get the .25 bonus, an attack 3 army has attack 3.75. You seem to imply this isn't the case?

Also I have never been able to figure out if mixed unit armies average their values or use each unit in turn. For example, a Rifle+ longbow army might defend with strength 6 and then with strength 1 (or visa versa).

Has anyone ever studied how armies mix units and their attack and defenses?

--------------------------

IBT: Germany lands 2 MDI near Shurrupak. Babylon lands a Pike and an MDI near Marad.

590 AD:
Vet Archer kills the first MDI, but a Vet ACav dies vs the second. The MDI promotes.
ACav attacks regular pike and does no damage. The Pike promotes. An elite ACav attacks the same pike and is killed. At least the pike is red-lined.
A horseman attacks the MDI and retreats. An ACav kills the MDI. Our one and only Telephone Sanitizer kills the Pike and makes the public telephones in the square safe for human use.

Not a good round. 15 turns worth of ACav are no more.

IBT: German Pike, Swordman pair is landed near Shurrapak.
Metallurgy->Mil Trad
Statue of Zeus is no more.
Gah! Forgot to adjust the towns I took units out of for the loss of the MP. R

600 AD: Archer loses to the pike. Barely kill the sword with an Elite* horseman.

IBT: Rifle and 2 knights are dropped off near Kish My. This could be a real problem. I will probably defend due to the lack of Trebuchets. Spanish drop off an Longbow.

Ur: Cathedral->Trebuchet
Bad-time: Knight->Trebuchet
Akshak: Aquaduct->Library

610 AD: Longbow killed but no leader. Defend city.

IBT: The Babylon knights kill two of our knights. The rifle pillages.

620 AD: We lose three horsemen killing the knights. Our last attack is with an Elite, but no leader. The lack of Artillery combined with poor RNG is decimating our forces. I don't think defending only is the answer either as we have no pikes in the empire. I upgrade one of the horses we own to a knight.

IBT: Fortunately quiet.
Sumer: Trebuchet->Harbor (really needs one)
Sumer of 42: Trebuchet->Trebuchet
Kua: Trebuchet->Trebuchet

630 AD: A horse retreats vs the Rifle. A knight kills it. We finally get some RNG Luck.
I think Spain and Germany were fighting, but made peace. We may see a large increase in landing units soon. [edit 650 AD: The war may still be going... I can not tell]

IBT: Another Spanish Longbow lands.
Ur:Trebuchet->Cannon
Bad-time: Trebuchet->Cannon
Note that we can just now build cannon since I just now got the Saltpeter connected.

640 AD: Spanish longbow does not generate a leader.

IBT: Or maybe the war is still on?? Babylon troops enter German territory.
Kish My...: Trebuchet->Market (we need more income).
Isin da bag: Courthouse->Market
Akshak: Library->Market

650 AD: Pillage into Germany.

Notes:
Our forces were sub-optimal. We mostly had Enkidu, Horsemen, and ACav, which handled the invasion forces poorly. We either needed up upgrade more or build more Trebuchets.

The above combined with under average RNG meant we lost half our speed 2 units.

Our towns weren't in danger however - we did have sufficient numbers of troops. In fact, maybe too many as 50% Commerce only gets us to +1 gold.

It may have been a mistake not to go for banking first for the above reason, but I wanted Cav to deal with the threat of invading rifles.

We now have some Trebuchets, but only if the AI lands near them.

Good luck Yom! A new CD should solve your Civ woes.

Sorry for the last minute nature of the "I got it". I just suddenly had some time.

A mixed army defends at the highest defense in the stack until it loses 4 hp, at which point it defends with the next highest defender and so on. The same holds true for Attack, but the loss of bonus attack/defense in Conquests due to the army being mixed usually doesn't make it worth it unless you are VERY low on spare units (in PTW and vanilla, though, the concept was a pretty good idea if low on units).

Mixed armies lose their bonus to attack and defense then?

Does that it mean it may not be worth adding a stronger unit to the mix? I have seen a single cavalry added to an existing knight army with three knights. Does this mean the defense drops to 3 when you do this (from the 3.5 or 3.75 of before?)

Roster:
Handy
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom <-UP

No time to look at the save. Things sound okay though. :thumbsup: Nothing we can't handle after we build some cav. Our economy is getting better, the AI's worse due to pillaging. Sounds like we are in hunker down mode to some extent.

Sorry for the last minute nature of the "I got it". I just suddenly had some time.

I'm glad you got a chance to play! :)

Victory :)! The new cd does the trick (though it made me think I had just thrown $30 down the drain when it wouldn't work on my laptop, I got it to work on my desktop, which is even better). I'll get this sometime tonight, so consider this a 'got it.'

@Greebley: Armies don't defend at non-integer values. All bonuses applied to armies are first rounded down before being added to the base att/def. values. So a 3 knight army attacks at 7 or 4 +(4+4+4)/4 and defends at 5 (even though 3 + (3+3+3)/4 is 5.25, it rounds down). It's not that a mixed unit army actually gets NO bonus, it's just that its bonus is LESS because of the differing values of the units of the army AFAIK. A 2-Knight, 1-cav army would get an attack bonus of 3 (3.5 rounded down) rather than 4 if it had had 3 cavs. If it had 3 knights, it would get the same bonus as a 2knight/cav mixed army, but it loses the +2 attack from the addition of a higher attacker. Since the army would attack at 6 with the cav being the highest defender it would be a 9-attack unit vs. a 7 attack (all knight) or 10 attack (all cav) unit. As you can see, the difference between a 2knight/cav army and cav army is more in its speed, rather than its attack (though the military academy makes mixed armies less desirable with the bonus being increased - 3knight/cav being 4 and 4 cav being 6 ). OTOH, if you added a pikeman to a 2-sword army, you'd get a 4 attack unit instead of a 5-attack unit, which makes a big difference in the ancient age. There's really no [b]downside to mixed-unit armies other than losing defense and 1 attack point. I'd fill an empty army with mixed units if we were severely short on units. As for adding a cav to a knight army, it's a no-brainer with the extra attack of the cavalry. The only way in which an all-cav army is superior (other than 1 extra attack) is the fact that if a cav retreats in the army, there's another cav in the army to attack. In a mixed army, however, a unit of lesser attack will lead the attack, meaning it has 2 less attack in a 2-knight/cav army.

Sorry if that's too much to read, but I wasn't sure how much you knew about the physics of armies (I remember T_McC explained it in Narcissistic Nehru).

:lol: Yom's explanation has me confused. :crazyeye: :lol:

So here's my take (all calculations assume pre-Military Academy):

- Armies attack or defend only at integer values. I can't remember the source of this information, but it was no worse than second-hand from the developers.

I'm not sure why this is. Although every other unit in the game has integer attack or defense values, the actual combat calculation has to use real numbers for the city/metropolis/terrain bonuses to be meaningful. All I can guess is that it was either too difficult a programming task, or the programmers were too lazy :sad: , to re-code so that the calculation could begin with a real number instead of an integer.

- Each unit in an army attacks or defends with its base value + the army bonus. For the example of two Longbows and a Rifle, the army would have 3 attacks of 6 [(4+(4+4+4)/6)/(4+(4+4+4)/6)/...]. The army would defend at 7/2/2. [(6+int((6+1+1)/6))/(1+int((6+1+1)/6))/...]

- Each unit is given the maximum number of hitpoints its type can allow (i.e, 5 for every unit other than AC or War Elephants, those two units can have 6), provided each subsequent unit in the army will have at least 1.

For example, put 3 Vet Knights in an army, and attack with the army. Knight #1 attacks until it loses 5 HP, then Knight #2 takes over. Since the army has 7 HP remaining, Knight #2 also attacks until it loses 5 HP. Knight #3 will only have 2 HP if it is needed to continue the attack.

If the army began its attack with less than full HP, say 9/12, Knight #1 would still have 5 HP to lose. When Knight #2 was needed to take over, the army would only have 4 HP remaining. Since 1 HP is reserved for Knight #3, Knight #2 would attack until it lost 3 HP, then Knight #3 would take over.

- The army moves at the speed of its slowest member.

- The math never seems to work out that a mixed-unit army is really good. If a mixed unit army can gain a point of defense (2 LB's + 1 Musket), it loses a potential point on offense (vs. 3 LB's). Once you can add a 4th unit, or build the MA, things are a little better.

Agreed that we need to build a bunch of artillery. Since we never had a static front to defend, we didn't build much early, and we've been pushing infra really hard since our GA. Cities that can't do a Knight or Musket in less than 10 turns are excellent candidates for artillery production.

I know this is anathema, but we might consider merging some of our workers into cities where they can be happy. I think we should be close to having all tiles improved and we aren't very close to rails, so these guys don't have much to do. When we need them again, we can always spit them back out.

Turn 0 - Looking over our lands, we seem to have almost every tile fully improved. The only thing we lack is infrastructure and badly need courthouses in the west. For instance, Zabalam is losing 6 of its 7 shields to corruption, and I'm sure we haven't hit the OCN yet (btw, do we want to go to communism? It seems to be the smartest choice to me with our dumbell shaped making for a non-centrally located palace).
Our military is weak compared to the Germans and Babylonians and strong compared to the Spanish. I notice that we only have 3 knights and still have 5 horsemen. A diplo check shows that we have fallen a bit behind in techs:

Spain: up MT, Banking, Astronomy, and MT (probably other techs beyond that as well)
Germany: Same as Spain
Babylon (Industrial): Same as Spain + Nationalism, maybe one more Industrial tech, but not communism (since he's still in republic).

Aha! the Babylonians lack saltpeter! If we can keep this out of their hands, their offense will be pitiful. The Spanish, too, cannot build cavalry, being in need of horses. The Germans, however, have both horses and Salt., but not iron.

I swap Umma off a knight in 7 onto a Library in 3. We need to improve our economy and we are too broke to upgrade more than 2 knights.

As for the army, I think it will be better used in Babylon, so I'm going to just take out the German incense and head to Uruk, moving southward (taking out the German's only visible horses on the way).

IBT - German workers flee from our worker and I see a freshly produced German Cavalry leave a city. The Babylonian and Spanish ships continue along our coastline but don't drop off anything.

Lagash:Cathedral->University
Der:Trebuchet->Cannon (why didn't the build upgrade before?) I switch all trebuchet builds to cannons (I wish we were communist right now, as my trigger finger is itching to whip some courthouses in these corrupt cities that aren't fully corrupt but only have 1 shield.

The Spanish complete Magellan's voyage (how fast are their ships now, with seafaring, Magellan's and The Great Lighthouse?).

Turn 1 - I fortify new trebuchets outside of cities so that we won't forget about them.
I trade 4 food for 1 shield at Marad, to halve its courthouse production time. It had to be at 11 shields! Actually, I move 2 mined grass to an irrigated one, since the mine on the hill completes next turn.
Kissura only needs 6 shields, so I borrow a mined hill from Akshak and switch a roaded Grassland at Akshak to a mined roaded one to keep the Marketplace in 9.
I use a trebuchet to bombard a Spanish ship, but no dice.
I also notice some odd worker configurations: 2 workers and 1 slave working on irrigation, 5 workers working on mining a hill, and 2 workers roading a hill. It's unimportant weed but :smoke: nonetheless.

IBT - Still no landings, but there are about 4 ships circling like hawks.

Forest Chop completes.
Ur:Cannon->University (It has hit size 12 but is still happy - so any city with a temple and Cathedral will be happy at 20% lux as long as it has 1 MP and makes 24 commerce per turn, an avgerage of 2 per tile, which we can do in a couple core cities, otherwise we'll only need 1 specialist. Actually, nevermind, only Ur has 4 commerce at the center tile, so it's impossible without working 10 2-commerce tiles.

Turn 2 - A quick swap between a mined and irrigated grass at Ur gets it up to 15 spt to get the Uni in 7 and Lagash growing more quickly but still getting the uni in 9. One turn at 12 and 8 at 11 will get the uni in 9 rather than 10 and wasting shields.
I send the New cannon to the west as it is low on artillery.

Trebuchet bombardment succeeds in injuring Babylonian ship.
Our workers in the East are out of jobs until the courthouses begin finishing in 16 turns, so I move them to the West to mine over irrigation.

Our army lands on the german incense.

IBT - Still no landings, but there are still 4 or 5 ships along our coast. I wonder what they're waiting for?

Bad-time:Cannon->Knight (Cavalry prebuild). Actually, I change my mind and change it to a university. We need more infrastructure (especially libraries & Universities since we're scientific and have to research on our own).
Umma:Library->University in 13

MT is now in 6 at +0gpt and 30% science.

Turn 3 - I send our new cannon west again.
Begin mining of Ur, with all mines, and one water tile switched to a mined grass, it should make 20 spt with no growth.

Incense tile pillaged. I check the diplo screen and confirm that it was their only source of incense (no longer under resources).

IBT - OUCH! The first landings this turn and they come in full force! The Spanish land a harmless longbow on a hill next to Kisurra, and the Germans proceed to unload an MDI, a Musket AND a *Cavalry* on the other side of Kisurra!!!

Sumer:Harbor->Musketman

Turn 4 - Our *sole* trebuchet in the East bombards the German stack, injuring the musketman. Unfortunately, the Cavalry doesn't come up as the top defender. I send in an AC (not really expecting a win, but rather injuring it until the Cav is the top defender and taking that out) and it SUCCEEDS!!

With that bit of luck I have a 1-unit buffer for taking out the remaining 3 troops (before resorting to Enkidus, which I might do if the cav survives (not the MDI or longbow though).

Elite Telephone Sanitizer vs. vet Cav. redlines but wins!!! (phew! it scared me by losing its first 2 hitpoints).
Vet Horseman vs. reg MDI....loses flawlessly and promotes it :rolleyes:. Well...that's the way the PRNG works. I'd rather let the reg longbow attack than the vet MDI (b/c of experience and b/c the MDI is next to the redline archer and 4/5 AC), but the MDI is tougher to take out.
Reg (how'd this come to be?) archer vs. Longbow on hill...loses flawlessly and promotes him?!? wtf? This is not looking good for our thin defenses in the East. They should hold up, but it won't be pretty.
I definitely don't trust the RNG now, so I use my last attacker (an elite horse) vs. the longbowman and win flawlessly.

I can now either sacrifice a telephone sanitizer or an enkidu. The AC I'm not worried about b/c of its 2 defense and retreat. I decide that the AI will choose to attack the city rather than the Archer (hopefully), so I enforce it with another enkidu to ensure Kisurra doesn't fall and do a *massive* unit shuffle to prevent massive riots (which is a very bad sign. We need more luxuries and more cathedrals!)

Thanks to our great 3-tile set up, I effectively move an unneeded MP from Agade to defend Kisurra (gotta love those virtual rails).

I hit end turn and pray to the PRNG gods...

IBT - I read my cards wrong and the MDI offs our Telephone sanitizer without a scrath (and I was certain that the AI couldn't resist attacking cities when it was their primary goal).
Germany also drops off another cav (which can be handled with all the troops in the area and one more cannon to soften defenses.

Agade:Harbor->Marketplace (I still think we should push infrastructure. More units would be nice, but right now, we're not going anywhere so we can afford losing a few units here and there to landings).

Turn 5 - Lagash has a total of 5 MP inside. We could really use a knight in the East and the West is relatively secure with 6 trebuchets, so I send it east. Sumer is actually a better place to station units, so I move the other knight and AC there and it's still happy.
I pillage the German horses, and sure enough, its their only source :D. No more cavs for you, Otto! You've been a bad boy, let us 'old' men rest in peace!

Our cannon misses the cav, but our trebuchet hits :crazyeye:. A leader would be nice, but I really don't want to push my luck with the PRNG after I defeated the Musketman, so I attack the cav with the 4/5 AC rather than the 5/5 Horseman...and lose flawelessly, promoting it!!! Seriously, wtf is up with the PRNG on my turns! The chance of not scratching it are very slim I'm sure (the odds of winning should have been around 50-50 too!). Letting the Cav attack is no option, so I press my luck with the Horseman....and win, losing only 1 hp AND getting a leader :crazyeye:. He is renamed 'Cav-killer and retreats back into Kisurra. He is of course used for an army, which will be filled with Cav in 4 turns.

The MDI is unfortunately within range of Sumer of 42, which is defended by an Elite and vet enkidu. I don't trust the PRNG to give me another leader or the 1 hitpoint to make much a difference, so I evacuate the enkidu and send another vet in its stead (although both vets are unfortified). I'm not sure if you guys consider this an exploit, but I leave Kisurra undefended for one turn so that the MDI will go for it, allowing me to get in a round of bombardment and use the knight on it.

IBT - The MDI ignores the empty city and attacks, killing the vet enkidu *flawlessly* (see what I mean about not trusting the PRNG?) The spanish drop off another reg Longbow. This tim at the Choke between east and west. A babylonian Galleon shows up outside Kissura (if it drops off a cav I'm going to freak out!

Turn 6 - The Spanish actually picked a good spot to land (for us, not for them) as it is within the 6-tile range of our knight, cav, and horseman in Sumer and right next to a trebuchet and cannon. I'm suspicious of the Babylonian Galleon though, so I don't bombard with the cannon, but, rather, I put move it towards Kisurra to bombard any troops the babylonians drop off.

The trebuchet hits the Longbow and a vet knight takes it out, losing 2 hp. Our trebuchet and cannon both hit the MDI and a knight takes it out, winning flawlessly. I now form a coastal blockade to prevent the babylonians from landing next turn (with military units only, no workers, though an army and artillery played a part).

IBT - The Babylonian galleon can't drop anything off as planned, and a German galley disappears into the ocean. But you can't cheat Murphy's law, as a german caravel appears from the same ocean along with a babylonian galleon, which drops off a *rifleman* and longbow by Marad.

Turn 7 - Well...another turn, another crisis, each one faced with less units than the last. The plan is to bombard the rifle down to 2 hp and attack with the knight and take out the longbowman with the elite* horseman.

The trebuchet fires and hits, now the cannon fires (which will change the odds by 20+% if it hits) and...misses (how is it that the trebuchet always hits and the cannon always misses :crazyeye:? You see? You shouldn't rely on modern technology. Why back in my day, we had to throw the rocks ourselves!).

I really wish that cannon hadn't missed, but I have no choice to attack as the odds are better on the attack than on the defense (we need muskets very badly! Now that I think about, there IS one other option, and that's defending with the knight. Sirp's combat advisor shows slightly better odds for that situation, but not enough to warrant defending. I decide to try for the best of both worlds and enter and attack from Marad with the Knight. I attack and...sh*t! Forgot about the new longbow defensive bombard. Nevertheless, the Knight wins with 2 hp left, leaving the weak longbow (is it just me, or does my PRNG seem to either be horrible or great, but nothing in between?).

I send in the Elite* Horseman in (which should take care of him easily at 86%) and...HE DIES DOING ONLY 1 point of damage!!! Omg, I seriously cannot believe my luck. I'm very tempted to switch all buildings to units, but I don't, since the Eastern front still hasn't totally collapsed (as long as I can get 1-2 turns rest for the two knights there, it should stabilize). I take a deep breath and attack the longbowman with an elite enkidu (73% vs. 59% defending). He attacks and...loses :eek:, redlining the Longbowman and promoting him?!?!?!?!?!?!!? I am SO close to just calling it quits and turning this game in early, but I give it *one* more shot. A vet enkidu attacks the longbow with a 78% chance of winning and VERY THANKFULLY wins. I seriously have not seen PRNG like this in any of my games in Civ3. The occasional bad prng I expect, but this is starting to get ridiculous if you look at the actual odds! This seems to be a prime example of a war of attrition, and it isn't a war we're going to win. I move the AC out of Sumer to the west which will be able to reach some tiles if the Babs land now, but will fall short if the landing is in the very south. I also move one more trebuchet to the east (I swear I'm never going to trust the PRNG again!).

IBT - I pray that this IBT be a merciful one, but I know not to expect that by now. Suprisingly, there's only one landing of 1 unit by the babs in the south, right next to a cannon.
Sumer riots :smoke: And I had just told myself to MM it after I had moved that AC! More :smoke:, Kish also riots. I look through all the other cities to make sure they're not about to riot.


Cut due to length, continued in next post...

Turn 8 - Our cannon fires at the vet longbow and, as a matter of course, misses. Our second cannon hits, and our trebuchet hits as always.
Vet archer vs. 2/4 longbowman wins flawlessly.
I lower research to 20% and we still get Military Tradition next turn.

IBT - Ouch once again, of course. The babs land 2 knights an MDI and a rifleman on the hill next to Sumer of 42.
MT comes in and I set research on banks at 30%. I could switch to cavalry in a couple of cities and have them come in this turn to attack the new stack, but in most cases it would be counterproductive, either producing a reg. cav or a cav too far away to attack. I decide to bite the bullet. We might be able to hold off the attack (although the loses would be pretty brutal) and we should get a number of cav soon. Essentially, I risk sacrificing 3 turns control of either Marad or Sumer of 42 and a couple gpt (since they're nearly totally corrupt before a courthouse, I accept the risk).
Ur:University->Cav. I set it to 20spt by switching around tiles and it should probably make 4-turn cavs from here to the end of the game.

Turn 9 - Luckily for us the babs landed a regular rifleman and our knights just healed (I love the fact that units heal faster in towns whether they have barracks or not), so it is possible for us to take out some of their attacking power before the end of the turn as long as our artillery cooperates as well as the PRNG, for once.
Our first cannon shot is successful, as is the second! Now there is a knight showing with 4.5 defense (effectively). The trebuchet hits too!
Time for the first attack. Vet Knight vs. vet knight on hill...loses flawlessly :(. It looks like defense is the way to go. I fortify Marad and Sumer of 42. Even if both knights and MDI win, the AI would have to attack with a 1/3 rifleman to take Sumer and Marad cannot be taken by the 2 knights that can reach it this turn.

I also notice that armies only move 2 on roads (wonder what the reasoning for that is? Counterbalance the extra movement point or is it just 2 movement for roads for an empty army?).
Our workers don't have much to do. I had them mainly mining over irrigation at Ur, Lagash, and towns without aqueducts. The south should become fairly productive once the courthouses are built.

I hit end turn and hope for a kind PRNG...

IBT - One word. Pain. The Germans drop off *3 Cavalry* :eek: right next to undefended Isin! The babylonian Knight redlines vs. our AC and then proceeds to win 5 straight. The MDI is only scratched by our knight and the 3/4 knight kills our Enkidu without so much as a scratch. In order to survive the next IBT I *have* to rush a cav somewhere to take out at least one german cav. Luckily I just evacuated the Army from the East so once we fill it with cav we'll be alright.

Lagash:University->Cavalry
It looks like it's time for some crash completion of cav's.
Umma is swapped to a MDI, wasting 8 shields not counting the production turn.
Erech is swapped to an MDI which is rushed for 28 gold.
Isin da bag is swapped to an MDI wasting no production and will barely complete without any rushing this turn.
It's painful, but I have to swap the barrack-less Kisurra to a cav this turn, losing 10 shields and the production for the turn.
Zabalam's courthouse is swapped to a cavalry and rushed for 36 gold (this city may never see a courthouse, as I wasn't able to get it up to 2spt).
Marad is swapped to a musketman, wasting 1 shield and the turn's production.

All of the aforementioned units complete and I get ready to counterattack. (Marad also riots due to the loss of MP but still completes its musketman).

Turn 10 - The Apocalypse.

Vet MDI vs. vet Cav. wins, -2hp. Reg MDI vs. vet cav. loses, taking 2 hp off the cav.
Reg. cavalry vs. vet cavalry wins flawlessly.
Reg. mdi vs. 2/4 cavalry wins flawlessly.

Well that takes care of the German problem.
I check the diplo screen again and affirm that he has no horses, so the best he'll send from now on is knights.
Our cannons go 2 for 2.
Vet archer vs. 1/4 knight wins flawlessly.
Reg. Cavalry vs. 1/4 Knight wins flawlessly and promotes. This will be the first unit in our army.
Our trebuchet successfully injures the MDI.

The invasion force now consists of one 1/3 rifleman and 2/4 MDI on a hill NW of Sumer of 42.

I'm going to leave the rest of the turn to the next player as I frankly don't know what to do. We were literally one player round away from a new core with all the courthouses completing in the east until disaster struck. Those were either the worst turns I've played in a long time, bad luck with the PRNG, an underestimation of the frequency and strength of AI landings, or some combination of the three.

On the up side, I was able to build a few unis/infrastructure and Kisurra's courthouse is still on schedule, but we lost a good number of units (a little less than Greebley's turn, I think, but we CANNOT win a war of attrition on deity!).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have 3 problems: too little infrastructure, too few troops (both offensive and defensive) and backwardness when it comes to our military. All 3 of these, however, require conflicting solutions. Our enkidus are useless against their cavalry and even their knights, MDIs and Longbowmen, we have no production capabilities in the east, lack basic buildings in the west (and just about everything in the east, including walls and barracks, and all of our units have only 2-4 offense (actually, as of the last turn, bad luck lost us all our mounted units sans the 2 freshly produced cavs).

I don't think we're in danger of losing the game, but if we don't consolidate our position more and get a new core of production in the east, we are going to have a tough time getting a win. IMHO, with the advent of cav we can consolidate our island. I think we should have 4-5 cities build cavs until we get around 13. 3 for the cavalry army and 10 for homeland defense. With 10 cavalry we can fortify them all near the choke and be able to reach any square in our territory. With cannons and artillery spread around our coast, we'll be able to fend off any invasion as we start building infrastructure. Some cities, like Ur and Lagash, will finish early and be able to start producing musketmen and rifleman. Defense is very important, IMHO. We have to force the AI to attack at bad odds. Right now, we're just throwing bodies at them to slow down their attack. As we start to build more defense, we can disband some of the costly enkidus we have and save on maintenance. While all this is happening, our AC/knight army and our Cavalry army will be pillaging the AIs back to the stone age. Once our entire continent is fairly secure, with about 2 units per city (around 3 defensive units and 1 offensive unit per 2 cities), we'll be able to pump cav and cannons and hopefully establish a beachhead. Otherwise, we'll have to wait for tanks and bombers.

What is everyone's opinion on this, as I don't want this godsend of a start (starting alone but still getting timely contact) to turn into a disaster.

Pictures to follow.

As you can see, it doesn't look pretty, but I think we can pull through.

@T_McC: Shouldn't a 2 longbow/1rifleman army defend at 8? 6 defense plus the 2 bonus (this is all initial defense of course. Once the Army loses as many hitpoints of the highest defender/attacker, it goes to the next highest).

Have fun reading the tome I wrote.

P.S., my original post was 5,000 characters too long and had too many images :eek: (and my posts are usually so short).

Edit: @T_McC: I considered merging some back in, but there are simply *no* content cities ATM (we might want to merge one into lagash, simply for another 2 commerce tile). We are really hurting for luxes.

Sounds like rough turns Yom. I am not entirely suprised as our forces were getting quickly outdated by the fast AI tech pace. Normally we get longer before the larger units start attacking, but the diety difficulty is definitely showing. The bad RNG is making it even worse.

One major disadvantage of no other civ on our landmass is that we only get the two Lux (I assume that a continent is usually going to have 2 lux per civ on it).

I agree on the shoring up of our defense and then infra especially Banks.

I grab it later today & see what we are up against.

Roster:
Handy <- UP
Slinger
T_McC
Greebley
Yom

@Handy: You can take off the MIA tag. Now that I have a new CD, there shouldn't be any more problems.

@Yom - Hey, we haven't lost any cities yet so things can't be that bad. Now that we have Cavs and Cannons, the AI's window of opportunity is shrinking. We can pillage until we go Commie, then take to the offense against a bunch of broken AI.

Enkidus are nice units for a high-level AW. But not when you have an isolated start. They're still Spears, and being so cheap means they are extra-expensive to upgrade by cash. We just never had a reprieve to build Pikes in this game, those usually tide us over until Rifles.

Armies receive a bonus of 1/6 the sum of member attack (or defense) ratings before you build the Military Academy, and 1/4 after the MA is built. We have the tech to build/rush the MA, but we don't yet have the requisite Army victory.

What do we do with the new Army? We could keep it home and ensure the safety of our current holdings. Or we could send it to the main AI lands for more pillaging. Or we could send it to the larger island that Babylon holds to pillage and (hopefully) burn some cities to the ground. Or maybe best of all, pillage on the main AI continent, then lead an assault on Spain. Is there a choke we can occupy to force the other AI to run an amphibious landing to get at Spain's core?

Remember we're scientific, so when we hit the IA we get our free tech which will inevitably be Medicine. :rolleyes:

Things aren't that bad right now, but they were pretty dicey on my last turn until I swapped those builds to MDIs and Cavs (remember, I crash-completed 5 units that turn. Otherwise, we may have lost some cities). With Military Tradition just coming in, I think we can turn the tide. Ur can build a cav every four turns until banking comes in, and Lagash can either build a cav every 7 turns or a musketman every 5 turns with no waste.

As for the army, I think we can hold off the AI landings now that we have Cavalry. On my turn, I had to attack mostly with 2-attack units, so casualties were high. Once we pop out a couple of cav, we can make a 2-cav army (and fill it with one more cav once it lands) and pillage the Mainland. The other islands are basically worthless to the AI. If we have so much corruption just in our East, those Islands must be nearly 1/1 for the AI. Plus, we really need to slow down their production base and science rate, we want to hopefully finish this before infantry and slow down the number of landings so that we can start an offensive. Seeing as a 3-cav army would essentially be a 9/4/4 unit, we could use it to take out a couple cities in Germany (the riflemen would be a tougher nut to crack and not worth losing our army). Their cities will probably have 3-4 defenders in them, so we could take out a couple of defenders, rest, and repeat and raze a few cities.

Edit: :crazyeye: You're right about the 1/6th thing. I completely forgot that the 1/4 is only after we build the MA. Btw, has anyone else ever noticed an army only moving 2 tiles on roads vs. 3 for regular units? Is it only for empty armies? Is it only before the MA or pentagon?

I'd look hard at Spain as our first victim. There is a 2-tile choke we can occupy to cut their (small) core off from the rest of the continent, they may only have 5 cities left, and they're the smallest of our opponents. They likely won't have Rifles (they alone cannot get Nationalism for free) and they have a bunch of wonders in Madrid that are at least useful for generating tourism cash.

Holding on by the skin of our Teeth
Or...screw the cathedrals, we need some more cavalry. :lol:

Reader's Digest version:
Isin is a favorite target
Pillaging army sees Babylon sending mucho units our way.
Kill a bunch of AI
Get another leader
Lose some cavalry
Next Supreme Allied Commander needs to consider switching cathedral builds to cavalry before you hit enter
We'll lose undefended Zabalam on the IBT
Reminds me of the hunker down phase we went through in AWDG. We need to just hang on until we get rails.

Pre Turn 750 Ad
Looks good.
Hire a couple more specialists in size 6 cities not on a river that have extra food.
Switch Zabalam from court to cannon. (It’s a 1-spt-specialist farm)
MM Kish to get the market 1 turn sooner sacrificing growth. We already have a clown there.
Erech hires a scientist so it does not riot.
Optimize specialists to get banking in 8 and +4gpt.


IBT
Sumer defends against an MI and the Musket promotes to veteran.
Spain drops a lone MI off @ Isin

Turn 1 760
Attack redlined rifle with regular cav, win & promote to veteran.
It’s a little hard to distinguish Spain’ color from our color. Let’s kill them first.
Bomb Spain’s MI, attack with our Regular MI. We win but no promotion.
Decide to leave Zabalam undefended & try to induce the AI to attack near there.
Umma has 9 turns to complete a cav. Switched to Cathedral. May have to switch back if get a little light on defense.

IBT
LB drops off near Isin
Der – cannon - cannon

Turn 2 770
Cav offs LB and goes Elite.
Begin pillaging Babylon’s capital to break deals.
Our workers have nothing to do, and no cities to join.

IBT
See a lot of Babylonian troop movement including rifles & crusaders
Ur – cav – cav
Sumer – cav – cav (don’t want too much infrastructure going all at once).
Bad time – university – cathedral

Turn 3 780
Umma switched from cathedral to cav & Sumer goes from cav to Cathedral
We have 3 cities turning out cav.
No landings and nothing for workers to do.
Fiddle with specialists. +6 gpt banking in 5.

IBT
Babylon has galleons. They could potentially drop off a 4 stack
Spain & Germany each drop a single MI.
Turn 4 790
Treb missed but elite cav kills MI
Bomb & kill German MI
Babylon’s capital city is disconnected.
Banking in 4 is the best we can do, but we can make +11 gpt now.

IBT
Kissura – court – 4spt = 10 turn cannon

Turn 5 800
The army is in Umma. I think we need a few more cav @ home before we ship it over.
Umma & Ur both complete cav in 2 turns, and then maybe we can send it over.
Fortifying workers on hills to prevent the AI from landing there.
Pillage Babylonian horses.
Akshak has to hire a tax-babe
Babylon sure does have a lot of boats. If they ever manage to make a coordinated landing, it’ll be tough.

IBT
Babylonian Galleon drops LB & Rifle near Isin.
This seems to be where most of the AI wants to attack.

Turn 6 810
Bomb rifle
Attack with veteran cav & win
Cav kills rifle & Cav kills LB. No leaders.

IBT
Babylon drops a boatload of units near Isin, and our pillaging army can see that many more units are on the way.
There are: 3 rifles, a crusader & an LB
Ur – cav- cav
Lagash – cav – cav

Turn 7 820
Treb hits a rifle
Cav loses to rifle, does zero damage
Cav redlines rifle & loses
Cav retreats after taking 1 hp
Cav retreats after doing zero damage
Cav loses to rifle
Cav kills rifle
Pull units from Erech & Akshak for defense.
Erech is left empty as bait.
Switch specialists to get banking in 1 and make a little extra gold.
Isin is defended by 1 cav, 2 EW’s & 2 MI’s
I left some workers out as bait.

IBT
Not too bad. We lost 1 EW and the AI took a worker and pillaged the road connective our east & west.
Banking – astronomy due in 9 @ +0gpt
Agade – market – cannon
Spain drops MI & LB @ Zabalam

Turn 8 830
Kill Spanish MI & LB
Pillage Babylonian Incense

IBT
How about this. Babylon’s redlined rifles attack Isin. I guess since they had no place to heal the went kamikaze. They both die, and we get another leader on defense from the Elite Cav.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is Germany drops a musket, Cav and MI next to Isin.
Kish my… - market – cav
Babylon begins Shakespeare

Turn 9 840
Healed cav kills last of the 6 Babylonian units, a redlined rifle on the Isin choke.
Now for the Germans.
Two of four bombards are successful
Kill the German cavalry
Kill German Musket
Sacrificial EW or MI will die to Germany on the IBT, but we won’t lose a city.
There are loads of troops in Eridu headed our way.

IBT
Lucky MI defends against German MI. That’s all of the German stack.
Babylon drops 3 rifles and 3 LB’s next to undefended Zabalam. Well, at least it’s a 1-spt-specialist city. It’ll take a miracle to hold it.
We can build the Pentagon – BTW the two empty armies are in Umma.
Umma – cav – cav
Akshak – market – barracks
Der – cannon– cannon
Everyone is building Shakespeare

Turn 10 850
Zabalam is empty, and there are 3 rifles and 3 LB’s next to it.
We have two 2-hp cav and 1 4-hp cav in striking distance, along with 2 cannon & 2 treb.
I think it’s foolish to attack the stack. We’d lose out artillery & most of our cav. I think we should build up an assault force and then go take the city back.

Note:
2 empty armies are in Umma.
You can switch the cathedral in Bad-Time and get a cav on the IBT for a loss of 4 shields.
Sumer can switch it’s cathedral & get a cav with no lost shields.
Switching both of these is probably a good idea.
Ur builds a cav next turn.
With Ur’s cav + the Sumer & Bad-Time’s switches, you’ll have 3 new cav + the existing 4 we already have. You could load 2 cav into each army to take back Zabalam, and for homeland defense.
Since we get Astronomy in 7 –3gpt, and have 97 in the bank, we can upgrade galleys to caravels to boat 2 unit armies across the sea.
Cav versus rifles stink perhaps we should put a high spt city on cannon builds.

850 ad

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_850ad.JPG

Haven't looked at the save. My initial, adrenaline-fueled response is to say: We have 2 Cav armies? Piss on homeland defense, both armies overseas and we're burning the Babylonian Core to the ground. Next leaders rush the Pentagon and the Military Academy and to Hell with pillaging, it's payback time!

Well... we have 2 empty armies. :lol:
and 4 cav total. We can get to 7 total if we you switch 2 cathedral builds on the IBT.

I was all excited to get a cav army overseas until babylon started dropping 6-packs on our doorstep.

I agree with the payback time. Switch the cathedrals and let's go kick some Babylon Booty. Just avoid their SW harbor city Eridu, there are a butt-load of units in that city.

Well, Slinger knows what to do to set me up! :p :lol:

Seriously, this game just got a lot easier. We are a couple of leaders away from an avalanche on the AI. If we do build the Pentagon, it's probably worth it to bring an extra Cav for our 3-member mixed army on the other continent.

With two armies to fill, my gut reaction is all Cavs, all the time. We can take the fight to the AI now.

all Cavs, all the time.

I like the sound of that. :D

Agreed. 2 cav armies is more than twice as strong as one. The reason is that if one gets hurt the other can cover. You can actually guarantee you have a 8+ HP guard at all times, so the only risk is to lose entirely which is rare if you are careful.

[Edit: Only empty armies move at only 2 on roads. Put in a single Cav and your movement is now 12 on roads. Leaders of course move 9 on roads

In case you missed the addition to my signature, I'm on vacation 7-1-04 to 7-11-04. Auto skip me during that time.

Sure would be nice to get this game back before I leave. [hint hint] :)

Roster:
Handy
Slinger <-up
T_McC
Greebley
Yom

Just back and it looks like I'm up across the board. I'll play this tonight.

I've only played 4 turns and it is not looking good. Marad was abandoned, Isin is about to be over run and our armies are taking forever to heal because of the lack of barracks in the south. I'll also have to finish in the morning. I'm still tired from the trip.

I've only played 4 turns and it is not looking good. Marad was abandoned, Isin is about to be over run and our armies are taking forever to heal because of the lack of barracks in the south. I'll also have to finish in the morning. I'm still tired from the trip.

I have every confidence in you. :D

I expect to read about our glorious victory when I return from vacation. :thumbsup:

Ouch on the way things have gone so far, but I'm sure we'll be able to regain control of the situation soon. All cavs, all the time seems to be the panacea. Put 2 units in those armies and retake our cities and then we can ship them over to the Mainland with 2 more cavs each for 16 hp, 10 attack 4 move monsters (assuming we have the pentagon, 12 attack with Military Academy). Don't worry, there's always a calm after the storm as well ;).

HNDY04 - 850AD
Preturn - Do some slider moving to be able to raise lux and still get
Astronomy in 7. Our corruption is still bad and I'd like to get a court in place someday in some of the others cities. Perhaps after astro we can rush a couple courts, temples and markets. Right now it looks like we are in the middle of a war!
Cathedral in Sumer swaps to cav as does Bad-time. That pile of Babylon boys, as Handy stated, will take or destroy Zabalam next turn. Not good. It will be tough to displace those boys. I would think they will try and pillage the wine while they are there. Well, here goes!

IT - Ur, Sumer and Bad-time- Cav>Cav. Zabalam is taken and they head to pillage the wine. Looks like another Babs ship going for Marad.

[1] 860 - With the new 3 cav army and the help of cannons we kill the rifle on top. 2 cavs and a MDI take care of the 3 LB's. Should be able to retake it next turn or 2. I also load the other army with 2 cavs.

IT - A crusader, MDI, 2 knights and 4 rifles land outside of Marad which has a bucket in it with the musket I moved over.

[2] 870 - This does not look good. Our 2-cav army jumps on the iron. I abandon Marad and hunker down to protect the iron.

IT - Plenty of movement with our musket killing the MDI, a knight and almost the other knight.

[3] 880 - Retake Zabalam and kill almost all invaders. I have an endiku covering our 1 hp army. An endiku killed the 1 hp knight. Brave guy.

IT - 2 guerillas (rep parts w/no rubber), MDI and a pike land next to Isin. Not good again.

[4] 890 - Looks like we're going to lose some troops. I put enough in each town to prevent the loss of the towns but I'm really hoping the armies will heal. It is dire. Our iron town could go down along with Isin. I move the archer out of Kissura to entice the rifle to there.

IT – No towns lost but this is ridiculous! 2 German cavs and a Spanish MDI land next to Zabalam and Isin gets reinforced with a rifle and a pike. The Sumer of 42 rifle went for Kissura and the MDI went off to heal. In Isin an Endiku beat a guerilla and an MDI beat an MDI while we lost an endiku. Ur-Cav>cav Babs are building ToE. :eek:

[5] 900 – In Isin we bombard and then use the new cav to knock off the 2hp rifle, the 3/5 MDI to kill the 2hp guerilla and an E horse to kill the 3 /4 pike. That leaves the 4hp MDI but Isin has more than 1 defender. Kissura gets reinforced with the archer and Endiku to defend to the rifle. He may now jump on the iron. Hopefully the army will heal a bit in Sumer of 42. Zabalam I have a 10hp army that takes the 2 cavs and the MDI. Since that frees up the ¾ cav I kill the healing MDI and cover the iron. Well the rifle should go for Sumer of 42 or pillage. I see I have 2 horses to take on the MDI and an ill advised attack kills him with the 2nd horse. Only 1 rifle on our lands at this time. Meanwhile the pillaging AC’s have taken out the german salt and are now standing on the german iron. Unfortunately the german have another salt. I’m going to head to the jungles after this iron hit to make sure the babs rubber is gone.

IT – No landings. Spanish complete Newtons. Isin builds a 3hp cav>Rax. Kissurra – Cannon>Cannon

[6] 910 – Stabilizing continent defense and take out german iron and head back to Babylon.

IT – A single Spain MDI lands N of Zabalam. Everyone is building Shakes.

[7] 920 - 2-cav army takes down MDI and heads to Erech. Astronomy comes in next turn leaving us with 7g. I’ll build some gold to upgrade a caravel to transport him.

IT – Germans land 4 cavs N of Isin. Badtime and Agade-Cavs> Cavs. Der-
Cannon > settler to replace Marad. Astro>Navigation?

[8] 930 – Bombard them down to 3-3-3-2 hp and knock them out with no losses or promos. Kish my goes to a court. Pillaging heads to jungle. After I get it all I would hover around to see where the workers go to road up the rubber.

IT – No landings.

[9] 940 – Join 3 workers into Zabalam to get it to 6pop. Form a picket to try and force landings near army. Ur goes to pentagon. Lagash to HE.

IT – Guerilla, 2 Rifles and 2 LB’s from babs NE of Isin. A MDI next to Zabalam.

[10] 950 – Kill them all with no losses and no leaders. Drop off the cav army with a cav on the Spanish mountain ready to do some more pillaging.

Sorry about loading the 3rd cav in the home army but I felt it needed it. We need a lot of pillaging to happen and hopefully more leaders.

I think defense is fairly important so loading the third cav makes sense.

I think we might want to push toward magnetism rather than Nav? They do the same thing, however Mag gets us the ability to move size 4 armies.

Hmm...things don't look good. Looks like a case of a Runaway AI (TM). I say our first offensive be against Babylon. We need to catch them now before they runaway. The Spanish may be nearest, but they are a no threat to us. We need to pillage Babylon back into the stone age and methodically raze their cities. 2 3-cav armies (hopefully 4-cav) should be able to slowly pick away at the defenders of a core city (maybe babylon itself) and take the city in less than 10 turns while they pillage and wait for reinforcements.

Agreed. This is the hard part of diety AW. We have to try to move quickly to keep the AI in line. We don't want tanks landing on our shores :sad:

TMcC,
Are you able to get this? I think you are up.

Sure, I got it.

Good luck T! We have another cav army over there now ready to cause some havoc. Hopefully you can get a leader to rush that pentagon or another army as the situation warrants. The AI is liking to land N of Zabalam and E of Sumer of 42.

HNDY04 - Is There A Problem Here?

950 AD (0)
Let's see how big a mess we have here ...

Well, there aren't any troops on our soil, and the Babs have been just about picked clean. To top that off, the Babs are building ToE in a size-5 city that I have a sneaking suspicion will be nothing but a memory after my turns.

I agree with Greebley and swap research to Physics. I don't think we can afford to research optional techs. MM to come.

Swap Ur from Pentagon to Cavalry. We don't have enough cities for a 4th Army, so next leader goes to the Pentagon.

Swap Akshak to Temple, we can merge another worker that way. Sumer got swapped to a Settler so we can rebuild the abandoned city. Might also get rid of the straggling Kraut citizen.

Kisurra swapped to Aqueduct. Bigger is better for unit support and defense.

Pre-MM for Specialists: Physics in 27 at +14 gpt. After MM for Specialists: Physics in 13 at -1 gpt.

IT -Nothing lands.

960 AD (1)
Pillage a bit, Babylon is target #1A, and is starting to look a little Barren.

IT - LB dropped off. German Frigates seem very confused. :crazyeyes:

970 AD (2)
Kill LB, no leader. Found Kuara in the south. Re-MM, merge a worker. Physics in 11 at +1 gpt.

This will be an interesting case: I ended up with the junior army on a mountain, adjacent to a good size stack of Bab troops. Will they attack, even though the Army has 11 HP? :hmm:

IT - No, they won't. :shakehead: But the Germans do drop off a nice stack next to the city I just found.

980 AD (3)
Kill 3 members of the German stack, then promote a regular MDI on the last. No leader.

Merge a worker into the new city, and make him a scientist. Physics in 9 at +2 gpt.

Cav army cuts Bab horses, moves to a position where we may draw some blood in 2 turns.

IT - Went to the can, have to look closely :scan: ... nothing interesting.

990 AD (4)
I see rails in Germany. And the Germans and Babs might be fighting. Can't say for sure.

Nineveh gets a rude visitor next turn.

Merge another worker into Kuara. This one, too, becomes a scientist. Physics in 7 at +4gpt.

We have the largest population in the world.

IT - Couple of MDI's dropped off. Bab troops do seem interested in moving towards Germany. Maybe after I burn Nineveh I'll pop over and see if I can lend a hand.

1000 AD (5)
Bombard MDI's down to 1 HP each. Two elites win but no leaders.

The AI is so intimidating, I'm starting a Bank push.

Assault on Nineveh: Win with Cav army, but drop 6 HP. This is a seige candidate, since a Wonder is being built here. Well, that was anti-climatic. Junior army wins and razes the city. Pocket 42 bucks and kill 3 slaves.

IT - Nothing gets dropped, Babs start to chase the Jr army.

1010 AD (6)
Run away from Bab troops, fortify on a Hill.

Move artillery in anticipation of something from the Babs landing. Also move workers off of shore blockade duty.

Physics is due in 5 at +4 gpt. Bump up slider to get it in 4 at -17 gpt with 75 in the bank.

IT - Nope, nothing got dropped off. How am I supposed to pop leaders when the AI is so uncooperative?

1020 AD (7)
Shuffle tiles, armies healing.

Germans build Bachs, so Ashur will cascade to ToE.

IT - Nothing.

1030 AD (8)
Shuffle some builds, Heroic Epic in 1.

IT - 5 Units dropped off near Kissura.

1040 AD (9)
Kill two units with Army, then bring out the Artillery. Iffy bombardment, use Army on 3rd unit, winning but red-lining. Win with Elite, no leader, then finish the stack off with a Vet Cavalry.

On the other continent, both armies are healed. Move out for pillaging.

Physics due in 1 at -18 gpt. Start to adjust the workforce: Get it to -12 gpt.

IT - More leader fodder is dropped off. Physics comes in, set course for Magnetism.

1050 AD (10)
Two more elite wins without a leader.

Babylon city is starving. Pillage a bunch on my way to Germany.

Final Notes:
There is a 6-pack of workers on goto to the Hill beside Sumer of .. We want to build a road so we can have better mobility for our Artillery.

I was hoping to get a leader to rush the Pentagon, but no dice despite a kill ratio of 16-0.

Magnetism is due in 11 at +3 gpt. Maybe we get on the next players turn.

Nice T. the starving sounds good. Too bad no leaders. Someday soon!

Sounds like we are doing ok here.

I got it.

Preturn: Things look in good shape.

IBT: TOE built by Babylon. Germamy drop off 4 cav, Spain an MDI

1060 AD: The enemy troops are killed. I do try attacking a badly injured Cav with an elite horse but the horse is killed.

IBT: I hate it when I take a troop out and forget to adjust happiness. You would think after this many AW games, I would have figured it out. 3 Bab Geurillas land.

1070 AD: I get the Leader TMcC was trying for. Tough choice on what to build... another army, Pentagon, or Mil Acad. I know TMcC was thinking of the Pentagon. However if we are just pillaging we don't need the 4th unit in the armies yet If we are going to go on attack then it would be very useful.

Destroy a German city near some Saltpeter.

IBT: 2 Bab Crusaders and 2 Riflemen show up. A German Cav also shows up.

1080 AD: Our luck on attack is absolutely attrocious. Even though we bombard the Rifles to 2 and 1 hp, we still lose 2 Cav and an MDI

IBT: No landings

1090 AD: Land Army on other continent.

IBT: A privateer attacks our Caravel but loses.
Ur: Bank->Pentagon (Doing it the hard way...

1100 AD: I am getting very sick of Cav vs Cav losing.... Uh oh! I lose a second cav and won't be able to kill all the Cav. This is not good at all. 4 cav lost so quickly means we will probably lose towns.

I screwed up big time guys. I really didn't have a back up plan for losing two cav... I decide the Artillery is more important than the corrupt towns.

IBT: Sumer of 42 is now in enemy hands. More Geurilla landed to the North.

1110 AD: This turn is nearly disasterous as well. Two healthy Cav are redlined fighting a 1 hp cav and 1 hp rifle.

I raze Nuremburg
I also attack Eridu

1120 AD:

IBT: One of our ships is attacked and sunk (it was exploring).

1130 AD: Attack Eridu. Need to rest afterward (down 7 hp).

IBT: No landings

1140 AD: armies are healing.

IBT: German Rifle, Cav, and 2 longbow dropped off. 1 Bab Rifle is dropped off.

1150 AD:

Notes:
I went for another army rather than Pentagon. This army is under the knight army and is attacking Bablyon towns. If we get a leader, I would switch Ur to Mil Acad and then rush pentagon elsewhere.

The Cav army under the knight army has killed a few rifles in Eridu. I would attack next turn as well. Lets destroy some cities!

Aargh! Not another one! Looks like SG feast mode for me.

Wow, wicked turns. I'm thinking our iron is in enemy hands. That is a must if we are to protect the home continent. Also, rubber is probably available to the AI so I would keep one pillaging force near the jungles and look for workers trying to hook up. If we spot any infantry eliminate the other jungle tiles, take a screenie so we know which tiles ARE NOT rubber and then we can concentrate on those. Infantry guarding cavs will hurt.

BTW we got our town back the next turn. I think I forgot to mention that in the log

I think Yom has to be skipped in this one, too.

So since Handy is away, I think it is Slinger's turn.

Just finished Sling3 and will play this on this evening.

Handy04 - 1150AD
Preturn – Babs and Germany are still the big dogs here. Looks like we are still balancing our happy trouble in our cities and on the positive side we have 3 armies on the foreign continent. Germany still has iron and salt while babs still have iron. Need these pillaged though Babs have a little island with iron hooked up. Play with the sliders and specialists to get mag from 7 turns at +30gpt to 4 turns at 0gpt. I see no metion of needing cash and the reason for the cash play. I slide the Cav in Ur towards the south where it looks like action has been heavy due to healing troops. Final check on happiness and here we go.

IT – A Spanish MI and rifle North of Akshak and a Bab knight NW of Zabalam. Erech ct> Temple. Spanish start Smiths.

[1] 1160 – Bombing the knight to 1hp I take a leader shot with the 3/5 cav. We’re going to have a pentagon. The army handles the rifle, a cav handles the MI and after looking at Zabalam I swap the cannon build to rax starving but not losing the 6 pop with no duct to get the rax in 6. We take a shot with the army near Eridu and get surprised with an arty firing at us. We win the rifle battle but then retreat with the AC army to heal. The AC army is now on permanent pillage duty after the cav army heals. The cav army east of there jumps on the salt mountain to pillage and then attack. Mag in 3 at –2gpt. Thinking about adding the 4th unit to each army. MM’ing gets the Zabalam rax in 4 with less starvation. Kuara and Shruppak grow next turn. Mag in 3 at 0gpt.

IT - No landings but I lost our galley in the ocean. I thought we had ocean capability. Bad-time-Cannon> Pentagon to be rushed. Ur was swapped to cav. BTW, the Germans were showing a lot of cav.

[2] 1170 – Do a little pillaging and kill one rifle in Bonn going to 8/14. Germans are out of salt as is everyone else but us. Rush the Bad-time pentagon and prepare to ship 2 cavs.

IT – Germany lands 2 cavs. Lot’s of builds. Ur-Cav>Cav, Sumer-Bank>Cav, BT- Pentagon>Harbor, Lagash-Cav>Cav, Kishmy-Cav>Lib, Isindabag-Mkt>Lib, Akshak-Cannon>Caravel, Kisurra>Aque>Temple. Germay starts Usuffer.

[3] 1180- Can’t swap any scientists around or move the slider. That’s buying tech at the exact price! We have 40g and make +5gpt. We beat the 2 cavs gaining an elite. We are out of elites. Pillage my way to the coast to meet the galley sailing with the *Elite cav and another vet cav.

IT – Mag in. ToG in 12 at –4gpt for now. We get a landing of one MI where the last 2 died N of Akshak, renamed Loveshack for all the love we are giving them there.

[4] 1190 – We’re 87% with the 3/5 cav. We win but the odds of leader prove lower. Oh, well. We deliver the 2 cavs and will load them next turn. Galley gets back to port in the face of the Spanish armada. Sumer and Umma swap to colosseums. Kill another guy in Bonn. After killing him I realize we need to concentrate on Babylon. They have 1200g and a razed city has got to be worth something.

IT – A rifle and a LB in the Loveshak field. A guerilla N of Kuara.

[5] 1200 – Kill the Guerilla and then look at the Zabalam Rax build. It was 4 but now I can’t get 2 shields putting everyone to work???? ToG in 12 at –1gpt. Load the cavs and off we go. Slight delay making sure the elite got into the all cav army.

IT – Babs rifle and guerilla N of Kuara. No builds.

[6] 1210 – Use the army to kill both after bombing. Decide to escort another cav to other army so I risk a galley and drop another cav off. He is to get to other army making it’s way to the coast.

IT – Galley makes it clean right under the nose of another galleon. He will make it home though the crew has frightened. Ur-Cav>Cav. Kishmy-Lib>Bank. Spanish rifle near Kuara.

[7] 1220 – Cav makes his way over while Bonn army pillages a bit on the way to him.

IT – My messed up public works project between Kua and Bad-Time. I mined the wrong tile. Fixing now.

[8] 1230- Cav nearly there to add to army. Others fanning out for Babs. ToG in 8 at 0gpt, 36 in the kitty. Looked at 7 turns but we lost to much gpt.

IT – Double landing of an MI and rifle N of Loveshak and a 2 rifle, guerilla N of Kuara. Possible trouble.

[9] 1240 – No trouble and we get them all with no loss. We attack Akkad with army and go down to 8/18. New cav is delivered to cav army and will team with cav army attacking Akkad. Other cav army makes it way to pillage. Swap specialists to get ToG in 6 at –8gpt with 36g in kitty. Hoping for a Babylon windfall from a city kill to strengthen the bank. Sap a couple enkidus for –6gpt.

IT – Spain lands 2 LB’s and an MI N of Kuara. These I can deal with.

[10] 1250 – Kill all after bombing to 1 hp and no leader. Public works project is complete and shields in Bad-time are up to drop cav builds. ToG in 5 at –2gpt.Not much luck with recently loaded cav, we win but down to 4 hp. The cav, AC, 2 knight army decides to joining the fray and wins too but the town still stands with a guerrilla left.

Heal and attack. Perhaps send the half force army to pillage iron and salt again. Hopefully we get steam for our freebie in 5 turns and can loosen our home defense to send more over seas. We need more leaders.

I got it.

Then Yom can play after me.

Handy is away until the 11th. Maybe this game will be over by then. :)

1250BC, huh Barbslinger? Is that just labeled wrong or did you upload the wrong save? (I'm too lazy to download it and check)

Bad label. I usually just pick an old file and change the date to maintain file naming convention. Double checking now though.
edit: verified

HNDY04 - Smell the Fear!

1250 AD (0)
First thing is to see if we can lower the lux tax. Yeah, but probably only for this turn.

IT - Nothing lands, no one riots.

1255 AD (1)
Attack Akkad, win vs. Guerilla. Reveals regular Rifle. Win vs. Reg. Rifle, but lose too many HP. Head for the Mountain.

IT - Spanish drop off an LB.

1260 AD (2)
Bombard LB to 1 HP, then attack with Elite Cav. You know, I don't think I've gotten a leader all game.

IT - The Spanish liked last turn so much, they drop off another LB. I think Izzy is mocking me.

1265 AD (3)
Agade riots. No idea how. Kill LB from Spain.

Our armies are just chilling on the mountain. I think they will be sufficiently healed to do some damage in about 3 turns.

Have to turn science back down to avoid going broke.

IT - Krauts drop off 2 Cavs.

1270 AD (4)
Kill both of those things. Still no leader.

Adjust sliders and fire specialists. Make +44 gpt.

IT - OK, last to the IA. Free tech: Steam! Ehh, I wanted Nationalism so we could go Commie.

1275 AD (5)
Not exactly a shock that we don't have Coal.

Patience is a virtue, I'll hold off attacking a Bab city until next turn so all three armies can participate.

Nationalism in 17 at -11 gpt. I'm letting some cities grow a bit, keeping the lux tax at 30%. I think we will be more capable of dropping to 20% by the end of my turns.

IT - Another Spanish LB is dropped off.

1280 AD (6)
Each army wins once, we burn Eridu and pocket 94 gold. Everybody back on the Mountain.

Kill Spanish LB, no leader.

IT - Babs drop 3, Spanish the daily LB.

1285 AD (7)
Finally lose the red-lined Elite Cav. Win 4 other battles.

The top defender at Akkad is a conscript Rifle. Kill Guerilla blocking the way, then kill the conscript. Then kill 2 more and burn the place down, taking 104 bucks and 5 slaves with me.

The Babylonians are down to 6 cities, although 2 of them are > size 12.

We have to pay the Germans a visit next.

IT - Whole lot is dropped off, all by Sumer of 42. I guess they hate bad puns.

1290 AD (8)
Kill the LB, have to leave the other 8 units next to Sumer of 42. The army is on defense, and we have some artillery support. Hopefully they will chase softer targets and let our artillery get after them.

IT - Win 3, lose 1. Now we get to use our Artillery and our Cavs on offense.

1295 AD (9)
Bombing. Bombing some more. Win 2. Win a third but take the Army down to 2/18. Retreat the Army, only one unit can attack Sumer of 42 next turn.

IT - Win 1 on defense. Have a square pillaged. Spanish drop off our RDA of Longbow.

1300 AD (10)
Well, my taunting of the pRNG pays off. A 2-hp Elite generates a Great Leader, so now we have a Military Academy. Up to the next player though.

Spread Armies out for a quick tour of the Rhineland. Catch a Bab worker out in the open and kill him.

Final Notes:
I didn't MM on the last turn. The leader should be active, and I recommend we rush the Military Academy somewhere. An extra 2 points on offense for our Cav armies will be nice.

I think the plan should be to wipe the German lands clean, maybe burn a city, then double back and put a hurting on Izzy. Raze everything up to Toledo and capture the rest. Get rid of her and take the lux and coal on her lands. We are close to Rifles, and can build our initial landing city on a hill. Pics in the next post.

Being a bad boy and putting these in-line.

I propose we rip through the German lands, then whack the Spaniards while the German cities starve. The blue dot is a coastal hill that would make a good beachhead. The blue circles are either luxuries or coal. The red circle is Toledo, the first city I think we should capture instead of raze. After that we are in the Spanish core and can probably make short work of the rest of their empire.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_AD1300a.JPG

Here is our lands.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_AD1300b.JPG

The action is inside the blue circle. No landings outside of there.

The islands.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_AD1300c.JPG

The red dots are the other two Babylonian cities. We can also see that after Toledo, only two Spanish cities would remain.

Since Handy is out until the 11th, let's go ...

Yom - Up!
Greebley - On deck
Slinger
T_McC

Handy can slot in whenever he is back and ready to play.

Ack! It's like a never-ending buffet, only I'm getting the food shoved down my throat!

Nice work T! This game is getting closer. I'm wondering how close coal is to the proposed beach head site. I like the idea of pillaging the germans down and then attacking Izzy. If we can narrow this down to that over the next 20 we'll be looking pretty good for the win. No sign of infantry yet? Need to keep our eyes peeled and then have a look for with the armies which roads are in place so we know which ones to keep pillaged.

I'm going to need another day to finish playing this. (I've been busy, relatives over again).

@Yom - No problem. We don't want to run through the roster too many times before Handy comes back. It is his game after all. :)

@Slinger - There is coal just beyond the beachhead. In the pic I posted, the two isolated blue circles are coal.

Back @Yom - Probably a good idea to put some of our corrupt cities on Settlers. We'll need a few for the other continent. And whenever we can squeeze out the cash we should upgrade our boats to Galleons, we need carrying capacity. Next couple of leaders can look to see if that's the best idea or if we should just build more from scratch.

I've started us down the path towards Communism (just for Greebley! :p ), we are getting killed by corruption in our eastern cities. This game should last long enough that the gov't switch will be worth the Anarchy.

Actually, I think communism is a better deal on a tiny map. Your corrupt cities are close in a relative sense to your core and so are built up already. In the other game, we are still just building new cities and the corrupt cities are small. Here the corrupt cities were built long ago and can be real power houses.

I am willing to bet our corrupt to uncorrupt shields are much closer to being the equal (or greater) in this game compared to the other one which would the larger improvement in communism.

I'm going to play this later tonight (eastern time) so let's keep the discussion going.

@T_McC: I'm glad we're going to communism. I really want to see how good it is in C3C. I've heard it's overpowered, but I've never really gotten a chance to experience its power myself.

We currently have 16 cites, and our OCN is 11.55 :eek:

When we go Commie, our OCN will be 50! With the SPHQ, it's 75.

The next MGL might be sitting around for a while, we're at our army limit and have no other Small Wonders to rush.

What are the [edit: base] OCN's for all the sizes, do you know?

Oh we may also want an appropriate prebuild of the special wonder. It really reduces corruption, so having it right away will be a win in terms of shields. We need to time it for when Communism comes in...

What are the [edit: base] OCN's for all the sizes, do you know?

I fired the editor up and took a look...
Tiny=14
Small=17
Standard=20
Large=28
Huge=36

Thanks.

I really need to play with the editor and get familiar with it. The few times I tried, it was a bit confusing - mostly because I didn't spend long enough on it nor did I read a doc.

Edit: TMcC, I don't think it can be that low. Your number doesn't include the FP bonus. I forget if Monarchy has nuisance corruption or better. In any case you need to multiply your number by 1.375 or 1.475 I believe.

[Edit2:
14 * .8 * 1.375 = 15.4
14 * .8 * 1.475 = 16.52

Communism is 89.6.

I hope that is all right...
------

If you are comparing the two you should also divide the communism number by two (or double the monarchy number). The reason is that the rank of every city is N for communism (N is the number of cities), while the rank in Monarchy has ranks 1,2,3,4, etc. so the average rank of a city is about N/2.

So the average rank of a city is twice as much in communism, so by dividing the OCN by 2 you get the same aproximate result

So comparing 16.5 vs 45.8 is more accurate. (or 33 vs 89.6)

Here is an OCN calculator. those numbers are with FP.

Ya that was my intent (include the FP). I also included the SPHQ in the calculations. The communism OCN drops by about 50% if you don't include the SPHQ, but we can prebuild and have it right away.

Communism is the clear winner once you get a courthouse in the city to reduce the distance corruption.

Yeah, those numbers are straight from the utility Slinger mentions.

We can't pre-build for the SPHQ, because it isn't available until Espionage. We have a lot of research to go before that. [We need Communism + Industrialization, then we can go for Espionage.]

Turn 0 - Hmm..where to build the MA... I want to build it in our eastern towns to get a free border expansion, but don't want to lose the city from a landing. We seem to have enough forces on hand to defeat any attempt of landing (especially with an army). So the leader will rush the MA in Kuara next turn (2 shields left rushed for 8 gold.
Zabalam switched from an aqueduct to a courthouse.

IBT - German frigates bombard Shuruppak
Erech:Temple->library
Kisurra:Temple->library.
Kuara:Cannon->MA

Turn 1 - Gotta love those barracks and new and improved armies of C3C. Our Army, who was at 2/18 last turn, is now completely healed :D. Lugalzaggesi (try saying that 10 times fast) rushes the MA.
We don't have any elites, so I attack the Rifleman with a vet cav who wins flawlessly but doesn't promote.
Babylon's been sufficiently destroyed, so our armies move toward Munich, pillaging along the way.
Bah, one of our cavalry armies gets injured by a cav's ZoC while moving past Munich.

IBT - More ineffective bombardment
Babylon drops off a guerilla by Kuara
Ur:cavalry->Cavalry
Kuara:Military Academy->courthouse.

Turn 2 - I set Kuara and Sumer of 42 to grow (if we can get WLTKD, we can cut down on the time to a courthouse). Sumer of 42 swapped to Courthouse.
Vet cav. vs. 3/4 guerilla wins flawlessly and promotes.
18/18 Cav army vs. vet rifleman wins, but only after losing 9 hp!
17/18 Cav army vs. vet rifleman wins flawlessly.
17/18 Cav army vs. reg rifleman wins, -6hp.
11/18 Cav army vs. reg rifleman wins, -3hp and loses another hp due to ZoC.
I will let the armies rest up a few turns before pushing further.

IBT - More bombardment (I won't mention it from here on out)
Bad time:Colosseum->Cavalry
Lagash:Cavalry->Cavalry
Kish:Bank->University
Isin:Cavalry->Bank
Loveshak:cavalry->Bank (we are over the unit support and need more money to get nationalism without lowering science)

Turn 3 - Healing time for our armies, I move some workers to the area pillaged by the rifleman.

IBT - The spanish drob an LB and a rifleman on the hill by Sumer of 42 (should have left it covered)
The Germans land 4 cav by Sumer of 42 (so much for re-roading/irrigating those tiles)
The Germans are building Universal Suffrage.

Turn 4 - Our artillery are unsuccessful on the whole.
Vet Cav. vs. vet cav wins, -1hp.
Vet cav vs. 3/4 cav somehow manages to die.
Vet cav vs. 3/4 cav wins, -1hp.
Vet cav vs. 3/4 cav wins, -1hp, but still no promotions :(.
Vet cav vs. 2/4 cav wins flawlessly.
Vet cav vs. 1/4 rifleman wins flawlessly.
Elite cav vs. 3/4 Longbowman wins flawlessly.

Munich has a new rifleman in it, but I'm going to wait 1 or 2 more turns before attacking.

IBT - Damnit. I should have landed a unit on that hill after killing the spanish landing, as the Germans land 3 longbows and an MDI (promotion/leader fodder, but our units are injured).
Umma:Courthouse->Musketman (we will discover nationalism before it completes).
Shuruppak:settler->Settler

Turn 5 - Our artillery performs well this round.
Vet cavalry vs. 3/4 longbowman wins, -2hp.
Vet cavalry vs. 1/4 MDI wins, -1hp.
3/4 cavalry vs. 2/4 longbowman wins flawlessly and promotes.
Elite cav. vs. 2/4 longbowman wins flawlessly.
Our armies are now 15/18 and 17/18, so I will try another attack this turn.
17/18 Army vs. vet rifleman wins, but loses 9 hp.
15/18 Army vs. reg rifleman wins, -3 hp. A conscript is now showing.
12/18 Army vs. conscript rifleman wins, but drops to 4 hp!
I will try to take out the city this turn and attack with the Cavalry/AC army.
19/19 Army vs. conscript rifleman wins, -7 hp. A cav is showing. I try one more attack.
12/19 Army vs. Vet cav. wins, -1hp and an unfortified conscript is showing. Since the Germans are a republic and it was freshly drafted, it must be the last unit in the city unless they have an archer or other equally archaic unit in there.
8/19 Army vs. conscript rifleman wins flawlessly and razes
Munich, along with The Great Wall. Konigsberg or Hamburg will be the next target (Hamburg is closer to Berlin, but Konigsberg is next to Iron).

IBT - Ur:Cavalry->Cavalry (remember to build a courthouse just before revolting, though)
Sumer:Cavalry->University.

Turn 6 - Fortify an archer on the Hill. Not much else to do.

IBT - A german city pops up outside of Babylon's borders by the incense.
The Babylonians are building Smith's (this is good news for us if they are building it in a major city).

Turn 7 - Literally nothing to do (other than repair the pillaging done by the German rifleman).
We're running out of money. Nationalism due in 5 at -20 gpt (used to be lower, but unit support hurts our ability to research, another pro for communism :D).

IBT - Holy crap! We definitely did the right thing in attacking Babylon first. A destroyer passes by our shores. That means they are up at least 11 techs.

Turn 8 - Our armies are almost healed (the Acav one is fully). The attack will take place over the next two turns.
As I move towards Konigsburg, I notice that it is defended by infantry. Not Good. We can still slowly take out cities using armies, but it will take longer than 2 rounds of attacks this time.
The good news is that we can lower the lux tax to 20% and only hiring 1 entertainer/1 scientist and moving one unit as MP.

IBT - German ships appear off our Western Coast, for a change.
Bad-Time:Cavalry->Cavalry
Babylon builds Izibia south of Babylon city.

Turn 9 - I pillage the German Iron. I will try to soften Konigsbergs defenses this turn to see how many Infantry they have (They only have 18 gold, so they shouldn't be able to upgrade many more).
19/19 Mixed army vs. Vet infantry wins, -3 hp.
18/18 Army vs. Vet infantry wins, but loses 14 HP!!! :eek:
16/18 Army vs. Vet infantry wins, -4 hp.
12/18 Army vs. Vet infantry wins, and razes the city liberating 1 gold!!!
That's it I guess. Germany has Infantry, but there cities are weakly defended (since Konigsberg is closer to the core than Munich but less defended). I guess they're gassed. Let's try to nip this in the bud and take out Germany before they get too many units and come back for Babylon.
The Settler makes it to Erech, waiting for riflemen to disembark.

IBT - The Spanish land a longbow by Kua. Unfortunately, we don't have any elites in that area.
More Babylonian destroyers show up and the Germans ships head for what seems to be Kua.
Ur:Cavalry->Cavalry
Lagash:Cavalry->Cavalry
The Germans complete Smith's in Leipzig (Do we want to keep Smith's, given the weakness of our economy?)

Turn 10 - Vet cav. vs. 1/3 Longbow wins flawlessly.

I left the settler in Erech (unmoved, so we wouldn't forget about it). I would wait until rifles to build the beachhead and keep our armies attacking Germany. We probably won't be able to keep Leipzig due to culture, but it should be considered. I would disband our Cavalry army at home and build a new one with just 3 units if we get the opportunity. There's really nothing left to rush with our leaders and we have too few cities for another army. Though nationalism comes in 2 turns, keep a close eye on that number, as the firing of just *one* scientist will bring the number to 3 turns. I doubt we'll be able to lower the science rate for the last turn or raise it for communism.

That said, I think we're doing okay. A thorough pillaging of German lands before attacking may be in order. Hamburg doesn't have a harbor, so isolating it and then attacking may mean it won't have access to infantry when it is drafting.


Hmm...The post didn't come out with left-hand tabs this time. I wonder why that is.

Here's a pic for the lurkers (if we have any).

Here's the roster (taken from T_McC's post)

Yom - Just played
Greebley - UP!
Slinger - On Deck
T_McC

I'd probably pillage the Germans now, and come back to attack cities later, after they've starved a bit. Infantry in size 12+ = no fun.

If we want some money we could raze Samarra. I think Hammer still has lots of cash and no rubber for Infantry. :)

After a pillaging of Germany we can attack Spain. She should be the weakest (she appears to have no iron or horses, and doesn't have RP yet). We should be checking to see what Wonders we want to keep ... oh wow did I just discover a Hellacious cheat ... The Pyramids and Sistine Chapel (Babylon) are always good, The Colossus (Madrid) still works and would be a real boon in Communism, Leo's (Madrid) is also very useful. Basically, we want to capture Madrid and Babylon. We can snag Madrid and see the Spanish off into that good night, Babylon city will be a capture/flip/capture/flip deal. Barcelona would also be good for tourism cash.

I don't think we want to disband the homeland army. When we get another leader we can take it with us to the beachhead, disband the mixed army to build a Harbor, and then form a fresh all-Cav army. Might want to keep the fresh army at 3 members so we can transport it to the island Babylon will be relegated to.

Here's a pic for the lurkers (if we have any).

You definitely have lurkers. :scan:
So keep those pics coming...

Things look in good order. I hit enter.

Early:

I decide to repillage Babylon as well as Germany at least for now.


I consider if it would be wise to upgrade our obsolete units. This is what we have:
1 Settler, 1 Worker, 2 Musket, 1 Knight (In our "junk" army), 31 Cav, 10 Cannon, 1 Galley, 1 Caravan, 1 Galleon, 4 Army, 19 Enkidu, and 8 Trebuchets, 2 A Cav (In Our "junk" army).

I decide to go for communism for full for now (21 turns). After we switch govt, I seriously think we should consider switching to cash to get a few useful defensive units at least.

I pillage and attack Samarra

Mid:

Samarra destroyed get cash for it.

Late:
Just pillaging and fighting off minor attacks from the AI.
I do Raze some 2 bit Babylon town for more Cash. Up Science - communism in 5 at -90 gpt.

Notes:
There are troops in Erech for use.

Do we want to consider putting rifles on a mountain so that the enemy wastes attacks on them?

we seem to have enough Cav in our home cities, so I am building rifles to possibly disband the extra Enkidu.

Here is the enemy territory. Not too different.

I consider if it would be wise to upgrade our obsolete units. This is what we have:
... 31 Cav, 10 Cannon, 1 Galley, 1 Caravan, 1 Galleon ...


Yeah, at this stage of the game we definitely want Freights. :lol:

I would say upgrade the boats and the artillery, and build Rifles anew. I think the upgrade cost for an Enkidu will be 210 gold, and we don't need to be throwing around that kind of coin.

On another subject ... I guess the AI will attack our Rifles even if we put them on Mountains. It's worth a shot, we'll probably get a nice kill ratio off of that.

If the AI won't attack, we just have an advance party to garrison future settlements.

Would love to play right now but my drinking glove is on and not coming off. I'm going GOTM. BTW, PM me if you want to hear the story of my company picnic, 6 shots of crown, a six pack af empties in the bed of my truck and the CHP pulling me over. Today is one of the proudest drinking moments in my life. I am celebrating, as I speak.

CHP? What's that? Sounds interesting though, I wanna hear about it.

California Highway Patrol... Sounds not so fun to me. Poor slinger... at least you didn't have herbage with ya.

I'm back. :)

Sounds like we are not quite to mop up mode but are definitely in the driver's seat. I knew you guys would make it through the rough patch we seem to have in every game.

Since Slinger sounds like he is, err, otherwise occupied :lol: I'll jump in the order here and grab it.

Yom -
Greebley - played last

Handy - I got it. :)

Slinger
T_McC

I have a vacation coming up that will keep me from civ from July 24th to Aug 8 .

I won't be able to log on much if at all during that time. Just give me a skip if my turns come up during that period. Actually I am hoping we will have won by then and I will come back to join the final challenge: Tiny AWS :D

We take control

Need irrigation so Sumer can work the mountain
Swap Loveshack tiles to get cannons every 3 turns
Irrigate tile at Zabalam to support an additional specialist
Kua – note to self: remember to MM for more SPT when temple completes.

IBT
No units land
Bad Time – rifle – rifle
Kish – harbor – frigate (maybe we can bomb & sink & retreat to the safety of Agade).


Turn 1 1405
Play with specialists. Commie in 4 –79 gpt; 407 in bank.
We need some explorers. After we switch to commie, find a city with 2 or 4 spt to build pillaging explorers.
Upgrade the galley for 60 gold. We’ll need 2 galleons when we go over to found our beachhead.

IBT
Germans land rifles @ Agade
Ur – rifle – rifle
Babylon Cruiser & transport are N of Shuruppak

Turn 2 1410
2 elite cav off the Spanish rifles.
Armies are making a pillaging sweep through Germany.
Our continent looks pretty secure. When the rifles arrive at Erech, they will set sail to found a city & make push for coal.
Commie in 3 –80 gpt with 268 in bank.

IBT
Loveshack – cannon – cannon
Germany has several infantry units that appear to be headed our way. I hope to found a city before they all board ships to induce them to attack over there. Not getting coal is going to make this game take a lot longer. With no rails we are forced to keep a lot more units on our home continent.

Turn 3 1415
Off Spanish rifle 7 pop a leader. We have 17 cities, so we need 3 more for another army. We already have MA, HE & Pentagon. Espionage is needed for the secret Police HQ. I’ll send this dude to Erech.
Ur & Bad Time are switched to settlers. No wasted Shields. Both settlers will go to build fishing villages S of Kua. This will allow for the rifle army to defend the city on the hill overseas.
Isin switched to Galleon so we can carry some cannon along with the rifles & settler.
Science slider gets dialed down because I want to rush the walls in the new city, and I’ll need cash for that. It’s due in 4 +2gpt.

IBT
Ur – settler – cav
Bad Time – settler – cav
Lagash – rifle – rifle
Agade – rifle – rifle
Isin – galleon –cannon



Turn 4 1420
Moving units & pillaging.
Germany has large numbers of infantry.

Turn 5 1425
Pillage & position.
We found in 2 turns. Commie dialed back accordingly.

IBT
Loveshack – cannon – cannon
Babylon has a transport 2 tiles N of Isin. I’ll move the army & some cannon to attack if they land there.

Turn 6 1430
Position to found next turn.
Leave the worker fortified on the choke NW of Isin so the AI cannot land & cut us off.

IBT
Commie –> electricity then on to -> replaceable parts
Sumer – courthouse – Cav
Babylon lands 7 units NW of Isin (4 guerillas, 2 rifles, crusader)
Spain lands MI & Conq. SE of Isin

Turn 7 1435
Found Kutha. Disband worker & rush walls.
Hope Mount St. Helen does not go active soon. :D
Harbor in Kutha will get us another Lux
Found Nagsu and Susa S of Kua to get to 20 cities.
Build rifle army in Kutha.
Kill the Babylonian 7-stack. Lose 2 cav.
Erech garrison kills Spanish forces.
Raze a Spanish city (Salamanca) and net a total of 7 slaves. I hope to colonize the coal for 1 turn to start rails. Workers are spread around to maximize the railed # of tiles. I don’t expect to hold the coal for long.
Fire all but 1 scientist & hire tax men.
Don’t Revolt.
I want to cash rush a harbor before I revolt so we can get an extra lux. We should get coal (via colony fairly soon thereafter). I’m not sure we can hold both the coal & the lux, but at least we can get a few tiles railroaded.
Electricity in 50 +103 GPT.

IBT
Kutha – walls – harbor
Umma – cav – cav
Kua – court – cannon
Babylon drops a stack on the Mountain next to the new city of Kutha.
Flak, 2 Guerilla, 3 rifles. Rifle army should be a heavy favorite on a hill with walls.

Turn 8 1440
Not much to do.
The army with the Acav is permanently pillaging Germany & Babylon.
The other armies are being directed to the south to secure coal.
No roads & no horses means a steady trickle of units that cannot retreat for us to kill, so the Acav Army is just going to pillage Germany & Babylon.
Might get coal by the end of my turns. If not next player will get it early on.
I’ll revolt after we get the harbor rushed.

IBT
Ur – cav – cav
Kish – rifle – rifle
Umma – rifle - rifle
Love – cannon - cannon
Kutha is attracting quite a lot of attention. :D

Turn 9 1445
Rush harbor.
Cannon go 1 for 7 on the dyes near Kutha.
I think the dyes get pillaged on the IBT. :sad:
Luckily we have slaves in Kutha to reconnect.
Capture Valencia and colonize coal
More cannon arrive in Kutha.

IBT
Bad-time – cav – cav
Kua – temple – duct
Kutha – harbor - rax

Germany drops 3 guerilla & 1 cav near Kutha that would have been dropped on the homeland if we had not founded Kutha.

Turn 10 1450
Amazingly, Babylon did not pillage our Dyes on the IBT, but chose to move to jungle for defensive bonus instead. Looks like they were headed to lightly defended Valencia.
Workers begin a defensive rail system @ home.
Kill a bunch of the babylon stack.
Cannot hold Valencia against the Babylonian Stack plus the German Stack, so it and the coal are abandoned. We’ll can hook the coal back up as soon as the workers are finished building rails on the tiles they are currently working. We can repeat this pattern fairly easily: hook up coal – start rails – disconnect. Later when we can adequately defend it (after the revolt is over), we can leave it hooked up. I think guarding the dyes is more important. The dyes help us every turn.
Did not revolt – but I think we should. I wanted team input.

Notes:
EDIT - VERY IMPORTANT
Keep at least 1 Galleon fortified S of Kutha so the AI does not run a blockade against us.

We will lose the coal colony on the IBT next turn. We can build another colony to hook it back up after anarchy. I did not want to tie up the cav armies playing defense to hold coal we don't need every turn. Let's raze Spain instead.
I did not revolt, but I think the next player should before hitting enter. The rails are started & we have 3 lux so I think we are ready to revolt. Appears we have ample units to defend with during the revolution, but I wanted the team to agree that we were ready. We have 3 lux and are building a defensive rail line. Kutha has plenty of defenses to hold on against the AI attacks.
ARMIES – two 4-cav armies are healing in Kutha. They can raze Seville and then build a colony on the spot to get us GEMS. After the revolution we can send some settlers over to firm up the gems & coal.
AI has not landed a unit on our home shores since Kutha was founded.

Is this the most recent order?
Yom
Greebley - [Out July 24 to August 8]
Handy
Slinger -> UP
T_McC

1450 AD - The hot spot
Keep at least 1 Galleon fortified S of Kutha so the AI does not run a blockade against us.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_1450A1.JPG

The lone pillager
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_1450B.JPG

The subway
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/HNDY04_1450C.JPG

Exxx-cellent

The boulder is starting to roll downhill now. I think we have 1 more run through the order before this one is over.

Two things:

Is Babylon in the Modern Age? Flak comes with Flight, IIRC.

and ...

What a surprise! Handy ducked Anarchy turns. :lol:

"I heartily encourage the next player to revolt on the inherited IT ... "

:rotfl:

Go get 'em Slinger!


Unless you're in the slammer. :shakehead

What a surprise! Handy ducked Anarchy turns. :lol:

:rotfl:

I was hoping no one would notice. :mischief:

Great work Handy on getting us the coal. We get to use one of the few advantages of Spain for AW - the revolt will be short.

[Edit: We should research at full. We won't be rushing anything with cash. Except for upgrades (which we may as well do) our cash is useless except for research. We may get to some tech that will be of use if communism gets us enough gold. RP is probably best

We get to use one of the few advantages of Spain for AW - the revolt will be short.

:lol:

Had to happen eventually. Wrong game. We're Sumeria in this one. Handy ducked a probable 8-turn revolt. :rolleyes:

:lol: Ahem... Ok, make that a long agonizing affair.

Question:
Are we too close to the end to make a revolt worth while? We are talking 7-9 turns of no production. How long will it take us to make that loss back?

[Edit: When we do get to the next game; one request is to not make both civs the same color. It is too much for me feeble brain :D ]

I think the revolt will be worth it, we're basically 3- or 4CC'ing it at this point. We don't have a lot of non-Army troops available to invade the other continent. And we'd like some tech sooner rather than later. It is not out of the question we're going to be up against TOW in Babylon very soon. Being quicker to Artillery will be nice. (Bottom line: Revolt + Research of two techs in Communism will be faster than research of two techs in Monarchy.)

I sincerely doubt that this game will last until we get Tanks.

I think the revolt will be worth it

I agree it's worth it, but we could win this either way. A third legitimate 4-cav army (as opposed to the hybrid 2cav/2Acav pillager) will let us take down size 12 cities even with infantry. Commie may allow us a quicker victory. Artillery is the only missing piece for us in this one.

Sure hope the volcano does not blow during anarchy.

When we do get to the next game; one request is to not make both civs the same color. It is too much for me feeble brain

No problem, just tell me how to mod the colors in the editor. I'd prefer not to pre-select which AI's we play. I like to go random.

Got it!

:banana: :rockon: :banana:

Handy, I meant us. Sumeria and Spanish have the same color units making it even harder to tell the games apart.

So If we are going with Sumeria in Handy5? then lets not choose china, america, spain or sumeria in the other.

Anarchy is over. We've overthown our oppressors.

Lost one unit during Anarchy, otherwise I just MM'ed the cities post-revolution. Electricity is due in 15 at a semi-sustainable rate. Also noted that Hammer had over 5000 gold, and decided I wanted some of that. Burned Izibia to smite the capitalist dogs and return the means of production to the workers.

We lost about 6 points of population during the Anarchy. Despite that, productivity went up from 400 to 467, and we went from 159 raw trade to 186.

I also left Slinger a present in Kutha. :)

Now Slinger is up!

I was curious so I checked things out. Research in Monarchy was just slightly more efficient than communism (using scientists), but communism (not using scientists) will do much better in terms of shields.

Only 5 turns anarchy? That was less than I expected :)

If we had taken the RP route we would have gotten it right about now - less shields but we would have artillery and double speed workers. Both have their advantages. There probably isn't a clear cut answer.

=========================================
We must have lost our Coal recently. We have no colony and our road is cut off by Spain. Our first priorty will be to reconnect I suspect.

=========================================
We must have lost our Coal recently. We have no colony and our road is cut off by Spain. Our first priorty will be to reconnect I suspect.

I let the coal go on purpose. I hooked it up via a colony, started a bunch of workers building rails (1 worker per tile), then abandoned the colony. I didn't want to waste the cav armies protecting coal we would not need until the workers finished building rails - 6 turns later for a regular worker IIRC. I thought we could raze some Spanish cities, then hook the coal back up via colony after the anarchy was over. We can probably hook it up and protect it this time since we can produce the additional rifles and cannon needed to protect it.

Is this the most recent order?
Yom
Greebley - [Out July 24 to August 8]
Handy
Slinger -> UP
T_McC -> (just played on a switch with Slinger)

Makes sense Handy. The 6 turns should be over shortly then (it would be more than 6 because of anarchy right? I am guessing 9 total). We probably want to capture or destroy the Spanis city blocking the road. Alternatively, we can build a town if can get a settler quickly.

I think we should also ship over a large part of our forces over to the other continent leaving just enough to handle landings. We can rebuild them.

Question for team:
Do we want to upgrade our Enkidu or replace them? Upgrading may not be a bad option since we can no longer rush with money. The downside is slowing research, but I think that is ok at this point. The number of turns to research seems too high for artillery to matter much in this game. On the other hand the cash may be so high that we can rebuild them much quicker. in which we can build the new and disband the old. If we do this, then disbanding in towns building courthouses makes sense. We want those.

How important is the MP for us? We are getting more Lux so I am guessing low? We could disband right away if we don't need the MP.

No, MP still matters. Once we get a 4th lux (or maybe a 5th) we can disregard MP. I don't know how much cash we can make, but Enkdiu upgrades are 210 gold per. I doubt very much that we could do even 1/turn running all cash. Many cities can build them in < 10 turns, so I think we are better off building new and disbanding old.

We aren't paying any unit support, and the Enkidus are only worth 2 shields. The best thing may be to keep the Enkidus as MP and ship all fresh Rifles to the other continent. Once we have a rail network we'll only need 3-4 Rifles between all of our home continent cities.

Got it. Will review and play tonight. Sounds good though.

Ya, you are right, I am forgetting that we don't have to pay unit costs in Communism. I would definitely keep them - Even ship over some to supress resistors since I think it only depends on number of units for suppression and not unit strength. That way we only risk Enkidus to flips, except where we need rifles to keep the town safe from attack.

Handy04 - 1475AD
Preturn – We have a load of workers doing 7 turn rail roading. Those will be nice when they come in. Der is the only city needing the increase in lux tax so it gets a scientist and waits for the cathedral in 5. I see a German infantryman. Time to go and pillage those jungle squares. Went around looking for the SPHC and when not finding it I see we still need espionage to be able to build it. That is what I was going to use the leader for but now I think a cav army is in order. Unfortunately we are at our army limit too with 20 cities. What the heck do I do with this guy? I ship him home to rush something and ship 2 cav, a rifle and cannon into town. Our cash bleeding is down to –18gpt with electricity in 14turns.

IT – Kill 1 guerilla outside Kutha and we now have 4 guers and 2 rifles out side of town. Lagash court>Cannon. A bomber makes the scene :eek: bombing an army.
[1] 1480 – Rush the Kisurra cathedral with the leader and then lose a cav and kill a rifle in Kutha. Move armies over towards jungles to do some pillaging and healing.
IT – Army gets bombing run again. Kill 3 guerillas losing 3 hp on rifle army. 3 cav land in the far SW on our tundra. Saw 2 destroyers. Build a cathedral, cannon and a cav.
[2] 1485 – Now I’m wishing I would have rushed the rax in Kutha! 12 turns left. Knock off a rifle to hold the dyes another turn or 2. Kill a LB with no leader. Electricity is now due in 10. Everyone has it. Lose a cav and kill 3 in SW tundra. Love shack goes to palace for prebuild. Don’t know if we will need it or not.
IT – Build a cav and a rifle. Order up the same combo. Still get bombed by plane. 2 infantry step on dyes. Bye-bye happiness. 3 destroyers and a transport round the bend near Kutha.
[3] 1490 - A few of the rail builds finish and Ur gets MM’ed back down to 20spt giving Umma a quicker rifle. The other workers fan out to start railing when I can get the coal hooked up again. Kill the 2 infantry on the dyes with no loss or leader. We hav that lux for a little while longer. The workers on the mountain behind Kutha finish a road and go to town to hopfully make a coal colony next turn. Armies are poised to pillage 2 jungles with spices and a lone forest with a road NE of Brandenburg. I’m thinking the Brandenburg tile is not the rubber site because no other roads connect to Brandenburg and Germany has a lot of infantry running around already.
IT – Plane starts bombing our army in Kutha.
[4] 1495 - We kill a rifle and MI blocking the path to the colony site and get a leader that rushes the rax in Kutha. Pillage a number of possible rubber tiles in Germany including a fur and 2 spice sites. That should hurt. I have a feeling the rubber may be coming in from the 2 city island they have with Cologne and Hannover on it. Hopefully Frankfort is the oil city and not Bremen. I’m pillaging Frankfort coming up.
IT – Plane connects on our army for 2hp. It still beats 2 guerillas. 2 rifles step on dyes again. 4 infantry step on railroad that leads to coal. Shoot. A few bilds completed and some markets were started.
[5] 1500 – Kill the 2 rifles on the dyes. Workers are waiting for coal on the mainland.
Armies on mountains to heal and then head back to aid Kutha.

I have to stop here because it is getting late and I don't feel so well. The cav armies may be needed in Kutha very soon. They can heal quicker there. I think all German possibilities for rubber on the mainland are gone. The spices were not it and the only other spot with no road was NE of Brandenburg and that town is not connected so it must come from overseas with all harbor towns building infantry. Not good. We may have to think about disbanding an army to get a new pillaging force on the island where that marsh probably holds the rubber. If we can get that and then somehow keep oil out of Otto’s hands we may still have a shot. This looks to be a nail-biter. Otto with Panzers will be difficult. We need RP and Electricity is due in 6.

Sounds like we need some more cannon. The rifle army should hold out on hills with walls in Kutha. Once we can get 3 cav armies going we should be able to start razing some German & Babylonian cities. I saw a bunch of German infantry on my turns. They may have been heading to boats, and turned around to go after Kutha. After we burn through those we should see a trickle. We need to keep pillaging, so the AI won't have the economy to support very many bombers.

Yom <- UP
Greebley - [Out July 24 to August 8]
Handy
Slinger <- just played
T_McC -> (switched with Slinger)

Yom <- UP
Greebley - [Out July 24 to August 8]
Handy
Slinger <- just played
T_McC -> (switched with Slinger)

Boy, you really take the cake. I fall on the Anarchy grenade (that you so deftly avoided), pass off once the gov't is formed, and then get skipped! This is an outrage! [pissed] :gripe: [pissed]