KoS2 - There can be only war

The shift trick only works if you have movement points left I believe.

It looks like mjg is up in kos3, so I will plan to take the next set here, unless he objects before this evening.

I think he's out of action still. That'd put you up in both games. Do you want a swap for one of them or can you play both?

I think a swap makes the most sense for kos3. I am starting to play kos2 now. As a side note, I saw we have a GG asleep in Eridu. Is he planned for a medic?

He used to be yes. Maybe we can use him for something else now?

Super defender?

I still think that a medic will be the best use for our other general, one thing that might not have come across in my report is Boudica's attack style. It seemed like she'd just throw a treb or two at the walls and then attack with one or two maces/crossbows and then stop without killing our units but leaving a fair amount of collateral. So having a medic on hand would really help keep our units healthy and ready for the next wave. Especially in the super defender stack where poor Charles will take a lot of beating.

Incidentally, I'd support sending Charles up to Ulundi for now, he has not been moved on the hand off turn. If you do send him he needs WE escort to the half way point b/c of Saladin's Camels.

I'm going to be out of pocket (any idea where that term originates?) for a while now as I'm flying to New Zealand for a term. Once I'm settled I should be able to find some down time to keep contributing but I expect the next week to be hectic. So I'm going to have to ask for a skip until I check back in.

Good luck with the home front

IBT (15000)

I forgot to take a screenshot, but I made the banana for corn trade with SB as suggested by Kossin. That was a nice find. I never think to trade things I have only one of.


1505
IBT: BBB attacks once with an Xbow, which dies to a LB of ours.

Uruk: harbor -> treb. (As a side note, I think I will mostly focus on trebs since we will largely be attacking kish with them. I may make a few cats as well).
Eridu: Pike -> Xbow
Ulundi: LB -> LB

Sal wandered an injured camel into our realm. I attack it with a newly built mace at 89% odds, and win flawlessly.

Charles Martel arrives in Ulundi, and receives a hero's welcome!

The GM makes it to York. Although I was unable to do the shift-click and examine mission before getting there, once I got there, I was able to. It looks like 1300 for a mission to York, or 1500 to SB's capitol. I decide for the sure/quick thing and get the mission to York. To my disappointment, there was no cute screenshot to take.


At this point, I saw Kossin's message about making a second super-defender. You can never be too careful, right? So, I send him towards Ulundi. He will make it there next turn.

1510
BBB attacks.
Charles Martel, fresh from the road, kills the first Treb and forces the second to withdraw. (After the fighting, he is at 1.5/6 health).
Subsequently, we kill 6 units, and lose 4.

Doh, I had temporarily put a chariot in Eridu (planning to make it a super-medic), but forgot to remove it when I saw kossin's suggestion of a second super-defender. :smoking: I promote it to medic one -- better than nothing, right?

Meanwhile, Eridu -> xbow. Really this time. I mean it.

1515
BBB presses the attack, this time things do not go well for her. She loses 7 units, we lose only 1 LB.

Good ole Saladin gets his reinforcements to Kish. It left me feeling like I should have pressed the attack on him while we could, but I just don't think we had enough units to both do that and keep Ulundi.


Saladin decides its time to bring in another stack.



Eridu: Xbow -> treb
Lagash LB -> XB


I use units from Ulundi to mop up BBB.
Saladin has a random Camel in our lands. I move in to kill it with the pike (80%) odds, but lose. Happily, there was a near-full health WE in ulundi that walks in and finishes the job (although it is hurt surprisingly much in the process).

1520
I make super defender #2 out of J.M. Akbar. He is currently in Ulundi -- should be able to make it to anywhere.

I also move my potential strike force into a central location. We are still gathering...

1525

SB offers:

I accept.

Also, this turn we get:


With that, I take


And I queue up drama, due in 1 turn.

I do not yet revolt. Barbarians at the gate and all that...

Speaking of which, BBB is back for another round


Eridu: treb->cat
Lagash: LB -> settler.
Ulundi: LB -> LB

1530
Drama!


I queue PP on the theory we are heading to rifles.

SB still refuses to part with guilds or gunpowder. WK will trade them with us, but not for less than lib + nationalism. Do we want to do that? This seems to need group input.

Saladin is back with another stack. I am a bit unclear how to proceed, and I have been playing very slowly so it is rather late. So, I am stopping here.

So the situation is I have been slowly preparing an offensive stack to take back Kish. It resides in a square of ours that can be next to Kish or within Ulundi (or Ur) in a single turn's move. It currently has:


Also, there are a couple more trebs on the way, and a couple more being built. Kish currently has only 3 LBs in it, and 19% defense.

But obviously Saladin has a bunch of power in the area, so he could get those back to Kish easily. Currently it looks like he is heading towards Lagash with it:



Lagash looks like this:



Also, BBB is massing her next stack by Ulundi. They have started bombarding. Ulundi is still pretty secure, but...



Ulundi has both super defenders, so I am pretty confident there:



My major question on the military front is: do we send units from the staging area back to Ulundi and then shuffle some of those defenders to Lagash? I think the answer is yes -- wait for them to blow their stack and then strike. I may want to take back Kish sooner, but it does not appear we will be able to do so and still hold it in the short term. However, I leave this question to the group.

Looks fine. Sal is actually pumping units pretty well.

My plan is more or less the following:

Maybe we can ask Sitting Bull to focus his attacks at Kish/Pyongyang?

Ulundi can be micro'd to get the LBow out this turn.

I think we can move on Kish in 1/2 turns. As long as a few siege are there, Longbows should die more or less easily. Keep the units close in any case.

We don't have enough units in Lagash to handle all of Sal's units. Scrap the settler for now and queue some Pikes/Longbows. Upgrade the archer -> Xbow and spears ->pikes.

Remember Knights are immune to first strikes so Longbows here get CG3 and then Guerilla2 -> strength.

We can get SB Friendly by gifting him Education -> unlimited trades. Seeing as he's quite large, odds are we might want to be his buddy for some time.

This would let us get Lib <-> GP+Guilds trades next turn.

Start on Theatres -> GT in Ur if you can manage... it has decent food so I'd stop cottaging it and get farms instead. We can draft now and Civil Service isn't giving us much of a bang for our buck (it might if Ulundi can be cottaged later on and move Palace there). With gunpowder, drafting Protective Muskets start being interesting.

We could change civics to Nationhood+Free Religion (1 turn) next turn (let the builds that are about to finish) for emergency drafts should we need them.

Try to get a few Pikes for defense in Ulundi/Lagash. While they perform as well as Elephants against Knights, they get city bonuses. Too bad about the stoopid RNG -_-

Should we put hammers in Taj Mahal? A golden Age wouldn't benefit us that much (it'd be nice still) and at worse we'd get failure gold - we have monopoly on it. It's ~16 turns in Uruk atm, a bit more if we go out of Bureau.

1. kossin - UP
2. The Simple Mind - On Deck
3. Stochastic
4. Meerk - Just played
5. mjg5591 - Auto-Skip

To any lurkers: I think we could use a 6th player on the roster seeing as we're effectively only 4 right now.

I've been following the game, not the discussion so much, I'd like to join if you'd have me.

So to be clear, at moment, your just holding the line to speak, looking to settle city in north.

I'm not really sure of the aims of this Succession game?, is it to defeat the 3 at war AI's, or is it to bully ALL AI's in to war eventually.??

anyway, I've put up my hand

IPEX-731BA5DD06, you're more than welcome in! Where would you like to be inserted in the roster?
You could pick it up right now if you want - just to make sure you get a round in in case we lose

As for the aim... whichever victory we can get. The easiest way to achieve that from here is to defeat Boudica and Saladin and leave WK and SB duke it out a bit. I don't think Domination can be achieved with that (land won't be enough I think - unless we can culture press a lot). Diplomacy could be doable if we get someone's vote.... but let's not get too far ahead.

Here's a tentative roster:

1. kossin - (UP?/On deck)
2. The Simple Mind - (On Deck?)
3. Stochastic
4. Meerk - Just played
5. IPEX-731BA5DD06 - UP?
6. mjg5591 - Auto-Skip

Welcome, IPEX!

kossin said:

Looks fine. Sal is actually pumping units pretty well.

My plan is more or less the following:

Maybe we can ask Sitting Bull to focus his attacks at Kish/Pyongyang?

Ulundi can be micro'd to get the LBow out this turn.

I think we can move on Kish in 1/2 turns. As long as a few siege are there, Longbows should die more or less easily. Keep the units close in any case.

We don't have enough units in Lagash to handle all of Sal's units. Scrap the settler for now and queue some Pikes/Longbows. Upgrade the archer -> Xbow and spears ->pikes.

Click to expand...

I agree. Once again, I was caught a touch off guard by his stack. That's also why I was mentioning shuffling a bunch of our units from the offensive stack -> Ulundi, and some defense from Ulundi -> Lagash. I probably wasn't too clear when I described that.

I worried about attacking Kish too quickly, because it seems likely that Sal would be able to counterattack very effectively. That's why I thought we should wait for Sal to attack Lagash and then to retake Kish. Is that the general plan?

Remember Knights are immune to first strikes so Longbows here get CG3 and then Guerilla2 -> strength.

Click to expand...

Ooh! I totally forgot that.

Does this change the dynamics for super-defenders? It seems worrisome that they don't get the first strikes. (By that I mean it seems like they will end up facing knights straight-up). Do we need to built more Pikes to allow them to serve as the first-line defense vs knights?

Start on Theatres -> GT in Ur if you can manage... it has decent food so I'd stop cottaging it and get farms instead. We can draft now and Civil Service isn't giving us much of a bang for our buck (it might if Ulundi can be cottaged later on and move Palace there). With gunpowder, drafting Protective Muskets start being interesting.

Click to expand...

Should we switch to nationalism as soon as we get a breather?

I have forgotten how much happiness we have in Ur, but we could conceivably do some drafting there in advance of the GT (it seems like we have a fair bit of surplus happiness in a number of cities).

We could change civics to Nationhood+Free Religion (1 turn) next turn (let the builds that are about to finish) for emergency drafts should we need them.

Click to expand...

Oh, uh. I see you were on the same page.

Try to get a few Pikes for defense in Ulundi/Lagash. While they perform as well as Elephants against Knights, they get city bonuses. Too bad about the stoopid RNG -_-

Should we put hammers in Taj Mahal? A golden Age wouldn't benefit us that much (it'd be nice still) and at worse we'd get failure gold - we have monopoly on it. It's ~16 turns in Uruk atm, a bit more if we go out of Bureau.

Click to expand...

Feels to me like we are a bit hammer-starved on the war front at the moment, although that could change after the immediate crisis has passed. Again, I am not the best war monger by any means.

I'll play today, time to get things moving again.

Sal will most likely only focus his attacks on 1 city so taking Kish back ASAP can't hurt really.

I'll get some more pikes to deal with Knights. Muskets are also pretty good against them.

Hammers: GT+Draft + whips everywhere else = bunch of hammers.

I played a few more than 10 (14) turns, but this gets us back on the dial at turn 230 as some rounds were a bit shorter previously.

I started off by a big gift to our new trading bud, Sitting Bull.


Next turn I do some trades:


Meaning new draftees are now Muskets.

Boudica suicides a stack on Ulundi...


The 1 lost unit was a bogus fight! I mean, c'mon!


Meanwhile, I notice SB has Chemistry for trade so...


At the same time, I take this opportunity to advance our quest towards Rifling.


Taoism spreads to us... no use.


Remember Kish? It's ours again. I moved in on my second turn and captured it on turn #4.


Meanwhile, Boudica keeps suiciding units...


After that stack, the coast looks clear so I take the opportunity to revolt into Nationhood+Free Religion, greatly augmenting our happy cap.


Wang is giving SB more of a fight than Liz did.


Printing Press is in and I start on RP.


I settle a GG in our to-be draft city ->units will start with 1 promotion rather than 0. Whip infra/units into the Globe Theather to get if faster.


I settle the iron/crabs city. It doesn't help maintenance but it'll help production.


Sadly, everyone went to Mercantilism so I revolt to it (1 turn).


Get a good haul on Taj Mahal gold... too bad about the Golden Age.


WK has a good resource trade on my last turn:


Techs:


Things are looking up. Sitting Bull is keeping WK busy and at times even kills Saladin's stacks for us.

Boudica has a mini-stack outside Ulundi but if you check the save you'll see defense is appropriate.

As things are for the moment, we can move units in between Ulundi, Kish and Lagash which are the three target cities. I've started building wealth in some cities so we can get to Rifling ASAP.

I think we should move the Palace sometime. Uruk isn't centered and Maintenance will start being a pain once we start capturing cities. Whip Ziggurats in island cities as needed. (I used them to draft some muskets)

SB has Military Science so he should start fielding Grenadiers relatively soon.

The other possibility is we can scrap Rifling for now and head to Steel -> Canons will pretty much decimate anything for a long time.

Thoughts? Ideas?

1. kossin - Just played
2. The Simple Mind - UP
3. Stochastic - On deck
4. Meerk -
5. IPEX-731BA5DD06 - ? Possibly on deck
6. mjg5591 - Auto-Skip

@IPEX: since I couldn't get an update from you, I've continued with the game roster for next round. If you can/want to take the following save, I'll move you up to position #3 on the roster.

Nah, just leave as is, I need to really read up and get with the flow and idea of the game, best leave roster as is, I'd NOT have gifted Education to Sitting bull, I have a trade threshold greater/lower then Tokugawa.

Great playing, I suggest going for steel/drafted Muskets, Grenadiers get bonus V's Riflemen, but no other units unless they have pinch. Cannons at 12=Grenadiers, and causes Collateral damage.

Only real Benefit of rifling, is Calvary, and Access to Infantry really, I just see them as another pause on the road to Uber domination Units.

For me, Muskets, Cannons, Cuirassiers and Boudica.

Hi I'm back!

Looks like there were a good couple of turns while I was away, things seem much more under control than they were before. I think that the failure gold from the Taj might have been almost better than the actual golden age. We aren't exactly working a lot of tiles right now and we need the gold for research.

Since Ur is the GT site I expect that it will only ever be working 5-6 tiles at any one time. Maybe we should farm over those towns and then settle on one of the hills 3 East of Ur. The Southern one is better at not poaching tiles from Ulundi, but the Northern one gets fresh water as well as future Corn, so I'd vote for that site. The idea would be to provide a more defensible position to take on Boudica's incoming stacks as well as providing a staging ground for our own assaults.

I agree with IPEX about techs, since we've got Chemistry from SB, we should go for steel and drown Boudicca in cannon balls.

Regarding SB vs WK, I think we should make sure that WK does not loose more than 1 city as we want to make sure WK is alive in case we need his votes for a diplomatic win. If we close borders WK can probably retake 1-2 cities, but more than that will probably mean SB will keep them b/c of AI stupidity and SB's better military techs.

@IPEX
OK for the roster.

Ok I'm sold for Canons. Let's drown that ***** who's been bugging our *** for a while. We can trade MS with SB (research a bit into it and trade for PP) to get some Grenadiers of our own if need be. For the moment, keep building Muskets and Trebuchets(in preparation for a mass canon upgrade).

Completely agree on WK vs SB issue. Close and reopen borders as needed.

Nice set, Kossin. I just played a shadow set, and it went much like you described it. I am still surprised that Sal wasn't more effective at picking on Kish while it was weak (in my shadow, there seemed to be a window where he might have been able to take it, but he kept at Lagash and wasted everything).

Any case, very nice judgement.

I agree with the for cannons plan.

Good set Kossin. Looks like we're all in agreement about going for cannons to pound the Celts to a pulp.

I've got it. I'll look at the save tonight and post any questions. I should play & report by Tuesday night. Hopefully, the RNG will be kinder and I wont lose any cities this time!!

Inherited turn

As everyone agreed, changed research from Rifling -> Steel

1605AD

Ulundi: Bank -> Market
Ur: Whip barrack into Globe
Draft muskets where possible and send units to Ulundi to bolster defenses.
Agree to the following deal with Wk to build up the treasury to research steel:

Picture is missing (will hopefully add later) but it was Music+730 gold for printing press.

Boud keeps pounding Ulundi’s defenses and attacks after turn 232:




Hooray!! I don’t lose a city. We kill 11 of Boud’s units at the expense of 9 units. Fortunately, both our GG units survive.

She attacks again after turn 233:



Double hooray!! We survive again with no losses this time. Maybe my RNG luck is turning.

Consider attacking Boud’s wounded stack but best full strength units have poor odds (WE C4 54% and musket 51%).

I was hoping to rebuild the goldmine 2 west of Lagash but Sal has a small stack in Pyongyang:



Plus you can see that there is one camel archer 2 NE as well.

SB does us a favour and reduces this stack to two wounded camel archers and they stop just north of Kish. We easily wipe them out.

Boud is back bombarding Ulundi’s defenses then our 2 GGs kill the two units she attacks us with.

SB finally grabbed one of Wang’s cities so I close borders.

Sal’s new stack 2 north of Kish:



Next turn it moves to west of un-mined gold but is reduced to 2 maces & 2 trebs. SB.

Boud attacks (again).



We kill 8 for 2 losses. Unfortunately, one of them is one of the GG promoted longbows. To avenge Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, we attack & kill the three remaining units in her stack. Boud now only has one longbow on the hill 1S2E of Ur.

Looks like SB done us another favour and cleared out the last of Sal’s stack.

Techs:



We can get Steel in 10. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of gold about to allow us to upgrade the trebs to cannons. Hopefully, SB will get some failure gold that we could trade for printing press.

The borders with SB are still closed as Wang hasn’t been able re-capture Pyongyang.

Phew made it through without losing any cities this time.

TSM