SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

One detail we haven't discussed I don't think is that we haven't seen any wbs coming from the west or northwest. I would assume that means Hammy has no city on the west side of our landmass, just as TOku has no city west of the mountain range, and no AI has access to the land tiles across the water to our west. Whatever that means, it doesn't bode well for reaching annyone by galley, I don't think. Not without creating some sort of canal and probably capturing their capital, is my guess anyway.
 
Hatsegawa threatens us with War Chariots, too. We might need that spear sooner or later.
 
Good spot! That's excellent news. We can consider plans for researching Guilds now.

Hehe good point. It also puts Stonehenge within conquerable reach (Hatty built it in Thebes).
Hatty and Toku have had OB for at least 25 turns, and have at least 30 turns of shared religion, so (S?)he can't be too far away.
 
Thanks, LC. I was feeling bad about forgetting to move our NW warrior west on the first turn of my turnset. I don't feel quite as bad any more... ;)


I think it's time to go down on Toku... so to speak. Set us up LC and I guess Dhoom gets all the glory.
 
For anyone doing testing, I'm fairly certain that Osaka will complete a library on T68, so you need to WB this in on that turn, because that will eventually grab the corn back for several turns.

Ou maintenance costs could go up to 50gpt or more after we capture Osaka and Kyoto. I think pretty soon we'll need to run 2-4 cottages per city to finance this expensive empire.
 
Okay, we've got a problem. Osaka will grab the corn on T75 and won't relinquish it until around T88, meaning we need two turns to reach and capture Osaka. Do we try to grab it before that with an earlier DoW or just take it more slowly? The maintenanc costs are going to be so steep, I'm tempted to slow down our conquest of Kyoto by a hair and manage Delhi better to have less whip unhappiness and more population for the ensuing steps.

Another problem is that poprushing seems to have caused more of a problem for unit production than I first thought. Either that or I'm approaching braindeath, which is more likely.

I need some help testing this. Could someone figure out a good solution to getting ourChandi library done by T74 or T75 and still getting a reasonable amount of units by then also.
 
I'd rather spend 2 turns capturing Osaka and still be ready to march on Kyoto and capture it than attack early. Far too many BtS games have turned into a total slog because I declared war too early.

It's amazing how much of a difference staying at war with an AI for a lengthy period of time... you really do get trapped in a war of attrition (on the side of the AI).

Assuming that we skip the City-gifting idea and just build a stack (i.e. we skip the idea of building a Settler for Deer + Cow), then we might just need to make the stack larger by 1 or 2 more Axes/Spears, to ensure a smooth capture of Osaka.

It's just 1 extra whipped (0% Fortification bonus) Archer, so that's not a valid reason to declare war before we are prepared to push on and capture Kyoto, if you ask me.
 
There are several advantages to attacking Osaka sooner.
1. It only has one archer now, and isn't planning to build one till the library's done, at the earliest.
2. Save a turn attacking Osaka directly.
3. Osaka can't whip a second archer after we DoW but before we attack Osaka, if he has BW by then, which is very likely, since he just finished mining and he heavily weights getting his first strong unit in his research decisions.
4. We could chop two more axes in Osaka by the time we're ready to attack Kyoto.
5. We'd have to use 3 cats to knock down Osaka's 20% defenses, so there'd be another turn lost waiting for them to regain their movement points.
6. Losing the corn makes a difference in the speed of building up our forces, because it delays the third poprush significantly.
7. We could use Osaka as bait to possibly draw out units from Kyoto, if we don't threaten it.
8. We could CF Toku, then gift him Osaka before DoWing again. This would almost surely draw defenders out of Kyoto, to defend Osaka. In fact, although I don't know the code on it, I've often seen BTS AIs put a stack of defenders in culturally pressured cities, so that my be the best way of all to draw out units, just before we're ready to move on Kyoto.
9. We could send a scouting unit forward to peek at Kyoto, though I think that's more curiosity than necessity.
10. We have more time to create a 10XP unit, giving one or more axes multiple attack possibilities.


On the other hand:
1. Osaka already has a partial granary built and we'd have a 66% chance of keeping it, upon capture.
2. We risk the possibility of encountering more defenders in Kyoto.

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There are different possible war tactics here, especially speaking of war of attrition. If we don't CF, then we could focus on building more cats after the initial axe pair, and send 5 ahead with an axe/spear. They blast down the walls and castle while more units are getting built.
 
I've been thinking and the critical path on the Engineering/Machinery bulb is the second GS (i.e. our third total), not the library and first GS in Candhi. So, why don't we get a unit or three from Candhi? Especially if this will speed up our capture of Kyoto.

As long as Candhi pops the next, 200-point GS before Delhi (and the GLib) gets to 200 GPP, we're golden, right?
 
LC: I'll play a few test runs later today, to help sort out the Chandi build. I'll also see if there's a way to speed up our retaking the corn.

I'm initially dubious about taking Osaka early - losing the corn I think is something we'll have to live with. I expect Toku will bribe Hammy and/or Hatty, who could put up some real units in time to cause us trouble if they're bribed this early.
I need to think about that one a bit more though. If Toku does have extra units waiting around in Kyoto, this would be a way to distract them.

edit: I wonder if that GNP spike could be the effect of building two scientists in Kyoto. It would be nice if Toku would leave us an academy to play with.
 
As long as Candhi pops the next, 200-point GS before Delhi (and the GLib) gets to 200 GPP, we're golden, right?
That's an interesting point.

So, as long as we still have the Warrior in our build queue, maybe we can make a Spearman from there?

The question becomes... when will Delhi reach 200 GPP?

Working backward from there, we can decide when we must hire 2 Scientists in Chandi in order to beat Delhi's 200 GPP mark.


Another way to look at the problem is... capturing Kyoto and then holding the chokepoint will give us leverage against Hatty... only one spot for her units to go would give us a great way to rack up Experience Points... plop in a couple of defending Spearmen and a defending Axeman and watch the Experience Points roll in.

Then, it will be at our leisure as to when we generate the 2 Great Scientists... sure, sooner is better, but unless there is competition to build The Great Library, then we can still generate those 2 Great Scientists later... we don't need Fishing if it turns out that we are trapped by the Peaks in an inland sea... the test game leaves the sea open-ended but what if, more realistically, it is closed off on both sides? Maybe we can settle a Hills square to the west of our empire to get a passage out, but maybe not.

Anyway, with no Seafood Resources, no Lakes, and likely no Seafood Resources of Toku's to worry about, getting our Great Scientists ASAP is not really a crucial thing... because we'll probably want to capture and hold Kyoto for a while, rather than pushing forward, unless for some strange reason Toku-with-Alphabet is unable to bribe Friendly Hatty against us. I'd count on that war declaration to happen, though.

Thus, we can't afford to declare early, as ZPV is also saying, since we can't really have War Chariots using Toku's Road network to snipe at us from all over... War Chariots will absolutely MURDER Axemen and Catapults.

Now, more than ever, capturing Kyoto must be a high priority aspect of our war and we really can't afford to declare war early thanks to the threat of War Chariots using Toku's Road network and appearing anywhere. Once we hold the Kyoto chokepoint (which I'm assuming is a chokepoint--do we know that for certain?), then we can always send out war parties versus Hatty that come equipped with at least 2 Spears per stack, at a future date.


ZPV said:
edit: I wonder if that GNP spike could be the effect of building two scientists in Kyoto. It would be nice if Toku would leave us an academy to play with.
Toku does love his Academies... in a normal game, where he doesn't Open Borders, it's hard for him to keep up, otherwise. Of course, a Toku that trades is a formidable opponent... imagine a map full of them! :eek: :lol:


I have no clue how we'd force Hatty to make peace with us, particularly since she'd take twice as long to talk with us due to being the one to declare war, so we really need a plan that consists of taking down Kyoto quickly, which, to me, means building a force that is sufficiently large to capture Osaka + Kyoto and then striking in one fell swoop.


Whether we get Engineering 10 to 15 turns later than the earliest possible doesn't really matter all that much, as we'll still need to build up a large enough force before venturing out past the Kyoto chokepoint, regardless of how quickly our small-at-that-time remaining army can move along a Road network.
 
One more detail I forgot on when Osaka takes the corn. SInce I assume TOku's going to get BW before we attack him no matter what, if we're lucky he'll get it after teh library is done, but before he gets 10:culture:. That would slow that down by one turn de to his revolt to slavery. So far, I have no problem having 2 axes there on T73, with one axe 3XP, but on T72 I'm still working on. Without the revolt, he gets 10:culture: on T73.
 
I'm initially dubious about taking Osaka early - losing the corn I think is something we'll have to live with. I expect Toku will bribe Hammy and/or Hatty, who could put up some real units in time to cause us trouble if they're bribed this early.
I need to think about that one a bit more though. If Toku does have extra units waiting around in Kyoto, this would be a way to distract them.
I did a quick estimate of how long befoe Toku will talk when we take Kyoto and I believe it's likely to be 8t or more, so we need to be prepared for various eventualities no matter what.
edit: I wonder if that GNP spike could be the effect of building two scientists in Kyoto. It would be nice if Toku would leave us an academy to play with.
I haven't taken a careful look at the make-up of his GNP graph and how many bpt that must have been to research Alpha. That should tell us whether he was running two sci for 17t or not. But it was relatively flat for a long time, so that kind of indicates against both the library 25% bonus and the +6bpt. His hammer graph could tell us if he put the hammers into a library in Kyoto.
 
I haven't taken a careful look at the make-up of his GNP graph and how many bpt that must have been to research Alpha. That should tell us whether he was running two sci for 17t or not. But it was relatively flat for a long time, so that kind of indicates against both the library 25% bonus and the +6bpt. His hammer graph could tell us if he put the hammers into a library in Kyoto.

I've had a look at the culture graph. He hasn't built a Library.
 
If we were to attack with 2 Axes and have bad luck, we'd lose the battle. Reasonable odds = 1 dies and the other is wounded, then gets killed by an Archer counter-attack. Then, any further Axes that we build will get mowed down by War Chariots sneaking out from Toku's Roads (or which could happen even if we keep the City).


The best thing to do is to do your testing as though that Corn was NOT EVEN THERE. Ignore it, instead of relying on it. All of a sudden, you'll find that all of the pressure disappears from you and we can go forward with the planned Stack of Doom approach. AIs are awesome at one-off, two-off warfare but totally fail to Stacks of Doom. Let's go with what works and be the team that does it the most effectively. :goodjob:
 
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