[BTS] SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

We currently have 14 trebs near or on their way to Liz. Should we start building more of them or is this enough to keep capturing her cities? I assume we'll lose several for every city we take.

Or is the idea to lose many cats per city we capture and keep most of our trebs alive? I'm not sure which will be better now that we're fighting Redcoats... I guess both tebs and cats will have less than 1% odds so we're banking on collateral damage. In this case, sacrificing cats is better.

[ZPV]

AD1210:
We switch to researching Gunpowder.
Our units congregate in former Mongolia.

IBT:
That tile didn't flip. I'm still sure it should have (since Turfan itself shows 4% Indian 3% English), but I must have overlooked something.
Hence, Liz captured Turfan. We'll, better in her hands than having someone culture-block the lake for a long time.
Cyrus learns Banking. We will extort it when the time comes.

AD1220
We have a 66 unit stack waiting for Liz to move out of Turfan. I don't really want to attack over a river into CG2 redcoats, so I won't.
It kind of looks like we need to go through the Karakorum Multistorey Galleon Park to get to Mansa - the fort by Ulundi is usable now. At least our troops will be in the right place when we're done with Liz

IBT:
Liz pops a Great Scientist and builds the Taj Mahal.
She doesn't move on any of our cities; her stack is split between Turfan and Coventry.

AD1230:
There is no Zulu entrance to Mali.

IBT:
Liz moves out of Turfan, toward Ning-Hsia.

AD1240:
I start to besiege Liz's stacks, but collateral damage is stopping before 50HP. This is weird. I'll have to investigate.
Stacks are now next to Pasargardae and Gaul, for us to capture next turn.

[LowtherCastle]

Originally Posted by ZPV

AD1210:
We switch to researching Gunpowder.
Our units congregate in former Mongolia.

IBT:
That tile didn't flip. I'm still sure it should have (since Turfan itself shows 4% Indian 3% English), but I must have overlooked something.
Hence, Liz captured Turfan. We'll, better in her hands than having someone culture-block the lake for a long time.
Cyrus learns Banking. We will extort it when the time comes.

AD1220
We have a 66 unit stack waiting for Liz to move out of Turfan. I don't really want to attack over a river into CG2 redcoats, so I won't.
It kind of looks like we need to go through the Karakorum Multistorey Galleon Park to get to Mansa - the fort by Ulundi is usable now. At least our troops will be in the right place when we're done with Liz

IBT:
Liz pops a Great Scientist and builds the Taj Mahal.
She doesn't move on any of our cities; her stack is split between Turfan and Coventry.

AD1230:
There is no Zulu entrance to Mali.

Depending on SOD leaders, those units could be trapped in Turfan till more defenders are built or arrive. How about just moving on COventry and seeing what happens to the Turfan SoD then?

[ZPV]

Ok, this is a PITA. Cats can only do 31HP of collateral damage to rifles/redcoats. It would've been easy if we could have knocked them down to 50HP. Good thing we have grens coming soon. Otherwise we'd have a bit of a problem

[LowtherCastle]

Originally Posted by ZPV

Ok, this is a PITA. Cats can only do 31HP of collateral damage to rifles/redcoats. It would've been easy if we could have knocked them down to 50HP. Good thing we have grens coming soon. Otherwise we'd have a bit of a problem

Now that we lost Turfan, Lizzie won't talk for an eternity, so maybe we need to accelerate getting grens as much as possible, building commerce, working merchants, or whatever it takes.

I assume you didn't whip Turfan down to pop3? If not, Lizzie wil probably whip a defender and bring another, if needed. Then her SoDs can move on, if not sooner...

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle

Now that we lost Turfan, Lizzie won't talk for an eternity, so maybe we need to accelerate getting grens as much as possible, building commerce, working merchants, or whatever it takes.

I assume you didn't whip Turfan down to pop3? If not, Lizzie wil probably whip a defender and bring another, if needed. Then her SoDs can move on, if not sooner...

The GS is due in 1 turn; gunpowder in 2. I'll see if I can bring Gunpowder down to 1 turn.
edit: yes, I can.

[ZPV]

Now I've got an unpleasant battle to fight. I've got to clear some units from the vicinity of Ning-Hsia, and then hope I have enough units left to clear up the ones I collateralled at a decent kill rate.
This is going to hurt, but it's got to be done - otherwise we'll just face even more units on a hill by Beshbalik.

[ZPV]

Ok, I've killed the Ning-Hsia stack, and chopped that forest. I'm pausing and uploading for the night.
Hopefully things will be simpler in a few turns, when our concerns our fewer and our units are modern

[Mitchum]

Nice work so far, ZPV. How many of Liz' units did you kill and how many did we lose?

Hopefully losing Turfan didn't cost us too many units. For some reason, I thought we were gifting Turfan to another AI... I guess missed the part about getting culture on a certain square.

[Mitchum]

I see that we've killed 5 Redcoats. There is another stack of 8 wounded Redcoats at Beshbalik-W+SW. If we don't kill them this turn, will they get a bunch of promotions?

Grens get +50% vs. Riflemen (Redcoats) while Redcoats get +25% vs. Gunpowder units. Grens will provide much better odds. We need to buy time until we can amass a stack of grens, which could take a while...

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by Mitchum

I see that we've killed 5 Redcoats. There is another stack of 8 wounded Redcoats at Beshbalik-W+SW. If we don't kill them this turn, will they get a bunch of promotions?

Grens get +50% vs. Riflemen (Redcoats) while Redcoats get +25% vs. Gunpowder units. Grens will provide much better odds. We need to buy time until we can amass a stack of grens, which could take a while...

The redcoats at Beshbalik-WSW have only had the initial cats attack them - and not very many of them at that - so they shouldn't be promoting right away.
Next turn, our units will be able to promote to Pinch, making it easier to attack yellowlined redcoats. We might be able to kill them off, at a kill ratio not much worse than 1:1, but that would leave us very short-handed if the rest of the redcoats in coventry come to play. Maybe I'll prefer to do it anyway in the morning, but not right now.

The 5 redcoats killed make for a total of 9 units killed on that square. I think we lost around 24 units, including the ill-conceived cats that suicided on the other mini-stack - there's nothing that can be done about those, now I know collateral damage will only reduce them to 69hp instead of 50 (the collateral damage limit is higher for units stronger than the siege weapon).

I'll find a way to get us some grens asap - atm the timetable is GP (1t) - Chem (1t) - MilSci (1t). We have population to whip, after that.

[ZPV]

AD1240 cont'd:
We mop up the stack of wounded redcoats.
IBT:
We lose a couple of knights due to lone redcoats. We'll live.
Liz pops a Great Prophet.
AD1250:
We know Gunpowder, and got our Great Scientist from Kyoto. I'll lightbulb Chemistry once I've captured some Persian cities.
We capture Pasargardae easily, and I've reduced Gaul to a single redlined Catapult, but I'm going to leave it until next turn - that way we can get a quick strike on Genghis before Samarqand's culture takes over everything.
2568 beakers magically appear in Chemistry, and it is now due in 1 turn, at 0%. I'll put unit-producers back to work making units.

AD1260:
The resolution is: return Ning-hsia to the Mongols. We can live with that. He won't be around long anyway.
We lightbulb Military Science (due in 1 turn), and capture Gaul.
Cyrus is threatening our cities, so he won't give us anything for peace. I'll try and kill the straggling units to ramp up our war success and unthreaten them.

IBT:
The vote passes, and Genghis has Ning-hsia back. For now

AD1270:
Oops, I've done it again. I declared war on Tokugawa. You've gotta feel for the guy. Our citizens certainly do. We'll capture Samarqand next turn, and possibly Ning-hsia too, if he's stupid.
There's a small (7 redcoats) english stack on the move. I'm not sure where it's going. Beshbalik whips a Grenadier. Our GG insta-upgrades an archer to a Gren. I spread the XP around to give some elephants Shock.
I've nearly set up a Galleon chain around Zululand to head straight from Delhi to Persia-Mongolia. Once we've dealt with the Mongolian war weariness we can consider trying to research Steel.

AD1280:
We capture Samarqand, but not Ning-Hsia. That one will take a couple more turns.
We've dealt with Cyrus's stray units, and he'll now give us peace for Civil Service + Theology. I'd really like CS+Banking, so I'll try and take Persepolis from him.
We had to attack the English stack of redcoats on the hill, but it wasn't too painful - pinch gives our grenadiers good odds when they've been softened up by cats.

AD1290:
War Weariness is going to force us into strike, so I make peace with Cyrus for CS + Banking + 2gpt.
I'll consider our civics, and probably revolt just into Mercantilism.
We revolt into Mercantilism and Feudalism (the latter of which pays for itself in unit costs alone)

AD1300:
Our Grenadiers are starting to mass - we've got 5 in Mongolia already, with more coming every turn. This will be Genghis's last turn alive. Good riddance!
I've been spreading Buddhism a bit, but we don't have a blocking vote yet, because war weariness forced me to whip away some of our population.

IBT:
Liz's golden age is over.

AD1310:
Genghis bites the dust. The game is simpler now... it's just get units to the front -> smack liz around a bit -> repeat.
I'll upload now so that someone else can play tonight and onwards if they want.

[Dhoomstriker]

Originally Posted by ZPV

I'll put unit-producers back to work making units.

Musketmet won't auto-upgrade to Grenadiers but Crossbowmen should (not tested, going by memory)... although you'll have to wait just as long to whip those units as Grenadiers as if you'd started building Grenadiers on the turn that you learned Military Science... but for Cities that take a few turns to build a unit, I suppose that starting on Grenadiers Crossbowmen that will auto-upgrade to Grenadiers in the build queue is a decent approach.

[ZPV]

I've played through to 1310AD, and finally we're at a point where it should be clear-ish what to do.
Genghis is dead. Cyrus is down to two cities, and there's a stack there waiting for him.
We have enough Grenadiers in Mongolia to consider marching on Turfan, and then Coventry next when more reinforcements arrive.

We don't have a blocking AP vote yet - unhappiness has forced me to whip some population away - but I've spread Buddhism a bit so we're not that far off - killing Cyrus would be enough, I think.

We'll never win by AP, unless we capture a lot of Incan cities - his population is just too high - so we'll have to try and win by Domination or Conquest (so there's no need to butter Shaka up).

The upload log is attached.
The save is OPEN. Post a Got It if you're going to play

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by Dhoomstriker

So, we'd need consensus (at least between ZPV and me) on big-picture items.

Here are big-picture items that come to mind:
1. Whether we're going to be Liberating 4 Cities at Shaka that we settle
2. Whether we're going to try and capture MoM versus ignore Cyrus for now
3. How the Great Person plan relates to Caste System and what to do when we don't get a Great Person type that we were hoping to get
4. Which Civics we'll be running when (i.e. when we learn Banking, is it an immediate switch into Mercantilism? If yes, what criteria do we consider for other Civic swaps, such as Caste System versus Slavery or possibly even Organized Religion if we're staying in Slavery?)
5. If we're going to be in Slavery, how aggressive can or should we be with our whipping
6. What's the story with Liz... Cease Fire ASAP? Does Cease Firing depends upon certain criteria, such as whether we appear to be winning and can successfully push an attack on one of her Cities, and if so, what are those criteria?
7. Do we need to start putting any Galleon chains in place for Mansa and/or Huayna or shall all Galleon chains remain focused on supplying the front lines at Liz with troops?
8. If we are able to get our troops from Cyrus' area (sorry, I can't access the saved game now to check), do we leave any in the area by Cyrus or do they all go toward Liz? If some remain, how many (i.e. enough to push a stack straight to Persopolis, ignoring other Cities?) would we keep around?
9. How is it best to handle fighting with Liz' troops? Let her capture a City and recapture it? Fight her inside of our Cultural Borders as much as we can? Be as opportunistic as possible in attacking her in the field? How many suicide Cats do we need to have in order to ensure that we can successfully deal with a stack of, say, 5 Redcoats? 10 Redcoats? A bigger stack?
10. When to launch a Golden Age

We're up to a point where we can tag-team without losing coherence too mucch.
On these issues:
1: no.
2: Kill Cyrus when the treaty is over. That'll allow us to block any annoying resolutions.
3: Pass. I don't see a need for Caste System - Liz isn't going anywhere near Infantry, so teching is probably optional now - we might want Steel for Cannons, but we can't afford it yes. If we happen to pop a GP, then it doesn't matter what type - a golden age or culture bomb would suit me fine.
4: Merc+HeredRule+Vassalage+Slavery are fairly no-brainers. I don't see value in OrgRel right now, but maybe in the future.
5: Not very aggressive - we still want to have lots of citizens around to block the AP and pay for all our units - but in a crisis (unit or unhappiness or whatever) whip them to the bone.
6: Grind her into dust.
7: We need to focus on Liz for now. A Huayna chain will set itself up when it's needed. Mansa will be harder but not too difficult if there actually is access to him.
8: I've left a stack in Pasargardae which should be sufficient to kill Cyrus - you might have to juggle a little while walking to Persepolis, but from there on in it'll be a cake-walk.
9: Fight her in the open. A few barrage-promoted cats, followed by (hopefully pinch-promoted) grenadiers should mop mostly everything up.
When attacking her cities, the order is cats (collateral down to 9.7/14) -> trebs (to try and redline them) -> Grens. Grenadiers are too few and too expensive to throw away on cities yet.
There are some old CR3 melee units that you might want to upgrade when we have the gold - they'll be ridiculously powerful attacking redcoats in cities.
10: As soon as we get a Great Person... so sometime on Tuesday

11: Use Great Generals to upgrade old barely-promoted units free, and spread the XP around so that units that can get Pinch do get it.

[Mitchum]

Regarding the AP win, if our Voting Buddy is running Buddhism, don't foget that his pops count double. So mathematically, an AP win may still be quite possible.

I'll do a count to see if the donut gives us domination and if not, by how much we're short so we can decide whether Domi or Conquest would be better... or trying for the AP.

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by Mitchum

Regarding the AP win, if our Voting Buddy is running Buddhism, don't foget that his pops count double. So mathematically, an AP win may still be quite possible.

I'll do a count to see if the donut gives us domination and if not, by how much we're short so we can decide whether Domi or Conquest would be better... or trying for the AP.

It might be barely possible, but we're talking giving him so many population that we risk him becoming our opponent (if Huayna can even be our opponent).

[Mitchum]

According to the F9 Demo screen, we currently have 614 land tiles.

There are a total of 1784 land tiles. 60% of that is 1071. So we're currently 458 tiles short.

I did my tile count based on the following assumptions:

- All cities we currently hold will at least reach 100. This would require either building culture or a theater in several cities.
- That we'll capture all of the barb cities.
- That all of the cities that we have not yet captured on the donut will pop their borders once (i.e. 10).

This would give us an extra 310 tiles. If some of the newly capture cities reach 100, we would get an additional 59 tiles.

614 + 310 + 59 = 983 tiles. This puts us just about 100 tiles short.

Therefore, we should plan on attacking HC and/or Mansa. I suggest both in case we can't trigger Domination before we reach a Conquest victory. What else are we going to do with our highly-promoted army? We just need to decide when we have Liz under control enough to start diverting some of our army overseas.

[ZPV]

Originally Posted by Mitchum

According to the F9 Demo screen, we currently have 614 land tiles.

There are a total of 1784 land tiles. 60% of that is 1071. So we're currently 458 tiles short.

I did my tile count based on the following assumptions:

- All cities we currently hold will at least reach 100. This would require either building culture or a theater in several cities.
- That we'll capture all of the barb cities.
- That all of the cities that we have not yet captured on the donut will pop their borders once (i.e. 10).

This would give us an extra 310 tiles. If some of the newly capture cities reach 100, we would get an additional 59 tiles.

614 + 310 + 59 = 983 tiles. This puts us just about 100 tiles short.

Therefore, we should plan on attacking HC and/or Mansa. I suggest both in case we can't trigger Domination before we reach a Conquest victory. What else are we going to do with our highly-promoted army? We just need to decide when we have Liz under control enough to start diverting some of our army overseas.

With Caste System and Sistine-boosted artists, 100 shouldn't be beyond any large city we capture. I'll see if I can manufacture the extra 29 tiles from somewhere.

[Mitchum]

Originally Posted by ZPV

With Caste System and Sistine-boosted artists, 100 shouldn't be beyond any large city we capture. I'll see if I can manufacture the extra 29 tiles from somewhere.

It's not 29 tiles. Actually it's more like 1071 - 983 = 88 tiles. If it were closer, like the 29 you suggested, I would have "sharpened my pencil" to see if we could eek it out. But being 88 tiles short makes it a bit harder to accomplish.

In any event, even if the donut has just enough tiles and we can somehow find 88 tiles that I missed, I often find that just continuing on the conquest path is the best way to go. That way we aren't twiddling our thumbs for 15 turns waiting for cities to come out of revolt and pop their borders twice.

Of course, this assumes that our army of trebs (cannons?) and grens transported on galleons will be able to adequately handle Mansa and/or HC.