SGOTM 17 - The Shawshank Redemption

Mitchum said:

We don't own a monastery yet. We could have one next turn and a missionary popped naked finish the next turn, but it will delay the rathaus and likely the Forbidden Palace. Plus it could delay the turn we DoW. Definitely not worth it in my book.

Click to expand...

Fair enough, but after we get that Monastery and Forbidden Palace, we may want to pre-emptively build a Confucian Missionary, so that we have one ready in the future when we see a possible use for one.


So, I'll say:
1. Fine, no Missionary for Churchill
2. Get a Settler for Churchill, and a Worker, too, if possible
3. Do not declare war on Sury now but instead focus on Qin with the units that we were going to use on Sury
4. See about getting Code of Laws into the hands of Churchill, so that he might build some Courthouses for us. My earlier argument of him not getting Code of Laws so that he doesn't learn Civil Service doesn't really apply, does it?

Maybe we can even do something like:
Civil Service from Churchill <-> Code of Laws + Drama + Literature
followed by:
Gold / whatever someone will give (a Civic switch?) for any AI that doesn't know Literature <-> Literature

Mitch: Our progress has been good lately. Let's take the evening to figure this out. HOpe that works for you. I can't even look at the save now for a while.

I'll try to make a very careful analysis of where all our fronts are and our production. I haven't really done that yet in general.

I'm fine waiting for someone else picking it up tonight. I think this is a critical decision.

When I got shot down on giving Churchill CoL 500 posts ago, I kind of forgot about it. I think that ship has sailed (i.e. free CHs) but selling techs sounds good for cash.

Yeah, sorry, the thinking at the time was that Code of Laws leads to Civil Service, but so does Feudalism.

Anyway, keeping Churchill backwards has worked in terms of reducing tech trades, but there's still time to trick him into whipping a couple of Courthouses. Qin was willing to build a Grocer during a war, so Churchill might do the same with Courthouses. Or, he might waste his Hammers on the Epics via Literature.

FYI, there are only two galleys near Golden Clams. There were two others that were further north near Aachen, but I started moving them west to help with the pile up of units in Silver Bridge. I didn't know we were planning a full-scale attack on Sury. Now that we've lost Nagara, it really needs a full scale attack, which will take us quite some time to muster... Had I kept those two galleys around to open a third front (not something I was planning), it may have been easier to go down on Sury now, but I don't see it happening now.

BTW, that's twice that city revolting has randomly screwed us: once getting Dual Bananas the turn before we were going to steal CS and again losing Nagara the turn before our DoW.

0. Wow. Shanghai. Please, no more suicidal panic attacks. Castles are castles. If don't have seige weapons to suicide, then we have to minimize the chances of damage to our kill units by bombarding to 0. We can add knights as fast as he can add his wimpy lbms. Or just build more trebs.
1. Shanghai is in extreme danger, as is the Super Medic. We could (should?) lose one or the other this IT. Let's hope Qin is an idiot. I'd move the Super Medic 1NW and move the HA into Shanghai. I'd also send HA #25 from Nanjing to Shanghai.

The big problem with a suicidal panic attack is defending the city after capture. Shanghai is Qin's for the taking.

2. Neither Hari nor Yasad will put cultural pressure on Thom. We could send the three knights and the Aachen treb and capture Nagara and Thom in 6 turns. But I don't care what you do at this point.
3. Trade Sury our maps for 90g.
4. Aachen needs to be at pop11 to guarantee we get 1100 from teh trade mission, which is all we'll get anywhere, except in CHurchill's ToA city.
5. The worker is too late for the Toku road and we can't teleport till T157 now. Forget the worker.
6. Ten more knights can get to the flotilla in the next two turns, then land at Toku by T155 and teleport on T157.
7. The spot on my map for teleporting appears to be okay. Farther north is not okay unless we settle Rice2 before teleporting.

0. I got the city to 28% before attacking. We've been talking about city capture gold for a while now. We really can't afford to sit outside a city and bombard for 5 turns, especially when we have a huge SoD sitting at the city gates eating up maintenance and doing nothing. It was far from a panic attack. I thought about it for some time calculating odds. To be honest, we cannot add knights or trebs that fast. There are NO galleys to transport troops over to Qin. We can barely keep up with sending 2 units/turn on the NTC let alone shuttle units to Qin. We would have had to sit at the gates for 5+ turns waiting for reinforcements. If you look at the odds, we did get screwed. We lost several 50% battles, several without hardly scratching the unit. If we were to do that same attack 10 times, our results were the worst you would see. I'd attack the city again in the same situation.

Really, we can't sit around taking 1 city every 3 or 4 turns. We need to pick it up or else we'll lose units to strike, which is worse than losing them at cities, right? We have massive production. If we have to suicide units, so be it. Our economy is in dire straights and we have to pick up the pace. If no one else agrees, then I'll change and bombard to 0% and then attack, but I'm pretty sure that won't get it done.

1. I don't think Shanghai is in danger. He has a couple of HAs and chariots but that's it. Those units have been sitting in his cities not moving. We may lose the wounded WE, but that's it. If he does attack Shanghai, I don't see how he could possibly take the city. And it will leave his units vulnerable and his cities more lightly defended. I don't see the concern here. EDIT: especially since we're threatening 2 of his 3 cities so he's unlikely to move units out of them.

Again, it was far from a panic attack. It was only suicidal because we lost every single coin flip but 1 and in the ones we lost, we barely scratched the defender. The 2 CG3 LBs would have been trouble no matter when we attacked.

2. Really? You're thowing in the towel because of my "panic attack" and you don't care any more? Plus, I don't see how the stack by Sury can take and hold Nagara and then take and hold Thom. Sury will reinforce both cities and whip like mad while we slow march there. I don't see it happening. Plus, Sury is not on our critical path, so why are you so gung ho to attack now? When we lost Nagara to the culture flip, it just became a bit more challenging and tipped the scales toward not doing it.

3. OK.

4. Can we even get 1100 from Mansa?

5. OK. I don't recall you reminding me about the worker until I had already moved every unit and possibly even advanced the turn. You did say something umpteen million posts ago, but I forgot about it.

6. So is T157 our drop date? With 10 more Knights plus the stack of trebs and 7ish knights I dropped off last turn should be a pretty good start.

7. I'll aim for the spot on your map.

Regarding the sieige units, we had 5 cats there. I bombarded 1 full turn. On the next turn, I bombarded with 3 and suicided 2. I didn't want to lose all of our accuracy trebs on one city. I know that we'll need some for Beijing. I'd be fine losing all of them at Beijing (and Guangzhou) becuase I'm building galleys in 4 cities and we should have the capacity to fortify our Qin army instead of camping them out in Silver Bridge. At first, I thought we were building too many galleys but now I realize that we don't have nearly enough. Those 5 turns out of Slavery actually hurt us quite a bit in that regard.

Oh yeah, I haven't moved any units around Nanjing just in case we DoWed Sury this turn and I had to deal with 3 roaming LBs of his. If we agree to let Sury be for now, that will free up several units to secure our position with Qin and to push forward on Beijing.

Mitchum said:

BTW, that's twice that city revolting has randomly screwed us

Click to expand...

Well, three times if you count Hades Anvil, but we never really were serious enough about taking Hades Hammar.


I, too, vote for intensive Bombarding in most cases.

LC is right in that the Super Medic will come up as a defender before the other 2 Chariots, so we should hide him.


Or... should we take our Cease Fire now and redeclare next turn right after gifting Dual Banana to Qin? We haven't made much progress on a Galley there yet, so now seems like a decent time to do so.

The Maces and Horse Archer in Hangzhou could easily kill 3 more of our units in between turns if we don't Cease Fire now. (Remember: no Peace Treaty, so no getting anything in trade!)


No one likes Qin, so the only one who will be angry at declaring war a second time on Qin will be Qin.

I agree with Mitchum... We cannot afford to bombard all cities to make the war efficient. That ship sailed long ago, when it was decided to go for a brute force war intead of one supported by a solid economy. At this stage, we need to keep the war maching rooling quickly and fight a war of attrition. That is the only way to keep the war financed. I am not saying we should go suicidle or anything, but aggresively taking cities, even if that comes with moderate loses, is clearly a neccessity.

I just looked through the battle results since I feel that I have to justify my "suicidal" attack. Here is a summary:

City defense = 28%

Cat 1 loses to CG3 LB without scratching him (OK, odds were .1% and we got collateral on the second CG3 LB and 4 other units). As expected.
Cat 2 loses to same CG3 LB with exact same results. As expected
Knight 1 loses to CG3 LB at 24% odds and gets a single hit. A bit unlucky to only get 1 hit but OK.

At this point I'm committed, but things are looking fine with the odds after losing just 3 units. Then:

Knight 2 loses to CG3 LB at 49% and only gets 1 hit. Unlucky
Knight 3 loses to CG3 LB at at 54% odds and doesn't scratch the LB. Very unlucky.
Knight 4 defeats LB at 43.9%. Our very first break, but it was a coin flip.
WE1 loses LB at 36.6% odds and hits the LB 4 times. Another small break, but it was close to a coin flip.
WE2 loses to LB at 57.4% odds and hits the LB 1 time. Unlucky.
WE3 defeats LB at 84.8% odds. As expected.
WE4 defeats archer at 99% odds. As expected.
HA1 loses to HA at 73.8% odds and only hits the HA 1 time. Unlucky.
HA2 loses to HA at 73.8% odds. Unlucky.
HA3 defeats LB at 100% odds. As expected.
EDIT: Chariot1 defeats HA at 100% odds. As expected.

So, had things happened strictly per the odds, we would have lost 2 cats, 1 knight and maybe one or two others. But to lose as many coin flips as we did and to not scratch the unit is painful. But I was committed after the first 3 attacks, otherwise, we would have been facing even more highly promoted units with fewer seige and none in sight for quite some time.

The CG2 archer would have upgraded to a LB IBT, which was another factor that swayed me into starting the attack in the first place.

Dhoomstriker said:

I, too, vote for intensive Bombarding in most cases.

Click to expand...

I think we spent 3 1/2 turns bombarding at Shanghai. What is considered intensive? 0%? We can try but I highly doubt our economy can handle it.

Dhoomstriker said:

LC is right in that the Super Medic will come up as a defender before the other 2 Chariots, so we should hide him.

Click to expand...

I'll take a look at the save and move him accordingly.

Dhoomstriker said:

Or... should we take our Cease Fire now and redeclare next turn right after gifting Dual Banana to Qin? We haven't made much progress on a Galley there yet, so now seems like a decent time to do so.

Click to expand...

And march through his culture again. That will REALLY slow down city capture gold. I see this as an alternative that could have dire consequences, but I'll do it if the team votes for it. My vote is no.

Dhoomstriker said:

The Maces and Horse Archer in Hangzhou could easily kill 3 more of our units in between turns if we don't Cease Fire now. (Remember: no Peace Treaty, so no getting anything in trade!)

Click to expand...

Really? Those units have been parked in the city for a long time. And we're threatening the city which should make them less likely to leave (EDIT: BTW, they didn't leave when we weren't threatening the city either). I doubt he'll move all of those units out now. He could have done something similar when we took his other cities but those HAs stayed planted. Which units are you worried about losing? And would then killing the 2 HAs and the mace the following turn make up for it if it happend?

Dhoomstriker said:

No one likes Qin, so the only one who will be angry at declaring war a second time on Qin will be Qin.

Click to expand...

At this point in the game, I'm not overly worried about pissing anyone off. If a CF and re-DoW makes sense, we should do it even if it pissed everyone off. We should be at war with everyone in the next 15ish turns anyway, right? It is interesting to note who will be mad but I don't think it should dictate or even guide our actions this late in the game.

Just a reminder, this is fastest conquest, not a competition where we see how many highly promoted units we can collect by the end of the game. In my opinion, there are two extremes in warefare. First is to go in with overwhelming odds (2:1), bombard to zero and then suicide seige until the highly-promoted city attackers have 90%+ odds and then take the city. The second is to go in as fast as possible. No bombarding. Get to the city, suicide a few units and attack.

I don't think either approach fits this game, but LC and Dhoom seem to be leaning heavily toward the first method while I took a more middle of the road approach. Was it suicidal? I don't think so. Was it a panic attack? Definitely not. Did we get unlucky? Yes. Did we lose a lot of units? Unfortunately, yes.

But, our power is something like 4X Qin's. It is most likely more than 2X every other AI. We have MASSIVE production and a lot of cities that can crank out units very quickly. We have the NTC that can deliver units very quickly to most of the map (other than Qin/Sury but that should be fixed in the next several turns). Let's use our ability to produce large quantities of units and deliver them to the war front as quickly as possible. If we lose a few units, we build 10 more to take their place because we can.

Our economy cannot afford to bombard to 0% or until our odds are >90%. We'll finish off the podium if we take that approach as well. That approach is very conservative and saves every possible unit we can. But with a production base like ours, who cares if we lose some units. If we want gold, we need to pick up the pace!!

Agreed... Who we piss off is irrelevant...

Unless we are desperate, I am against a CF. Again, we need to be capturing cities in a bloodbath to pay for this bloathed millitary.

For the record, I am normally for very conservative and efficient warfare, but Mitchum is correct that this does not fit with the current situation in this game.

I.e. Build Wealth in Dual Banana for a turn.

GAH, the saved game is not paused. Good thing that I didn't try talking to any AIs to see what deals they might offer and then misclick to accept such a deal, heh heh.


Poly's Cultural Borders could expand on the current turn if we hired a 2nd Artist Specialist there.


I'd still send a Settler with our Churchill teleporting party if we think that he can arrive on time to catch up with the Trebs. I mean, we already have a Worker there.


Hmmm, Churchill wants:
Civil Service <-> Code of Laws + Drama + Literature + 120 Gold

That Gold price is quite steep. I suppose, though, that we can instead trade:
50 Gold from Churchill <-> Code of Laws

I guess that there aren't any other tech trades to make at the moment.


If we give Qin that one turn of Cease Fire, he might even be silly enough to switch into a Peacetime Civic, namely, Organized Religion or even Pacifism (he has the Shwedagon Paya, so he can pick any Religious Civic, even without knowing Philosophy).


Ummmm... so... where would we put The Taj Mahal? Sury is capable of researching Nationalism at any time and Qin could start on it after learning Philosophy.

I suggested at Horse City, and we seem to be pre-Choping the 3 or the 4 Forests that would be Chopped into it...

Thank you for doing the sensible thing, whoever did it, by building a Rathaus even in our capital.


Can we please Pillage the Road on Qin's Iron? That could be the difference of 4 Worker turns (2 to land on the square without being able to perform a Worker action by 2 Workers and 2 turns of Re-roading it). Yes, it is on a River, but AIs tend to be dumb and Road Resources before improving them.


After the Cease Fire, when we approach Beijing again, try to end up not being across of the River from the City. We do not need to stand on the Iron... we only need to have a 2-movement point within 1 turn of being able to reach that square while at war.


Peter may capture the Barb City of Ainu soon, since he has an Axeman by it. That's not a big deal, as the City will go down to Size 1 and will be in City Revolt for about 3 turns' time when he finally does capture it. However, it will make it harder for the Barbs to capture Cities that we steal from Peter and whip down to near-nothingness.


Are we going to try for The Globe Theatre in Horse City? This City's excess Food is starting to go to waste due to the Unhappy people there. We need 4 more Theatres, including 1 of them being in Horse City.


Should we be working GRiv squares in Rice City in favour of Coast squares? We have a lot of Happiness to spare there.


I'm still voting for EPPs being spent on Qin until we have earned twice the amount needed to steal Civil Service, then switching them to Peter. We don't even have Rice 2 settled, yet, let alone have its Forts built, so I don't see us not being able to get City Visibility on Peter within a reasonable timeframe.


I'm also still all for ignoring Sury for now and going down on Qin with those units, after a Cease Fire and waiting a turn before gifting redeclaring. We can even gift Dual Banana this turn if our Spy is ready to steal Civil Service.

Here is my opinion on the warring... things are going well, but we should seriously consider Cease Firing with Qin on the current turn.

My personal opinion is that unless you have 85% odds, you should expect your unit to lose. Losing at 70% odds is not unlucky; it should be expected.

The problem is that we're low on siege units, so we're attacking a bit too soon with our non-siege units... but... you can't then simply replace the siege units as the non-siege units end up having to sacrifice themselves.

To me, sending in 2 Cats against Longbowmen is not enough. I realise that we're under-funded since we shipped our Trebs to Churchill and not to Qin, but we CAN afford to be more patient in the Qin war and the ensuing Sury or Toku war.

We're not in a desperate rush to get City Capture Gold to the point that it means having to rebuild more units.

I do not necessarily disagree with the choice of attacking Shanghai now, given the upcoming Longbowman and the fact that we're already low on siege units... but, I do think that regrouping and bringing in the Trebs by Sury is going to be required to ensure that we have an efficient war, which is important, as we don't want to have to keep replacing troops at Qin's area if we can help it.

Mitchum said:

I think we spent 3 1/2 turns bombarding at Shanghai. What is considered intensive? 0%? We can try but I highly doubt our economy can handle it.

Click to expand...

After reviewing your posted battle results, it's not so much the lack of Bombarding but more the lack of suicidal siege units, which is causing us to suicide more non-siege units that is the problem.

One way to compensate IS to Bombard more, but we still need to plan to be able to throw more than 2 Cats at a City defended by Longbowmen.


By regrouping, we could probably have a small defensive stack in Shanghai (can we send the Chengdu Longbowman southward and maybe send a Horse Archer from Nanjing up to there if we're okay with the Cease Fire?).

Then, I'd aim to have most of our attacking units at Qin march on Beijing, with a mini-stack going to Guangzhou for the purpose of ensuring that we keep Bombarding there with, say, 2 Cats (the other Cats can go to Beijing), so that the City Defences in Guangzhou aren't rising over time.

Ignore Hangzhou for now and just plan to defend from its attacks in Shanghai.

I'm really thinking that our units are in a VERY poor position right now. We're not in any shape to take Beijing or Guangzhou without heavy losses and we're in danger of losing a lot of units at Shanghai. We don't really want to keep shipping in reinforcements.

A Cease Fire really looks like the right play and like I said, we could get lucky and see Qin switching his Civics. Even if he doesn't, it looks like the right strategic play. Until units arrive from Sury's area, we won't be capturing any more Cities, so let's secure a hold on the Cities that we have.

WE WILL NOT gain less City Capture Gold this way but instead can rebalance our units to EARN IT FASTER. That is my belief from looking at the situation.

Mitchum said:

Really? Those units have been parked in the city for a long time.

Click to expand...

Yes, really. There's a War Elephant of yours that is 1S of Shanghai that is just begging to die, even to a Horse Archer attack.

Shanghai is within range of Hangzhou's units via Engineering, and Shanghai was just captured, has 0 City Defences, and has wounded units in it. If we end the turn without a Cease Fire, we're almost guaranteed to lose some units that we shouldn't need to lose... a wounded unit can heal and fight another day. A dead unit cannot. Losing 3 units at Qin is actually going to be pretty significant at this point.

Mitchum said:

He could have done something similar when we took his other cities but those HAs stayed planted.

Click to expand...

The situation was probably different. We probably had much better defenders than a Horse Archer racing in, Chariots, and wounded units. Hangzhou is also an auxilliary City, so it doesn't need to keep a lot of defenders in it. It's a very real risk that we need not engage in.

If you still disagree, then please outline a plan for how you're going to more efficiently capture any more of Qin's Cities without rebalancing our units and healing others, since I don't see it happening with any of our partial stacks at Qin's Cities.

Mitchum said:

And would then killing the 2 HAs and the mace the following turn make up for it if it happend?

Click to expand...

Heck no. That's a 1-to-1 war of attrition. As LC said earlier, we want to be killing more like 5 units for every 1 of ours that dies. If we're in a 1-for-1 situation, that's exactly when we need to regroup our units.

Mitchum said:

In my opinion, there are two extremes in warefare. First is to go in with overwhelming odds (2:1), bombard to zero and then suicide seige until the highly-promoted city attackers have 90%+ odds and then take the city. The second is to go in as fast as possible. No bombarding. Get to the city, suicide a few units and attack.

Click to expand...

Fine, but we didn't really do either one at Shanghai. That's okay... but because we got unlucky in battle, we're now low on total unit counts at Qin and thus we need to regroup (teleport out and heal) and reorganize (send more siege units toward Beijing) our units. We're low on suicidal siege units. So, we have to make the best of the situation.

We have a Super Medic. His purpose is for us to Cease Fire, get our units teleported into healing range, reorganize units for one or maybe even 2 turns before redeclaring, which, if we pillage the Road on Qin's Iron will mean that Qin won't get his Iron reconnected, and will give us a chance to redistribute our army so that we have enough units to take on Beijing and can mostly leave Guangzhou to the units at Sury except for a small task force to keep the City Defences from climbing there with minimal Bombarding unit the units at Sury arrive.

Mitchum said:

But, our power is something like 4X Qin's.

Click to expand...

That's irrelevant as long as we have enough Gold to sustain our economy for 5+ turns, which we do.

Our Power is dropping relative to the Ducks, which is something that we should be more wary of.

Let's use our Super Medic for what he's good at and keep our units alive to be able to take out Qin without needing more reinforcements beyond what exists at Sury right now.

Note that the Knights at Sury could even march ahead of the stack. Qing does have 1 Pike, though, so if you do send a mini-Bombarding-party to Guangzhou like I am suggesting, bring along an Axeman to that party.

Mitchum said:

If we lose a few units, we build 10 more to take their place because we can.

Click to expand...

Or, keep more units, meaning less War Weariness, which we'll have to suffer for a while yet with Qin, and will mean being able to direct more units toward Peter. If we're not ready for Peter, it means being able to attack the northern part of Toku ahead of schedule. Either way is better than having to replace units at Qin just to be able to eliminate Qin.

Mitchum said:

Our economy cannot afford to bombard to 0% or until our odds are >90%. We'll finish off the podium if we take that approach as well.

Click to expand...

2 suicidal Cats are not enough, with or without partial bombardments.

That's why I'm suggesting that we regroup our units and attack Qin with sufficient numbers to be able to attack prior to having Bombarded to 0%, by being able to toss 6 Cats at Beijing in a turn, after doing a moderate amount of Bombarding.



By the way, I would raze Hangzhou, as the City won't pay for itself (no Food) unless when you capture it the City comes complete with a Forge + a Granary + a Rathaus.

From Shanghai, we need to march 3 turns to arrive at the gates of Beijing.

It's 2 turns to march from Nanjing to arrive at the gates of Guangzhou.

That's what we have to expect with non-primarily-2-movement-point stacks.

Note that if we march on Beijing after Cease Firing and regrouping via entering Qin's Cultural Borders at the G Riv NE + E of Shanghai (SW + SW of Nanjing), units from either City can reach Beijing within the 3 turns' time, meaning that we definitely can bring in some of the Cats currently at Guangzhou to help out at Beijing.

We have 9 Cats total, so I'd probably do 7 for Beijing and 2 for Guangzhou. Expect to lose all of them plus the 2 Trebs, without losing other units. That's about how our warring should go. If some siege units retreat, yay, we'll be in luck and will have an easier time of razing Hangzhou.