ALC Game #22 Take 2: Arabs/Saladin

A. Let the record show I called for war often and loudly. Not a full out war but rather a surgical strike to removeboth his both access to ivory and iron. Luckily those are your first targets as well. Seattle and Philidelphia are the keys to success vs Rosy. Without them he is limited to trebs/maces/spears and HA's until the gunpowder era. By that point he should be someone's vassal.
B. You made the classic error that so many players make when playing a Protective leader. You tired to configure your planning to leverage a trait that doesn't benefit by leveraging. Protective doesn't mean you should beeline Fuedalism if you are planning an offensive. it means you don't need to. Protective archers behind cheap walls and castles do just fine. Just try and picture the Frenchmen in Monty Python's Holy Grail thumbing their noses at the "silly English Kaniggits"
C. All that is meaningless at this point. But let's use what we have to our advantage. get into slavery w/HedRule and start whipping. I would switch production in Bagdad to a pikeman and whip after one turn soit drops to a 2popwhip. The majority of his attacking units appear to be mounted units. I am thinking shishkabobs for lunch.
D. Switch Gaul from a forge to military units and whip every other turn until you run out of people to whip.
E. Whip and build at least one pike and 2 LB's in all border cities then start on offensive troops. 2 protective LBs behind walls are a safe garrison. If the city is threatened whip a couple more while they drop the walls. NOW this is protective at it's best. When less is more.
F.Take seattle and philidelphia then sue for a cease fire i wouldn't go for peace treaty because he doesn't have crap to give you. And if sury jumps on him afterwards you aren't forced to wait 10 turns to dogpile him.
G. Let the pops regrow a little while you build more offensive troops. Then when they are up there...whip some more.
H. Go scoop up what american lands you want.

Don't wait for Roosevelt to exhaust his stack. Take advantage of your Protective trait. You've already teched Feudalism for it, you might as well make the most of it. You'll be able to assign a smaller defensive stack to take out his offensive stack. As soon as his SoD is firmly bogged within your cultural borders, invade his lands with your own SoD from a different direction.

In terms of offence, all protective does is give xbows and lbows Drill 1, and Drill 1 is really pretty poor. Leveraging protective is a hard thing to do, simply because to do so really means to turtle behind walls with archer or gunpowder units....

If there's anything at all which could be leveraged with this trait, I'd say it is building cheaper Castles. As you've got Engineering, build them earlier for the extra trade route and the bonus to espionage.

I don't think you should care about Sury building his UU- it's not giving iron to Rome, it's giving Ivory so some martian can build his pretty much useless (Pikes!) UU. Its special ability is a special mounted unit seeking missile tusk or something. But it looks cool.

And that cheeky Zara, sneaking Debre Berhan and Adulis up there. Also, who wants to bet that grass hill in Zara's capital will never be improved?

CivCorpse said:

Just try and picture the Frenchmen in Monty Python's Holy Grail thumbing their noses at the "silly English Kaniggits"

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Someone check my history, but I do believe Roosevelt's mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries.

I'm a dope about most of this stuff, but I think everything about your plan except the vassalizing Zara sounds like it should be fun effective. I doubt he'll be much tech help after you relieve him of his best cities, not to mention the all the homeland-yearning in that great capital for the rest of the game.

I really think Sis is in quite a good position here. Although leveraging protective is never a super powerful option in this case it will work just fine. You will be able to hold off Roosevelt quite easily while building up a good stack to capture Philadelphia and Seattle. While many have argued Camel archers were unecessary to research, they will prove to be quite helpful, supplementing your passive, protective improved defense with a good active defense.

Frankly I don't see what everyone is so worried about here, Roosevelt has just doomed himself. Sis has a pretty good economy that should churn out some quality units under vassalage. He should be able to wipe the floor with the Americans in a reasonably short time then move on to finish off Zara with what will then be a nice veteran stack.

Hehe Americans trying to capture Baghdad...

Lord Chambers said:

Bulbing Machinery is almost pointless when you then go on to research Civil Service but not build Macemen, then Feudalism, only lastly bothering with Engineering.

Engineering is the key tech if you actually want to wage war, but I guess if you want to get invaded Feudalism is handy. Delaying Engineering means you will face Macemen, possibly Knights, and more archers than you would have if you had struck quickly and actually tried to capitalize on bulbing Machinery.

It might seem like researching random military techs is "preparing for war," but it's not. Building siege weapons + city raiding units = preparing for war. Your war will always be more effective executed 20 turns earlier than lollygagging for 20 turns so you can build Longbows which shouldn't get into combat and Camel Archers which are unnecessary. I know both units are nice to have, but it's better to find yourself in a bind with just a regular archer defending a city than to find your whole invasion is grinding to a halt because your stack is getting attacked by Crossbows, Knights, and Macemen, and catapults. Only in this latter situation will you really need good troops to garrison because you can't keep enough offense going to limit the enemy to his cities.

When you can invade, do so. If you can't, your whole strategy should be oriented towards getting to the point which you can, as soon as possible.

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You have a point regarding general war principles, but there are special circumstances here.

As Sisiutil noted, there are no religions available to us now, and in the foreseeable future. This means that we can't leverage any of the religious civics that require a state religion, including Theocracy.

Therefore, in order to improve our Barracks-only troops from 3 XP to 5 XP, we will need Vassalage, which requires Feudalism.

So where's the waste here? You can argue that spending beakers on two techs to get both Longbowmen and Crossbowmen is a waste...which it is, in a sense. If we knew beforehand that we would get Feudalism before going to war, then the argument for bulbing Machinery would be much weaker, as you claim.

But who knew that we would be going for Feudalism??? Presumably there was an alternative, which would be to patiently wait for a religion to spread to our continent, and then adopt Theocracy for the +2 XP bonus. Of course, this would be contingent on that very event happening before we mobilize for war. But, arguably, it was a possibility that was worth hoping for.

It's only because of the urgency of impending war that we researched Feudalism. And unfortunately, the knowledge of that urgency came to us after we had already bulbed Machinery.

First, a couple of significant developments in the last round that didn't get mentioned:
820 AD: Confuscianism (the last religion) was founded. On the other continent, like all the rest.
715 AD: The Egyptian civilization was destroyed. Not sure whether this is good or bad. If the two remaining civs on the other continent are not Friendly then there will be no tech trading between them and they may well go to war with each other. But if they are Friendly (possibly do to MMS from teaming up against Egypt) they'll have more land now that Egypt is gone. And there's also the possibility that the stronger of the two will finish the other off, leaving them with their continent all to themself.


Overall the Arabian empire is looking a lot better after that round. But I'm still seeing a lot of development issues:

• No courthouses. Not a big issue now, but you're going to need them before you start adding more cities.
• Most cities have unimproved tiles (mostly unmined hills), while a couple have more improved tiles than pop.
• 7 scientists total isn't much of an SE.
• In that regard, it's 920AD and you've only produced 2 GPs with the third still 29 turns away. It doesn't look like you'll be bulbing your way to Liberalism.
• Gaul and Estruscan are working 3 scientists each, but have no madrassas.
• You now have literature and have had a level 4 unit for ages, but HE hasn't been started.
• Estruscan should probably be the HE city, which means it shouldn't be working scientists.
• Gaul shouldn't be building a forge. It doesn't need the multiplier, and is likely to be a problem in that city before .
• I thought one of the advantages of an SE is that all the farms allows you to whip what you need since the pop can be regrown quickly. It doesn't look like you've made much use of the whip in the last round.
• You don't need stables in every city. Your HE city plus 1 or 2 others is sufficient. Your other production cities can build the rest of your military (i.e. siege, city attackers, stack defenders).

Even with all those issues I don't have any doubt you'll be successful in your war with Rosy. I do think you should be looking to whip a couple more war elephants/pikes. The American stack south of Baghdad is going to do some pillage damage before you can get any defense to that area. Unless you want all your improvements torn up you'll need some anti-mounted units ASAP.

If you do get a chance to take Rosy out completely you're going to want to give some thought about what to do with the American cities. There seems to be issues with all of them except for Washington. NY, Atlanta and Boston all have serious problems with foreign culture. There will already be a significant amount of foreign culture in those cities by the time they're captured which will likely make them hard to keep. And even if you can keep them from flipping a large percentage of their tiles will be lost.

One option is to take Seattle, Philly and Washington and then accept Rosy's capitulation. This would let the American culture built up in the other three cities fight off the foreign culture. But taking Rosy as a vassal has some drawbacks, most significantly it increases the likelihood of Sury DOWing you when you start your war with Zara.

The other option is to raze most of the American cities and then refound in tiles that are little farther away from the neighbors. The problem with this is that Philly really should be razed, but that means losing S. Paya. I'm not sure how much of a loss it is though. The only benefit it provides with no religions available is the +10% science, which combines additively with other science multipliers, so the actual increase is less than 10%. And how many turns will it be before you get access to FR via Liberalism?

If you are willing to raze Philly this could be an option for founding new cities:


Of course you might not have the option to decide how to deal with Rosy all by yourself. Zara and/or Sury seem likely to join in once Rosy suffers some losses. This means that Rosy is likely to seek capitulation pretty early. Are you going to accept his capitulation or take a chance of Rosy capitulating to one of the AIs? How much of America do you want to try to get before the capitulation? You may need to do the trick you tried in one of the previous ALC games (Mansa IIRC) where you position armies near multiple cities and then take them all on the same turn, then accept capitulation.

It's also possible you might want to think about bribing Sury to make peace with Rosy if he does DOW to avoid the possible capitulation to AI. Unfortunately I doubt you'll have anything to bribe Zara with if he DOWs Rosy.


Some minor points I noticed from the save:

• Baghdad is working a farmed plains (2f1h1c) instead of the grassland ivory (2f2h2c).
• The axe defending the worker along the border near Medina is vulnerable to an American chariot attack. You might want to reinforce with the HA from Medina.
• Why is the worker near Medina farming the plains tile instead of one of the 2 unimproved grassland?
• If you're planning to use the worker near Gaul to chop the grassland forest you might want to reconsider. If you do build a forge in Gaul the 1 from that tile would avoid the round down loss, so effectively it becomes a 2f2h tile.

Wow, you're really making your name justice, Validator...

Well, let it be known that you had everything you needed for war #1 about 1000 years ago (elephants and catapults and protective archers)

Now you have Trebuchets, Elephant/Pike, Protective Crossbows* and Feudalism (Way More than enough)

* add Cover and they replace Maces for city taking... and can defend the cities they take.

I'd go full fleged war machine, Feudalism, Slavery, and possibly Police State (for the buildup)

Ignore science in favor of Production wherever you can

Take all of America, then Build Couthouses and Immeditely regear for taking on Zara with the UU to protect if he gets Gunpowder... although you have waited too late

At THAT point once you have conquered all but one power on the continent THEN make sure you have Literature for National Epic, possibly Philosophy for A.W. (although that should be done by then) and If you think you can make it a mad dash for Divine Right (you can try pumping some prophets to help)

I'm not to worried about Roosevelt. Build/whip up an army quickly - don't get me wrong, he might be a threat, but if you strategically whip castles & lbows for the first few turns, then grab a pike/mace/treb army you'll be golden. Plus 1-3 x-bows. Whipping/building the castles will be the strength of protective here. I know I was all gung-ho for attacking Zara earlier, and I'm still for taking Roosevelt, but I'm not as concerned as I used to be. You've got boatloads of settled land, you're keeping up in tech (likely to improve once you expand). The only thing I'd be worried about at this point is the other continent, which seems a bit more worrysome. The faster you finish off Roosevelt & Zara, the better. Ideally that'll roughly coincide with grabbing Optics/Astro and seeing the new continent, so you're not the only person Suvy knows. He'll make a decent trading partner.

enough talk of leveraging protective: attack is the best form of defense.

tycoonist said:

enough talk of leveraging protective: attack is the best form of defense.

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I agree, but at this point I don't have a lot of offensive units. I'll be relying to a great extent on Protective to see me through to the point where I can, indeed, go on the attack. And in fact, my lack of offensive military units reflects the recommendations of the group mind here, that I could rely on Protective's advantages (enhanced archery units, cheap walls and castles) to see me through in the event of a sudden DoW such as what I've just experienced.

Artichoker said:

It's only because of the urgency of impending war that we researched Feudalism. And unfortunately, the knowledge of that urgency came to us after we had already bulbed Machinery.

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Are you joking? 224 & 237. I'm not even going to make the arguement here that Feudalism is not the way you fend off an attack.

Artichoker said:

But who knew that we would be going for Feudalism???

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No one suggesting to bulb Machinery?

Artichoker said:

In order to improve our Barracks-only troops from 3 XP to 5 XP, we will need Vassalage, which requires Feudalism.

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Effective wars have been fought without two extra XP.
When you attack Archers with Catapults you really only risk your first two. All the others basically get a free experience point, and then none of your actual attackers fight below 95% odds. When you're using a steamroller on your opponents because you properly prioritized catapults and trebuchets, 2 XP is like dust in the mother. .. .. .. .inging wind. In other words, deviating or delaying for Theocracy or Vassalage is almost always going to be less effective for beating your opponent than attacking earlier with less experienced Catapults.

These aren't special circumstances. This is Sisutil leading by democracy which has shortcomings. For a study on the shortcomings of democracy at war, I refer you to this book which I found facinating: A Democracy at War by William L. O'neill

Lord Chambers said:

This is Sisutil leading by democracy which has shortcomings.

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I should have known that anyone calling himself a "Lord" would prefer Hereditary Rule...

Here's a chance to show off Spiritual again.

Whipping phase: Police State + Vassalage + Slavery

Recovery phase: Representation + Bureaucracy + Caste System

(Possible wild worker phase with captured cities -- swap into Serfdom)

Rinse and repeat as necessary.

Start going for war. You have a nice tech advantage over the AI's around you, and the only thing you lack is military.

Okay, I played the round tonight, I'll post it later tomorrow.

A funny thing happened on the way to America...