SGOTM 05 - Geezers

Very nice progress AgedOne.

AgedOne said:

Attacked and took Kagoshima - though it didn't all go to plan.

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I wondered about this. However looking at the session log, and our losses, explained the comment.

As an aside it's amusing to see a barb maceman.

Thoughts for the next turnset:

• The courthouse at Yokohama can be for 3 pop although the FP has made a big difference to the maintenance cost.
• We have a medic 2 axe hanging around on the hill by Corinth. We really should have him with the attack forces.
• Is it worth switching to Vassalage instead of Bureaucracy for the extra XPs? Probably not but I thought I would mention it.
• Dropping off units on the road on silver island tends to speed up their tranfer across the island.
• Ning-hsia should work the hill forest instead of the bananas to stop it growing unhappy. Also speeds up production.
• Beshbalik can work a cottage for 2 instead of the forest. Every little helps and we still get a .

Sam_Yeager said:

I wondered about this. However looking at the session log, and our losses, explained the comment.

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Ah. I see I was assuming you were all mind readers (again).

After reducing the city defences to 0, we had one more cat that hadn't attacked, mace, axe, spear and 2 keshiks in the attack party.
Used the cat to cause some collateral damage, losing it as expected.
The damage was caused to the spearman rather than the longbow.
Mace attacked LB at 30%, losing as expected.
Axeman made short work of the wounded LB at 95%.

Then came the disappointment as both our spearman (at 50%) and a keshik(at 52%) lost attacking the wounded spearman.

That left us with only a keshik to take and hold the city - which it did.

Looking back, it was only losing both the 50% chances rather than winning one out of two that didn't go to plan. So that wasn't too bad.

AgedOne said:

After reducing the city defences to 0, we had one more cat that hadn't attacked, mace, axe, spear and 2 keshiks in the attack party.
Used the cat to cause some collateral damage, losing it as expected.

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Having been caught out many times in the past I must admit I often wait another turn so that I can use multiple cats to weaken the defence. It can be expensive in cats, although sometimes they retreat instead, but does mean my main attack units are more likely to survive and get more XPs.

Sam_Yeager said:

Having been caught out many times in the past I must admit I often wait another turn so that I can use multiple cats to weaken the defence. It can be expensive in cats, although sometimes they retreat instead, but does mean my main attack units are more likely to survive and get more XPs.

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That's interesting that you should mention that. I think that I would, too, more often than not.

What I need to think about is why I am playing differently in these turnsets from how I would play in a SP game.

I'm playing much more slowly than normal. My 10 turns took almost 2 hours today, including note-taking. That's just incredible. However, you'd think that would make me more cautious, and think about decisions more. On this occasion it didn't. I don't really know why. Psychiatrist, please

AgedOne said:

My 10 turns took almost 2 hours today, including note-taking. That's just incredible.

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That turn time sounds roughly about the time it took me for my last turnset. I do tend to pause the game every now and then whilst I have a think about what to do next. By the time I crop some pictures, upload them and writeup the turnset it probably ends up as getting on for 3 -4 hours overall.

OTOH this is one of the reasons why SGs tend to have ten turn turnsets.

Roster

Sam
drhirsch (automatically skipped until he reports back)
Harbourboy (away from 11th Sep - 4th Oct)
AgedOne - just played
markh - Up
The-Hawk - on deck
Pariah

Great turnset... we continue to chip away.

Sam_Yeager said:

Is it worth switching to Vassalage instead of Bureaucracy for the extra XPs? Probably not but I thought I would mention it.

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I had thought about this several turnsets ago since Vassalage also provides some free units (a gold pickup). I almost always switch to Vassalage on Domination attemtps. However, I concluded at the time that the impact on our commerce would be too great. Our capital is cranking out commerce. I have not looked at the save, but I assume the impact on our economy is still too high.

How are we doing guys? Have we won yet?

Harbourboy said:

How are we doing guys? Have we won yet?

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Making progress but we'll need your expertise before we can win.

Nice to see our first knight.

I got it. Will have a look later on.

I had a quick look. The courthouse in Yokohama will be whipped and I will play tomorrow morning.

Looks good. Whip the courthouse in Yokohama.

Move our fortified medic axe towards the frontline

IBT : we learn drama and move up to second place in score again
set research to engineering. I guess we want some pikes to counter knights and +1 movement is also welcome

Corinth : knight -> settler
Yokohama : courthouse -> barracks

1) 1583AD : just moving units

IBT : a barb mace moves towards Phoenician and reveals there are two phants and a spear defending the city

2) 1586AD : more troops movement

IBT : we learn engineering -> gunpowder

Old Sarai : Maceman -> catapult

3) 1589AD : well, the same as the last turns

IBT : Toku wants engineering for peace. I don't think so, buddy.

4) 1592AD : move a stack out of Kagoshima towards Osaka

IBT : Kagoshima comes out of revolt : courthouse

5) 1595AD : not much to do apart from shipping units

IBT : An Indian knight appears NE of Corinth

6) 1598AD : rush a pike in Corinth
rush a mace in Athens as it grew unhappy

our stack moves beside Osaka. There are 3 cats, a longbow, a war elephant, a spear and a crossbow

IBT : Toku attacks our stack with a cat which retreats against our knight

Karakorum : knight -> settler
Athens : mace -> knight

7) 1601AD : start bombarding Osaka

IBT : Toku moves a war elephant, 2 crossbows and a catapult to Kagoshima

Asoka's knight moves towards Corinth

A galley at Athens sinks a Persian caravel

Athens : knight -> catapult

8) 1604AD : roading towards Kagoshima is complete and we have spices connected to our network

Catapult attacks the stack and retreats

Pike dies attacking the Indian knight (at 79,5%)
A sword finishes the job

IBT : Toku attacks Kagoshima
His catapult loses to a mace
His war elephant kills a mace
His first crossbow loses to a Keshik
His second crossbow kills the Keshik

An Indian galleon appears South of Ning Hsia, it carries two longbows and a settler

9) 1607AD : Osaka's defences are down to 0. Will attack next turn

Two maces kill the Japanese war elephant and crossbow at Kagoshima

IBT : another Japanese war elephant and catapult appear NE of Kagoshima

Beshbalik : catapult -> catapult

10) 1610AD : three cats do not even scratch the longbow
send in a mace at 22% and it brings it down to 2,8
I HAAAATE this game : an axe at 96% loses to the longbow
mace kills the war elephant in Osaka
sword kills the spear in Osaka
catapult kills the longbow
keshik kills the first catapult in Osaka
keshik kills the second catapult and the city is ours for 151 gold and it has a forge, marketplace and lighthouse

knight kills another Japanese longbow that was just outside of the city to reinforce it

A settler will finish in Corinth next turn. I would settle South of Corinth at the wine or East of it towards Phoenician, although I think this might attract Cyrus to pay more attention to us.

Diplomatic Situation :

Cyrus would make peace giving him Kagoshima
Toku would make peace giving us 300 gold
Asoka and Qin won't make peace at all

markh said:

Cyrus would make peace giving him Kagoshima

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Cyrus really knows how to make peace difficult doesn't he? Cutting our supply line to Osaka and beyond in half. The other question is why does he want it? As a base to attack Toku or ourselves subsequently?

markh said:

Toku would make peace giving us 300 gold

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I must admit I'm quite tempted by this. We are a bit light on defence on lush island which will only get worse if we found another city. Only Qin likes Toku so most of the AI won't mind when we DoW again.

markh said:

An Indian galleon appears South of Ning Hsia, it carries two longbows and a settler

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On that point I notice that Cyrus and Qin also have Astronomy. I wonder if we can expect a naval landing in the not too distant future. I suppose this might be a reason not to make peace with Toku as it will upset Qin when we redeclare. I'm really in two minds about this. We may well need to beef up the garrisons on the home island.

I was wondering why Toku's culture had gone up so much despite losing cities. It seems he captured Izzy's holy city and shrine in his last war.

EDIT: I've just noticed that Phoenician seems pretty weakly defended. I didn't really want to take the northern cities until we had cleaned up the southern ones and also had a decent force to discourage Cyrus from attacking immediately but it is very tempting.... OTOH perhaps Cyrus might get the wrong ideas.

EDIT 2: Whoops. Forgot to to congratulate mark on his turnset.

Congrats markh! We continue to make progress.
(And that despite the cursed RNG! 96% loss! That's why I have a bottle of Bushmills 10 year old handy when I'm playing)

Phoenician is a really tempting target, but I would just consider to take it if we intend to make peace with Toku. If we take it we will have direct borders with Cyrus and this will encourage him to send some units over. We do not have the strength to fight both, so our strategy could be to take Phoenician as a base towards Cyrus. Once we have Phoenician we have to make peace with Toku and concentrate on Cyrus. IIRC Toku has just 4 cities left. If we take Phoenician he will just have 3 and he will be more or less out of the game. The next Southern city of Toku would be Kyoto which is his capital. Obviously he will have a good garrison there and we will need some time to get an army formed to attack him there, so the plan to take Phoenician and then make peace with him looks quite apealing the more I think of it. We do not need to redeclare on Toku for a long time then. With just three cities I do not think he will be much of a threat and he will not redeclare from his side if we get stronger.

@AgedOne : this might be the reason why the RNG is always that bad to me. Maybe beer is not good enough. Next time I will try with a good old Talisker.

Roster

Sam
drhirsch (automatically skipped until he reports back)
Harbourboy (away from 11th Sep - 4th Oct)
AgedOne
markh - just played
The-Hawk - UP
Pariah - on deck

markh said:

IIRC Toku has just 4 cities left. If we take Phoenician he will just have 3 and he will be more or less out of the game.

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I don't have the game open atm but does this include that holy city of Izzy's that he took?

I don't think that we can do anything soon about Cyrus. Seems to me that this game is going to be like SGOTM02 where we had to tech to infantry and flight before we could finish. However taking Phoenician will make a big dent in Toku's income although with a 1000 in the kitty he's not short of a few bob.

The big question is whether Cyrus and/or Asoka will start having a go at us if we take Phoenician. We don't want to follow in Murky Waters footsteps. Btw it looks as though they've retired since their last save seems to have vanished from the progress board.

Outstanding, I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Mark, I think you are on to something here. If we keep after Togu, we will have too long of a border to defend. I'm thinking on your lines:

1. Grab Phoenician (keep it), make peace with Togu. Once we have peace with Togu, we have a relatively small front to cover. After all, Togu is Togu. He has closed borders with all the others, so we are protected to the east. All of our pressure will come from the NE via a narrow corridor. Our other lush island cities should be relatively safe, at least until Togu rebuilds and comes looking for some payback.
2. Grab Tyre (keep it)
3. Hunker down in Tyre. I would expect Cyrus will counter attack at Tyre vs. Phoenician. We are going to get hammered, but we might as well face that music sooner than later. If we get a good stack in there to defend, he may burn through a bunch of units and even out our power deficit. Then we go after his next city.

One concern with this plan: Osaka is going to get some serious culture pressure from Kyoto. However, I think this is a risk we need to take... trying for Kyoto may be even a bigger risk.

Sam, I also agree on the need to build a defense force on the home island. We really are at risk of an invasion. I would recommend we build a force of about 4-5 knights and let them hang around near Karakorum. Their mobility should allow us to move to respond to an invasion. I would not waste time on defensive units, if we are invaded we want to hit them before they pillage.

Some other items for discussion:

• I would recommend we do some unit upgrading. I notice we have some level 5 Keshik and Axes. I think these would make fine L5 Knights and Maces. If we get some gold from Togu and turn off research for a few turns, we should be able to promote 3-4 units. Anyone opposed to this?
• I would settle the Corinth settler 1 East of the wine on the plains hill. Extra prod from the hill, lets us share a cottage with Corinth, gives us the gold from the wine. Anyone else have any other candidate sites?
• I see a settler being produced in Karakorum. I don't recall the discussion on this one, where should I be settling him when he finishes?

Oh, this is my "got it". I'll probably wait a couple of days to play since we are at a strategy junction. I'll plan on playing Friday night.

Yes, it was exactly my thinking that we will not be able to defend such a long border with Cyrus, so taking Phoenician as a last step in the war with Toku looks like a good step forward. Now that he is willing to make peace and giving us gold for it we should take it. If we take Phoenician we should get even more gold from him or a tech maybe.

I already thought of upgrading the highly promoted Keshik in Osaka now, but I forgot to mention this in my report. We just took the city, so I do not know whether Toku strikes back, but I doubt that he has many units left to counter us. I like upgrading highly promoted units, so you have my vote to save some cash and upgrade the units.

In a SP game I would provoke Cyrus soonest. He is the no 1 at the moment. If we get him under control I think we will not have much more trouble on lush island. To go for him we will need a decent number of cats and pikes to get his initial stack down. Hunkering down in Tyre would be my strategy, too. Waiting there to crush his initial stack and then go for him.

On our home island there are several knights in production, so if we get a landing they can be rushed, but I agree that we should keep 4-5 on our home land. Qin is too quiet.

The settler in Karakorum is either to be meant to settle another city on our home island or to ship it over to lush island. There is still a gap between Corinth and Phoenician which is to be settled. I think we want Corinth to produce military from this point on. We will then need two more settlers to fill our home island for the domination limit. I would do this rather sooner than later as we also have to get the pop up in these cities and there is not too much food around in that part of our island.

Regarding the settler in Corinth I was not 100% sure where to settle at the wine. There is also fish around there. I thought of either on the plains W or on the hills E of the wine. Both is fine with me. Even on the Wine might be an alternative. Then the wine is automatically connected, isn't it ? I do not remember.

Take your time for playing. I think we are at a very crucial point in this game now. If we get Cyrus down I think we have the game in the bag.

Definitely, we should settle the unused west of our Home Island - or, before long, somebody will establish a bridgehead there. And let's settle between the wine & fish - perhaps we can exploit both with the same city?

I like the idea of taking Phoencian and then making peace with Toku. The priority after capture would be to rush walls and a castle, so we will not be staking all on our expensively-upgraded, most experienced units. I'd hate to lose that L5 knight defending against a stack of Cyrus' pikemen...

I seem to have started something.

I'm fine with taking Phoenician. A bit of a risk with Cyrus on our borders but manageable. However I'm rather disturbed about this idea of taking Tyre. I get the impression that this might be fairly soon which is a big as far as I'm concerned. I know we've been getting away with not too many forces against Toku but Cyrus is another matter altogether.

I would really, really like to see us with one or two decent balanced SoDs before we provoke Cyrus. Knights and keshiks are good for attack but not nearly as good for defence. Cyrus already has guilds so we need pikes. We don't have that many cats either.

We're going to have to leave some respectable forces to deter Toku and beef up the defences of the home island. All of this doesn't leave too much for Cyrus as we currently stand. Bear in mind that Asoka is quite likely to join in as well.

EDIT: I hope I didn't get the wrong end of the stick about the timescale for taking Tyre. Btw I notice that the tech screen doesn't give me any clue at all what Cyrus might research. Does that mean he's even more advanced than we might think?