In my test games, GK DoW'd me earliest (T73) when I built 2 stables and cause of that had the least units of all attempts. I dunno if 2 stables are better than 1.
Anyhow, to the real game:
SpoilerImages :
SpoilerLog :
Here is your Session Turn Log from 2000 BC to 1960 BC:
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Washington has grown to size 3.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Washington can hurry Archer for 1⇴ with 13ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 10 turns.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Boston can hurry Chariot for 1⇴ with 8ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 10 turns.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Philadelphia has grown to size 2.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: You are the worst enemy of Genghis Khan.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Boston will grow to size 3 on the next turn.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: You are the worst enemy of Genghis Khan, Dr Evil.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Goldmember is the worst enemy of Gandhi, Joao II, Mansa Musa.
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Mansa Musa will trade Mysticism
Turn 50, 2000 BC: Boston will grow to size 3 on the next turn.
Turn 51, 1960 BC: Boston has grown to size 3.
Turn 51, 1960 BC: The borders of Washington are about to expand.
Dubioza: Yep, I don't know about making 2 stables either. One may be enough as well.
The dry wheat looks moderately good but it's too far away from the iron, how Evil However, it will be great for a 7th city. Nice
EDIT: I think that means we can settle Chicago as planned. Do we want to plan in an extra settler during the HA rush or is it not worth it for the dry wheat?
Hmm...there might be time for another settler, especially if there's more resources in tiles next to wheat. Warrior should scout this next, while Fembot (3rd pic in post #1521) I think should go 2S1E (roaded PH) and then east to find river connection between us and Joao, right?
Spoiler:
Worker is more urgent, I'd say - we have to try to include it in micro in near future.
It may not be necessary to make another test save again, but ftw, here it is:
Wheat is great news! With riverside Plains hills in first ring, too.
@GK dowing: I read you
@more workers: we can "easily" get 2 more from Boston and New-York before T60. HBR is researched T64 +/- 2 turns.
@settler for city 7: not sure where we get that one but we can surely get it, yes.
@fembot: yes, on the road seems right.
@micro: I have taken no notes past T60... do you want me to share what I have? To T60, there is some tile juggling but most of the stuff is "emphasize food" category. Some room for build orders.
I'm reaaally tired tonight so I couldn't point out very well what the unrefined things or what the alternatives are. Tomorrow, I should be in shape, however.
Yeah I dunno. I think most of us agree to go HbR. We (or I) should just replay it few times to see if we missed something, at least until Atl & Chi are settled. We should wait for Doshin to change his mind as well. I like 10 fast cities in your runs Doshin, but...no units and GK mad on us don't mix! If he does DoW us early, we're screwed even before we'll build first cat! What's the alternative? Build bunch of defensive spears? I don't like that.
BiC, I think I got your micro right and incorporate it in my latest runs. If there'll be any unknowns, we'll call you.
We could try a PPP to T60, then. Maybe that's manageable in an acceptable amount of time?
Or to HBR? Maybe that's more reasonable (there will be some slider nuances).
If you provide a first draft, it'll be easier for us to comment on it
Otherwise, tomorrow I can provide a draft.
EDIT: correction: we'll need to talk "city sites" before then. And slider, yes.
It's late here and tomorrow will be long day for me as well. Same time, same place, tomorrow? In most of my tests I upped slider next turn (T52) and finished HbR in T61 IIRC. Is leaving it @0% few more turns better? I guess we should still look at options for a day or two.
Leaving the slider down until at least the first two libraries are finished will save us some commerce in the long run but will result in a later HBR, so yes, that needs a bit of testing. And I agree with trying for a T60 micro now.
As for city sites: we still want to settle the iron, don't we? So settling Chicago as planned is OK, right?
Hmmm. The Wheat city is going to be a drag for a while, unless there are hidden commerce resources to the west. It'll get good with Civil Service I suppose.
I played a Currency ---> Construction run. We'll be able to finish Genghis off before T100:
Spoiler:
I added Sailing on T79. No tech trades, no gold trades (Mansa seems to have a lot). I added Mysticism when I tried to negotiate.
My micro got worse and worse as the game proceeded. Monarchy would make things much easier too. Proper team play and trading could end the war much sooner.
EDIT: although GK was at war with Mansa when I attacked, so I might have had it easy.
Anyway, I'd like to see a HArcher run to a similar point, T100 maybe, so as to give us an idea about the state of our economy (are we running a deficit?), the units that are needed, the hammers that are lost, the hammers that are gained, the state of Genghis, and so on. It only has to be approximate.
I don't think that is too much to ask, since I am not exactly going against common orthodoxy, e.g.:
i guess with elewhachas best you can do is somewhat around 500 AD having conquered everything. but it tanks you economy a lot less then a ha rush due to the later start and therefore the better economical setup of your own empire (i ended up with around 20 cities at around 700 ad without gong broke)
War, war and war. It is important to keep warring and losing the momentum was a mistake of me. Perhaps, I'll play since I got the GEngineer to see how many turns I have lost for delaying my third wave of solders between my elepult and cannon war (which was near my infantry wars).
Mounted are not only about unit speed, but also getting there fast.
HAs are usually break out units, you always want to break out of bad positions quick.
Again, the answer to "when to start" is dependent. One of the typical situation is that you have enough room to expand peacefully, then what you want is to settle all the good sites before going for war, in immortal and below, you could choose to war with cats/trebs/cannons. Both of my 2 SSV BOTMs started the 1st war with cannons. The answer to "when to stop" is NEVER before you reach the domination limit, the reason is simple, you have to pay for the existing military units, so why let them rest. The key to nonstopping war is only letting the front cities dedicate to military production and most of other cities focus on infrastructures (including core commercial cities, new conquered cities).
Apologies in advance to all these players if I misquote or misrepresent your views.
I am happy to proceed with a HArcher rush if testing shows that we won't experience high losses against metal units, or crash our economy, or run into severe happiness problems, even if I personally disagree with that choice. But I have zero interest in continuing to test or play if we proceed without getting a feel for the way the war is likely to progress or conclude.
I hope that doesn't sound petulant (or even like a threat ).
----
@Dubioza
I think you've been unlucky. Genghis has never attacked me in testing.
But he did attack MM, right? In real game we're closer so...I don't know how to edit in peace treaty to get even more real, but test save v18 and up seems realistic about that. It would be even more if we re-positioned MM further west. Can we determine likelihood of GK DoWing us? For T75=x% T80=x% T85=x% ...and our readiness to respond?
GK did attack Mansa in all my tries so far, so Dubioza has a fair point which I think is also one of the reasons why we considered HA rushing in the first place. Nevertheless, Doshin, your proposal sounds intriguing, yes please post a save
Hmmm. The Wheat city is going to be a drag for a while, unless there are hidden commerce resources to the west. It'll get good with Civil Service I suppose.
I played a Currency ---> Construction run. We'll be able to finish Genghis off before T100:
Spoiler:
I added Sailing on T79. No tech trades, no gold trades (Mansa seems to have a lot). I added Mysticism when I tried to negotiate.
My micro got worse and worse as the game proceeded. Monarchy would make things much easier too. Proper team play and trading could end the war much sooner.
EDIT: although GK was at war with Mansa when I attacked, so I might have had it easy.
Anyway, I'd like to see a HArcher run to a similar point, T100 maybe, so as to give us an idea about the state of our economy (are we running a deficit?), the units that are needed, the hammers that are lost, the hammers that are gained, the state of Genghis, and so on. It only has to be approximate.
I don't think that is too much to ask, since I am not exactly going against common orthodoxy, e.g.:
Spoiler:
Apologies in advance to all these players if I misquote or misrepresent your views.
I am happy to proceed with a HArcher rush if testing shows that we won't experience high losses against metal units, or crash our economy, or run into severe happiness problems, even if I personally disagree with that choice. But I have zero interest in continuing to test or play if we proceed without getting a feel for the way the war is likely to progress or conclude.
I hope that doesn't sound petulant (or even like a threat ).
a) good testing. Although, when you say: "We'll be able to finish Genghis off before T100" what you really mean is: "We could extort HBR before T100."
No way we capture 3 more cities in the same timeframe, even with better management.
Also, you provide like 0 details. DoW date?
b) Agreed about the Wheat: it's really far away and makes a poor 6th (also: joint defence of Atlanta & Chicago would be hard).
But... a drag on our economy? Double standards, much? How about settling 4 foodless cities?
c) @quotes. I don't think we need to summon the advice of players outside the team (shakabrade proposed to read some of WaistinTime's HoF playthrough, too). However:
Fippy clearly supports HAs for speed.
Tachywaxon doesn't make any clear point except that war can sustain an economy by itself... and that is quite contradictory with...
... Duckweed's point, which is that peaceful expansion is less costly than military expansion. Hammer cost + unit upkeep makes peaceful expansion more profitable. Yeah, we agree about that. But the returns of peaceful expansion, here, are questionable.
Snaaty, when speaking of a rush, is referring to a thing entirely different than what we are doing.
HA rush can lack Writing/Pottery, probably lacks Alphabet and very surely lacks any further tech. We would have Alpha, Maths, Monarchy and one of CoL/Currency and soon the other one. If we go HA, we have higher tech to support the war. In fact, we'll have exactly the same tech we'd have if we were Elepulting.
d) Yes, you do sound petulant.
Instead of testing what wasn't supported by our macro discussions, please, test what we're supporting.
Do the T100 test yourself. I'm sure you'll get a much better understanding of the pros and cons of a HA war. And if you then think it's really weak, please, tell us why.
This is a 50 turns test and, considering the level of expectation that is placed on that test, I certainly cannot do it.
I provided a T80 test that was deemed "not good enough" (war too late) and "not exact enough" (GK no metal). I've tried to get that far again, with good management, and I've failed: the testrun is too long for me.
Personnally, I have zero interest in running a competition of 50 turns tests, just so we can disregard macro discussions. Macro discussions are there to ease the testing.
In general, I'd consider trying different approaches to the game, even against a majority macro decision -- like the HA rush in our case -- a good thing, as it is essentially the only way to get close to 'optimal play'. Examples from other games might help too, as long as they fit to our scenario. However, in this particular case I don't think the citations you mentioned are truly relevant, Doshin, and I think either of us who played any test games can confirm that GK is very likely to DoW before T80. In our test game he DoWs Mansa, which he may very well not do in the real game, given that (presumably) he cannot get to him. Can you get Currency and Construction before T80? No. However, we do need to be ready to take Karakorum by then, this is what all the test games suggest.
EDIT: and I hate to say this but we're starting to run out of time. We have two months to get close to dom and tech up to Flight, and even though decisions might get more and more obvious as the game progresses we don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot and try to play 100 turns within the last week or so.
You shouldn't say so, Doshin
I'm not any more entitled to stay in the team than you are. This is your game as much as it is mine. It is ours.
And if you have blames to address me, I assure you I'll do my best to abide by your demands I'm always acting oh so self-righteous but I can exert a critical eye on my behaviour, too.
I'm sure we're all getting annoyed by the delay we're taking into the game and the difficulties we have to decide on anything.
@testing: I'm not saying you're "testing for nothing", far from it.
My intention was to say: you're willing to test everything except HBR first. And I wonder why that is so. I intended to point out your time could be better employed testing HBR first. And maybe I'm wrong!
You can tell me: "I disagree" and that will be fine. No need to sacrifice yourself.
I can already present you my apologies for my previous post, which was a harsh one. I present you my apologies.
As far as I'm aware, we have not settled on HA rush yet, 0% research doesn't mean anything.
Doshin's save looks very strong and has a lot of Catas leftover to keep pounding on Joao -> Shaka (which is needed).
I support his point that we have yet to see a HA rush save execute it and then show where it ends up. Before even considering to push it under the rug, maybe we should look at all options?
EDIT: no need for 10-hour tests, just a playthrough to ~T100 should take maybe 1 hour.
Thanks for the save, Doshin And do not leave, we need you
Yes, Doshin's test game looks really good. However, how big is the chance that we won't be DoWed by GK while we're still in preparation with zero units? Has anyone had a test game so far where he didn't declare on anybody around T80?
EDIT: to be truly honest I don't feel like running several tests until T100 either. It's just too big a gap with too many yet unknown factors.
Have all autosaves, logs and over 200 screenshots if anyone's interested. Main thing is, I DoW'd GK around T75 (he was plotting from ~2T earlier) and opportunistically took undefended Joker city, with 6 HA's in Atlatna and 4 on the road. It looked good, but then his stack of keshiks, archers & chariots showed near Chicago - they were heading west, toward Joao or MM. So I "laid siege" on Beshbalik, defended Chicago and lost 9 HA's (and more than half of them on freaking 70+%) taking it over 10 turns. Bad warring on my part, unprepared.
But now he has 1 or 2 archers OR axes in remaining 4 cities, while our 8 HA's in Beshbalik are 5-11 xp. And I scouted with Fembot instead of being there healing the stack. Now he would sign peace treaty, and I don't know if I should (war weariness started), but if planned properly it can be done good and it looks like our empire can be manageable. Even with my micro.
I can find on which turn I DoW'd him and replay, cause there is where I started messing up. I'm 1T from Music though, settled clam & stone and have 2 more settlers on the way to north.
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Well, see you back soon 
However, it will be great for a 7th city. Nice 
I like 10 fast cities in your runs Doshin, but...no units and GK mad on us don't mix! If he does DoW us early, we're screwed even before we'll build first cat! What's the alternative? Build bunch of defensive spears? I don't like that.
