ROTQM10: Raging Over the Quarreling Mountains

Yeah well cleanup force shouldn't be necessary. AIs targeting cities either suicide or can be taken out since we have roads and they can't use them. Especially after engineering.

I really like guilds though for the +1H on workshops though I see most here prefer cottages over HE....

Ok, before I start the set, I'll say something that is griping me due to what happened during the set: We should had not razed Evora... you will see why later.

LK let me with a Mongol stack to our west. I was hoping that they would try to bang against St Pete ( or even Coimbra, in spite of Coimbra being heavily pounded as well during the set ... to the point I couldn't upgrade any of the archers there to LB because they all died :/ ) . GK showed brains ( !!!!! ) and did the more damaging option:

They went south and killed our fort garrison. To be honest, I was with the southern cities ready to whip defenders at this time and was scrambling war elephants to the area ( couldn't bring our stack down due to the first Incan stack that appeard from the west 2 turns after the set started ... 15ish units between cats and chariots , and 2 mini stacks from the north, one Portuguese and the other Viking . A couple of rough turns , I should add )

In the end the stack divided in a pillaging party that I had dealt with some dificulty ( keshiks move in the same speed in our land than us without engineering :/ ) and the rest got back to their land ...

This is a far later pic ( almost in the end of my set ... couldn't find any other of the area in my screens. BTW notice the first Bizantine units that came to us ... from the west ), but it shows where GK settled a new city ... 1 W of the ruins :/

Other thing to add from this pic is that HC hit Feudalism .Ragnar already had got there some turns earlier.

OFC that getting so much attention fron the part of all the AI now meant that I couldn't pull any kind of offensive and passed most of the set churning LB and x-bows ( only to the end of the set I managed to get some maces going ). For a idea, this was a typical day in Coimbra :

In this particular time I actually feared to lose the city, but the stacks did not attacked both in the IBT . Again couldn't send most of our units north due to Incan interference ( they sent 3 stacks during the set and always eyed St. Pete ) ...

Fast forwarding to the end of the set ... well , as you can see below we teched Feudalism and I overplayed a little until ending Engineering.... Not because of the tech alone, but more because of the third Incan SoD, that aproached St Pete via the southern aproach and that i wanted to clean out before I delivered the set out ( 6-7 units, cats + lone chariot ). I got a GG out of them :


This is how I deliver the set:

The queues are not obviously set in stone especially St Pete ( that has a aqueduct and a castle in queue ). The more salient point is the settler in the cap. That settler is to close the western flank, with or without capturing the mongol city. We have 3 civs attacking through that aproach route and we can't be in hold waiting for them to decide what to attack or ,heavens forbid, they decide to go south against our relatively undefended spice cities. There is a valid hill spot 3 W 1S of Coimbra for that ... it has hills all around and it is a crappy city, but until we can plug out the west we can't do a effective offensie in any direction ( I've been hammering this for quite a while, but it got a new urgency given from where the Bizantines and the Incans are coming from ). That or we capture the mongol city, but I can't assure that we can take our attacking units out.

The second pic shows the current menace. Nothing too much.

On other concerns I left Guilds on queue ... feel free to change, but I don't see much of good options to the Guilds tech for now . Maybe we could even go Gunpowder next.

Will try and offer comments later. That download site is a pain once in awhile with file temp unavailable.

pholkhero
ozbenno
LKendter
rolo >> just played
pigswill >> UP NOW
mystyfly >> on deck

dang that looks like it was a rough set. nice job, tho, rolo.

it seems as if we should settle some sort of defensive city, and your spot is as good as any imo. i wonder if once we set up a decent sort of defense there, if we could take out portugal and scandanvia quick enough that we don't get overwhelmed in the homefront.

it feels like we're at the crossroads of the game, to me, where we could either when it, or get stuck playing defense till 2100 ad...or, c.e.

also, thx for postign the roster Lee ~

pigs apparently got bitten by the black dog, and if we have to ask, we shouldn't ask

so if he can't get to this by tomorrow, mysty, please grab it and go.
actually, if he can't, i will grab it and swap with myst as i'll be unable to dl or upload saves until next saturday.

i've got this as i can't sleep, so i'll play, and then we'll go on to mysty. hopefully pigs can slip back into the roster when the spinning wheel comes round again.

like rolo, most of my set was centered around fending off attacks at coimbra. most of the AI units are old tech so i was able to take initiative and wipe them out before they could attack us. however, they do seem to be neverending.

I played 12 turns and was attacked all 12 i think. We're starting to build up an army, though. maces are there and more on the way. got some trebs out and some HAs as well that are there or on the way (the goto orders might still be on with some of them).

before we go further, here's some pics for you:

the hanging gardens came in:


we hit 10 million people:


we're not hurting there.

guilds came in, and i set research to guns but put gold at 100%. here's the layout of our western lands for now. Here's the greek stack that may go for st pete or our southern city there:

be ready to send a few units south just in case

here's coimbra, with the small stacks nearby, nothing we can't handle there


and here's our units at st pete, w/some more on the way:


pholkhero >> just played
ozbenno >> on deck
LKendter
rolo
pigswill
mystyfly >> UP NOW

LOL - well, I was going to try and comment on Rolo's turn...

We've overgrown our cities. We really need to find a new happy source. No idea where, but we are paying for to many red faces.

MM is an issue. We can't afford to grow more miserable faces. For example: Novgorod needs to work another hill, and not a cottage to stop growing.
Can we put one turn into the bucket in Rostov, and then whip it. I want to get rid of those red faces.
Yekat needs to grow. Can we swap from the 4 shield mountain to the water tile?

Strategically it is getting ugly, and will get worse as AIs are researching machinery. IMO our #1 goal needs to raze the Mongolian ivory city. Put our city one east.

Can we have Yaroslavl' go from wealth to missionary. I want to get the last of our cities converted. We need the culture and happiness.

Well most reasonnable source of happiness is installing a monarch and we're fine that way.

I'm going to check the save later and post some more specific comments before playing. MM is no problem for me, as is getting rid of unhappiness

any more specific comments or, better yet, turns to post?

Argh, I just lost my comments... so here goes (again):

- This set will be mostly about cleaning up. We have troops in enemy lands yet don't have a clean backyard. We shouldn't have any problems handling prince AIs at all.
Then there's the issue of . It's not acceptable to have any while in HR. Plus there are buildings like coliseums to be built... no war is won without at least basic infra in place. I'll switch around builds.

- We're teching gunpowder. I'd suggest staying on that line and go straight to steel. We'll quickly get to a renaissance unit plus get the hammer bonus on workshops (how can we build that many cottages, even rarely work them, in an AW game where it's all about production?). We still don't even have aesth which is not a huge deal in this scenario with the limited usefulness of GPs.

- I don't see why we're building that many trebs (just 'cuz we now can?) while we're both in a defensive position and lack infra.

- I'll update signs, especially mark settled MIs. Please do that kind of stuff as you play, otherwise bonuses like the additional XP may get wasted.


One last thing: I don't feel like playing in a team as we should in a SG, due to the lack of discussion. This is no excuse for my lateness, I simply didn't find time. I am sorry for that. I would really appreciate to actually discuss the state of our game. I learnt most about civ thanks to discussing SGs and it makes the game way more interesting than just playing some turns and handing the save over, waiting to be in line again.

I'll play in ~12hrs, after I had some sleep.

Agree on the unhapiness, if we're in HR and slavery we shouldn't ever have unhappiness, build an extra garisson or whip a happy building.

Should we teching towards Steel or Military Tradition? If we're doing Gunpowder then I guess Chemistry and Steel is all we need for cannons. Curassiers and then Cavalry would be nice though.

I think we should be putting more pressure on Joao, maybe razing Oporto and taking Lisbon??

My first target is the Mongol ivory city. We need to raze that, and build our own city on a hill to secure that flank. Getting tired of people behind our lines.

LKendter said:

My first target is the Mongol ivory city. We need to raze that, and build our own city on a hill to secure that flank. Getting tired of people behind our lines.

Click to expand...

True, getting a hill city on that flank will take the heat off the interior heaps.

Oh, some discussion, sweet

I agree with lk, we need border hill cities while we prepare for the big assault, but I'd go for Oporto first, which is on a hill as well but already will have some infra, pop, and tile improvements. There's no way I'll go after either city straight away though.

Regarding tech, I'm not too sure. Eventually we'll want cossacks of course, and steel isn't on the way to it. However, steel would get us sooner access to some good renaissance unit and prevents anyone from flanking our siege. OTOH we'll want 2MP stacks so going straight for cuirassiers might be in order. IIRC that means, after gunpowder, we'll need paper > nat > MT, which is a looong way also. What's your preference on techs?

Can we build temples yet? Another happy in cities that have our religion.
IIRC we've ignored that path so far. My be worth a turn or two to get more happy and culture defense into our cities.

Both Steel and Military Tradition are a long ways away. Both give us a good ofensive unit, don't really mind.

I'd prefer going for steel. Cannon are stack busters as well as city attackers, weakened stacks are much easier to kill. As Ozbenno observed they're both a long way off.
btw miltrad requires music and nat.

Minor point: double whipping aqueduct in Moscow would (temporarily) resolve health and happy there.

Filler city midwest 1E of ivory is hilly and catches clams in bfc (need to raze newbuilt mongol city). Filler city down south 1NW of current stackette is hilly and catches three resources.

Ok, thanks for the input guys. Feels more like a real SG now.

We have guests for lunch, I'll play afterwards, in a couple of hours.