ROTQM10: Raging Over the Quarreling Mountains

I played 14 turns to get to an "even" 315. Not really much happened.

IHT:

Lots of MM. Changing builds, whipping, assigning citizens.

(1)
Kill the Greek stacklet hanging around with no losses. GG is born and settled in st. pete.

(5)
Capture Oporto with few losses (2 suicide axes IIRC).

(6)
Joao vassalizes to HC. Big deal. Honey shows up with a mixed stack of cats, chariots, lbows, swords and axes, around 10 total.

(7)
HC stack suicides against a couple of units sent to the adjacent forest. Losses: 1 mace.

(8)
Greece stack of about 15 units shows up. Rags sends a 7-man stack against Oporto as well.

(11)
IBT: Kill rags stack, losing one lbow.

(14)
Gunpowder in, chemistry selected with no hammers invested. GS born in thracian (still unmoved).


Overview on the front:




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OK guys some comments:

- PLEASE stop spamming cottages everywhere. The AI techpace is pathetic, and we don't go for space. We need hammers, which means build farms and work as many hills and soon workshops as possible. This is not an ordinary 0815-game where you run your CE.

- I think we agreed to do some spy-warning-system. I didn't see a single spy when I took over. One was sent through GKs land, we probably won't face troubles from down there. Lets map out the AIs attack routes and keep track on them.

- There were plenty of smallish stacks coming in all the time. Rags goes for coimbra, alex for st. pete and hc for Oporto. GK, joao and just didn't really show up by now.

- We have superior units. We don't need uber-units that badly, we need more units. We're short on defenders up front, so after the current builds we should spam a few muskets. Knights are getting thrown in the action as well, doing good. Pay attention to withdrawal mounties, to kill cats with flanking. After flanking, promote them to sentry to get more visibility range.

- I have no idea what to do with the GS... keep bulbing? Next GG should probably make another super-medic.

- @LK: We can build temples. The problem is the low presence of religion in our cities. I wouldn't bother too much with that and backfill up to drama at some point and be done with it.

- We should try to chop forests in a way that AIs have to cross open fields at some point. While they're in our territory, we don't get much WW, can easily kill them and retreat, and don't waste so much time for healing as we don't suffer collateral damage.

- Stay alert for incoming attacks. We can't deal with them efficiently if we have such short notice, so immediately replace captured spies and make sure those we have are getting in place ASAP. If we do see them coming, try to take them out with counterattacks or by fortifying on some forest hill as far away from cities as possible.


Ozbenno is up I think!

pholkhero >> UP NOW unless I forgot about a swap
ozbenno >> on deck?
LKendter >> on deck?
rolo
pigswill
mystyfly >> just played

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

In an AW game we should not have mutli-turn move orders for any unit. The knight above Novgorod is set to move south 2 turns, yet Joao has a stray sword above Novgorod that the knight should deal with. We have an exposed worker north of the city that the sword could move toward.

I don't see anything in your report why Oporto and not Khan's pain ivory city. I thought we had a team consensus to get rid of the ivory city, or did I misread stuff on targets?
I am going to ask forget all other cities until we can secure the ivory spot. We can't keep dealing with a scattered front.


I was going to write up about more stuff, but the farm vs. cottage issue IMO needs to be settled NOW before anymore turns our played and more cottages are destroyed for no good reason. This is my #1 issue with the turn set.

I am unhappy with Novgorod. Before mystyfly played it had +1 food, and one unhappy person. Net was +3 food once we made the red face happy. Now two cottages have been destroyed in favor of farms, and the city has +6 food. Once the whip anger wears off next turn the only way to get the city with no growth is to hire a scientist and use a LESS mature cottage. We gained no production, and hurt ourselves economically. The city could already be configured to use all its hills without the new farms.
If we really wanted another farm the cottage 2E, 1S that has no growth, could have been replaced giving us more food without economic damage.

We are destroying a town south of St. Pete when the city can't even use one hill because of the AI occupying it. The city is already at +6 food and working a grass tile with no improvements. The city could be whipped in an emergency, and still grow back fast. IMO a workshop one the grass tile with nothing would be a much better use of the workers.
I do agree we need to improve production, but not by destroying cottages in cities that can't effectively use the extra food.

If we want another farm, Yaroslavl' sucks for growth and could use a farm 1 north.


Our current cash flow positive science rate is 40%. Chemistry is 25 turns at that rate. I totally disagree with mystyfly on the cottages. I thought we already agreed early one to set up cottage cities behind the lines. Later cities were too become production sources. Now we are destroying cottages in Novgorod behind the lines.


pholkhero
ozbenno >> just played
LKendter >> on deck. However, I won't play until the production vs. economy debate is settled.
rolo
pigswill
mystyfly

OK, I have it. Can have a peek tonight for some comments.

I think we should keep mature cottages if we can work the hills as well, only farm where we have to, having cottages in our back yard free from pillaging is good.

I think we already had the troops at Oporto, which is why mystyfly took it. I'll focus on getting GK's city and resettling there.

As for the GS, I think a bulb would be good, can we (part) bulb Chemistry itself, I'll have a look at the save.

Pretty sure, I'll be building a lot of troops and spies

I agree on keeping the cottages we have in the back ranks as it was our plan to keep them there for just that purpose. I'll take the hit for cottage spamming...i wasn't thinking about that during my set. st pete and those cities to our north should probably all be given over to production cities.

if we can take out GK's ivory city, we have a settler asleep in st pete, that *should* get those to our west to go there. If we can set up a shield there, and then swing our hammer of an army up north to take out the AI up there, we *may* be alright...this all hopes taht the AI will go for our newly targetted city to the west and not force us to disperse our army up north defending there.

good turns, tho, mysty. glad someone was able to make someone headway with conquering. i sure wasn't

I'm all in favour of hunkering in defense for a while AFTER we secure our west flank.

also, we could consolidate the defenders in st pete and coimbra, and use them to attack GK. if we leave some LBs in the city, and have our knights attack, we should be able to clean up those subpar units being thrown at us.

Moscow has to much food (at happy cap), so we could temp steal the banannas to get city growing (whip granary / court). With windmills, farms and those hills we could have a production city behind our lines.

Lurker's comment to picture above :


1 lake + 1 grassland + 1 plain hill <-> 2 grassland + 1 desert hill + 1 grassland hill
And 1 plain <-> 1 forest river grassland

One thought,

With everyone being all lovey dovey Buddhists and getting their military struggle bonuses, do we need to make sure we build the AP, to avoid an accidental AP loss??

That could become an issue, but I've never personally seen a lost via AP in AW.

LKendter said:

That could become an issue, but I've never personally seen a lost via AP in AW.

Click to expand...

I have lost an AW SG to an AP loss. Was very early in BtS, so can be avoised if we're careful. We can make sure that we raze every Buddhist city, as that would be the likely AP religion.

Also, every AP religion building gives an extra 2 hammers, which could be helpful for production (as well as happiness for temples), might be worth it. No idea how far off Theology is though for us (don't have access to the save).

i wonder, too, if the detour to theo would be worth it for us. i know its still early on and we've got a tech lead, but, to me, our research is pretty anemic.

our production isn't spectacular, but it is fairly good, even in our cottage cities where we can still crank out a maybe a dozen or so new units in a 15-turn set (throughout the empire, not in one city).

As i said, i'm for makig the new gains production cities and leaving the rest as is for now. Also, I'm for NOT settling new cities unless we have to for now (for economic reasons as outlined above )

OK, have loaded up the save.

Thoughts are....

Research - Theology is 10 turns away, Military Tradition and Steel about 60 each (MT a little quicker I think). The GS will bulb Chemistry now (15 turns or so saved).

I think a little detour to Theology would be worth it, extra hammers and AI denial and then Chemistry.

Militarily, try to repel what I can, build more troops and raze GKs city and rebuild 2E.

That's about it, cottages behind lines, farms and mines on the border.

Will play tonight or tomorrow night.

I am sorry for leaving units on go-to, I try to avoid that. People make mistakes though.

I was under the impression we wanted to go after GK city and Oporto, in no particular order. I went after oporto as we 1) had plenty of units nearby, 2) it's easily defendable with hill and river, 3) I saw the defenders in there while I lacked intelligence on GK city.

Every cottage I bulldozed I had a good reason for it. Usually the reason was to get enough food to work all available hills (like in the city to the east with plenty of river tiles). There were plenty of cottages on unirrigatable tiles pre-CS that can be farmed now. We have plenty of low-food cities, if we cottage up grasslands while lacking food, there is no good reason to keep them.

Also many cities lack specialization while others have improvements that don't follow the specialization, cottages in St. Pete is a good example. There is no reason to keep cottages around there.

Another note on happiness/health. Groceries give more health than aequaducts and also yield commerce bonus. Markets don't give much happiness yet but there is whale up north in joao's posession for example. Those two buildings can be pretty strong.

I agree with bulbing chemistry. It's a good military tech and on our techpath anyway. I'm not sold on detouring theo though. It would require us to build AP which is only helpful when we spread taoism around. Same thing with theocracy. I don't think we can/should spare the hammers for either. I would much rather capture some cities and rely on AIs taking a while to get it built, being at war and everything I think we'll have plenty of time. The AI still is only prince lol.

have to agree on theo and the AP. being that for a large part of the game we've been playing mostly defensively, I'd rather spend the hammers on units.

mystyfly said:

I was under the impression we wanted to go after GK city and Oporto, in no particular order.

Click to expand...

OK, SG confusion then. Nothing we can do there.
I know personally I'm tired of the units behind out lines and only care about ending it. That means GK city gone.

We have 10 cities and 6 workers. We need more workers ASAP.

On the city specialization issue, I think we need to mark up the map what each cities goal is.

We will never come to agreement on Novgorod. This city is a PURE income city that happens to have hills as a bonus IMO. Our second highest base income is Novgorod despite destroying two mature good cottages. It would be #1 if we still had those cottages. You don't remove mature cottages in your best income city IMO.
I won't say more on Novgorod to avoid tempers flaring, and will agree to disagree. Nothing you can say will convince me those farms were a good move.

St. Pete I am neutral on the cottage, but IMO we should put a workshop on the unimproved grassland first.

We have another strategic path to consider. If we can wipe out the ivory city and the city by the red line we would have the whole Mongolian empire behind out lines. From there we could raze / capture all of his cities and not increase our front lines. Size is power in Civ.

Note that his whole territory is along a lake!