@Dhoom: Responses to your posts from last night
1. I don't see any good way to watch for a Hammy armada. The scout/axe can go SW next turn, but then N, where it should fortify. From there, we get 6 turns of advacned warning of an SoD coming from Babylon, rather than only 4 turns warning. If you put the warrior W of the chokepoint, then he'll get attacked by the advancing barbs.
2.
Zlatorog. When I opened the choke point last turn, all three barbs started in our direction. No barb suicided on our axe. Instead he went 1E of my sticky note. Yes, barbs will enter our culture now. Yes, forests spreads from the camp, but we'll need a farm at Zlat-W anyway, so go ahead and road it. That's the direct path for units from the south to Hammy. Per ZPV: attack unpromoted warriors and heavily damaged units across the river, otherwise put the axe in the forest and let him be attacked (or avoided) by barb archers/spears (I think it's a bit too soon for spears and axes anyway). Use the "alt" key and hover over the victim to find out the odds, XP to be gained, etc. When the second axe is completed in ZLatorog, he can be used for protection if needed. But, yes, we are looking for a WoodsmanII or even III with these barb attacks, in addition to 10XP. I would use our warrior at Zlat-2W for advanced warning. Until the second axe is built, he can alsl help protect our axe on teh chokepoint if he's heavily damaged after attacking a barb.
3. I forgot to remind you that we have a partial (3h) spear build in NC also. After the next axe, that could be one of yoru beloved spears...
Don't forget, we'll want pikes as soon as we get Engineering, so we only want bare necessity spears now, right?
4. Excellent call on promoting our TOku axes with CI. That gets us to a jump point with 88% defenses in Kyoto.
5.
Osaka. I wouldn't attack it till we take back the corn at the earliest and only if it has 2 defenders. As you said: Bombard to 0%, attack with unpromoted cat, then you should have good odds with a CRI cat, then either one more cat, if needed, then clean up. MOve other units towards Kyoto for pre-bombardment. But always maintain a flexible battle approach and if SHTF, then stop, take a deep breath, and maybe pause for analysis.
6.
Research. Yes, Org Rel looks like it could be pwerful. Right now it would only cost an extra 2gpt. When we finish MC, I would switch the science slider to 0% and put all the overflow into Aesthetics. We don't need Poly for bulbing and we might get it for free later on. We might need spare cash for our Toku campaign, so we should probably go to 0% for now, although I haven't done any testing on that and it's nice to go 100% while we're working those scientists.
7.I don't see how we have any time to lure units out of Osaka, because we want to capture it on T0 if at all. A lure at Kyoto makes sense but only on the turn before we're going to attack, because Toku can't attack units 2 tiles away across that river. He doesn't have COnstruction yet, the klutz. But you'll also need some sort of garrison in GEL, I think, because of whip unhappiness, so keep that in mind.
8. I don't understand how OrgRel gets us Chs at half-price.
9.
Wonders. My latest thinking on the Pyramids is let someone else build it for us, because I don't see us working enough specialists to make it worthwhile. I also would skp the GLib and Hanging Gardens (aqueduct is too expensive). I think we should try to pay for our warring and research with cottages, spoils, and failed gold from HE, NE, Moai, and maybe SoA (which would be a reason to research Poly sooner, if we had some spare hammers to put into SoA).
10. Which reminds me, we still have a few hammers in a barracks in Delhi. I suppose we want the foge there first, but then barracks would be useful so we can build failed gold for HE there, or maybe we'll actually build HE there, since the second copper makes that a better HE city.
11. I agree on having more than enough units. I'm always a bit conservative with that. Furthermore, if we're going for fastest finish, we really shouldn't be thinking in terms of pausing our warring. We should go pedal-to-the-metal and figure out how to afford it. That's where I agree with your phasing out of poprushing and into growth, working food, mines, and cottages.
12. Yes to chopping units now. After we have Kyoto, I would prefer to use chops for various things, depednign on the city. If Kyoto has enough hammers to be our HE city, then we could use chops for the HE and then a treb SoD. I was calculating that these mini-seig-SoDs are a bit short-sighted in this game. Much better would be one that's big enough to bombard AI-capital defenses to 0% in 1 or 2 turns and then move onto the next capital, because travel time is too slow to build new SoDs for each capital.
13. Don't worry too much about us getting dogpiled. Once we secure Kyoto, it chokes off all attacks to our empire from Hatty. Once we get Babylon, I assume it will be the same. Then we'll just capture a new capital, AI by AI (or more likely two by two, with two fronts).
14. As for bombarding Kyoto, if Kyoto has too many units when we get there, we'll just have to bite the bullet, bombard him to zero while bringing in re-inforcements. Sooner or later, we'll be too powerful for him.
15.
Scouts. I agree with Mitchum. Scouts are not worth the effort. Not before T86 anyway. If he has lots of units, we might give it a stab. They will screw up our WarSuccess numbers a bit.
16.
DoP Trade points. By the way, it might be counter-intuitive, but the more kills we get, the better, even if it means Toku gets more kills. For example, a WeKill/HeKills ratio of 3/0 might yield 955 trade value, whereas 8/6 would yield 1484 points, assuming power, city count, total pop are otherwise the same. The rule of thumb is basically, the more kills the better, as long as we don't lose an inordinate amount in the process. The reason for this is the 3X for threatening his city.
His RefuseToTalk time, on the other hand, grows longer as he gets more kills. That's why he's probably not going to want to talk for 11-12 turns. (That's also a reason for you to not worry about getting dogpiled--good chance it's going to happen. Big deal.)
17.
Getting dogpiled. Speaking of getting dogpiled, just as soon as you see Hammy's SoD leave his borders, we need to stop and discuss our plans. We'll want to DoW him, as you pointed out, to halve the RefuseToTalk time, but when? We'll need to decide how we want to play that, i terms of shortening the war, worker stealing, tech trading, or some mix of the above.
18.
Ignoring Osaka. When we're ready to DoW, we could still decide whether to beeline Kyoto or not. We can analyze his power graphs on that turn to determine how many more units he's produced and decide what makes most sense. Kyoto is far more important than Osaka, especially after we get the corn, which we won't lose again.
19. Osaka may lose more pop if we delay it, but then again, Kyoto may have more when we capture it. I care more about Kyoto.
20. Barrage I gives 12HP damage per turn versus 10HP without it. (Hence 20% more.) I ahven't tested whether it gets us a jump point, but I think I've shown that the CRI promotion will get us jump points in our situation, in both Osaka for the second archer and in Kyoto against the 1.5 archer.
21.
13 cats, 10 axes... I think that's overkill. I think 9 cats, 8 axes, 1 spear on T86 is a good start. We keep building units for at least 2 more turns. We just need to decide Osaka or not, get a glimpse into Kyoto asap, and decide whether to attack immediately or bombard and re-inforce. Since we're goint o wait 11 turns to DoP anyway, it's no biggie, I don't think.
That's soon enough for the Machinery/Engineering bulb. Guess we might have time to go after Tokyo or Samsuto. That might speed up his willingness to talk to about 9 turns.
