ALC Game #23: America/Lincoln

Sis, I think you're underestimating the effects of defying the AP vote. In my experience it's pretty severe, especially as almost all of your cities are Buddhist. And get ready for when that "sweet 'lil gal" of yours offers up the "return city to its rightful owner" resolution once you've take peace.

IMO, you should take "let's stop this fighting" (no peace treaty) for a bit, and follow up the suggestion to build stables for uber-knights. They'll definitely move the war along with Monty. I don't think you can afford (economically and technologically) to draw it out too long.

Great job so far.

Oh, almost missed this: bienvenue, LetoCiv!

Amazingly well played!!!! I tried numerous time to shadow it, but failed.

My biggest question is how do you plan on winning this thing???

Advice:

1) Finish teching liberalism but do not trade it to Shaka as you probably do not want him to bolt to FR.

2) Next go down the rifling path: PP/banking/RP/rifling

3) The AP is going to hurt bigtime as I think the vote keeps coming up and unhappiness mounts.

Good Luck!

huerfanista said:

Sis, I think you're underestimating the effects of defying the AP vote. In my experience it's pretty severe, especially as almost all of your cities are Buddhist. And get ready for when that "sweet 'lil gal" of yours offers up the "return city to its rightful owner" resolution once you've take peace.

IMO, you should take "let's stop this fighting" (no peace treaty) for a bit, and follow up the suggestion to build stables for uber-knights. They'll definitely move the war along with Monty. I don't think you can afford (economically and technologically) to draw it out too long.

Great job so far.

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No Knights! Monty has lots of elephants, which makes them next to useless.

I haven't been able to look at the save, but my guess is that the way you've been tech-whoring with your Buddhist Buddies (and the tech screen in the state of the world post confirms this), Monty is now way behind.

You're actually reasonably placed here to sit back and tech to rifles before smacking him down in the Renaissance. Long, protracted wars are fine on Emperor, but you run the risk of falling behind the peacemongers here if you don't pay a bit more attention to your economy.

As it stands, you're only 3 and a bit techs from rifles (the rest of PP, gunpowder, RP and rifling). If you finish off liberalism, PP and then go straight for RP, you should be able to trade for gunpowder. In fact, will Hatty trade compass for PP now? You've bulbed most of it so you may be able to make that trade if you're lucky.

Rifles will cut a swathe through the Aztecs much faster than your medieval units will. I'd plan to invade with 2-3 separate stacks to capture his cities (and therefore get a controlling interest in the AP) that much quicker.

Don't listen to the peacemongers - having to DoW a fellow buddist isn't good at all. And it allows Monty to rebuild his armies. Only accept peace if you can switch him away from Buddism.

If you stay at war, Monty will stay very predictable which is good.

Don't forget that if your economy can't take it, raze a few of his cities. That's much preferable to not taking them at all.

Of course, eventually WW will drag you to the negotiation table - but don't accept peace until the pain level becomes absolutely unbearable, hopefully having reduced Monty to a non-threat before then.

Sorry, completely forgot about the elephants... argh... Oh well! Pikes! Charasmatic pikes are awesome! =]

I think Combat II, formation knights (baracks/vassalage/stable/settled GG @ charismatic) will take out combat II jumbo (some are combat 1 shock) and some trebs/cats with them.

Perhaps you can try mixing some Knights into a Pike army to take out the Jumbos?

Of course, once he's a non-threat, just get him with Rifles and Trebs.

madscientist said:

I think Combat II, formation knights (baracks/vassalage/stable/settled GG @ charismatic) will take out combat II jumbo (some are combat 1 shock) and some trebs/cats with them.

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The Elephants definitely make things more complicated, but do not rule out Knights. I was actually thinking Cuirassiers, which do better against Elephants, but that requires Military Tradition.

When you have Charismatic and want to go for level 4 mounted units, however, it's much more economical to use Stables for that purpose (with the help of Vassalage + Theocracy) and use the settled GG for level 4 non-mounted units.

LetoCiv said:

(Please aknowledge my wrong spelling, grammar, ... French dude posting )
Long time lurker, first post whatsoever

I'm really enjoying this thread.
Your war against Monty's going well. If you need to make peace for settlement of your research/economy/infra, i suggest you to ask Monty to change his State Religion (if possible), then dog-pile him in order to not be drag on a long long war.

You should also think how to break your all-happy-unified world. Hatty's won Liberalism race coming from behind on the bee-lined techs. That show us how she could be a threat (Space Race ?).

Correct me if i'm wrong

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Bienvenue, mon ami! Votre anglais est tres bien; meilleur, je pense, comme mon francais.

That idea of trying to change Monty's state religion is a good one. I'll see if it's possible. If I can get open borders with him I can try to send missionaries his way, though I don't think he'll agree to OB anytime soon. If it's possible I may go for it, otherwise, the war continues.

It's tempting to leave Monty weak for now and come back at him with not only Rifles, but Cannon too. Maybe I should have considered that before the AP vote. I probably should have ended the round with the results of the AP election so we could discuss the best strategy for deal with that vote. Oh well, live and learn.

I did mention it as a possibility in the discussion following the previous round, though, and none of you said boo! What am I payin' you guys for, anyway?

Oh, right--I'm not.

I think if I negotiate a peace deal with Monty, I'll still get the for resolution defiance in a few cities. So like I said, unless LetoCiv's trick works, I may simply have to persevere.

As for Knights versus War Elephants--a few Catapults may even things out. WEs are typically the strongest units in Monty's stacks and should therefore suffer the brunt of any siege weapon attack.

patagonia said:

As it stands, you're only 3 and a bit techs from rifles (the rest of PP, gunpowder, RP and rifling).

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A minor point but you forgot to mention Banking. Of course Sisiutil should have no trouble trading for it, so it won't slow things down in this case.



Regarding making peace now, I think one thing that needs to be considered is what is going to happen after the war with Monty is finished. How is this game going to be won? Is it going to be possible to play peacefully for the rest of the game and go for a space/cultural/diplo win? Or is more warfare going to be required (either for a domination/conquest win or just to get more land to make one of the peaceful wins possible)?

If the plan is to play peacefully for the rest of the game then waiting to deal with Monty with the major tech advantage provided by rifles makes sense. But if there's going to be more wars fought later can Sisiutil afford to take his time with Monty? Any delay with Monty just delays the next war. Considering how tedious modern era wars are against Monarch level AIs, I can just imagine how frustrating a late war would be against Immortal AIs. Then again Lincoln does have a late UU and UB, so maybe this would be appropriate.

One final thought. Making peace now, right after defying an AP resolution to make peace, would be one of the moves of all time.

Sisiutil said:

Bienvenue, mon ami! Votre anglais est tres bien; meilleur, je pense, comme mon francais.

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Certainement. On devrait plutot dire "que mon francais." De l'autre cote, qu'est-ce qu'on attend d'un Canadien?

I think I'm still on the "kill Monty as much as you can" side of things. Whether you decide you want a peaceful or wartime victory, the land will be good, and the sooner you get it, the sooner you can start building Courthouses.

Sisiutil said:

It's tempting to leave Monty weak for now and come back at him with not only Rifles, but Cannon too.

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How long will Monty stay weak? You haven't really done anything at this point to hurt his production potential. He's going to be technologically backward, but that won't stop him from fielding lots of obsolete units. Each one you kill adds the same to your WW as a top of the line unit.

Validator said:

How long will Monty stay weak? You haven't really done anything at this point to hurt his production potential. He's going to be technologically backward, but that won't stop him from fielding lots of obsolete units. Each one you kill adds the same to your WW as a top of the line unit.

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Good point. I'm thinking I just need to swarm him. The problem is I keep leaving my stack behind in the last city I took while I absorb 2-3 attacks of his units. As soon as I think I'm ready to venture out, I spot another stack on the way. The stacks are not that big a threat, but right now one of them could do considerable damage to my offensive stack or could retake a city if I don't leave enough defenders and Monty gets lucky.

I think I need to build a bunch of good defensive counter units and leave them behind to absorb his counter-attacks while my stack just keeps marching steadily onward. I also think I might need to devote all my meager espionage points to him and try to send out some spies to pillage his strategic resources to slow him down. Maybe I should even send a separate pillaging stack or two into his territory to take some heat off the recently captured cities and offensive stack. Basically, force Monty to play whack-a-mole, especially now that I have units that can ward off his best attackers.

As for the rest of the game, I am hoping to mostly play it peacefully. I may launch an amphibious invasion of someone--Zara would probably be a good candidate--once SEALs come along. Or I could go pick on the weak mystery civ.

I think the logical victory condition to aim for is either space race or possibly diplomatic. The latter may be complicated because my main competitor may be another Buddhist, which would split the vote at the very least. Space race powered by an Internet bee-line and some late-game GP-induced golden ages may be the best option. I usually win my first few games on a new difficulty level via space.

Sisiutil said:

Basically, force Monty to play whack-a-mole, especially now that I have units that can ward off his best attackers.

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Don't go bringing *me* into this!

Regarding diplo: some AIs might switch away from Buddhism to Free Religion. Both you and whoever your competitor will be (Hatty I presume) would lose the shared religion bonus, you'll just have to outsmart him/her in the diplomatic field somehow. Maybe a shared war with someone else, etc.

Here is a question... which of these AI's typically pick up free religion?

Hatty will probably stay Buddist because OR is her favorite religion.

But I wouldn't be too concerned with her friendly status. I would her. She is safely teching away like a mad woman and probably has few units. make peace with Monty. Fortify your border cities and then mass some trebs/maces. Go smack her around a bit. Vassalize her then gift back a few cities to counter the diplohit for attaching her.

Hatty will probably stay Buddist because OR is her favorite religion.

But I wouldn't be too concerned with her friendly status. I would her. She is safely teching away like a mad woman and probably has few units. make peace with Monty. Fortify your border cities and then mass some trebs/maces. Go smack her around a bit. Vassalize her then gift back a few cities to counter the diplohit for attaching her.

@Polobolo. Further WB tests reveal that I was in error with regard to the woosmanIII/medic1 stacking.

Sisiutil said:

Good point. I'm thinking I just need to swarm him. The problem is I keep leaving my stack behind in the last city I took while I absorb 2-3 attacks of his units. As soon as I think I'm ready to venture out, I spot another stack on the way. The stacks are not that big a threat, but right now one of them could do considerable damage to my offensive stack or could retake a city if I don't leave enough defenders and Monty gets lucky.

I think I need to build a bunch of good defensive counter units and leave them behind to absorb his counter-attacks while my stack just keeps marching steadily onward.

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I have to laugh at the number of times having Protective would help here. With Vassalage, you'd be producing CG3 longbows right out of the chute. Oh, well, there's always the Churchill game.