SGOTM 15 - Xteam

Mad Professor · Apr 14, 2012

OK - save is uploaded to central - here is a link to it:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm15/Xteam_SG015_AD0980_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

Here's a screenshot of the situation in the west for those who want to see it without opening the save:

Here's my notes on what the spies saw in Egyptian cities:

Spoiler :

Here's the turnlog the server gave me:

Spoiler :

Here's the BUFFY log for those last few turns:

Spoiler :

Cactus Pete · Apr 14, 2012

Good work, MP. You've set me up well (though wish you had not traded our map).

Understand that I can play from the save posted in the thread. Please advise if otherwise.

I have income taxes to complete by Tuesday, so not sure how soon I'll be able to post a plan, but hope to do so within 30 hours and would like to begin my turn set Tuesday afternoon or early evening.

In the meantime, soliciting advise and counsel. Do we want to attack or defend against Ham? Would it be possible to set up a test as we did earlier at the beginning of the Egyptian conflict?

leif erikson · Apr 14, 2012

Nice work MP! :goodjob:

Got a nice little war going with Hammy and drew him in for some :hammer:

Roster:
Cactus Pete - UP
Htadus - On Deck
zamint3
leif
Undecided
Mad Professor - :clap:

The-Hawk - traveling

Cactus Pete said:
Understand that I can play from the save posted in the thread. Please advise if otherwise.

Yes, same save.

It is a link to the server.

Cactus Pete said:
I have income taxes to complete by Tuesday, so not sure how soon I'll be able to post a plan, but hope to do so within 30 hours and would like to begin my turn set Tuesday afternoon or early evening.

In the meantime, soliciting advise and counsel.

Was that advise and counsel on taxes? :mischief:

Off to look at the save.

Mad Professor · Apr 14, 2012

Cactus Pete said:
Good work, MP. You've set me up well (though wish you had not traded our map).

I feared those knights against spears (especially the possibility that there would be even two more of them from further upgrade of WC's, (an eventuality which didn't occur in the end) so was very keen on the upgrade to pikes. The map sale was the only way to finance that. The price of caution...

Cactus Pete said:
In the meantime, soliciting advise and counsel. Do we want to attack or defend against Ham? Would it be possible to set up a test as we did earlier at the beginning of the Egyptian conflict?

I'm thinking against Hammy that we should wipe out that most advanced stack ASAP and see if we can't deal with the knight and 3 maces behind as well, then take Opis ASAP. Then we can see what the situation is, but unless we're very unlucky with the RNG I think we'll then have enough to take more of Hammy after that -and if possible we should do it ASAP.

"Wiping out the stack" though needs some thought. I don't like the knight/mace mix in the stack for attacking it - I'm thinking maybe if we wait a turn and see if he want to suicide units by attacking? My guess though on what the AI will do is that he will just use his cats to bombard the city - we might be waiting two or three turns for him to start the suicide mission. Do we really want to wait that long? We are in need of rapid advancement!

Against Egypt, I think we need to declare immediately and march on the Statue of Zeus and take it - that will break her back since that city seems to have most of her army in it. Climb that mountain and Hatty is at our complete mercy - we can take the elephants, and whatever else we want. She doesn't have much else!

The AI's who are preparing for war worry me a little - they are taking a while to actually do it, which means they might be lining up US and are delaying because they can't catch our power growth which has been considerable lately. If they were going to pile on Tokugawa, they probably would have done it already. On the other hand we can't sit around waiting for them. The quicker we break Hammy and Hatty, the sooner we'll be able to deal with an attack from someone else!

zamint3 · Apr 15, 2012

Cactus Pete said:
Do we want to attack or defend against Ham? Would it be possible to set up a test as we did earlier at the beginning of the Egyptian conflict?

Attack I would say. :hammer:

We want to get this campaign going before he brings in too many reinforcements.
Promote the cats to barrage (knights are immune to first strikes) and attack.

We should have enough units surviving to defend our trebs moving in.

Anyway, I created the scenario from one of Undecided's earlier maps:
View attachment Ghandi Test Hammu attack T159.CivBeyondSwordSave
(the 2 axes in Pat already used their promotion and got CB1, the rest should be about OK :crazyeye:

)

The-Hawk · Apr 15, 2012

Yes, I would go after the stack. I tried Z's test (thanks!), killed them all with loss of 4 cats. I think this is a worst case scenario, with luck, maybe one will retreat.

After killing them, I moved units into the tile the stack had been in (to protect the pike who killed the last unit). He suicided his knight in the following group, then the maces ran for home.

Cactus Pete · Apr 15, 2012

Thanks for the test, Z. I won't have time to play with it for about 10 hours, but will try and post some tentative plans then.

Hawk, was there no way to also attack the secondary attack the same turn?

Did anyone test to find out what happens if we hunker down and defend?

The-Hawk · Apr 15, 2012

Cactus Pete said:
Hawk, was there no way to also attack the secondary attack the same turn?

It is possible, they can certainly be reached. I ran another test as was able to kill both stacks at the cost of 7 cats and 1 xbow. However, there are barely enough units to do so. If you have bad luck with the first stack and lose a few extra units, then there will not be enough to protect all the wounded after killing the second stack.

Did anyone test to find out what happens if we hunker down and defend?

Just tried this a couple of times. Promoted the two xbows in the city to Garrison, then let Ham come. Ham played pretty stupid. Turn 1, reduced defense, but then suicided some units. Turn 2, suicided the cats, then killed 2-3 defenders. Then I came out and killed the wounded. Both times, the second stack escaped (after suiciding one unit, the others ran). So if he follows this pattern, it works better than attacking (lose 2-3 units vs. 4 cats). However, there is a risk. His attacks after suiciding his cats were pretty effective, his problem was he had wasted units on turn 1. If he does not suicide units on turn 1 and moves his second stack up, then his 2nd turn attack would be pretty punishing. I.e. if he doesn't play stupid on turn 1, we will need to attack on turn 2 before he gets a chance to suicide his cats.

Undecided · Apr 15, 2012

Ran both tests, hunker down and attack both stacks in one turn.

Attacking both stacks: Lost all cats (used the one on the way to pat to damage the 1st stack to save one out of pat for the 2nd stack), and 1 CB. Could positioned a stack of 1 CB, 3 pikes, an axe and 3 trebs on the tile east of the lake. Next turn they're joined by 8 CBs (2 with full health), an damaged sword and axe.

Hunker down:
Fortified everyone without promotions to heal faster the next turn. 1st stack bombarded the city defences as expected. 2nd stack suicided against the stack on the deer tile. We lose 1 CB (the rest is at 100% health) and kill everything except a badly damaged mace.

Next turn the mace retreated, and the cat stack attacked after collateral damage.
We lost 3 units and both cats of babylon retreated. So there were 5 badly damaged units sitting right in front of pat which i picked off with the stack on the hill and an axe out of pat. forest-stack went to east of lake and is joined by everything inside pat except one axe for MP-duty.
On that tile there are pike, 5 CBs (2 at half-health) 7 cats (1 slightly damaged) and 3 trebs. The stack from the hill can join the main stack a turn later.

The big problem is, that there are more possible outcomes if we defend. The 2nd time i tried, 3 maces of the 2nd stack retreated (which is bad) and the knight joined the 1st stack. So the outcome from the first test is a best-case scenario. If we get that it's better than attacking i think. If Hammu does something different with his troops it's closer. Also it seems that promotions play a role in the decision making of hammu.

zamint3 · Apr 15, 2012

The-Hawk said:
It is possible, they can certainly be reached. I ran another test as was able to kill both stacks at the cost of 7 cats and 1 xbow. However, there are barely enough units to do so. If you have bad luck with the first stack and lose a few extra units, then there will not be enough to protect all the wounded after killing the second stack.

I had similar results, but I don't agree that there will not be enough units for protection. I did not use any of the pikes in my tests, and the xbows will get nice promotions and heal quickly, and there's no immediate threat from the AI (except for one nasty pike :mischief:

)

I would not count too much on the hunker down tests. The save was just something I put together in the worldbuilder, the AI may react completely different in the real game. :eek:

Mad Professor · Apr 16, 2012

PLayed that test battle over a few times - I'm not sure what to make of the results. Every time I waited, the AI bombarded (consistent with my experience of how the AI acts) and then suicided a knight and two maces on the city - in my experience, sometimes the AI will do this and sometimes not, in this case it was every time.

Once he's suicided those units, finishing off the leading stack is quite easy - I did it at the expense of a couple of cats and a couple of xbows - I might have used more cats and therefore lost less xbows if I had gone that way.

In every case, it was the second stack that puzzled me - one knight and one mace advanced to joing the first stack (and got killed off the next turn as I counter attacked) and two maces retreated - I have no idea why. I don't think we can bank on that.

When I tried it attacking instead of waiting, again the first stack was easy to get rid of thought the losses were higher because of the mace/knight combination - that is not a good combination to try and attack - the AI in this test does us a BIG favour by suiciding the two maces when you wait for him to attack - that makes a BIG difference. Trying to get rid of the second stack in the first turn is also possible but again with losses that seem to me to be unaccaptable because of the mace/knight defending combination.

Cactus Pete · Apr 16, 2012

Tested and got similar results to those posted, but perhaps came to a different conclusion: the risks of hunkering down are worth the potential rewards, and I don't see big risks.

If we hunker and Ham just plainly retreats, then we can still attack whatever stack is available. If all the knights and chariots are moved out of range, then we'll get rid of the cats and any maces available and advance on Opis with a big stack. Even if, worst case, he retreats one tile and upgrades chariots, we will be able to attack them with cats, so won't have lost too much. (Don't think this will happen, because the CR cats will influence behavior.)

If he bombards and suicides some units, great, we'll go from there in a better position.

Even if he bombards and advances units without suiciding, concur with Hawk that we will have to attack, but we would be in better shape, because our cats' collateral damage will be effective on more units and we'll be able to wipe out most of his visible forces.

BTW, in one of my tests, he suicided both a knight and a mace and brought another knight forward. This allowed me (because there were no longer any maces on the tile outside Pat) to attack a knight with a pike at about 70% odds. Anyone else have that opportunity?

Getting late. Will look at eastern front and post in about 12 hours.

Mad Professor · Apr 16, 2012

Cactus Pete said:
BTW, in one of my tests, he suicided both a knight and a mace and brought another knight forward. This allowed me (because there were no longer any maces on the tile outside Pat) to attack a knight with a pike at about 70% odds. Anyone else have that opportunity?

Yes - this happened in three consecutive tests with me. The absence of a mace in the front stack is a big bonus if he suicides the ones in the stack.

Cactus Pete · Apr 16, 2012

Don't see a good way to go directly at Egypt. (Pleased to entertain any suggestions.) Too many counterattack possibilities, and a bull rush with a big stack would have to weather multiple seige weapon attacks and the follow up. Don't like the prospects of Hat moving trebs and HAs/WCs onto a roaded tile 2 tiles from Thebes, then attacking from there, especially across pig mountain where the river doesn't help the defense. Plenty of units would survive these kind of scenarios to take a city, but we would likely not be in good shape to go on and take multiple cities, which is what needs to happen.

So, propose the following to put the burden on the AI to play wisely . . .

Move one of our precious cats 3SW toward PiR.

Declare and move a large mixed stack of units onto the pig hill, including 3 crosses, a cat, trebs, a pike, and enough others to be able to attack effectively if Hat stages on an adjacent tile. (We could eventually defend against the trebs there, which is better than defending them in the city.)

Move wk5 onto the grass 1N1E of Thebes to verify that the farmed grass 3N of Thebes is empty (and return him to our territory), then, if vacant, move 2 spears, an axe, a treb, and a sword onto the 1N1E grass tile to try and draw forces toward them. If Hat comes onto the grass 2N of Thebes, then we can attack; if he comes onto the farmed grass 3N, then at least that will significantly reduce the immediate mobility of some of Hats troops (and we will probably retreat from there and advance elsewhere).

PiR will be hard to defend, so plan to move units from Memphis to PiR and move pike SW of Memphis into city.

Move the pike in Tokyo and the cross in Kyoto forward. (In case of cross, probably won't move him further, unless worth the risk to Kyoto from crosses out of Satsuma.

Plan to make the trade with Shaka for 100 gold.

Not planning to change any builds, but will concentrate on cats in subsequent ones.

zamint3 · Apr 16, 2012

Plan looks good. :goodjob:

Just a few notes:
Undecided noted 3 HAs in Heliopolis earlier so he's got some lurking around.
You could leave the scouting worker on the grass 2N of Thebes. :mischief:

The cat in Memphis could be whipped any time, ww will hit soon any way.
There might be a peace resolution we have to defy in 4 turns.
Use the spy as recon, we do have 175 EPs towards Hatse but I don't think any mission is worth it atm.
If we run out of gold, put one or two cities on wealth, trade with Shaka is fine. :thumbsup:

I'll join leif in one of his Hakas when ever he's ready! :crazyeye:

Cactus Pete · Apr 16, 2012

zamint3 said:
Plan looks good.

Just a few notes:
Undecided noted 3 HAs in Heliopolis earlier so he's got some lurking around. Understood.
You could leave the scouting worker on the grass 2N of Thebes. Yes, that's probably better.
The cat in Memphis could be whipped any time, ww will hit soon any way. Makes sense.
There might be a peace resolution we have to defy in 4 turns. Oh, joy.
Use the spy as recon, we do have 175 EPs towards Hatse but I don't think any mission is worth it atm. Spy can't move this turn, but planned on putting him on a hill to keep track of Hat's forces in two cities.
If we run out of gold, put one or two cities on wealth, (could happen) trade with Shaka is fine. Hope it keeps us in the black so we don't have to use our GA during wartime and war weariness.

I'll join leif in one of his Hakas when ever he's ready!

leif always seems ready for a Haka, and we probably could use a good one right now.

Not playing for about 24 hours, so additional advice is welcome.

leif erikson · Apr 16, 2012

Plan looks good (as amended by z3), be interested to see how it works. :goodjob:

Sorry been a bit tardy, real life is biting hard and I got some flu or something. It was 85 degrees F up here today (and tomorrow) and I'm not used to that this time of year. :crazyeye:

Be very happy to perform a drug induced haka tomorrow morning (it'll be too hot by afternoon) and I'm too sick to go jump in the 45 degree F ocean. :sad:

Cactus Pete · Apr 17, 2012

Get well, leif. Need you for the long haul.

Undecided · Apr 17, 2012

Cactus Pete said:
[War plan against hatshe by CP]
Agree that the war against Hatshe is going to be difficult. Your plan looks good however and we shouldn't run in to much trouble. Let's hope for a more siege-friendly outcome than thebes if we knock at the doors of heliopolis.

Move the pike in Tokyo and the cross in Kyoto forward. (In case of cross, probably won't move him further, unless worth the risk to Kyoto from crosses out of Satsuma.
We could take the cross in tokyo and get a peak at satsuma from the forest-ph. After that the CB and a pike could move on the cow-tile near memphis and sit there capable of reinforcing 3 cities. We likely won't face any major threat out of sats as the CB from earlier is still inside the city and hathse finished something 6 turns ago. Not many possibilities with only 2h per turn so she might have a WC inside the city. If we watch closely at the population of satsuma we can adjust our garrison accordingly without overdefending as the one CB will probably stay as city garrison as long as she isn't whipping a longbow when sats hits size 4 in a couple turns (3 or 4).

Plan to make the trade with Shaka for 100 gold. Concur. There could also be the possibility to trade another cow and renegotiate a couple deals in two turns with shaka, genghis and eliza. We can also start trading the gems in 6 turns from thebes most likely.

Not planning to change any builds, but will concentrate on cats in subsequent ones. I think we need a good amount of trebs to crack heliopolis defenses but agree that cats are also important..

Couple other things:

We have to watch out for an AI getting astronomy.
1. This could be the final variable for the Wheoohrn-AIs to attack us and create a front that will be incredibly difficult to defend. . As long as the AI has landtiles to reach us they won't stage a naval invasion but it seems that our two biggest rivals don't have one. (man/huy and eliza, but mainly worried about the team-AI SE of thebes.)

2.Astro could also spell doom for Tokugawa. As soon as he is gone we are in trouble i think. We need to keep the punching bag as long as possible or create another one.

3. Not sure if it's possible but man/huy could settle the spot 3S of thebes which would be very unfortunate. Don't think the crab-banana spot is in danger as there is only one landtile avaliable.

I'd like to run 2 scientists in bombay. This would decrease the production, but would grant us another GPerson in 14 turns. We could make use of a scientist or a prophet.

If we really starting to hurt for gold we could try and demand gold from toku. We have a much higher powerrating and i don't think he would declare on us if we was opposed to our reasonable request.

Oh and get well leif.

Cactus Pete · Apr 17, 2012

Move the pike in Tokyo and the cross in Kyoto forward. (In case of cross, probably won't move him further, unless worth the risk to Kyoto from crosses out of Satsuma.
We could take the cross in tokyo and get a peak at satsuma from the forest-ph. My concern is that a longbow will be built at some point in the near future, and the cross will be free to attack us. After that the CB and a pike could move on the cow-tile near memphis and sit there capable of reinforcing 3 cities. Essentially what I had in mind. We likely won't face any major threat out of sats as the CB from earlier is still inside the city and hathse finished something 6 turns ago. Not many possibilities with only 2h per turn so she might have a WC inside the city. If we watch closely at the population of satsuma we can adjust our garrison accordingly without overdefending as the one CB will probably stay as city garrison as long as she isn't whipping a longbow when sats hits size 4 in a couple turns (3 or 4). Believe Sat is capable of 6 hammers per turn, so could have 30 into longbow soon.

Plan to make the trade with Shaka for 100 gold. Concur. There could also be the possibility to trade another cow and renegotiate a couple deals in two turns with shaka, genghis and eliza. We can also start trading the gems in 6 turns from thebes most likely. Good point to keep an eye on resource trade possibilites.

Undecided said:
Couple other things:

We have to watch out for an AI getting astronomy. In Vanilla, this would be too soon for the AI to research Astro. They wait on it. Is this not true in BtS?

3. Not sure if it's possible but man/huy could settle the spot 3S of thebes which would be very unfortunate. Once Thebe's culture expands, this wouldn't seem a promising spot. Other opinions on the danger of an AI settling here at some point? Don't think the crab-banana spot is in danger as there is only one landtile avaliable.

I'd like to run 2 scientists in bombay. This would decrease the production, but would grant us another GPerson in 14 turns. We could make use of a scientist or a prophet. Prefer running a scientist in Delhi. Don't want another GProph. We need to bulb Astro.

If we really starting to hurt for gold we could try and demand gold from toku. We have a much higher powerrating and i don't think he would declare on us if we was opposed to our reasonable request.

Interesting. Other opinions on this?

Planning to play in about 5 hours.

SGOTM 15 - Xteam

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