RBtS1b - The Thief Economy

Got it.

More good thievery :goodjob: so I should be due another bad streak :rolleyes:

Build-wise, I think that a CH in Mutal in order to run a spy makes sense. Elsewhere whip Jumbos where practical, and maybe a forge or two.

As to the war, Shaka should really quit :smoke: That's twice he's piled in with wildly inferior units. Maybe it's an EP thing: if one AGG AI can't see the other civ's power then he just steams in regardless? However, it looks like a bit of stalemate outisde Ecbatana; let's hope it continues like this and peace breaks out soon, so we can bribe Shaka into war again when we're ready.

Techs: I'd propose to target Darius for Guilds (good tech, Shaka's bribe). Aside from that, we seem pretty up-to-date. We have no Calendar resources, and Compass isn't much use to us either. Maybe split EPs between Wang (long-term investment), Hat and Darius (cheaper war missions)?

PS: I didn't see any shared religion modifiers: maybe one needs to control the Holy City for this to work?
 
Oooops. On a busy news turn early in my set, I contrived to completely overlook the fact that Hatty had broken free from Darius. I was distracted by her runmbling another Spy in Memphis, and Shaka adopting HR and Org Rel (I had just traded it to him). :blush: doesn't really convey my embarrassment on this one. I happened to be building up our army, and Shaka is still at war with Hatty (but at peace with Darius) so we can't bribe Zulu into attacking Darius anyway. Our army is more or less in place to attack Hatty next turn, with a few units on go-tos.

Hatty caught two other Pies at Memphis (one of whom was only passing through towards Wang). Guilds was obtained at the cost of one failed and identified spy. I've been shifting EPs around to get enough of a balance to steal Banking from Darius, whilst maintaining a positive balanced with Hatty and Wang, but now it's only Hatty and Darius getting any EPs, as we've spent our surplus cash.

Shaka got corn, but traded us Deer for Spices. Cancelled the gift of clams. A CH was whipped at Mutal and a Spy assigned, the other cities were whipped quite hard for military. The workers have nothing to do, until they can clear some Egyptian jungle.

I had the idea to get Memphis and Elephantine into revolt at the end of the turn that we move troops into Egyptian territory, so we could then move 2 tiles on the next turn, and then repeat the revolt to help take the city, but her success at unmasking our Spies at Memphis has undermined this idea (though we have two Spies in the Memphis area).

ungy is up:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96651/RBtS1b_AD-0900.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Drat, I forgot to mention in my turn report that she had completed a spy out of Memphis. If it is stationed there, then that would account for why our spies are being found out quicker.
 
OK it seems clear that we have to attack Egypt. We're unfortunately a little weak in city busting units. I'd be inclined to DOW her and wait a turn or 2 for her stack to come for us so we can waste it. Otherwise we have to keep lots of defenders.

Unfortunately if she caps to D I think we're in trouble as we need everything we have for her now. I'm inclined to go for it--build some defense if we take a city or two from her but I think this is a good chance. I think whip up a few knights and go for it in around 3 turns or so. I'm inclined to whip aggressively here--I think this is a make or break war. Time is not on our side in this game at all.

I'll play tomorrow night.
 
I advise to go on the attack as soon as you feel happy, as we can shelter in the forests outside Hatty's cities (and my major oversight has already wasted some turns). With Level 2 units, we should be able to bust cities if we can get defences down: it'll be a while if we have to rely on Accuracy cats, rather than Pie-induced revolts.
 
I advise to go on the attack as soon as you feel happy, as we can shelter in the forests outside Hatty's cities (and my major oversight has already wasted some turns). With Level 2 units, we should be able to bust cities if we can get defences down: it'll be a while if we have to rely on Accuracy cats, rather than Pie-induced revolts.
I think the cats will be fine--Hat doesn't have walls up.

My hope to lure her SOD on the attack is
1) It'll take a few turns for our knights to arrive. Those are really the ideal LB busting units. Swords are good--better value. Problem is that 2 of our cities are in easy reach and she has a large mounted stack. So if we can get her to come for us then we wipe it up and life just gets simpler. If we have to divide our forces more complicated.
 
OK here we go. I start out by stealing calendar from Hat. While we don't immediately need it, the other techs she has are much cheaper and I want to take advantage of trade route bonuses for the bigger tech.

Change to build a bunch of knights--going to whip again next turn.
Move a few units down from Mutal to join attack. Holkian no good against D--still good against Hat.
We steal calendar (78%) from Hat.

910 whip knights in Mutal, Thebes,Chichen,Maya. DOW Hat--hoping she'll send forces against us.
IBT we lose spy at Elephantine.
925 Hat does not attack--we start to move on her.
940...
IBT 3 cats suicide against us. Shaka asks us kindly for feud--well I was planning on giving it to him anyway. GG born in Mutal--will be medic 3 char.

D completes statue of Zeus. This will be somewhat of a problem later on.
950 reducing Memphis. Hat has a bunch of units there.
IBT cat and HA suicide against our SOD.
960 we take Memphis:) . suicide 2 cats then we kill 1 jumbo, 3LB, sword, HA, and 2 WC w/o further loss.
Outside Memphis we find a stack of axe, HA, and 2WC and dispatch them w/o loss. Hat still has quite a few units wandering around and we don't have a great way of taking out hill LB. Some of our units are a little beaten up.
IBT we lose another spy at Alex. This was stupid--I should have figured Egyptian spy goes there from Memphis.
980 we start reducing Elephantine. We fail to steal monotheism:(
IBT our trireme kills Egyptian trireme. Hat--peace with Zulu.
990 Another trireme in Elephantine. Elephantine has 2LB,1XB, WC on hill.
We sacrifice 2 cats and then take it w/o further loss:)
I rearrange some trades. I send a bunch of workers down to Egypt.

Hat will now cap. I'm going to stop here for discussion but my initial thought is we need to take it. This really accomplishes most of our objectives: We have eliminated a southern front for us and created an ally vs. D. We have taken off some cultural pressure and picked up a couple of resources--sugar + gems. I'm thinking we can go for D sooner rather than later--we can get Zulu to start it off and then give him a true dogpile. He doesn't look that strong militarily and we lost only 4 cats in our war (although we need to replace some spies).
I think we should be able to take a few cities and knock him down a bit.
 
We are set up to steal from D. I think we should wait and steal Eng.

Save is here:
 

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great turns, ungy! Agree that we should capitulate.

Shoot, Darius built SoZ all the way over on the other side of his empire in Susa. That complicates things. Even if we launch an attack from Hatty we'll have quite a march to get to that city.

When we do attack Darius, we need to make taking Pasargadae a priority. That city houses at least one wonder (Colossus) and the Jewish shrine (which if our theory of espionage is correct, owning it will help our spying efforts against other Jewish nations).

Also, Darius has two sources of Iron but he only has one of Horses. Maybe we could sabotage that...
 
Hatty
Agree to take her as a Vassal. We keep the full fat crosses of Ele and Memphis. The only good city remaining is Alex (and we'd lose the sugar to Darius), and we don't want her capitulating to Darius.

Darius
His main stack was (and almost certainly still is) in Ecbatana. I'd like to track this stack with a Spy (and we have one in Egypt we could divert there), as the AI will now move its attack stack away from its garrison.

He has built walls in all cities, so siege bombard will be slow, making pie-revolts an attractive option.

The key cities to target are Pasargadae, Persepolis, and Susa. We can attack in the 'conventional' order Pas=>Per=>Susa, or reverse this to gain control of Temple of Zeus at the start of war. Susa is two tiles from Zulu, so this is quite possible, though more expensive in support costs. My main concern with ToZ is that we don't have Drama to offset WW, but we do now have Sugar and soon(ish) Gems. I’m not sure how badly ToZ will impact Shaka’s warring.

Steal Engineering when we can afford it.

Shaka
His power has spiked quick pleasingly, and he'll DoW Darius (but I didn't check his price). We could ask him to adopt Vassalage to improve his units; he's had the possibility for 6 turns without adopting.

Wang
He has CS, so we could try to steal this after Engineering, but would need to invest some EPs to do so.

Thieves
I’d recommend assigning the Spy at Mutal to reduce the turns for the next GMan from 45 to 19: we’re struggling to match the EP spending of Darius and Wang, and could use the boost to EPs Scotland Yard would give.

I think we can move relatively quickly to attack Darius. Adding some Trebs would be good (and cats if we can’t steal Engineering), and restocking our Pies is also needed. I probably favour the conventional attack order.

I'd say another 10-15 turns to build up and get some intel on Darius troops before bribing Shaka to attack, then launch in ourselves after taking a turn or two to see how the initial battles pan out. What do you guys think?


Ungy can play on if he wishes, otherwise Kodii is up.
 
I’d recommend assigning the Spy at Mutal to reduce the turns for the next GMan from 45 to 19: we’re struggling to match the EP spending of Darius and Wang, and could use the boost to EPs Scotland Yard would give.
Definately. My mistake:(

As for playing on, I'm happy to do so or pass the torch. If Kodii doesn't check in the next day or so I'll play another short set.

I think we should either play 10 turn sets or 15 with a break in the middle for comments. We've got a lot going on and the variant is a new one.

I'm inclined to go sooner rather than later with D.

I'm also less interested in SOZ--we have a lot of pretty obsolete units we can use for garrisons. His having it makes it much better to save those for garrisons as opposed to suiciding them to help out.
 
Definately. My mistake:(
Don't worry about it: we were in whip up an army mode.

As to number of turns, don't be afraid to break for discussion at any time during a set. Ten to fifteen turn is fine as a general guideline, but I think the best handover point is a 'natural' break in play, such a key tech, or when AI attacks dry up, etc.

In this case, it's fine to play on, as most of next few turns will be spent moving units towards D/healing, so another good handover point is not far away.
 
ungy, go ahead and continue. I hadn't realized that I was up after that, but now I am. :)

The plans look great to me, sorry that I cannot comment more right now.
 
I'll play us a bit tomorrow.

BTW using a GS to build a Scotland Yard is not a good idea. We will have a large empire and not run too high a esp rate. The bomb is 4500, and that will help us get to some key techs. Payback on a Scotland Yard is just too long.
 
I disagree with the payback of Scotland Yard, ungy. We have to win via space race, so there are still plenty of turns to be played. Currently Scotland Yard in Mutal will break 4500EP in 116 turns, more likely under 100 with city growth.

The real question is which is better: Scot Yard in the long run or an EP boost right now? Will the small advantage gained by 4500 EP now outlast the gradual boost of Scot Yard? If it helps us take over Darius faster then yes. Otherwise I say build Scot Yard.
 
I'm also in favour of the Yard as it gives us long term, flexible EPs. Claiming Pasargadae and the Temple of Solomon will let us keep a high EP rate until we start to be interested in rush-buying. And it's along the rushbuy line (Constit, Demo) that Espionage buildings are located. If we wipe out Darius soon, or reduce him to a weak rump state, then there's only Wang to tech strongly.
 
OK-I'll continue a bit.

I don't think there's any way you'll convince me on the Scotland yard but we can have that discussion another time. Mutal will grow but we are currently running 100%. Our breakeven is 30% (will be higher after things settle down a bit but maybe 50% with a large empire.

We take peace with Hattie--oops I forget we can't extort tech. Was the first thing I did so reload and just take her $.

I change to build a few spies--we have only 2 and I think the city revolt at 200 is well worth it. AI will whip a unit every turn our SOD sits there.

As for a battle plan with D--I'm for Pasargadae first. Hard to argue with those wonders--then move to Persopolis. My plan is to whip out a few trebs when we get eng.

Question is should we take Ergli to open communications? I think yes--can be done with reinforcements I think. Also I think (but am not sure) that if we attack from our territory then units lost count as much less for WW.

1000 We steal eng:) D's SOD still watching Zulu. Get a few trebs going.
D is not really that strong.

1010 trade clam to shaka for 8gpt. Direct Hat to research theo.

IBT D builds Glib, parth.

1020...

1030..Our forces are in mostly in position. I think now is the time to go with us DOW in 3 turns. That lets us get the cat from Thebes up as well as the spies properly timed. I think now is right to get the Zulu in. Hmm despite being white I can't get him in.

IBT Zulu ask we cancel deals with D--I oblige.
Zulu take vassalage.
1040 D build Shewegon Paya.
1050 Zulu will still not attack. We're set up to go next turn--maybe they'll join us later.
 
My battle plan would be as follows:

SOD heads to Pasargadae. Since Zulu are not in, we need to keep a few jumbos back for anti-knight duty. We have 7 I would recommend keeping 3 back. Once we have Pasargadae I expect that will be focus of D attention. D does not have that many knights. I recommend we use the 2 cats I held back to reduce Ergili, then suicide some axes then take with the reinforcement knight and maybe another knight.

At some point we should send a spy down to Egypt and steal Mono and then Theo.
 
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