Swiss Pauli said:
I think we might as well take Osaka and Kagoshima, too, as their defences - at present - are rather light.
TheArchduke said:
We should really concentrate on making that continent our own and get rid of Toku asap.
So said the team members. Guess I'd better do what they suggest, right?
(0) 1300AD Looking over our position, overall I'm relatively pleased. The only AI civ that looks to be dangerous is Darius, who's built up a rather sizable tech lead. Everyone else is behind us or well within striking distance. The war against Tokugawa is going very well; he's due to get Feudalism in 4 turns, except that the civ swap will wipe out that progress and make it take that much longer. How... unfortunate for him.
I concur that we should try to wipe out Toku's core in the north before making peace. Actually, I pretty much have no choice in the matter; when I go through the civ swap, Toku will reset to "refuses to talk!" with our civ, so we're going to be at war for the next 5-10 turns regardless. Might as well pick up a few prizes while we're at it!
Unfortunately, Barcelona and Oporto will lose their nearly-completed builds when I make the swap. Nothing I can do about that. (Just remember never to whip anything on the final turn - it won't complete! Whip on the next-to-last turn if you're going to do so.) I note that we still only have 5 workers... uh, I'll see what I can do about that on my turnset. I can grab a worker from Japan right now, which is sitting exposed on the border. That increases worker capacity by 20%!
Techwise, there are some deals we can make, so let's do so! I trade Paper @2nd (Darius already has it) to Peter for Optics and 65g. We got a good deal because we already had some beakers invested in Optics - beakers that would have disappeared if I waited until after the swap! This reveals that Peter has Astronomy (!!!), which may be how he's managed to reach 20 cities. Yikes. Could be trouble long-term. I then trade Paper + 200g to Ramesses for Music tech. Ramesses refuses to trade Theology, so he's definitely working on building either Hagia Sophia (don't care) or the Apostolic Palace. Keep an eye on the Egyptian. Finally, I make back our money by selling Drama to horribly backwards Shaka for 150g. We end up making 15g and pulling in 2 techs - not too shabby!
Now time to roll our new leader and civ. For the civilization, I get... the Vikings! Interesting. Berserkers won't really add much to our civ, although I suppose building some wouldn't hurt either. Better than regular maces, of course. The unique building, the trading post, we'll have to be careful with. Stacked atop a standard lighthouse, that would produce 3 food/turn on water tiles, which would pretty much destroy game balance. I'm going to hold off building any on my turnset, until we can discuss what to do as a team. Maybe build them only in cities that don't already have lighthouses (?) Our leader is... Huayna Capac! Ha. No Charismatic civ, but Financial/Industious is a great combo nonetheless. With stone + Industrious, I think I'll see if I can land Notre Dame in Madrid.
As always, I go through our cities and emphasize growth, since the food box everywhere gets wiped out in the swap. I also note that Madrid can't build Notre Dame, since it was moved to Engineering tech in the expansion (d'oh!) Maybe for the next player's turns. Here's something I didn't expect to see: the civ swap also brings all recently-captured cities out of resistance!
Heh. This allows me to whip a courthouse in Kyoto (the city already has an Academy AND a settled Great Scientist, so it doesn't need a theatre right away for culture). I also take advantage of our cheap Industrious forges to queue them in many cities.
Enough text! Here's the new look of our civ:
(1) 1305AD Stack of doom closes in on Nara. Outlook very poor for defenders as City Raider III Praetorians and maces congregate outside its walls.
(2) 1310AD Darius (who no longer hates us due to the civ swapping, yay!) pops up and offers to trade one of his resources for our copper. That's an uneven deal... in fact, he refuses to make anything but wildly uneven resource trade, so no deal for now. (I think this is a bug in the current version of Beyond the Sword, if I remember correctly.)
Nara taken easily:
No losses. Praetorians look really cool on the attack too! Moving on the next city, little Kagoshima next. I should also mention that the civ swap
eliminates war weariness. Didn't think about that either! We may be able to keep this war going for longer than expected, excellent!
I decide to sell another backwards tech (Compass) to Shaka; not because I want his 50g, but because I want his World Map. Before the civ swap, he refused to trade it to us because we were on poor relations. Now everyone is sitting at "Cautious", so he's OK with the deal. This reveals... a lot of info! Shaka is on a continent with Ramesses and Darius. Poor Ramesses looks totally squished in terms of land, only six heavily pressured cities. And... there's still another civ out there we haven't met yet! Wow, crazy. I'm sending a workboat to go investigate right away.
(3) 1315AD Toku foolishly runs a bunch of horse archers INTO Kagoshima, not realizing that our units are heavily promoted down the City Raider line. He'd do much better to try and face us in the field, rather than taking a stand inside the city! There's a small stack moving to threaten Nagoya (our iron location in the south), but I've been moving some archer reinforcements down there for a while now, once it became obvious that the northern front was coming to an end as a serious threat.
(4) 1320AD I realize that there's no reason not to have Open Borders with Darius and Shaka, now that they'll speak to us, so I go ahead and do so. I also trade some of our excess fish and clams to Shaka for gems. We fail to take Kagoshima when Toku wins a battle at 6% odds, hmph! Darn archer will get a lot of XP from that too...
(5) 1325AD Kagoshima does fall this turn, although it proved a little more costly than I expected:
Kyoto now gains control over the silver resource at the Japanese capital. Wow, that is REALLY a nice location. Three clams plus corn plus silver plus copper!
It's already got an Academy and a Great Scientist specialist.
This should be the spot for Globe Theatre + National Epic!
(6) 1330AD Moving on Osaka. The attack against Nagoya (a pitiful horse archer, catapult, and two chariots) has been easily beaten off.
(7-8) Bombarding at Osaka. Pesky walls! Darius also grabbed Education here, so he's almost certainly going to beat us to Liberalism. Irritating, but not much we can do. Given our dismal economic situation for much of this succession game's life, I'm pretty impressed by how decently we're doing!
(9) 1345AD Kill a whole host of defenders at Osaka, but there are too many to get them all on this turn. Our losses are a suicide cat and one unlucky Praetorian.
(10) 1350AD I take Osaka with no losses on the final turn. So all in all, that was a very productive turnset. Since war weariness is still pretty manageable, I'd go right ahead and keep on pushing against Toku in the south until we can no longer continue fighting. Losses are minimal, although we will need to replace some cats. Our City Raider Prats/maces/zerks are hardly dying at all - which makes sense, since most of the defenders are ARCHERS!
Might as well keep going, eh? One thing we do need to start building is some longbows for garrison duty. Many of our recent captures are sitting empty, or nearly so, which makes me uncomfortable. We also need more than a chariot and warrior on South Island! I queued up an initial longbow in Ondini, and I'd try to slip in some more wherever possible. One problem I DID solve: we now have nine workers! Of course, that was entirely from capturing Japanese workers/settlers, but I never said HOW I was going to fix the issue!
Techwise, Darius and Peter look like the major threats. We'll discover Education in a couple turns, then we can reassess from there. See if we can trade the tech for something. I don't think we can beat Darius to Liberalism... but we probably want to head in that direction anywhy, so why not try? We'll pop a Great Person in Madrid in 9 or so turns. I'd rush Sistine if we get a Great Engineer - a fun wonder for all sorts of victory conditions. Or maybe the Apostolic Palace if it's still available by then! That would be a big boost too.