Von Münchhausen II

We have 6 cannons en route towards Egypt and we're still building 2 more? I think Sukhothai should finish a bank before another cannon.

Click to expand...

As Optional said these are for artillery upgrades that will happen in 9 turns.

Hastings has noone in the wat, I know pretty foodpoor city, but still every beaker counts.

Click to expand...

Hastings was acting as a troop producer (very well) as we we're in our second war with plans of rolling straight in to the next one.

SiSatch will have another GSci in about 9 turns, can we use him together with the other scientist, PLUS the RA that finishes in 2 turns, to get something nice?

Click to expand...

I thought this was the general idea we had all agreed on (Rifling and Dynamite bulb).

Who are we going to war at next? If it's America or Egypt, we will have to wait 7 turns as deals was made with them.

Turn 166 - Gold to Egypt for 240g
Silk and Marble to America for 240g each.

So I'm confused here.

Click to expand...

Sorry I don't play that you can't sell resources to AI before attacking. I'll try to avoid it in future.

I assume we planning on DoWing Egypt very soon. This set?

We have 4500g and 81gpt now, we can afford to annex whatever we want, but let's start with London, then Delhi. I think we can afford more later.

Click to expand...

I agree that London id the best choice to annex right now. Don't TP spam it or Delhi's tiles!

Too bad my scouts I asked for in the beginning of the game didn't show up, we know 11 alive City states (we'll free Capetown when we get there), we are still missing 4 and if we had 2-3 scouts available when we learnt Astronomy, they would be happily sailing around now.

Click to expand...

We do still have 2 scouts. Sorry I forgot to send it to the CS by India.

Easy choices: Annex London, then Delhi when they stop revolting.
Change Sukhothai to bank before another cannon, we can't even fit more cannons on the frigging map!

Click to expand...

I think we should finish the cannon before we hit Artillery.

Sort out how we get Dynamite fastest - we have one GSci waiting to buld something, we have a RA in 2 turns and another GSci coming in 9 turns. That should be more than enough. After that we need to know where there is coal and oil later.

Click to expand...

Bulb Rifling and Dynamite. RA can go were ever really I don't think its going to yield much.

Next main tech targets for me are Oil and Tanks

Ok, I'm content with the explanations and we take on Egypt next. I have no problems really with it, only that I never play in that way myself.

And a couple more cannons (artilleries) wouldn't kill us as they'll be useful with a more spreadout army. With those to accompany our phants it looks like a walk in the park now. I never was good using cats or cannons effectively in my own games, so I'm glad to see it through other players eyes. Usually I stick to my LS and just swing at everything, not even bothering much about promotions...but that's on King and Emperor.

So do we have any options for another CS? Most are hostile if I remember right and some are "taken". Not a big issue, but it would be nice to have another lux as we move on. Second look at the save, Bucharest (Ottomans) have silver and 6 iron, Budapest (noone) have Wine and 4 horses. I think we can afford them now, Bucharest will be a buffer near America and Budapest the same between America and Russia.

And in time we liberate Cape Town, dunno what they have.

And btw, while checking City States, we're at war with India's ally Genoa who is not on the current map. I suppose making peace wouldn't hurt.

I'm off to the Lake District for the weekend so I won't be able to contribute to discussion. I'm sure you know what I think anyway!

grandad1982 said:

I'm off to the Lake District for the weekend so I won't be able to contribute to discussion. I'm sure you know what I think anyway!

Click to expand...

Always sailing away on a shrimp-sandwich!

If you didn't already think about it, we might figure something out.

Have a good weekend, grandad!

Ah I'm back in the game. Looking at that I think I would wait until we get dynamite then just sweep through Egypt on to US.

We have OB with Egypt for a good while yet but I think we can break that. Our trade deal ends soon if I read right.

I plan to declare on turn 9 and should redline a city of Egypts then.

I would feel like some banks after the 2 cannons, I think our army is so big we should maybe think about armourys, barracks before more units. I will convert all of our cannons into artys then I think we are looking good. I can declare on Egypt before the end of this set.

I will try to get the scouts on the seas. I think we could have squeezed in another city state really but we are still winning.

Should I annex London now and build a courthouse (I could buy it also).
It's got a mint and is not working the second gold, supposed to be on gold focus also, what is the AI doing???

Are we moving all our army towards US or leaving some as a rearguard. I guess India can't do much vs us now anyway.

I think we can declare now, cannons and Naresuans are way better than anything Egypt has. They look ripe for the picking. Time will only tick in Egypt's favour, our opponent's towns will only get touger, it'll get harder for the Naresuans.

You may want to declare and just sit back, slaughter the units they send us first, that can be okay, that's basically what we did with the English, going straight for the core usually doesn't work on a high level, so letting them come first is okay.

Grandad still made trade deals with Egypt, as that's the way he plays. He still sold a lux 4 turns ago, but I would prefer we ignore that for now. We know the game itself will ignore it. We should put a rule in stone about this for any next SG, maybe at least wait 10 turns or so, but for our war against Egypt that's too late.

I think there's a majority for annexing London now. If a courthouse can get built in a reasonable time I see no reason to rush it, but just do what you see fit.

I believe Gozpel wanted banks as well, so just go ahead if you think our military is sufficient.

I'll get cracking with the war then. No need for niceties. Turns will be done tomorrow.

Turn 170 1100 AD
Just inherited, moved a bit towards Egypt because I'm about to DoW them, gotta get scouts out first

Turn 171
More troop movements

Turn 172
RA with Cathy ends and shaves about 5 turns off Military Science, I renew it for 250 each.
Sukhothai, cannon > bank
Muang, LSman > barracks

Declare war on Egypt
I'm just going for it, Egypt doesnt have much army it seems. I've never had such a large army in one of my games

Turn 173
Hastings, cannon > bank
Gems deal with Sulie ends so I renew for 230 gold.
London finishes its bank so I annex it now. 4 turns to courthouse. We go from 7 happy to 0!

Turn 174
Military science is in. I go for compass because we will need those techs to go forward anyway and soem ocean explo would be nice. I decided to bulb rifling seeing as we had a GS around anyway.
Muang, Barracks > rifle

Turn 175
Sukhothai, Bank > armoury
Elephantine falls! No burial tomb though, a measly 149 gold. Oh well. Onto the next.

I upgrade 3 NE to cavalrys. It takes horse and only gives 3 extra strength but I think we need mobility.

Turn 176
Washingtons Fur for gold ends and we are now -10 happy. I renew it to -6 but we will need
to break it soon. I will annex Delhi in 2 turns when London finishes courthouse.
Si Satch. bank > theatre. We don't need any more army so I thought might as well. We will start to really get a happiness squeeze soon.

Compass > Astronomy
Troops are healing up and shuffling around, I think arties will help a lot getting to the rest of Egypts land. Its rough terrain everywhere, and a pain in the arse to move around.

I'm upgrading to rifles a lot, we won't need crossbows with our so much artillery.

Turn 177
Sorry we lost a scout who was sailing near Hanoi Didn't even see what it was. Unfortunately it is going to be hard to explore the oceans as we have no coastal towns yet.
We could annex Nottingham or Coventry. I just think there may be a nice city state or natural wonder out there.

London, courthouse > library. A big boost to happiness.

I annex Delhi. Nice city for specialists but theres no Wat there, only a workshop. Courthouse in 3. (I would consider buying a Wat here later and building other improvements).

Egypt are sending some pikes but Im just waiting for arty at Elephantine with a defensive line.

I notice Budapest is unallied and has wine that we need, it is also strategically positioned behind America and is a militaristic neutral. I put 1000 gold in for 135 influence. Here is our new friend.



Turn 178
New round of trades with Cathy. I like it, we got silver for Sydney also.


Turn 179
Egypt want peace and will give us about half of what they have but I dont thinks so. I want the capital.

A boffin is born in Si Satch and ends his life prematurely pottering about playing with explosives in his garden shed. Dynamite is in then.

I upgrade a few cannons.

Sukhothai, armoury > rifle
Hastings, bank > theatre

Astronomy > Navigation.

Turn 180 1200 AD
Heres the logjam. I got a bit brave with the cannon that took a hit from a pike but I think we are set to sweep through Thebes and Heliopolis then onto America. I didn't make any moves in this turn yet so its up to the next.

A bit of a traffic jam there, north of Thebes! Funny to see how the Egyptian capital is defended by just an archer, if only this was civ III... Our real enemy seems to be the one unit per tile restriction, that doesn't look like fun now.

I think it was a good decision to go for manual courthouse building, considering how much we needed to spend on upgrades. Honour would really have helped here, but we haven't got that.
I see you leveled out our perhaps unfair advantage from a recent trade with Egypt with not asking for money to declare war on them, so then we're sort of even again on that chart.
Silver from Catherine would have been available at the start of your set already, I suggested it, together with a Research Agreement with Oda. The RA is still available, just costing more now.

I haven't looked at every town, but I would go for a bit more production in Delhi at the cost of food. The town is still on gold focus, making +14 , there are a couple of river-mines available that I would pick. You want to grow when towns are still small, but at this phase of the game, going for Domination, you want hammers.
So also a bit of unhappiness every now and then is no problem, growth is at the bottom of our wish list now.

Nothing you could do about the lost scout; some caravel comes flying out of the fog and that's it. Can we have Gods & Kings mechanics, please? I'm a fan of building a caravel of our own now in London, that's so much better, we will learn more about the map, find the few remaining CS's, etc.
Our money is a bit low now, but that could look different again in 10 turns time. Although, the Naresuans probably really need the upgrade. On the terrain they are now they're just doing 1 tile per turn, you can't move them to where you want them, they're making the traffic jams worse, their slow speed can be a bit frustrating.

Next Social Policy in 7 turns; just continueing with the Freedom tree, I guess. Half unhappiness from specialists would be good is what I think we said before. We can't immediately pick that, but the prerequisite policy at least.
Techs I failed to look at, probably Gozpel will come up with some ideas here.

Oh I'm a bit bummed I missed the RA with Oda. That traffic jam is painful I can tell you. If we had a ship to look around and protect we could move some troops through the water around Thebes but I didn't fancy that without support. In principle I wouldn't mind annexing Coventry and buying a frigate but then it will be on the wrong side for the American cities and the rest, so probably not worth it. Cash is not massive now but hopefully Thebes has a burial tomb.

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm following the progress. My home computer is about dead now, so I can only get on with the laptop and phone... and I kinda got sucked into the PAX coverage last weekend. Last sets look great. I like the CS alliance and Grandad's brave stand at Delhi

Wow, what a congestion...this will be a hassle, luckily Egypt seem to be pretty gassed.

Ok, first, what cities do we want to take? Cap is a no-brainer, then we have Memphis with dyes which I don't think we have yet. So I want that city. Then we have their last city Heliopolis, which if we don't take it will only work as a plug for our reinforcements to deal with. The city itself doesn't seem to offer much, so what do we do here?

London can build a caravel in 5 turns or we can buy it now for 600g. How I'm going to pay for that, you ask. Well, we can sell luxes to England and Japan for 436g and we get more money from Sully when a deal ends next turn. We haven't seen even half of the map yet, but it's only a couple of CS left to find and probably a few barbcamps, so buying a caravel isn't really cost effective. Buy it would make me shut up forever about exploring the map

Anyways, a RA with Japan is possible - 300g and gems from us and he gives us 63g change back. How much DO we need another RA? 30 turns from now...

Science, we go straight for coal and oil, nothing really to worry about and we get another GSci in some 9 turns that can help with that, I think.

Next SP could be Free Religion in Piety, that would give us an extra 13 culture and we get a free policy, which goes into Civil Society in the Freedom tree. We would get Democracy slightly quicker this way, especially if London and Delhi builds some monuments and temples too. Just a thought.

I noticed the Heliopolis problem also. We do want dyes, a few cities of ours requested them on my set, but Heliopolis is blocking our access to America. If we take out Egypt completely we will lose our trades fairly fast. But really soon we will be hated anyway. I don't mind if you do that.

Also buying a caravel is not a bad idea for me. We do have a scout in the water above Japan but they are pretty slow and blind as a bat.

gozpel said:

Ok, first, what cities do we want to take? Cap is a no-brainer, then we have Memphis with dyes which I don't think we have yet. So I want that city. Then we have their last city Heliopolis, which if we don't take it will only work as a plug for our reinforcements to deal with. The city itself doesn't seem to offer much, so what do we do here?

Click to expand...

Well spotted! I hadn't seen that yet. Interesting problem. I scanned the map a bit, thinking there have to be more dyes around, but nope, as far as we can see that dyes in Egyptian lands is the only one.
I think Heliopolis is a must for us, though. We need to be able to pass through there. Egypt would give us Open Borders in a peace deal, but a couple of Egyptian units there could still block us. The naval (embarkation) option looks awkward as well.
Egypt would of course give us that dyes in a peace deal, then we would have it for 30 turns. Perhaps that would be my prefered option, although I'm not against a complete wipeout of Egypt either.

gozpel said:

London can build a caravel in 5 turns or we can buy it now for 600g.

Click to expand...

I spotted a third option: build a trireme in 2 turns and upgrade to frigate in 4 (Navigation is coming in in 4 turns). I think this would be my favourite. Not at all crazy as well would be to postpone Navigation slightly and build a few more triremes first. Los angelos, Seattle and Boston are coastal, Suleiman has quite a few coastal cities as well. We don't need all those cities, but we'll need some of them. You see with Thebes how awkward it is to attack a coastal city with just land units, and that's even without a frigate in Thebes itself! Some frigates would really help. We can't fit more land units on the map, but there's room for adding naval power.
Sorry, I'm from a seafaring country...

gozpel said:

Next SP could be Free Religion in Piety...

Click to expand...

It looks like it needs mandate of Heaven. Otherwise your tech and SP plans sound good.

Naval power won't do anything against Egypt, well only if we annex something on the south side, which we won't. But building a couple of triremes in London, no make that 3, while researching Acoustics after stopping Navigation on last turn, we can upgrade said triremes for 210g each if I'm not wrong here? So in 7 turns we'll have 3 frigates ready to move.

Sounds like a cheaper plan than mine, but better? I don't now, still I buy it (trireme-plan that is)and will play that way, if noone express themselves with a better plan. Maybe just build the one trireme and upgrade it, but it seems we need Acoustics anyhow so...?

As happiness is going, we will be better off next turn as Delhi get it's courthouse, plus we have a roadworker maing his best to reach Egypt. If we take all of Egypt, we'll get 4 more happy but much more unhappy....so maybe another annex shortly? We will have to spend money on happy as we sit now, but if we take over Egypt completely we will definetily struggle...even with the dyes.

But I still think that is the best plan, except building a quick settler and involving him in a peacedeal after placing him in some stupid spot and give away the city in the deal. Then we would'nt kill of Ramesses completely, when we take Egypt's last good city 10 turns later?

I don't feel a RA with Japan is very useful at this stage, better to sell them what we can miss and get some gold out of it.

Science is sorted I think.

I look at the warmap for the third time and I think our gold would be well spent to upgrade all NE's to cavs, we can upgrade 4now or 2 in a turn for 1260g. Like it is we're doing 116gpt right now, we'll get more when the egyptian roads are done in 7-8 turns.

You're right Optional, missed MoHeaven, so we go straight for Civil Society and then Democracy. When we get the first one, we have to be vigilant on faster city-growth...maybe turn off growth until we're sure. Maybe let our annnexed cities building some culture?

I play this tomorrow, will most likely take me all evening since I'm such a "perfectionist".

And what's the deal with lumbermills, chop the wood for stuff and build mines and farms!

Nicely done Brichals. I rea;;y hate the 1UPT shuffle in these situations.

I would raze Heliopolis. Burn baby burn! Don't mind killing Egypt off. We're going to be very hated soon anyway...

I agree about Lumbermills. I started to mine over one in my set!

Everything seems in place but I'll scan the save anyway,

I'll play tomorrow, but I thought about another way of getting out of the total warmongering hate.

After taking Thebes and Heliopolis for our free "walkway", should we make peace for 10 turns and give him Nottingham (next to London) in a peacedeal? London already owns every tile around there and we can sack Memphis in 10 turns after the deal? Nottingham isn't even improved, still a good city in a different victory condition, but here we can stack our enemies together in a little bunch and easily sorted.

grandad, how much do you hate it when I have to do the damn movements? Not as much as I do, I'm sure...this will be a hassle. Hopefully I won't lose any or many units, this type of landscape can surprise you.

I play tomorrow, give me your last ideas!

gozpel said:

grandad, how much do you hate it when I have to do the damn movements? Not as much as I do, I'm sure...this will be a hassle.

Click to expand...

Grandad did the troop movement back from Delhi to Egypt, which was already a hassle with only slow units. For some of it we have ourselves to blame, because we didn't invest in lancers or navy.

For naval power against Egypt it's too late, but we'll get in similar situations on the north side, against America and Ottomans at least, perhaps against Japan, they're still in the fog.
Whichever boat you build, I will always explore with it first. Well, unless there's no money on the bank anymore, then looking for CS's is pointless, then I'll probably sail towards Japan to check out that situation better. I always hate meeting CS's when I have no money, a woman would perhaps say it's like shopping without any money on you.

I'm not too bothered about how we deal with Egypt. If we leave Heliopolis for last, and it becomes the Egyptian captal, we can still raze it. No problem if we want to do that; you can raze a capital if it's not the original one.

Leaving them with Nottingham, and then later snap up Memphis seems a little contrived, it also puts us up with a two-front war at that stage, plus we would need to leave a couple of units around Nottingham.
It don't know how much diplo advantage we are left with; it's an extra war declaration and of course we'll get a denounciation from Egypt if we leave them in the game. Hmm... not sure if it's worth the bother, but I'm no expert here; I play more peaceful in my solo games.

Ya, this war is gonna put us in a significant warmonger status. I think if we wipe out Egypt we'll fall into the "critical warmonger" status. If not now then certainly when we declare on Washington... One of the civs will give us the warning that our aggression is drawing attention and we won't be able to trade anymore (something like 80 gold per luxury, no more open borders, etc.). You can usually get down to the last two or three civs if you never wipe someone out, but killing one outright seems to bring the hostility a lot quicker.

The city selling trick is a good idea to keep them alive, but it's too late now. We're already ankle deep in his... well, you know. We should leave some units behind anyway. AI can build military quick and Gandhi still had some good units left. A more war-prone civ like Japan or Mongolia would definitely try to take it's capital back. I don't know about Gandhi... just sayin.

I'm on turn 7, and we lost 3 cavs from ghosts, since we haven't war animations on.

I always play with normal comabt, so I can see who does what and so on.

But we haven't lost the game yet, since Egypt is GONE!!!!!!!

I'll use my last 3 turns to sort out some replacements.

Full report tomorrow, this time.