Von Münchhausen II

Optional said:

I said I found it rather late to get into, so that's not a vote pro Honour. All game I never said much about policies, as I was obviously the one with the off-beat opinion.

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Ah, I don't know. I think you're opinions are pretty consistent with the majority in this group. So, now I know what you're opposed to... I think. Is there a policy you would endorse or are you abstaining?

Optional said:

It seems now that it's a bit difficult to keep a consistent policy line in an SG. We've been talking about the next policy always, but not about a policy approach for the whole game. Maybe we can ban a few trees if we start a next SG, to make sure we're getting a more concentrated approach. I'm not too optimistic about getting a team decision about policies at this point

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Me neither. I'll give it a few more hours and if no one replies I'll just pick Monarchy and pass it along to the next player.

Optional said:

There are other decisions than this one to be made as well, like what are we doing with the Idian towns? I asked, and nobody has replied yet. Also, do we need a fleet?
You can't answer those questions well if you haven't had a look at the save. Personally I need to take a better look as well, as I'm not sure how many of our enemy's cities are actually coastal. Maybe early game you can still follow well what's going on by just absorbing the posts and pictures, but that's not anymore the case.

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I planned on making the Indian towns puppets. The wonders may be spread about the towns equally, but if they're all in the capital I suppose we could sell one of them. I don't think we need to sell towns that are so close to our own capital. If we have to sell towns - and I imagine we will (back to the social policy discussion) - we can wait until we're cutting through America.

Naval units aren't a priority for me. It wouldn't surprise me if someone wanted to get that started right now though. It's a good time to annex the coastal city anyway.

Ok so my thoughts on builds. Pikes or muskets for upgrades and thats it. Hastings has a Pike with nearly 80 hammers invested in it so don't forget to finish it.

Don't forget the GSci in Sukho is only one turn away if both sci spec slots are filled. Maybe wait till we've got 4/5 units to upgrade before popping Rifling first?

I would leave India Vijay as I'm not so bothered about Frigates. The only Capital we can see thats on the coast is Istanbul. Having said that I don't mind if we take it and do start an navy

As for the SP issue I really don't think its worked out that badly for us. The only things I would have changed to date so far would have been starting Tradition later instead of first and taking Monarchy instead of Reformation. The policies we have all complement the kind of game we've played so far.

The next policy we take should be Monarch for the with the gold a bonus.

When we look forward to SPs after the next one it might get more difficult. Autocracy has been mentioned but we are quite a few techs away from the Industrial era so we might well have 2 SPs to chose before then. For me this leaves Patronage or Freedom. Freedom will make our specs work harder for us and in 3 SPs we will be getting 1 for every 2 specs (I think this rounds up so actually you get 1 for the 1st,3rd,5th etc).

More happiness from Patronage comes in after 4 SPs. To make this Tree work for us we really need to invest in another 2 CSs IMO.

NotSure said:

Ah, I don't know. I think you're opinions are pretty consistent with the majority in this group.

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In my solo games I'll often go Honour > Commerce or Honour > Patronism, shunning Liberty, often picking up a bit of Tradition at the start. Especially ignoring Liberty will be strange for most.

NotSure said:

So, now I know what you're opposed to... I think. Is there a policy you would endorse or are you abstaining?

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I'm sort of going along with the group, although it's not clear where that takes us.
Commerce and Patronism are both not very suitable due to our map and style of play; not enough coastal towns for Commerce, not enough CS's for Patronism. I don't know if some of us are still thinking of allying CS's on the main continent, but I'm personally never much in favour of allying CS's that are basically in the lands of aggressive future enemies; they can get wiped off the map in a couple of turns, without us being able to defend them.
I'm in favour of looking for CS's in 'safe' places, of course.

Other policies I'm not even familiar with, I would have to study that, but I must have glanced my eyes over those policies before and thought that nothing stood out for me?

If we're selling a town, worthless Nottingham would go before any Indian town, that seems obvious, but you're right; we don't need to let anything go soon.

What has been for longer on my mind as well, by the way, I'm not sure if I would want America to attack Egypt. Those Egyptian towns don't look very strong, and we would rather be capturing towns with burial tombs - double loot - than American puppets. At the moment I believe Washington is fighting with Catherine and Catherine with Suleiman, and I prefer it that way, I don't see much reason to meddle.

Isn't Dynamite a more expensive tech than Rifling? Or does Dynamite need a lot more techs as prerequisite?

Dynamite requires Metallurgy (teching now), Rifling (next bulb), Printing Press, Banking, Economics and MilSci. MilSci allows us to upgrade our Elephants to Cav (2 stronger and faster but with a penalty V mounted).

Infantry is another 7 techs after this.

On a side note I don't know why i mentioned the pike in Hastings in my last post. Must have been playing with the build orders and forgot it was there.

Dynamite also requires Military Science. It's an expensive tech and I think we have a couple of RA maturing. I think it's smarter to bulb for artillery and save a few GS for when the techs get ridiculously expensive. We want to jump to bombers, mech infantry, stealth, nukes well before the AI can.

So, I'm going to play the turns and I'll pick Monarchy. I'm having a hard time selling my idea of a sound strategy for this type of game. Maybe it's the messenger. I just saw Snarzberry post something in the strategy forum regarding the virtues of Autocracy and Freedom in this type of game. I'm sure he states the case better than I've been, so I'll link his post.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=457172

snarzberry said:

If you have a large population with many cities then yeah nothing is going to compete with Freedom's Democracy in terms of happiness. You're going to get a whole lot of happiness and you don't have to do anything to get it other than have a lot of specialists posted, which you're going to want anyway. The fact that puppets post merchants is also a significant benefit to this policy. It's just plain better than Police State as far as happiness is concerned.

But if you're asking the broader question of Autocracy Vs Freedom when it comes to a deity game war push for domination victory then all of the other policies need to be considered when making your choice, as you alluded to. I don't find happiness to be that difficult to manage once you have a massive engine of population and gpt up and running. You are able to purchase happiness buildings, you can annex and build courthouses (even more effective with Autocracy) and there are a few wonders that really inject happiness when captured.

So overall I would still easily take Autocracy over Freedom when there's still 70 - 100 turns at least left in the game and I'm going to be spending it all at war, but yes Democracy is the tops as far as happiness policies individually go.

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My guess is that some of us have seen LPs of people playing Deity games where they sell everything they conquer. That is a valid strategy, but one we aren't really set up for. In that scenario you would burn through the tech tree using Rationalism. You would remain friendly (or as friendly as possible) with every other civ and get waves of RAs with everyone. You could get a massive tech lead and pretty much do whatever you wanted in a short span of time... ie, the Stealth Bomber strategy. We don't have Rationalism, we don't have the Porcelain Tower, and we're 150 turns into the game, so our domination game is going to look much different. We need cities to crank out military units because we'll be fighting on about the same tech level and our conquest will take much longer that the 20-40 turns it takes to bomb down some backward civs, auction off the rubble and snipe all the capitals. Patronage, Commerce and Freedom don't help us as much in this effort as Autocracy and Honor.

We could've easily worked our way down the right side of Honor before the industrial era, and we still can get to Discipline or Military Caste before then. Remember, we got one free policy from the Oracle, our puppets will crank out cultural buildings, and our universities produce culture. So anyway, this is my last plea to consider Honor and Autocracy for this game or consider a different victory condition. Using a lot of specialists in low population cities cuts into our production capacity and isn't a great strategy for mass conquest. Forcing that style of play because it fits a group of social policies we fancy isn't going to help us as much as the reduction in military maintenance, increases in troop strength and strategic resources, the ability to convert puppets quickly and gain happiness, etc., etc., etc.

Alright, now that topic is dead to me... We'll pick whatever you guys want from here, I've said my piece. One last thing, I have an extra silk on my first turn. I was just going to sell it for gold since we're building the Circus Maximus, but I could get a silver from Cathy. Does anyone want to do that?

So my liking for Freedom is because it will increase the rate at which we get and can sustain scientists. As you pointed out we're not RAing our way through the tree with the PT and Rationalism so GSci are our main tech accelerator. As I see it anything that increases our supply is to our advantage.

Honour and Autocracy (also Order) are probably my least familiar trees so I find it hard to argue in there favour or indeed, against them. I think of SGs as places to try out ideas that I'm not used to so please don't think I'm throwing your suggestions out of hand, I'm mearly stating my opinion. I'd like to try Autocracy, its just outside of my experience to judge accurately.

Cool... just asking that you give it a look and consider it. If you still want to go with Freedom, that's fine too. I like that tree myself and it's great for all of the other VC actually. We could still slow it up after we get the PT and go for a science or UN victory. I'm just not looking forward to slogging it out 350+ turns if we don't have to.

I haven't hit next turn yet 'cause I've been farting around in the garage. Last chance for some input... Silk for silver or silk for AI gold? Is anyone interested in allying a hostile military CS? The one next to Egypt has wine.

Nottingham, by the way, could be an awesome city. It's already expanded to two fish resources and has a ton of production potential. We'd have to build it up from scratch though... only 3 citizens. I like it better than the one she planted under our capital. Ramesses already stole one of the fish resources from that city (but we'll be taking it back shortly).

Go with your gut on the trades. I'd take the gold but might be good as Delhi is a big city.

TURN 150
As always, I have to survey the sitcheeation…

Diplomacy: It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve played my last turns. Anyway, I see Japan now has land envy ‘cause they border our lands and I see Ramesses has gone friendly. Not much else has changed on this front. Cathy is warring on both sides… good luck.

Our RA situation: Basically, we’re only going to get a four-turn return when our RA with Suleiman matures next turn. Our RA with Cathy matures in 21 turns, but it’ll take us 25 turns to set the median to 14 turns with Military Science and Rifling. I don’t think I can make up 4 turns by assigning scientists, but I will fully staff the Wats in Sukhothai and Muang Saluang by the end of my set. No matter what techs I selected, we couldn’t do better than a five-turn return on our RA with Catherine. This means we’re looking at about 50 turns before we can bulb Dynamite. Starting another RA with Cathy or Sully would only result in another very small return as long as we continue to beeline. If we wanted to get anything out of any further Renaissance Era RAs we’d have to balance out the tree to improve the median, which would actually delay Dynamite (but, obviously, get us a greater turn advantage). I chose to pass on any further RAs for the time being, but we may want to consider it again soon.

Stopped worker from TP in York & finished silk. I thought I could trade to Cathy for Silver, but I must’ve been drunk. She wasn’t interested in our fine Siamese silks, so I sold them to Suleiman.

Shuffled some units around. Found our scouts in the water. I don’t know where they’re headed, but it looks like we’ve found most of the AI lands so I assumed they were headed back home? It looks like we could poke around America’s lands some more, so I’ll renew straight open borders with them if they ask. We’ve only found 12 of the 16 CS. I’ll check the shores on the way back (looks like one may be north of America) and assume if we don’t find them then they’re on islands.

Upgraded one horsemen to NE and moved him & the cannon toward Pataliputra. It looks like Delhi has all three of the wonders. I’ll move in from the south and leave him with that tundra city.

TURN 151
Scout blocked by Japan’s borders In the SW & we don’t have Astronomy, so we head the other way.

Units shuffle and heal. Delhi is still pumping out longswordsmen and trebuchets.

Wanted to build a cannon in Hastings but a stable gives us three production.

TURN 152
Metallurgy done, started on Banking.

Canon finished in Sukhothai. Started workshop so we can get the Ironworks done before we start annexing our puppets.

Water mill finished in Muang Saluang, started cannon. I put 2 scientists to work in this city.

Egypt’s still spamming research agreements (Japan).

Our horse trades with Cathy end (including the horses for iron) and I see she has 15 horses. She probably isn’t interested in the trade any longer. I move the trade to our new friend Suleiman. He takes 4 horses for 180 gold and a 1-for-1 horse trade for iron. I upgrade our last remaining warrior to a sword.

I TP a hill near York. Watch this city! It’s growing like a weed. TP all of the hills until we can annex it.

Monarchy.

TURN 153
Golden age is over and we get a GS in the capital. I put him to sleep there and we’ll wake him when we want to spring into the Industrial Era through Dynamite? I take the specialist out of the temple and fully staff the Wat.

A longsworman, musketman and catapult magically appear in Pataliputra and I promote our swords to longswords.

TURN 154
India allies Genoa. The game tells me Genoa is somewhere in the clouds NW of Belgrade, so I’m not worried.

The AI takes the bait just like it did in Hastings. I put a weak unit (the pike from Hastings) in the forest and it focused city fire and melee attack on the pike and left our elephants alone. Because the AI has to move its units every turn, the musketmen move from the north side of the city to the south side of the city. We move into position on the north side. The AI did put this city in a valley though, so it’s hard to position siege.


TURN 155
Because the AI has to move its units every turn, the longswords split east and the musketmen split southwest forgoing flanking support and putting themselves in vulnerable positions. Gandhi’s cities are going to be tough though. He’s rocking Oligarchy, a full complement of defensive buildings in each city, and the Himeji Castle bonus. The double shot to one of our elephants from the city and trebuchet rips off 9 HP. We’re going to lose our first elephants in this war. I kill the musketmen, rotate in some fresh meat and hold off on the longswords. I’m hoping Warsaw’s archer deals him some damage and the LSM goes after him.


We actually popped a culture ruin in the hills on the other side of Hastings and it took a turn off of our next policy. We may have a HOF ruin game here.

TURN 156
Gandhi’s city craps out another musket. Why not? The city and the treb focus fire on our LSM. I just upgraded him and he’ll probably die next turn. I fortify him and hope for the best. One canon shot and three elephant attacks deal about 20 HP of damage.

The capital finishes the workshop. Forbidden Palace is only 10 turns if we’re interested. I start the Ironworks in the capital.

TURN 157
Gandhi offers a limp peace deal. We refuse.

Warsaw’s archer shots helped get Gandhi’s LSM an insta-heal and, along with the wicked ranged shots from the city, they got one of our elephants. horsehockye! We take the city.


TURN 158
Healing up. Sydney wants silver.

TURN 159
Ramesses smells blood and backstabs his friend Gandhi. Sully denounced Gandhi the turn before.


Both Coventry and Nottingham grew a pop during my turns. Nottingham is only working sea tiles though. I actually like all of the cities Liz built for us. I would annex them all as soon as we have a chance. I take back what I said about not building a fleet. Those English cities could really help out with this and Nottingham actually has great production potential.

Grandad, this is what you’ll see as you approach Delhi.


I backed off and put ranged units in close support. The crossbows near Mumbai can probably redline that one longsword, so it shouldn’t be too bad. There’s a good chance we’ll lose at least another elephant here. It might be a good idea to replace those units. They should really be our bread and butter for a while. They’re way cheaper than rifles to produce and there’s no upgrade cost… some of them are getting good promotions too. Some Deity players don’t even upgrade NEs until tanks.

Cathy’s actually beating Sully. She took Ankara. She allied Venice a couple of turns ago, so Sully’s troops probably all went after Venice.


TURN 160
I’m going to leave the units with movement. Two more cannons finish next turn and you may want to move one or both of them up to Mumbai, Grandad. If you want to press forward, you can, but I didn’t want to commit you to it. I found another musket hiding behind Delhi. He’s shooting one of those out about every 4 turns.


ROSTER
Grandad
Brichals
Gozpel
Optional

I never noticed that silk wasn't fully improved. It must have been like that ever since we took York. I did think it looked a bit funny...

I knew about the stable option in Hastings, but early in my set the river tiles were still the better tiles, so I postponed the stable. Also I wanted to get a few pikes out, I thought they obsoleted with Rifling, and pikes keep their bonus against mounted units when upgraded, so they're better than rifles built from scratch.

Personally I would have gone for Delhi first, trying to get the other town in a peace deal. This might have to do with my liking for ranged units, though, which I noticed isn't shared by others.
Now there's a cannon in Delhi, that might be too tough for crossbows on defense, I'm not sure, but I have my doubts. Hopefully Delhi's defense won't scare Grandad too much.

There's still that CS east of Vijayanagara for us to meet. I'm not sure which CS that could be. Some people can tell that by looking at the colour, I believe, but I don't know which CS is lilac?

Where's Vijayanagara? Is that the city north of Delhi? I looked for the borders you guys were talking about, but I couldn't see any. Not only can I not distinguish city states by the color of their borders, I couldn't identify the color lilac if my life depended on it.

I didn't try Delhi first because the AI does defend it's capital with a little more effort than the other cities. Seems that way to me anyway... And I just don't like having enemy come in from roads in multiple directions, not to mention having to attack across that river. Maybe your right. It's over now, so fire up turn 150 again and give it a shot. If you loose less troops than what Grandad will lose, then you've made a good point.

I may have overestimated how long it will take us to get to Dynamite. We picked up quite a few beakers per turn in my set and it effected the tech times. Grandad can always pull back a force to start fighting Ramesses and just play defensive against Gandhi until Dynamite. When we get artillery we should be able to push all the way to Washington's capital before the AI start's fighting arty with arty. My only advise... build lots of cannons.

No worries about the stables. Someone locked the citizens on riverside hills before fertilizer, which makes sense. I didn't take them off right away because we were in that golden age... and then I forgot. So we may be missing out on 2 or 3 production and food in Hastings. Might want to check that Grandad.

If it's lilac (pink) it's not a Maritime I think, they seem to be just yellow or bluish, so it could be either Military or Culture. Off my saucy brains, green, black and purple will be either cultural or militaristic.

I believe we can accept a few losses taking Delhi, but hopefully we can lose only the newer units as it will take time to set up our cannons. We waited for little Ghandi to stay meek and nice, but in most games I've played at higher levels, he can put up a fight. But only one fight normally as he seem to stagnate after losing. But atm he's spamming units like Monty, so he's not willing to give up just yet.

I think if we can sneak a bunch over to the east side, move a couple of units to the western front we grab him in a net. He can only kill so much and one cannon right now, should only abuse units we can lose. It will take a few turns for the army S to move east, but he wouldn't be able to counter all that.

Step lightly on your feet, grandad! We want those wonders.

Just realizing we're are playing a Domination game, I have one win in single play so this is a good chance to learn.

I'm a builder at heart and my comments earlier was because of that, but I see a new light, that might give me some spice to up my SP-games.

And I kept Nottingham because of NotSure said, great potential at first, but who want to raze a city like that or sell it to another soon-to-be enemy? Can we afford to annex any cities? Then London and Nottingham should be in the first slots.

NotSure said:

If you loose less troops than what Grandad will lose, then you've made a good point.

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It wasn't a 'point' as such. Taking Delhi will become easier now that Pataliputra is gone, that's true. It'll still be a tough nut.
I support building troops over gardens and aqueducts and that stuff.

I wonder if some lancers may be of use?

Got the save. Will look and post ideas later.

I think we're going to face losing some units for Delhi. I'll send in some more expendable ones to draw fire and take out that cannon ASAP.

I'm colour blind so I'm afraid guessing the CS isn't my forte!

guys I've had some personal problems lately so my input is lacking. I hope i can help out a bit more in a few days.

Optional said:

It wasn't a 'point' as such. Taking Delhi will become easier now that Pataliputra is gone, that's true. It'll still be a tough nut.
I support building troops over gardens and aqueducts and that stuff.

I wonder if some lancers may be of use?

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Well, I was hoping you would do it just to see if it worked out better. I think it might be a valid strategy to beeline straight for an AI capital instead of slowly rolling them up if, in fact, you can catch them in a moment of weakness. The AI might have been building wonders in those cities when you declared. It would be interesting to see if quickly grabbing the capitol took the fight out of the AI, or if you'd take too many losses for it to be worth it. Experimentation is a good thing.

I can never make lancers work. They are delicate little flowers. Goz is right about the meat shields. If we throw them some unpromoted green units to shoot at then we can get off a few cannon shots, break down those defensive units and start working on the city strength without loosing any of our promoted units. Maybe Grandad can spam NE's for his entire set and Brichals can finish it off.

Brichals said:

guys I've had some personal problems lately so my input is lacking. I hope i can help out a bit more in a few days.

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No probs. We noticed you were around a bit less. Hope you're doing okay.

Lancers are certainly delicate, yes. I thought they might be a good combo with Naresuans against the Indian rifles. A lancer could attack and hide behind a Naresuan, while a Naresuan, if it attacks, it often can't get out of the way.
I know the AI uses lancers as suicide units, that's not my idea, of course. They're too expensive for that. Maybe we can even build scouts as sacrifice units in the Delhi siege. Talk about expendable...
What I noticed lancers are quite good for, well, like any fast unit I suppose, is to attract defensive bombard from the cities you're attacking. I used it earlier in the game already, when I put a horse south of Canterbury. It worked in the sense that the horse attracted a few shots, sparing our Naresuans.
Except the Naresuans had too much else to deal with at that moment, so the offensive failed, but that's a different matter. I find it quite handy to have a few fast units around.

A few units from our side is enough, if the bulk is going to attack from the east and away from the river. Sending in scouts or workers is pretty lame, but works. They attract enemy fire, so stronger guys can get into position, but not my idea to how to outwit an AI.

And I like the NotSure comment of my weaker units -> meatshields! That is more fair for the AI and even for us, even if I'm the lowest lvl player in this team.

I spammed so many ideas throughout this game already, but noone was interested and the result is that we're better for it. At least what we know now! I still think my cityplacements would've been alright, but who's whinging? Not me, we have a fun game here.

Same with policies, I think we can try to do the Honor line quicker next time...well, if we play another after this.