sw10 - trenchcoats and the french resistance? training game

variant:
no fast troops. EVER. no artillery. EVER.
will we make this an Always War game? we will see.
aim is to hone the slow warfare skills. no flanking, rushing or similar stuff.
this is the heavyweight championship slugfest.

this is a combo fun-training game.
there is NO MINIMUM SKILL LEVEL. though if youre a chietain level player, jut say so for roster placement.

thus im looking for players that want to move UP to regent-monarch
we will aim for a CONQUEST game.
we will play the FRENCH? (or TBD)
world will be a PANGEA, probably a small-standard (to make for a quicker game)
level - TBD (regent-monarch is prefered, as we would like some NooB's in on the fun)

otherwise all can be discussed here.

places reserved for vets of JB01.
otherwise, you're all welcome.

roster -
soul warrior, the elvis impersonator
Boddah Khan
Kulko
JB, the funk master
Ansar the magnificent frog
open <--------------------------------------

I'm in.

Always war? Hmmmm, my first thought would be "no" but my second thought is "why not?" Expanding while under seige makes for different dynamics.

well, while were waiting for the hordese to wash upon our shores, i rolled this.
and its the first
rarely happens

looks poor. or does it?

oh.
edit....
level i rolled? Monarch!
world? Standard Pangea 70%, random barbs and AI, random weather.
all victory conditions enabled.
culture links - off.

i am NOT too eager to do the first 20.
if anyone wants to....
ill post the save.

still waiting for players.

I can be the noob should you wish to have me. Just got conquests, was a comfortable regent player in vanilla. It would be nice to get in on one of these, I've read enough of them.
Having never played an always war variant, I think it would be fun, mainly for the challenge.
Cheers!

lurker's comment: This seems interesting, but not good in SG's. I will lurk. Good luck team, soul warrior is a great leader.

Sounds interesting. Wish I had enough time to play.

Ansar_the_King said:

lurker's comment: Good luck team, soul warrior is a great leader.

Click to expand...

He must be an SGL (succession game leader????), I've never been able to pop him out from any elite unit victories in my vanilla games

lurker's comment: Sima Qian, obviously, I meant a SG leader.

Boddah Khan, welcome onboard.
may you live upto your name sake

Ansar, thanks for the praise, but i still feel like im standing on the shoulders of mightier giant (aka bede, whomp, tubby rower and Igor the infalliable, among others).
you sure i cant intice you to join our merry band?
i can GUARENTEE lots of laughs.

we are now 3. still need a couple more.

I am on Holiday next week, but apart from that fully available to be in.
I am a monarch/regent player, who would like to improve his game.

Is always war on or off? I am open at thos point although I think, without Cats and Horses AW would be a real challenge.

welcome aboard, Kulko.

right now im leaning towards an Always War game.
agree it will be a challenge, but thats what hones the skills, right?

we will take a vote on it when the roster fills up.

well, decided to do some homework for this.

found a few articles in the War Academy:

scoutsout's warmongering 101 a tactical primer
a very nice summary of warfare ideas.

keirador's The French
a generic review of the french. it has some very nice points there.

theoden's The basics of armies
self explanetory

and finally:

Tomoyo's Always War Theory
nice tactics there.

most of these are rather short pieces, so you should read them if possible.

Very well, I shall bark on this frech expedition of yours.

Now, where's the cake and beer?

EDIT: Does it matter if I already play in Monarch?

welocme Ansar!
monarch is fine.
it will be difficult enough as is, and it is a combo trainer-fun game.

hopefully, when i get back home (its work then school for me) round 22.00, ill post the save and we can ask the trainees what do you think we should do?
meanwhile, work with the pic i posted earlier.

what should our build orders be?
expand or stay put for now?
what techs should we study, and at what pace?
any other ideas?

the clock is ticking....

we have Alpha AND masonry.
that gives us a pyramid prebuild if we want (which i think we dont right now)
we do NOT have any war-like skills.
we are also Commercial and Industrious. how should we use this to our AW advantage?

roster -
soul warrior, the elvis impersonator. starting soon.
Boddah Khan. up next
Kulko. on deck
JB, the funk master
Ansar the magnificent frog
open <--------------------------------------

remember, basic SG etiquette.
24 hours to post an "I GOT IT" 48 more to play.
skips and swaps are acceptable, just let us know that you need it.

regarding exploits - be polite. if in doubt - save and wait for a discussion.
otherwise, have fun and LETS THE GOODTIMES ROLL

very well, by looking at the starting position pic, we are one turn away from coast, so if we settle on spot=useless coastal tiles, but we dont care about that since we are not going past size 12, my vote goes for settle on spot. Begin research on pottery, then bronze working, then iron working so we know where the sword makers are. pottery is just for expansion.

well, thats all I have for now, probably will think of more stuff after school.

good tech choices, ansar.

but i would change that a bit to: Bronze > Pottery > Iron
my reasoning?

1- since we are at AW we need the best defenders ASAP.
2- it will be quite a while before we start pumping out the settlers, since each will have to be very heavily defended.
im guessing about 20 turns to get to bronze, and another 15 for pots.
in that time we will be able to build 3 warriors and a rax? maybe a spear or two?
with just 2-3 spears, i would hate to let a settler venture out under a solitary spear (2 is MUCH better, imo)
my understanding is that we want to make slow moves, but when we do walk - keep it.
the goal is minimal losses.

any thoughts about longer term goals?
those ofcource will have to be reaccessed later when we have explored a bit.

any thoughts about build orders?
some schools are for a farmers gambit (go for pottery and a rax first), thus dictating a warrior > warrior > gran > worker build.
others might go for a warrior > warrior > rax > spear > spear > granary > settler.

assuming we get bronze and pots in the next 40 turns or so, what would you build?

@ALL - im placing these questions for all to answer and learn from. even me. im by big ideas.

First for general tactics, I think we will ahve to come up with some pretty neat ideas during the course of this game.

The general tactics in AW seems to be, bump them with cats, beat them with swords and finish of with horse which are able to retreat back to the safety of the stack afterwards. This means we are missing 2 important pieces of the equation here. I have no real good idea so far, but I think if do not come up with some way to improve the kill ratio to our advantage, we will be into heavy trouble come Knight time.

As far as the start is concerned, I vote for strong focus on People in teh begining. I have read a lot of AW- SG in the last week or so, and I must say the biggest risk, ist getting carried away with unit building for defense and then forgetting Infra, which will come to haunt you badly 50 turns later, when all your old defenders are badly outclassed, and you are missing the money to upgrade or the libs to research to chivalry.

Second important point is not to explore to far ahead, as to avoid meeting others until you are ready.

That all said, I would suggest going pottery first to settle our core and go with warriors for escort. I think this worked fine for others even on higher diffs. At least we never need to worry about HBR apart from the getting out of AA.

I will be away from 31.3 until 8.4. so either ut me in the other slot, or swap me during the first round.

Industrious and Commercial are my favorite traits. We should settle where we're at. Any other movement pulls us away from the river or covers up a BG. Movin to the coast doesn't buy us anything. We won't need the 2-food/tile from a harbor, we're not seafaring and we're on a pangea.

I would move the worker to either BG that's on the river and build a road and then a mine. Then go for the other one. Why road first? The few extra coin seem more important for research than dropping a turn off the build of a warrior.

Research... Well, Rep slingshot's right out. All the techs we get are going to have to be self researched or via GL.
Bronze, Pottery, Iron, WCode (especially if there's no Iron)

Build orders... Warrior, warrior,
Save the forrest chops for a granary.

Do we let boarder expansion pop that hut?

BTW, I'm out from 4/7 to 4/18 touring around South Dakota.