Fox09 - This Means War!

Rekindling what I'd enjoyed immensely in previous Warlords/Vanilla SGs -- OCC-AW.

The roster is unfortunately closed at the moment, unless some reserved players give up their slot.

Roster
-- GreyFox
-- Imhotep
-- Pholkhero
-- r_rolo1
-- Shyuhe (?)
-- Ozbenno
-- Cabledawg

Let's discuss some settings. The following are my choice.

Leader: QSH
Difficulty: Emperor
Map Type: Archipelago, High Sea Level
Starting Roll: A few start to ensure availability of iron and oil
Variant: As always, a joke must accompany each report

According this map type and difficulty, we would largely follow the tried-and-true strat of wonder-hogging until Astronomy, where we try to beat the Emperors to cannons, and go on a razing craze.

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Checking in....

Archipelago seems good enough, but the high sea level.... It may put us in a very small and resource short island.

My experience is even with high sea level, the starting position will still be large enough. The reason for high sea level is to ensure we are isolated pre-astronomy. If it is possible to reach us pre-astronomy, we wouldn't advance far enough to resist the Emperors.

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Oh, a OCC AW Lonely hearts game..... good enough

Too bad it's closed and I'm oveloaded...

Will lurk like hell, and learn for the next MLG

Fox, rolo and oz walk down the road. On the crossroad, Fox turns left, rolo right and oz follows them.

Is it bad enough to be enrolled for the next one ?

"Everytime I try to get out, they pull me back in!"

:sigh:

reporting for doody - er, duty

lurker's comment: ... ...

checking in. BtS right? Also, are we lifting the restriction on "bad" jokes to any joke now?

Checking in, Sir !

On Emperor this is gonna be way too impossibly hard....im in.

What makes it harder is we'll be researching everything ourselves. Every tech we choose right up until Biology needs to be carefully chosen....ie...do we really need it.

It would be nice to get Biology from Liberalism, but at Emperor...this would be tough. I like playing alot of OCC domination games and have found that there are 2 milestones in the game.....the first is after building Oxford and the second is after building Natl Park.

This makes Education and Biology a priority. The amount of hammers gained by working more specialist, growing to max size, and not having to put any more hammers into health buildings is HUGE. Even before looking at the map, I would suggest the following Natl Wonders.

Globe
Natl Epic
Oxford
Natl Park
Ironworks

I know you guys put Moai in your last OCC and Id like to hear your comments on how many hammers you could have saved in the end....ie not having to build any more health buildings. I know the fat cross had ....I believe 4 forest.....so thats 4 extra specialist which actually just break even ie:...the specialist only make up the hammers you lose from putting down lumbermills. But the amount of extra specialist after you grow to max size has gotta add 5 or 6 more.

With the map settings we have, itll prolly be impossible to get anything beyond Chemistry or Astronomy from Lib anyway. Wanna make it Monarch...lol

If we do go Emperor, may I suggest having Imhotep make the map to ensure we have resources or batter yet, make land bridges to the AI...lol.

Lurker Comment:
I'm rooting for you guys! You have inspired me to make my own SG.

@Cabledawg

Nat. Park + IW seems to be somewhat antithetic..... I think that Moai + IW worked well in Fox 8, and what prevented us to win was the lack of production, not the research ( we could keep with the AI almost until the end.... ) , a thing that somewhat negates the need of a nullifier IMHO

rolo, I do see your point about the combo of IW and Natl Epic. We do lose coal and its 50% production boost. We can still build rails with coal. We can get power from Hydro....granted the beeline from Assembly Line to Plastics is quite long.

I propose that we wont need that 50% production boost. We are gonna be building units alot...prolly Grennies, Cannons, and Galleons. Grennies and cannons are both 150 hammers at Epic speed. With a Mil Academy adding 50% unit production, we will be building 1 turn units even before a factory.

This doesnt take into account the hammers we wont have to spend on health buildings...ever again. We can grow into more production. More specialist mean faster Great people. In this AW game, we wont be able to trade for any resources at all. We may end up stuck at size 17 with -7 health for a long time without Natl Park. With it, maybe we grow to size 30 and dont have to worry about the enemies constantly poisoning our water supply....me thinks thatll happen a few times in this game.

All Im saying is before anyone commits to Moai and add 5-6 extra hammers, lets see where the game takes us.

Moai was iffy. It was helpful in the initial stages for getting wonders but I don't think it was super useful long term. I think National Park will depend on the start. The lack of coal means no coal plants and no coal bonus to IW. That's a +100% modifier we're missing for 4 unhealthy. I don't know which is worth more off the top of my head...

This is a screenshot from your 1955AD save.




This is a screenshot from my 1951AD save from the same game.




More specialist = faster research. Granted, your save doesnt have rails, and Im running state property for the extra hammers. Theres another plus....we dont have to research medicine or go into enviromentalism, but even without a Mil academy in my city, I can still build a 1 turn mech. So a 1 turn grenny will easily be achievable without coal. I would have had more production and/or food if I didnt put cottages on the floodplains, but that fueled my research up until i started building the spaceship parts, then I watermilled them.

I just noticed that the top pic is even in a golden age. In my opinion Natl park has so many more pluses than the
5-6 extra hammers from Moai.

Also notice that the base prodution between the 2 cities is allmost identical, but Im not working 1 of my mines. I micromange every turn so I can get something out in 1 turn. If I cant, I either build something super cheap to apply overflow or employ more scientist so its a true 2 turns.

@Cabledawg:

Your points are all valid. But it will really depend on the start. On archipelago maps you'll often end up with capitals with lots of seafood yet zero production. The Moai Statues are then our only source of getting production at all. If we get a start to the like of Fox 07, then I'm also leaning towards the National Park. We'll have to see what we get before deciding...

Imhotep

Checking in!

What speed are we playing at, normal or epic?

As for National Wonders, the 5 limit is unfortunate. Globe is an absolute must as WW seems even worse in AW in BtS (wouldn't have thought that possible). Oxford, National Epic and Iron Works would be my another three I would say are needed. Moai Statues or Heroic Epic as the last one (depending on sea squares).

Problem with National Park is that we're unlikely to have many forests on an archipelago map.

@shyuhe: There are only so many bad jokes I can tolerate So, yes, it can be any joke, good or bad, dirty or dirtier.

@Ozzy: given a 7-man roster, I would go Epic.

@Cabledawg; a land-bridge?? why? we want to be isolated.

@Difficulty: based on MM17, Emperor is doable. But that is vanilla. Things changed quite a bit from vanilla -> Warlords -> BtS. We could try Monarch first, if the team feels that is more comfortable.

@5-wonders: Oxford, Globe, Nat Epic is pretty much a given. I am open to remaining two ... let's see the map first before we decide. We do not need that high a hammer count since objective is not space. I am more inclined to HE ... the other aren't that useful as they are too late.

So everybody agrees on leader (QSH), and map type (Archipelago)? We have to settle on the difficulty (I am nuts, so don't ask me my preference).

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I'd say try Monarch first and use Archipelago map. It will be interesting how it plays on BtS, as AI is better at defending and using the whip but puts a lower priority on building naval units.

The land bridge was a joke. Im game for a Monarch start.