SGOTM 06 - Geezers

Looks good.

Next time, please play one more turn until anarchy is over.

I will assemble one big stack and go for Thebes. 8 or 9 cats should be enough to crush Alex now.

I like the sound of the word 'crush'.

Last warning ! I will play in about about 4 hours. Last chance for all of you to keep me from lowering our unit count !

markh said:

Last warning ! I will play in about about 4 hours. Last chance for all of you to keep me from lowering our unit count !

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What's happening with Alex's elephant city? Are you going to raze it to prevent Alex training any more elephants before you attack Thebes?

The units in Thebes were probably on their way to attack Iron City via the elephant city. You can probably expect to find some of them there as I deliberately withdrew from Thebes cultural border. You can also expect to see some Hanni troops coming through there as well. So far, it's been stacks of four units, so if you do bypass the elephant city, be sure to leave a pair of cats in iron city along with some spears. You will need them.

Good luck and happy hunting!

I am in turn 8 and we have the following situation. We can take or raze Thebes. I stopped for asking the team. I would raze it. It is too far away from our lands, so reinforcing it will be difficult. I would use the momentum, get the 3 northern cats and swords to the party and continue on Athens.

markh said:

I am in turn 8 and we have the following situation. We can take or raze Thebes. I stopped for asking the team. I would raze it. It is too far away from our lands, so reinforcing it will be difficult. I would use the momentum, get the 3 northern cats and swords to the party and continue on Athens.

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It would be quite nice to keep Thebes but I think I have to agree with your assessment that it should be razed. It's high time we started making headway against the AI. Alex & Hanny would only pillage the improvements anyway.

markh said:

I am in turn 8 and we have the following situation. We can take or raze Thebes. I stopped for asking the team. I would raze it. It is too far away from our lands, so reinforcing it will be difficult. I would use the momentum, get the 3 northern cats and swords to the party and continue on Athens.

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I vote for burning!
Basically, we only keep capitals or cities with something very special.
Thebes is nice, but not that special.

Burn baby Burn.

Ok, will finish tomorrow evening.

AgedOne said:

I vote for burning!

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erikthecelt said:

Burn baby Burn.

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Wow! what a bunch of pyromaniacs .

I would lean towards keeping Thebes in this situation (to accelerate our unit production). But I understand the concern about diverting units to protect from pillagers. Might as well keep the whole army moving forward. We can alway resettle the spot once the AI's are under control.

Initially I also thought of keeping Thebes, but we have no road and it takes 4 or 5 turns until reinforcements will be able to get there. Another concern is that Hanni just adopted bureaucracy. We have to pay him a visit soon, otherwise we will face maces.

I agree that the pillaging would be a distraction and would reduce the effectiveness of the city for us. Damage to the AI and denial of resources are more important to us at this point.

IBT : nothing

1) 830AD : we are a bureaucracy now
just move some units

IBT : our retreating stack is followed by a Greek War Elephant, 2 Carthage chariots, Num and Axe

York : cat -> cat
Nottingham : axe -> cat

2) 845AD : more troops movement. will take out that stack before I advance

IBT : London : sword -> sword
Nottingham : cat -> cat

the cultural boundaries of Kumbi have expanded

3) 860AD : asssemble a stack of 3 axes, 4 spears and 7 cats

IBT : Hanni suicides a Num and chariot on our stack
the second chariot tries to pass our stack towards our iron, the axe retreats

Another Num appears W of Iron city

Kumbi : cat -> worker

Hanni adopts bureaucracy

4) 875AD : kill Hanni's chariot

stack starts moving towards Thebes

IBT : Alex' War Elephant and the Num are now at the gates of iron city

iron city : cat -> cat

5) 890AD : the spear that killed the Carthaginian chariot is promoted to Medic II

mm for more gold, so we can maintain research at 40% , MC in 17

IBT : Num loses to spear in iron city
Greek war elephant kills archer in iron city

London : sword -> axe

6) 905AD : spear kills the phant

IBT : York : pult -> pult
Nottingham : pult -> archer

7) 920AD : advance on Thebes, defenses : longbow, sword and phalanx

IBT : Mansa has a cat down there and kills one of our cats ?????

8) 935AD : stop here for discussion
bombard Thebes

IBT : London : axe -> pult

9) 950AD : bombard Thebes to 0%
1st cat dies attacking Thebes
2nd cat dies attacking Thebes
3rd cat dies attacking Thebes
axe kills longbow
axe kills sword
axe kills phalanx and Thebes is burnt for 140 gold

we have our second general, move him to London. I would settle him there, but leave it to the team to decide whether we want our super medic now.

Athens must be SW of our current position. If we are lucky Alex has no metals anymore and we will face archery units and phants only. His phants city is quite young, so it should not be able to build phants fast.

That looks like progress, markh. 140gold in the bank, and Alex just might be crippled!

Bit of bad luck with cats there, tho. First Mansa's visiting cat that killed one. Then all 3 attackers die instead of withdrawing. Bad RNG!

I think we're definitely going to need a super-medic, and I say that with much more wisdom now than when I made a complete hash of creating the previous one. I have now created super-medics no fewer than 3 times in other games. So I know how to do it properly, and also I have seen how useful they are if you're going on a killin spree!

Good job on Thebes Mark - are you finished or are you pausing for a decision on the warlord? We could try and get 2 super medics if we put both medic spears in the one tile, they will get 10xp each and the warlord should join with the non warlord spear. I would not be adverse to setlling in London though. We can produce a tougher group of cats with it.

Medics are essential in order to keep our stack rolling. More important that being able to pump out more or stronger units initially.

It is even number of turns and we have to decide whether we continue on Athens or turn East, so I will not play more turns. Harbourboy can now make Alex disappear or start a campaign on Hanni. My feeling says continue on Alex, though.

Razing Athens should give us enough gold to get MC and machinery within the next 2 turnsets. We badly need maces and crossbows. Hanni is already a bureaucracy, so we will see maces in the not too far future. In any case I would mm our cities now to get mc and machinery fastest possible. Our unit output is still ok.

I am not sure on the super medic. We now have three medic spears in our main stack. One of them is medic II. Furthermore it would take some turns to get the general join the stack moving him through much land we do not control. I think I would settle him in London or York to get units with 2 promotions. Especially CRII cats will do much better than the cats we had for Thebes.

Roster:

Mark - just played
Harbourboy - UP
Sam - on deck
AgedOne
The-Hawk
Erik

Plenty to think about here. Give me your ideas and I will formulate a master plan! Although having just come of G Minor 34, I'll be expecting to have Modern Armour at my disposal, plus maybe one or two Stealth Bombers.

Harbourboy said:

Although having just come of G Minor 34, I'll be expecting to have Modern Armour at my disposal, plus maybe one or two Stealth Bombers.

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In your dreams.

Alex's elephant city is connected by numerous roads to Alex's other cities. Since it's not feasible to pillage all the roads I suggest that the axe, sword and cats by Iron city are used to raze elephant city and any camps.

Although this will delay reinforcements down south I think it's worth it. In any case the southern attack force need to heal anyway. I agree with mark that we should concentrate on Alex for the time being and leave Hanny until later. We just need to make sure we leave a decent defence force to fight off any Hanny incursions.

Since the GG is in London we might as well use him as an instructor. Now that we are more active on the war front we'll hopefully get another GG in the not too distant future.

Can we please ensure that the medic spears only get medic promotions. We don't want our medic units to be strong units.

EDIT: Machinery for the next tech please since we'll need some maces against Hanny.