DocT01a - Middle Ages Modified: Reconquista!

"It' the Year of the Lord 843. In a far away Burgundian town the grandsons of Charlemagne are dividing their patrimony...Hah! The lucky ones, they have something to divide. A mere hundred years ago, our Visigoth Kingdom prospered, but now Pagans from the Desert have pushed us back to the meager hills of Northern Spain, and who knows if they hadn't wiped us out completely if it wasn't for Saint Jacob's assistance! But we will strike back some day..."



Middle Ages

Civ: Castile
Level: Emperor

Modifications:
* Castile is REL and MIL
* Leon starts with the usual Barracks, Market Place and Temple.
That's it. No free Tech, no 3rd King, no starting UU (but we do have Knights by default!)


Rules:
Strictly keep to the commonly accepted SG rules (RBC, LK) - as long as it's not against a Muslim Civ

In other words: Our Trading reputation etc is crucial, but buying off Workers or breaking certain Peace Treaties may be allowed, after asking the team.

Roster:

1. Doc Tsiolkovski ->up
2. Bede
3. Corrado
4. DeceasedHorse -> just played

5. Elvis1985 - MIA (jump in whenever you want)

Try Castile!

I'm here and looking forward to it.

Not much feedback...I will start this now, and send out pms to everyone. I do not insist in continueing this SG if public interest is dropped again, btw.

Turn 1: 843AD

We start with surprisingly many Workers (5). Set Leon to an immediate Settler, Santiago to Curragh (we need as many contacts as possible), Salamanca to Barracks, and Navarre to Temple – it won’t be of any use before border expansion. Use the Warrior from Navarre to scout around.
Research Norse Tradition at 10% minimum.


Turn 2: 846AD

Rush the Settler in Leon for most of our gold– we must get that incredible city spot in central Spain (Wine, Iron, Horses, and on the Hills at a river).

IBT:
Leon (Settler) -> Granary

Turn 3: 849AD
Contact Cordova – they are polite J

Turn 4: 852AD
Salamanca is connected to our road net.

IBT: Leon’s borders expand.

Turn 5: 855AD

IBT: Santiago’s borders expand

Turn 6: 858AD

Meet the first Cordovan Ansar :shudder: .

Turn 7: 861AD

IBT:
Wool connected.
Santiago (Curragh) -> Settler
Salamanca (Barracks) -> Spear

Turn 8: 864AD
Curragh setts Sail to contact our Christian Brothers.

Turn 9: 867AD
Our Settler reaches his destination.

Turn 10: 870AD
Madrid founded (not the proposed name, but I prefer to choose geographically correct names here), starts Temple.

Turn 11: 873AD
Contact Franks.

Turn 12: 876AD
Contact Danes. Contact Celts.
Navarre connected.

IBT:
Navarre (Temple) -> Barracks

Turn 13: 879AD
Nothing

IBT: Celts wants us to leave –sure, Buddy.

Turn 14: 882AD
Nothing

IBT:
Salamanca (Spearman) -> Granary (Salamanca may seem to be our worst starting city, but it’s the only one that can grow above 6)

Turn 15: 885AD
Contact English.

That’s it.
The Save


Notes for the next player:
· Consider rushing the temple in Madrid, it’s close to Cordova and needs culture ASAP to pull in the Horses. We will make enough money to buy HBR easily.
· Navarre should focus on military (IMHO Swordsman only, they’d serve us better than Spears).
· Santiago will grow in time for the Settler, and since it has the most food, a Granary would be wise; nevertheless, it’s our only coastal town, so it needs to build another Curragh to contact the mediterranean Civs soon. Board a vet Sword and drop it near RL Ceuta; Curraghs carry only one unit, and we should get a Settler there in a couple of turns with our third Curragh.
· Our Curragh should continue to make contacts; enter the Baltic Sea, but once we meet Poland and Sweden, return immediatedly to the North Sea – the risk to be sunk by the Finnish is extremly high otherwise. Discovering as much as possible (i.e. British Isles, Norway) is pure gold once we can trade our map.
· Of course, you can ignore my advices and do something completely different, though I’m pretty sure those moves will pay off extremely well.


Dotmap:

Points to discuss:

1) No question, we could easily take out Cordova soon. But that won't help us towards the 30 000VPs needed. IMHO, we should take Cordova itself and Lisbon around turn 50, that means they have a King left in Cadiz, no Horses (=no Ansars), and usually 2 cities that will grow large (=VPs).

2) Who's next? I vote for Fatimids, for thematical reasons (unless someone attacks us before). That means, we should get a city to RL Ceuta location ASAP - there are Wines and Quarry, both will be needed for any city we found/ capture there.

3) When to research Western Church? Point is, at a certain size we are able to get it in substantially less then 40 turns, and MDI will serve us well in the Hills of North Africa, so I would suggest to delay Western Church until we see the first Knights - at that time, we can trade for something essentially useful after Western Church, which yields zero benefits by itself.

Checking in

On the dotmap:
Red is the other must-have place, the current Settler must go there.
Green the only 2 possible cities in Spain, but I would be surprised if Cordova claims them, while Blue is a surprisingly good location that will not be covered by the Frankish borders; we should settle there mainly to get a safe road connection to Franks/ Burgundy. It's by far more important to get beachhead in North Africa.

Elvis, you'r up btw.

@Bede: Welcome!

DOc,
Thanks

Encountered small problem loading starting .biq.

Get a Pediaicons error.

Standard Middle Ages loads and runs ok.

Should I reinstall Conquests?

Quick question-

Why are we researching Norse Tradition and not Horseback Riding? Are we going for Smithies? Or is there a trading strategy coming up that I am unfamiliar with?

I've played Western powers before, and always did HBR-Castle Building to get to work on the HRE. While I know we'll never be HRE, it seems to me that we're going down a path that won't lead us to Knights...

Also- I'd move the red dot SW by 1, and the blue dot NE by 1. Remember that we won't get aqueducts at all in this game, so only cities on rivers will grow beyond 6. And given our government, we'll need cities of size 7 or better to help afford the massive armies we need for beatdowns.

I'd suggest that we neuter Cordova best we can for now; since we're going up the Norse research path, once the Franks get HBR we attack them over the Pyrennes and extort techs from them.

@Bede: There are no changes made to any animations - but I forgot to mention you need to put the .biq into the /Conquests folder (where the 4 Middle Ages.biq is located, too).

@Corrado:

Dotmap:
- Red dot SW? That would have several disadvantages; we would destroy the Forrest, no defense bonus, and, most important, it would be at distance 2 to a Cordovan city. Not only that will provoke a war, we want exactly that city to grow to raise our VP count when taking it.
- Blue dot: No question, it would be better 1 N or E, but we won't get a Settler over there before Bourdeaux's and Ampurias' border expand; in this case, we have no choice.

And: Who says we'll have no Aquaducts? Of course we will. They are in the Arab tree. I don't think we'll have a chance to win without all the 7935VPs from Techs, and it could be a good strategy to research Arab Learning soon, and convince our Cordovan neighbors to hand over the other Techs from that tree. Arab Learning will give us Libraries, and with a few of them any other tech (including the flavors!) is due in ~10 turns.


Re: Norse Traditions
Researching HBR at max will need ~30 turns. Buying HBR once 2+ Civs know it around the same time will cost about 250gp netto (it'll cost a little more, but we will be able to sell it to some more Civs) - be assured, we'll safe a lot more money when we research at 10% only. And we'll be able to get Seafaring for HBR from one of the Vikings. This does work even at Demigod without problems. Castle Building of course is better reseached by ourselves.
And yes, Blacksmiths rule, as well as the Viking Sagas Small Wonder - Heroic + Magellan's!
And the Arab tree will give us Battlefield Med, Aquaducts and Assassins.

Re: Extorting from France - I would be rather surprised if we will be in any position to make demands against France for most of the game, a War with Franks will cut all our trade routes before Harbors, and they are usually by far more powerful than I expect us to be before we have lots of Knights.
And, equally important, it would be really against the spirit of this variant - we are on a crusade against Muslim Civs, we will not fight France (or any other Catholic Civ) until they attack us, or we would loose the game otherwise (like if Franks are close to the 30 000).

Red dot SE - Ok, but that would still lack the defense bonus, it won't pull in the good tiles before expansion, and most important, it will have lots of overlapp with our best city. We need the town to be really productive in the beginning. Also, your spot may invite the Franks to found a useless but annoying city SE from it.

The trees are really worth it, except for the Byzantine one; the only good thing there is the ability to draft.

And I wouldn't object too much against a war with Burgundy in general, (unlike the Franks, they won't kill us), but consider all our trade routes will run through their territory and Harbors...
Point is, our big advantage here are resources - once we remove the Cordovans, we'll have spare Horses, Iron, Quarry, Wine, and Sheep.

Originally posted by Doc Tsiolkovski
Red dot SE - Ok, but that would still lack the defense bonus, it won't pull in the good tiles before expansion, and most important, it will have lots of overlapp with our best city. We need the town to be really productive in the beginning. Also, your spot may invite the Franks to found a useless but annoying city SE from it.

Click to expand...

Okay, I really don't think you understand where I'm indicating.

I'm talking about the spot directly between where the red dot is now and the wine resource. That's 1 square SW, assuming top is north.

That square immediately gets us the forest and the wines-on-plains, so a 2f/2s/1c and a 2f/1s/2c space immediately. Yes, there's no defensive bonus, but we get control of the wines without Madrid having to build a temple.

Yes, there will be lots of overlap later, but with plains/hills as the terrain, neither it nor Madrid will grow so big that they'll interfere too much. And again, it'll be a *while* till we get aqueducts, so a city on a river not only gets +1 commerce (and money is tight in this scenario), but also can grow early.


And I wouldn't object too much against a war with Burgundy in general, (unlike the Franks, they won't kill us), but consider all our trade routes will run through their territory and Harbors...
Point is, our big advantage here are resources - once we remove the Cordovans, we'll have spare Horses, Iron, Quarry, Wine, and Sheep. [/QUOTE]

Doc,

I can pick up and play today unless Corrado, DH or Elvis want it.

Will check in at noon (-5GMT) and proceed unless instructed otherwise.

Bede's before me in the list, so I defer to him to pick it up first.

Bede, grab it. I'll update the rooster accordingly.

I'm checking in

Ended up out of pocket yesterday, sorry

Will play tonight

Everything looks good on the face of it. Do a little tuning for more gold without affecting population growth or shield production. Spend the cash to rush the temple in Madrid

T1 888AD
Madrid gets its temple and starts a barracks due in 10
Reassign citizens in Leon and Navarre to time granary completion and growth at Leon closer together (grow in 8, granary in 5). Slows the growth in Navarre but the worker is irrigating the plain so that will change
The Franks have a worker for sale for 142g. Too rich for my blood. Her treasury has gone to 0. Nobody else has anything of value on offer

The Franks ask us politely to please sail our dinghy out of their neighborhood

T2 891AD
The Spanish noblmen don wooly coats of many colors and the workers move on to cut a mine shaft on the sheep hill

The French are keeping 8gpt; England about 5; the Celts have spent their treasury on something; the Danish treasury stands at 44; and the Cordovans at 25

Santiago trains a settler and starts building a curragh

T3 894
Settler starts trek to quarry hill and picks up sword escort from Salamanca; peel a worker from the mining crew to build supporting road

T4 897
Navarre builds its barracks, its borders expand and it starts a sword due in ten, growth in 4

We meet the Burgundians and the Swedes

Burgundy has 15g in the treasury; Swedes have 29; neither have anything to offer us.
The French and the English are spending down their treasuries; the Celts are keeping 1gpt; the Danes are keeping 1gpt; the Cordovans about 13g. Looks like everybody but Cordova are spending heavily on research but there are no techs on offer yet.

Burgundy asks us to leave and the dinghy sails on.

The Franks have a settler team heading for our settlement spot in the hills.

The borders of Madrid expand and we gain horses.

T5 900
As the Franks will reach the quarry just as our team will, dispatch a warrior out of Navarre to dance with them.

France's treasury is up 6 to 12; England's is down to 3; the Celts up to 3; Burgundy down to 12; Swedes are up 9 to 38; the Danes are to 56 from 38 in 891; and Cordova is up to 38.

T6 903
Warrior moves to deflect Frankish settler team
Dinghy sails in North Sea
Leon gets its granary, goes on a high carb diet and starts a settler

T7 906
The Franks are deflected SE and our settler reaches the quarry hill

Madrid finishes its barracks and starts training a spearman due in 4

T8 909
Salamanca will bear watching as the granary is due in 9 and growth in 8. Will need a starvation diet to match growth to granary completion.
Found Barcelona on hill south of quarry (red dot spot) start temple (placeholder)
We meet the Germans who have 2g in the bank
French have 19; England 10; Celts 23; Burgundy 15; Swedes 41; Danes 62; Cordova is down to 28.

T9 912
No change on the diplomatic front

T10 915
Santiago builds a Curragh and starts another. A sword from Leon marches off to load up
The Frank settler team have headed back toward the Frank town east of the Pyrenees
No changes in the technology position

Status report
Curragh is waiting for sword in Santiago for trip to North Africa. First curragh is sailing the North Sea coasts. It encountered an English galley off Viborg. A galley appeared briefly out of the fog in the Mediteranean but didn't keep still long enough for me to identify it. We will have enough gold in the treasury to buy Norse Tradition should it become available but judging from the treasury changes I've been seeing we will probably get there first. I can only hope there's something worth dealing for when we do.


The Realm



Castile in 915

Got it. Will play tomorrow night, most likely.