SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

Sorry had some stuff come up yesterday. I've played on and we have a choice now:



We have a full health galleon, a 2.0/2 trireme, and a 1.5/2 trireme vs. 3 Ragnar galleys. I propose attacking with the galleon first (98% odds), followed by the 2.0/2 trireme (90% odds). Assuming both of those win, we can just let the third trireme sit and heal since Ragnar's galley will likely try to sail around the island counterclockwise. This will allow our shipment of two galleons to sail towards Amsterdam.

If we let the two galleons sail on towards Amsterdam, they will unload troops on T+1 (same turn that Utrecht troops are in range). Also, I found Willem's 5th city:



Unfortunately it'll be in range of Ragnar's land troops

Also, I think we will want to put out a settler or two from Paris and stone to grab the fur and silk. We need the to continue whipping as gold and marble are pretty much capped out.

I'm uploading the save as I've basically played through my initial PPP.

 

[shyuhe]

Proposed PPP for the next 4 turns:
Meta stuff:

Attack with galleon and trireme as discussed above. Northern galleon stack continues towards Amsterdam. Unloads to attack Amsterdam on T+1 (4 maces and 2 trebs). Bombard three turns + one extra bombard (should bring to 4%) and then attack. Souther stack unloads on T+1 (3 maces and 3 trebs). Bombard 2 turns (should bring to 2%) and attack. We can set up a galleon chain to send the 5th boat of troops to either city, depending on whichever one looks like it needs it more (I'm guessing Utrecht will).

Push EP slider up to 30% for 1 turn so that we get city visibility on Utrecht and Hague.

Paris: change build to treb, 2 pop whip on T+1, overflow into mace on T+2, start settler on T+3. We should probably revolt to bureau at this point so that we can 2 pop whip the settler for silk.

Gold: grow to size 4 and set to settler on T+1, 2 pop-whip it ASAP, send to fur.

Marble: 2 pop whip mace on T+0, set to mace and 2 pop whip once it's back at size 4.

Stone: This city has overflow stored in it right now so dump it into a mace and slow build it (5 turns). Then set to a treb and 2 pop whip it.

Pigs-fish: 2 pop whip mace, set to mace and 2 pop-whip at size 4.

Iron: 2 pop whip maces as well.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We have a full health galleon, a 2.0/2 trireme, and a 1.5/2 trireme vs. 3 Ragnar galleys.

Can you please clarify which Trireme is the 1.5 Health one, i.e. the Trireme that is closer to Ragnar's boats or further away from Ragnar's boats by 1 square?


Also, just to confirm, the only troops of Ragnar's that we see are inside of 3 Galleys that are stacked on top of each other, and those Galleys are located to the north of the L-shaped Plains island, at a position NE + NE of the Desert Hills Iron, right?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If I am interpreting the screenshot correctly, the three Galleys that are showing up in the hover text are to the north of the L-shaped Plains island, i.e. NE + NE of the Des Hills Iron. If that's the case, then Ragnar's boats could feasibly land troops next to Gold City next turn.

However, in order for his Galleys to get to Gold City, they would have to travel on the Coast square that is SW + SW of the Plains Hills Gold Resource, i.e. 1E of where the 3 Galleys are located right now.

So, that's the square that we want to attack from, if possible.

For example, if the closer-to-Ragnar's-fleet Trireme is the 2.0 Health one, then it can first move to the square 1E of Ragnar's fleet before attacking. The Galleon could also do the same.

However, if the further-away Trireme is the 2.0 Health one, then we might just be better off moving the Trireme to that position in order to block him, but not actually attack yet.

I do prefer to attack only with Triremes if doing so will be at all possible, using a Galleon only temporarily for defence, but I suppose that at 98% odds, we could be okay with attacking, too.

Push EP slider up to 30% for 1 turn so that we get city visibility on Utrecht and Hague.

Don't forget to change the Espionage Weighting so that only Willem has "Weight 1," i.e. give Weight 0 to Vicky.

If we're going to land troops next to his Cities, does having visibility of his Cities really help?

If you do plan to go ahead with trying to spot his Cities via Espionage, then you might as well change your game options (Ctrl + O) so that the game "Shows Friendly Moves" (because he'll be Friendly with us until we attack), "Show Enemy Moves" (since he'll be an enemy after we attack), and disable all of the three "Quick Moves" options.


As a side note: when Willem dies, we'll need to remember to reassign the Espionage Weighting to someone else.


Do you have the Galleon logistics worked out for shipping the Settlers over to their relevant islands without delaying the shipping of troops towards Willem?


Any thoughts as to where to settle? Directly on top of the Silk? Next to it but allowing the Workers (if they are still there) to put a Plantation on the Silk?

I forget what Fur Island looks like, but if we can settle to get the Clam in our fat cross but also settle on top of a Fur Resource, we'll probably want to strongly consider doing so.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Also, if we want visibility of Utrecht, can't we just move a Galleon next to the City? We'll be teleported out upon declaring war, but we'll be able to see what happens in the City up until then, particularly if you have changed your game's Ctrl + O options so that you will see Willem's troop movements occuring.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As for the City on Ragnar's island, we might as well simply raze it. An unimproved Jungle Ivory, likely an unimproved Fish, overlapping squares with Ragnar's City... it will probably take too much effort to defend it and it will also probably be too small in size to bother worrying about.


In fact, we may just want to KEEP that City there. Why? Well, that way, it blocks Ragnar from expanding. Ragnar very well may have chosen to go to war because he felt that he could no longer peacefully expand. If we raze that City, then Ragnar may just expand to a couple of Cities to the west.

Also, if we raze that City, then Cathy might settle there.

So, I would be tempted to stop the war against Willem (via a Cease Fire, so that we can change our minds) when he only has that 1 City on Ragnar's island remaining. We can finish it off after capturing Ragnar's nearby northern City.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Not counting the 'Ducks, we have roughly the same Power level as many teams had at around 500 AD, giving us about a 20-turn head start. Of course, they might have had more Galleys and Axemen instead of Galleons, for example, or they may have captured some Cities but lost some of their units in the process, but it's at least a rough guideline that says "okay, we're ahead of the majority of the pack, but not actually ahead by a wide margin."

 

[shyuhe]

The bottom right trireme is 2.0/2. The one closer to Ragnar's galleys is 1.5. And yes these are the only visible Ragnar troops -- I sank another galley before this.

As for the silk city, we should plant a city right on it for the immediate happy. The two workers are still chilling out over there and can build a plantation but that will take 4-5 turns (can't remember the exact cost on epic). I'd much rather get more for whipping now, so that we can continue to assault the AI.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The bottom right trireme is 2.0/2. The one closer to Ragnar's galleys is 1.5.

So, umm, if, say, you were to position the Galleon 1E of Ragnar's Galleys and then attack, then manage to win but with only a bit of health remaining, the idea would be to send the 2.0 Trireme (which I assume is actually less than 2 Health and it just rounds up to 2.0, otherwise you would have said 2/2 instead of 2.0/2, right?) to guard the Galleon, right?

What about if the Galleon wins but only has a medium amount of health? Will we attack with the 2.0/2 Trireme, even though it means that one of Ragnar's Galleys will only have a wounded Galleon between it and Gold City?

Technically, the Galleon could probably have enough movement points to sail back into the Ocean, but then Gold City would be open to attack, so it would be better to just stay on that square 1E and strengthen this position with one of our Triremes (presumably with the 2.0/2 Health Trireme, since it barely needs to heal)... HOWEVER, we'd have to leave the 1.5/2 Trireme in place, otherwise Ragnar's Galleys could just head to the SE.

As for the silk city, we should plant a city right on it for the immediate happy. The two workers are still chilling out over there and can build a plantation but that will take 4-5 turns (can't remember the exact cost on epic). I'd much rather get more for whipping now, so that we can continue to assault the AI.

Once we attack Willem, we'll lose the Happiness from his Gem Resource. So, we might not have that much leeway with our Happiness afterall (i.e. we might need to be careful about overwhipping by remembering that we'll lose that +1 Happiness shortly).

I'm leaning more towards what I think that mdy would say: I'd rather spend our Gold on more research towards Drama than on Espionage.

You're free to switch the Espionage Weights, but I am against increasing the Espionage Slider. We won't be spending those Espionage Points, Willem may end up being the first AI to die, and what info can we gain that we won't be able to see by moving a Galleon next to the City before declaring war or that we won't be able to see when our Cities are next to a City during a war?

You also only get visibility in the 9-square-radius around a City, so it's not like you get a map of the enemy's troop positions like you could get with Vanilla Spies.

Further, Willem is spending part of his Slider on Espionage, and he'll likely increase the Weighting to 100% on us once the war begins... meaning that we'll lose visibility shortly after the war starts anyway.

 

[mdy]

Looking at the screenshot I think we can block Ragnars galley with our triemes without attacking at all. Why risk attacking with a loaded galleon if we can avoid fighting them with 0 cost?

 

[mdy]

It looks like William's fifth city has access to ivory, we might want to keep it for that if we can make peace with Ragnar. Once we do we will be safe from another DOW due to our power rating.

Northern galleon stack continues towards Amsterdam. Unloads to attack Amsterdam on T+1 (4 maces and 2 trebs). Bombard three turns + one extra bombard (should bring to 4%) and then attack. Souther stack unloads on T+1 (3 maces and 3 trebs). Bombard 2 turns (should bring to 2%) and attack. We can set up a galleon chain to send the 5th boat of troops to either city, depending on whichever one looks like it needs it more (I'm guessing Utrecht will).

If William hasn't reinforced his capital we can probably take Amsterdam earlier at the expense of not bombarding his defences all the way down.

Push EP slider up to 30% for 1 turn so that we get city visibility on Utrecht and Hague.

Given that we will have visibility of Utrecht+Amsterdam next turn anyway I don't think there is much point in doing this now. I suggested it earlier so that we would have the option of aborting to gems city if Utrecht/Amsterdam looked too tough to capture, but in the circumstances that is no longer an issue.

Paris: change build to treb, 2 pop whip on T+1, overflow into mace on T+2, start settler on T+3. We should probably revolt to bureau at this point so that we can 2 pop whip the settler for silk.

Gold: grow to size 4 and set to settler on T+1, 2 pop-whip it ASAP, send to fur.

I think that drama would be a better solution to our happiness problems, allowing us to focus all our whips on our units. Additionally if we are doing 4-2 whips in cities like gold we are probably whipping too quickly, as we can't work all our food sources there at size 2. Ideally this city should do 6-4 whips, or 7-4 whips.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Why risk attacking with a loaded galleon if we can avoid fighting them with 0 cost?

I think that shyuhe was going to attack with the empty Galleon to the east... but then the question becomes... should we attack with any Galleon, loaded or empty, if we don't have to?

I'm a bit against attacking with a Galleon, unless we do it "relatively safely" by planning on attacking from 1E of Ragnar's Galleys plus planning on moving a Trireme to that same square to defend the wounded Galleon.

That said, the "degree" of woundedness of the Galleon would play a role in deciding whether or not it would need defending.

It looks like William's fifth city has access to ivory, we might want to keep it for that if we can make peace with Ragnar. Once we do we will be safe from another DOW due to our power rating.

Another option is that if we're going to land an army there anyway, we could just raze Willem's Ivory City and capture Ragnar's nearby Ivory City as the next target, potentially getting a Cease Fire with Ragnar at that time.

Those troops could then march over land towards Ragnar's SE Cities (chances are that there is a Road that these troops can march on) and we can redeclare war once these forces are in position.

 

[mdy]

Another option is that if we're going to land an army there anyway, we could just raze Willem's Ivory City and capture Ragnar's nearby Ivory City as the next target, potentially getting a Cease Fire with Ragnar at that time.

This would probably delay the Catherine war though, and we don't want to do that as she is the tech leader after William, and she has the Great Lighthouse which we will want as it will allow us to raise the culture slider = additional whips quicker.

Is there any reason why we are building wealth in stone, and working the cottage in the capital?

As for espionage I think we should focus it all on Jao now as he is the most powerful AI other then William/Catherine which we no longer have anything significant to gain from putting espionage on.

Looking at your proposed builds they look a little mace heavy, we are going to have to fit some more trebs in somewhere.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I've had a chance to think about it and I'm not a fan of building the Settlers, either, particularly if they are whipped.

I might only support building Settlers if we use 0 overflow Hammers and no whipping to build them--as a tactic to recouperate from whipping unhappiness.


If we can whip 2 Settlers, then we can instead whip 2 Macemen/2 Trebs. 2 more Military Units would help in capturing Ragnar's Ivory City, which would give us access to +1 Happiness from Ivory.


Additional Cities are valuable because they have "whippipng potential" from unwhipped citizens. However, that fact applies to AI Cities that have a few population points to begin with, not to newly-founded Size 1 Cities, particularly Size 1 Cities without any Food Resources like the Silk area.

Building Settlers after we've started our Conquesting seems like an inferior choice to just grabbing more Cities.

Attacking more AI Cities instead of building more of our own =
1. more Happiness Resources
2. more whippable population -> more units
3. more conquest Gold -> Drama sooner, Culture Slider higher -> more Happiness
4. less AI Cities that can spawn Settlers and military units


We have so many Galleons coming from the east... is it not possible to load up the Workers and send them westward? Even if they debark on Stone Island or Paris Island or Marble Island or wherever, they'd be closer to the west, so that a different boat wouldn't have to travel nearly as far just to send them to Forested areas.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

This would probably delay the Catherine war though, and we don't want to do that as she is the tech leader after William, and she has the Great Lighthouse which we will want as it will allow us to raise the culture slider = additional whips quicker.

Okay, so forget about Willem's 5th City and use the Military resources that we would have used on it to capture Ragnar's Ivory City.

Except that doing so would probably mean that Willem's Culture would steal the Ivory... of course, it might work, since Ragnar has 2 Ivories and Ivory is generally clumped together, so we might still get one of them within our borders.


We're kind of lucky that Ragnar has been kept the "dumb kid on the block," as otherwise Cathy would have traded him Horseback Riding and given him access to War Elephants. However, Ragnar has Horseback Riding as one of the highest possible techs that he could research, so he's not far off from War Elephants himself. I think that it will be a worthwhile investment of our Military Resources to at least capture his Ivory City before moving onto Cathy, don't you?

We'll want to wait for Willem's Cities to come out of revolt so that we can whip a larger for to hit Cathy with anyway, right? I mean, no sense in attacking Cathy before we're ready to hurt her, then watch as she fills each City with 8 defensive Longbowmen due to our delay in being able to capture her Cities. Hit hard and hit decisively, or else wait to hit another day.


Basically, if we're going on a man-hunt to take down Willem's 5th City, then I think that we should "finish the job" by razing that City and capturing Ragnar's nearby Ivory City. However, nothing stops us from grabbing Ragnar's City first, and, if we can maintain control of the Ivory, then we could forget about Willem's City for now and grab a Cease Fire.


Once a war is over, the Motherland Unhappiness is greatly reduced--it will be reduced enough for us to start whipping for the first rounds of whipping out of Willem's core Cities.



I'm not sure if a Friendly-Friendly AI relationship (i.e. Cathy + Ragnar soon, if they aren't already, due to a Shared Fave Civic and a default liking of each other) can override the "don't trade with the dumb kid on the block" code or not, but regardless of how Ragnar might get Horseback Riding, it's probably a worthwhile priority to deprive him of Ivory BEFORE he gets that tech. Fortunately, we're not playing Warlords or else he would have already been able to build War Elephants.

 

[Mitchum]

I agree on no settlers. Getting Drama and using the culture slider is much better.

Two and three turns of bombarding seems like too much for maces vs. archers. One turn and a suicide treb our two should be fine. That means that we should be building more trebs, especially once our macemen get to city raider III.

Gems give +2 with forge, which makes Drama very important...

 

[babybluepants]

I agree with getting Drama. It looks like we can support 4 happy at the moment that way. Settlers are very expensive at this stage. I'd be more inclined to settle if quick domination was an option, but it's really not on this map. We'll get gems and dye eventually, as well. Running up the pop in places like Gold has the added benefit of extra commerce to support something like better slider. I think we do wanna work the good tiles (btw, can we work a coast instead of cottage in Paris )

It's unfortunate we don't have MP in a couple of cities. Is it worthwhile to build 2 archers?

Espionage slider is expensive. Dhoom's suggestion of moving the Galleons in next turn seems better. The thing is that we're attacking with the 4 Galleons now, regardless of what he has in those cities. What would change our minds?

Do we have a list of whips by the turn they occurred? Are we trying to sync whips with cooldown a bit?

Ragnar: shyuhe's plan sounds good to me.

 

[shyuhe]

The cottage in Paris is because the city grew during the inter-turn. I'll turn it into a engineer and set Paris to trebs (other than the current mace overflow). I'll also change stone to build trebs instead.

I will turn on the research slider this turn, which should let us complete drama in about 5 turns.

I'll slow Gold and marble to 6-4 whip cycles, although it'll be growing into unhappiness until we get drama.

I'll attack with the empty galleon from 1E of Ragnar's stack -- if it becomes too injured, I'll just use the two triremes to block the route to gold and force Ragnar to sail counterclockwise around the island.

 

[mdy]

I'll attack with the empty galleon from 1E of Ragnar's stack -- if it becomes too injured, I'll just use the two triremes to block the route to gold and force Ragnar to sail counterclockwise around the island.

If we are attacking with the galleon have you considered promoting it to flanking I, which would allow us to get the Navigation 1 promotion on it's next battle?

 

[shyuhe]

Things are going well on the war front. We lost 1 treb taking two cities:





I cooled off on the whipping a bit as we need another boat or two for the next wave of troops.

Drama is in:


We can only crank the slider up 20% at break even right now because of the extra maintenance from Willem's cities.

And techs:


I think we should send all but 1 or 2 boats west to get ready to pick up the remnants of the Willem front so that they can advance towards Cathy. We need to start preparing to open up the eastern front as the west has more than enough troops to eliminate Willem and start on Cathy.

Mitchum - do you want to take it from here?