Term VI: Commander-In-Chief

[Chamnix]

How high a priority should we make frigates? None of the cities that have been producing movable shields so far are on the coast. Our core cities of Georgetown, Katana, and Claymore are all coastal and at 10 spt. Right now they are all building banks and will waste shields to switch to frigates. Once the banks are complete, it will be the appropriate time to start factory prebuilds if we want factories in those towns as soon as possible after Industrialization.

We have other coastal towns that are still building things like aqueducts, marketplaces, universities, harbors, and courthouses. Where do frigates rank in importance compared to infrastructure?

 

[dutchfire]

Not high in my opinion. Babe is not the team to beat, Council and Free are.

 

[denyd]

I agree that's it's not a high priority. I was suggesting that if we were building disposable units in a coastal city, that I'd rather build a couple of frigates. I agree with the bank->factory path. Once the factories are complete, I'd like to re-visit the frigate option.

 

[Marsden]

A privateer or two could be fun, just to sneak around coasts without telling anyone who we are.

 

[denyd]

What would be nice is to send a couple out and get them to approach either Council or Gong from a direction that would point to either Babe or Free as the owner and attack a couple of Gong or Council ships and then head back towards our fake homeland, disbanding just before entering a Gong/Council port so that it appears that our privateer belongs to Gong/Council. Anything we can do under the table to split those teams will help our cause.

 

[Cyc]

The only reasong I suggested keeping a Sword was in case we found a decent sized island. I think one Frigate would be a good idea so it could just be a defensive unit around our coast. I never use privateers and don't think we need them in this game.

 

[Chamnix]

If there is anyone talented with Paint or something similar, I think it would be very helpful for our ocean exploration if we had a map with superimposed explored tiles.

Based on what we've seen of others' continents so far, it looks like the map has an exact symmetry. I would guess that any other potential islands would also be symmetric - that is, if there is an island 5 tiles north of our northernmost point, then there is probably an island 5 tiles north of everyone's northmost points. So, for example, if we have already seen that there is no island 5 tiles north of Babe's northernmost point, then we can assume that there is no island 5 tiles north of our northernmost point, so we shouldn't bother to explore there.

If someone can put together a map of where islands could potentially be based on everything we've seen, we will make our ocean exploration much more efficient.

 

[Cyc]

I'll give it a shot. I've got a graphics program that I haven't fired up in a long time. Let's see what happens.



Well, this is a fair rough draft of the world map. Given time, I'l try to refine it.

 

[dutchfire]

That looks good Cyc, but could you remove the interface on the screenshots? (I know it's possible in civIV, don't know about civIII)

 

[Chamnix]

The delete key does it in Civ 3.

 

[Cyc]

Thanks for the tip. As soon as I get a chance, I'll whip up another one.

 

[Chamnix]

Regarding ocean exploration - is it always true that coast must be next to land, and sea must be next to coast even in a custom map? I'm thinking that even if there is a 1-tile island, it would require a 3x3 square of coast and a 5x5 square of sea. If that is true, then I will only explore areas that have at least that many unexplored tiles instead of trying to uncover fog everywhere.

 

[dutchfire]

IIRC custom is custom, there are no limits. Look at the Bears' hideout in the Council vs. Babe cagematch, I believe they've explored quite a lot of coast/sea in the middle of the ocean.

 

[Chamnix]

You're right - I've been avoiding the Bears' thread so I could post freely in the Council thread, but now that you mentioned it, I can see ocean next to coast in some of the Council's pictures.

 

[dutchfire]

So I've been thinking a bit.

Gong is going for 100k, if no-one stops them, they will just win the game. (How far away are they at the moment by the way?). The Council and Free will probably want to stop them, at some point. Since Council is a bit more backwards, and tied up in dealing with Babe, we can only assume that Free is going to be the one to take on GONG. But if FREE manages to conquer Gong (and they should be able to, with a technological advantage, and nothing else to do than build an army), they will be the biggest, strongest team by quite a large margin.

So, can we do anything about this? If we can get Nationalism (Rifles) and Military Tradition (Sipaphi), would we be able to take and keep their island? It would be a huge benefit for us if we could.

 

[Chamnix]

I can't check the actual save right now, but MapStat has GONG at 11905 culture + 366 culture per turn.

We probably could take GONG's island in 1 vs. 1 after a few more techs, but it would be bloody, and I'm not sure about holding it. Whoever makes the first move may gain GONG's continent, but they would also lose a lot of troops, suffer war weariness, and possibly fall behind in military and tech to the peaceful tribes. My (very limited) PBEM experience so far seems to be that if you can't kill or cripple someone fairly quickly, then you are better off not fighting because bystanders gain too much.

It's hard to know how this will play out, but my guess is that nobody will want to be the only one to suffer casualties against GONG, so it will take a military alliance before anyone attacks them.

 

[dutchfire]

How about having a small force around to try to take out anyone who wants to take out GONG? It's not a priority right now, but it might become more important as flight/tanks/marines come closer. It would probably be a lot easier to fight a spread out offensive force with hardly any defensive advantages than an opponent with good defenses, in Feudalism.

 

[Marsden]

I don't think it will be that easy to take out GONG. Their unit support must be huge, and they can whip up replacements very quickly. I'd imagine attacking their island would be almost as bad as attacking a Sid AI, except with a human intelligence. They could possible have 200 knights or cavalry, how could Free really take them out? And this is assuming they don't benefit from the Great elevator. I'm guessing they are going to want to be communist asap, which would close the last gap in this kind of defense plan, War Weariness in Feudalism, but if they keep the pop properly whipped, there won't be anyone left alive to protest.

 

[Chamnix]

I don't think it would be easy either, but I think it would be doable. Given the amount of culture GONG whipped, I don't think they could have whipped too much military also.

Whipping also leaves no production capability. If they've whipped their cities down to size 1, then they have pathetic shields. Whipping a cavalry without much production probably takes 3 citizens, and it is not that easy to grow with whip unhappiness.

I'm assuming they don't benefit from the Great Elevator. If they use it, then I'd consider that victory since that takes it out of play in the future - that's the main reason to attack them now instead of waiting. There will be plenty of time to stop 100K, but we really shouldn't let them accumulate tons of cash now.

Compared to a fully-developed mobilized Republic with extra shields from railroads using all cash for rushing (and possibly starting their Golden Age), I know which side I'd rather be. The problem is that no one of us can turn off science for any length of time unless the others do also, and Frouncil doesn't seem to have any interest in that.

 

[Cyc]

In my opinion, we don't have to take and hold the Gong Island. We just need to key on the major Culture contributors for Gong. This is if we are worried about the 100k victory. If your debating the attack on Gong for other reasons, then other factors can be considered. We don't need to obliterate them at this point, just disable their immediate threat to us.