The Order of the Knights Templar

[astre]

my opinions:
I vote for economic with no doupt. GM could be use for money as we won't use corps and we will not abuse golden ages.

for taj mahal golden age, i would use it for gold and production and sacrifice only one city to GP buisness (const probably).

I cuts quite some trees in my set especialy around barb cities and there is few left
I agree that there are too many cottages. with guilds on, i started on some workshop but more farms /watermill/workshop are needed.

For builds, i don't like stable, build cuirs instead. But these cuirs are quite expencive. I did concidered building forges in cities were it was lacking and tought it would be too long :/ maybe we could reconcider that point...

For the forced peace, i think we are not ready yet to attack anyone. cuirs are expencive and not build fast. in 8 turns, our force will be significant and we should be able to attack 2 cities at once.

 

[pigswill]

Taj asap and forget GP production, beakers are useful for economix>RP, hammers obviously for cuirassiers.

Economix before RP.

Maybe send our first stack to the other side of Mongolia during the peace treaty and attack on two fronts (GK's stack is presumably involved in his war with Sal).

 

[astre]

to the question : do we swap into Caste/Pacifism/Mercantilism?
i would say no, we entered in war planning.

to the : hook up our Bananas
it should hooked or will be next turn.

by the way, i reviewed some trade agrement for more money in my set.
If we miss happy faces, we can stop selling ivory to charles...

 

[lymond]

My thoughts:

1) The Peace Treaty with Mongols should not have happened. No reason for it.
2) We should build Curs and only Curs at present
3) Nicaea should whip in a Forge or chop it. Current worker improvement is really not important. Have worker chop those forests.
4) Whip Curs vigorously in cities outside Nople except maybe Hung-Nu which has nice production
5) LH in Scythian was a waste
6) Nople could take on more cottages, especialy developed ones from Adrian. Adrian should get some farms in surrounding green tiles
7) Yep, get pigs back. We can trade corn to Rags for Fur
8) Trade compass to GK for gold

9 turns is a very long time. Not sure if we just wait or maybe join the war with Mongols and quick cap Arabia first...just give back all his cities. It gives us a nice buffer over there. Really though we should have been attacking Mongols in the next few turns. (If we can take down Arabia and keep a healthy stack over there then we can hit Mongols from east-west.)

Not pressing, but we should get out a couple of settlers. One for fish/stone and another for fish/cow north of Mongols once we take that area out.

Keep Cur stack back some or at least on a tile with a road.

Not worried about GPs during Golden Age. Just work tiles. We will get at least one GP anyway.

 

[woopdeedoo]

lurker's comment: Cam_H always has the most detailed PPPs and TS reports ever! LOVES IT!!

 

[astre]

LH in Scythian was needed. without LH, it is only a 5 tile city.
agree with lymond: only cuirs. Even settlers can wait. The only other build i see is forges and barracks.
in 9 turns, we should have 17 cuirs. Probably more due to some whip / GA effect.
This should be enought ^^ for a first wave

for GP points, quite unsure if we must force them in one city or forget it at all and work max tiles.

 

[lymond]

LH in Scythian was needed. w.

Astre - You need to ask yourself though how important that is in the short term. Will we even care that Sycthian grows onto those coastal tiles by the time this game ends. Think about what the objectives are and build accordingly - this applies to any game. (same with giving into a demand that gives a peace treaty against the guy you plan to attack and would be your vassal soon anyway or dead) Scythian at size 4-6 is fine for quite some time and the city will be whipping in some more important infra like Forge and Barracks in the short term. Overall it's pretty much a crap city, but you'd be amazed how many curs we can whip out of a 4-6 pop city with a Forge. Instead we've wasted 60h into a building that we will never ever need..and I assume we wasted chops into the LH as well.

 

[Cam_H]

Thanks woop - but you'll be sadly disappointed with this TS report!

OK, played to 1090AD (nine turns), but there's still quite a bit of unfinished business left in the turn. I will however hand it off to lymond at this point.

For starters, our peace deal with Genghis Khan has just concluded. We have 18 Cuirassiers on the Mongolian border (I considered pigswill's proposal to move them west and strike from a peaceful foreigner's land, but erred on the traditional approach with taking Tabriz in mind). We have another six dotted around in our cities who have yet to make it to the main stack, two due for completion next turn, and four possible whips.

Taj Mahal was completed, and we have five more turns of Golden Age left.

Constantinople popped a Great Scientist (Michael Faraday).

We got the free Great Merchant from being the first to acquire Economics (John D. Rockefeller). We're about one-quarter of the way into Replaceable Parts (due in seven turns at 60% but this is aided by the Golden Age). We adopted Free Market.

Re-jigged deals as proposed. Swapped Bananas for Rice with Saladin for the +1 from Granaries. Mansa was happy to offer 7/turn for our spare Cows once he re-opened dialogue. Unfortunately our espionage is now insufficient to follow Mansa's research progress.

Genghis Khan and Ragnar in 1070AD dogpiled Cyrus, being the only current conflict.

I guess we should confirm that we're 'ready to rumble', and consider what to do with our two new Great People.

lymond << Up
pigswill
nocho
Tachywaxon
Sengir
astre
Cam​

Spoiler :

The SoD:



Tech, trades, and diplo:

 

[lymond]

Got it. I'm on a bit of a Mount & Blade tear at the moment, but should get up a plan within the day.

Note on GPs: Bulbing is less optimal at this point for the most part. We could just save those guys for another golden age or at least run a GM trade mission.

 

[Cam_H]

Got it. I'm on a bit of a Mount & Blade tear at the moment, but should get up a plan within the day.

I'm jumping between being hopeless at Bioshock Infinity, brilliant at Tropico 4, spewing fury at the obviously rigged river cards on Governor of Poker 2 Premium, and getting booed off stage on expert vocals for Young Americans (Bowie, Rock Band 3)! It's like I'm 11 years old all over again!

 

[lymond]

ha...I plan to get Bio Inf later on the cheap. I played some of the first one and really did not get into it, but this new one looks interesting. You should give M&B a whirl. The combat is great.

 

[astre]

We have a good army now
frankly, i don't see us attack before this point.

The only thing i would have changed is army placement.
we could have taken the 3 mongolian cities first turn if units were deployed accordingly.
Do we want to declare now or wait 1 or 2 turns for reorganisation before declared.

 

[Cam_H]

Thanks for the tip on 'Mount & Blade'.

I'm fine with the proposed Golden Age for our two Great People. I'm not sure if we should 'bank' them and wait until the 'proposed ex-Mongolian cities' come out of revolt in say 10-15 turns, or whether we fire off the Golden Age now to press home our current advantage.

On the SoD, I can see an argument for splitting the stack into two, but to chop it in three would leave us far too vulnerable in my opinion, especially if the RNG gods shaft us a bit. It's up to you guys to assess, but I'm very happy to stick with a single stack.

Two things; (a.) there's a Chariot in the Viking lands that I've only just noticed that's on auto-explore, and (b.) our variant requires us to be in control of Medina at game's end, so if we're to 'cap' Saladin at some point, we need to control the city first, and as previously noted by others on the roster (unless Saladin shrines it for us) we'll need to have in the back of our minds that we need a Great Prophet for the Temple of Solomon at some stage.

 

[pigswill]

I'd save golden age for after the GK War assuming we'll be doing a bit more whipping during the war.

Maybe keep cuirassiers in one stack until we've dealt with GKs SoD then split it up into 2-3 stackettes.

We could do with some mp/garison units as well as more cuirs.

 

[lymond]

We look in good shape here.

I agree with Pigs that we can hold off on a GA for a while, if that is what we do. At least until after the war. (I'll get some garrison troops as well in between Cur whips. Often producing LBs in 1turn)

I think we can kill off or vassal GK fairly easy and once Cavs come in this should be an easy romp the rest of the way. I probably would have gone for Samarkand first to reduce the amount of PHants we face or at least split up troops, but we should be fine.

We have a sufficient stack up North, so I will start funneling troops SW of Nople for taking that front on. The Northern Stack can probably finish off Samarkand. Luckily, GK does not have horses so we don't have to worry about Knights.

I may whip out a couple of quick settlers to fill in a couple of city spots I mentioned earlier.

I'll get our Nanas back. Not sure why we traded them.

Look at bribing in BK as well if cheap. There may be no benefit in that though other than diplo, especially if we plan to take them on later. The downside being he a) builds more troops b) can vassal GK at some point if we want to take out GK altogether. If we just vassal GK then it won't be a problem.

As for Teching, Rifling is the obvious goal. After that, teching really wont' mean to much. Chem can be a target for boosting workshops (probably get a trade later). Maybe target Comm for SP, but it won't really matter at that point I think.

Otherwise, the main goal of this TS is just an aggressive attack on GK. Looks pretty straightforward.

 

[Cam_H]

Traded Bananas (+1) for Rice (+2 with Granary). Saladin wanted a ton of /turn otherwise for the Rice. If you can later renegotiate a better deal, then that'd be great.

 

[lymond]

ah..that makes sense...rice is more health. We should be getting more resources in the near future anyway.

 

[Cam_H]

Yes - Rice is also near Samarqand, so it might just take care of itself.

 

[Sengir]

I'm really sorry to do this, but I find that I don't have enough time to participate in two succession games right now, so I'll have to resign from this one.

Good luck to y'all.

 

[lymond]

alrighty then....here we go (9 or 10 turns played)

We take this:

Spoiler :

And a little of that:

Spoiler :

and, well, why not this too:

Spoiler :

Sargon the Magnificent:

Spoiler :

Gimme yo Money:

Spoiler :

Okay, now I'm just getting greedy:

Spoiler :

muwhahahaha!:

Spoiler :

now, this is just silly:

Spoiler :

Time to show mercy:

Spoiler :

Mansa trade for gold:

Spoiler :

Aaah...we can breath a little easier:

Spoiler :

Summary/Thoughts:

1) War went pretty well and fairly quick. Not a lot of losses. Toughest egg was Samarkand (2nd city). Lost a few there, but we had plenty of troops and plenty of reinforcements.

2) GK would have capped after Turfan, but felt it best to take Krak and that stupid coast city to a) easy culture some b) leave a nice Mongol culture city buffer to the rest of the AIs over their.

3) Traded Edu to Mansa for I think Optics/Drama and a chunk of gold. He was teching it. Drama got us some chunks of gold as well.

4) Felt Econ was a good trade for Mansa gold and to hopefully have him switch to FM soon too. Maybe get us some OB later

5) However, I kinda want to take out Mansa now

6) Settled two more cities...probably our last settlers for the game.

7) Whipped in some forges and CHs. Surprised that certain cities did not have forges yet..really surprised.

8) We still have GM and GS for whatever.

hmmm...you may note that BK is surprisingly tech quite well over in his little utopia. He actually has Steel now. Sal may seem like a likely next target, but we could go after HRE now. His two irons are easily sniped. Mansa is another possibility. Should quick cap him..give him all his cities back and then we have our own pet research whore.

Sal does have a decent size stack in his border city. Probably not a problem though. Draw him out toward the Mongol city and then take out his stack. He would probably cap quickly.

Our troops need a little healing, but I think we are ready to war in 1 to 2 turns depending on who/where we want to attack. (Note that Krak will probably have some revolt risk after we move out troops)