5 city conquest challenge

[Opac]

The of building horses with 14 spt was started by me as I did check the cities at the interturn, but forgot to take account the growth, which would have required more attention of course. I guess i got a bit carried away with trading and asquiring of new contacts


I Dont see much harm done thought, gladly as we sure do have enough of horses now or if not now we will have enough by the time we get to chivalry, so had Berlin built horses faster it would have been finished with it earlier and there wasnt anything useful to be built really at the moment as the colosseum build suggests. Upkeeping way too large army compared to your unit support for a long while is a sure way to kill your gpt rate.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Well, from a lurker's POV I have to fully agree with grs.
Building Horses at 14spt when you are importing them and have only 5 cities is so , an experienced player must get upset. See it that way: Berlin could have built 10 Horses during the deal. Now, you have 6 (and the 7th will be started, but finish later). Since you will try to keep any unit ever built around (your cities will have to build lots of infra later, and not many units), this is a major mistake. Not to speak of the 84 wasted shields...
But more important, it's not that kind of mistake that happened because of single misclick, but an ongoing mismanagement for 20turns...

 

[grs]

PreTurn: Lux to 0%. People are happy. Berlin: Colosseum switched to horse, wasting another 40 shields. Leipzig: Produces 9spt and is building 30 shield units. Move reg. warrior to Leipzig to disband for the missing shields and switch Leipzig to 10spt after that. Hamburg and Konigsberg switched to court.

IBT: Renew gems for wines deal with Spain for 3gpt. England and Sumeria sign MA vs Russia. Berlin horse - worker.

470AD: Cancel a signle slave worker roading a forest that no city can work ever. Disband two regulars into Hamburg to speed up court. Manage Berlin for max. commerce producing only 10spt for the worker.

IBT: Berlin worker - worker. Leipzig horse - trebuchet.

480AD: Mine wines at Berlin; irrigate unimproved grassland at Konigsberg.

IBT: Invention in - Gunpowder. Berlin worker - wealth.

490AD: Research turned off. MM Berlin to 12 shields and 5 fpt. Every 4 shields give 1 commerce and Berlin will grow back to size 12 in 4 turns. Mine 3 plains at Berlin so that they will finish in 5 turns after Berlin is size 12 again. Sell invention to Rome for 20gpt and 33gold.

IBT: --

500AD: Continue mining.

IBT: Leipzig trebuchet - trebuchet. Hamburg court - horse. Frankfurt trebuchet - trebuchet. Sumeria completes The Sistine Chapel.

510AD: Monotheism has been traded around. Buy it from France for 41gpt. Sell it to England for 90gold and 3gpt. Research to chivalry at max (9 turns).

IBT: Rome takes Copenhagen from the Vikings. Sumeria starts Bach's.

520AD: Continue jungle chops and tile improvements.

IBT: Not much happens.

530AD: Join a native worker each to Konigsberg and Hamburg.

IBT: Again nothing of note.

540AD: Sell Monotheism to Russia for 3gpt and to Caesar for 44gold.

IBT: Chivalry is traded around.

550AD: We can buy chivalry at the same price we research it in 3 turns. Buy chivalry from Spain for 264gold. Barbarossa is turned to an army. Upgrade 7 horses. Research turned off again.

Berlin: Can do 18spt -> knight in 4 turns with minimun waste of 2 shields. Mining the last plain it uses and give one of the two mined grasslands to Frankfurt is useless, because the additional shield will go to waste. Anyways, I would let it fill its food box again, before taking its last +food.

Leipzig: Does 10spt. You can keep it there after growth while gaining +3fpt.

Hamburg: Does 15spt. It should be possible to get it to 18spt at size 12.

Konigsberg: Gets a court and grows next turn. Should be possible to get it to 14spt, so it can do a knight in 5.

I would save all cash for knight upgrades and attack when we have enough. I would not build any more pikes. Maybe get Sumeria into war with all others in 11 turns or try to wipe out England in 16!? Be thoughtfull when renewing per turn deals! We must not make new deals with civs we want to attack soon!

 

[gozpel]

Nice MM'ing, grs.

I think I want to hurt Sumeria some, when it comes to my turns. If we can get rid of those neighbouring town, we can abandon our junk-city next to Berlin and found a new town on the other side and gain control of them horses. We need a settler for that.

So no more deals with Sumeria.

 

[t3h_m013]

hajime - up
gozpel - on deck
opac - off enjoying some wine
t3h_m013 - benchwarming...in SILKS!
grs - just played

I did explain my mistake with the temple and the colloseum was left to be changed into whatever you thought was best. I admit im not the best MMer but berlin was working tiels with greatest spt as far as i can remember, and i didn't think to rework a tile to get the 1 extra shield. as i said im not great at micromanaging, i am a relatively poor player. i admit my mistakes but does a lack of micromanaging really stop the game being fun?

 

[grs]

@t3h_m013: It just would be nice, if you and others read what I write. If you don't understand what I mean please ask. Maybe I am simply wrong, maybe I can explain to you what I want and you see my point. It is no problem if someone does something wrong, but if I ask to please stop a mistake and am unheard I get the impression I waste my time. That's it. So lets continue now, we are making good progress nonetheless. If we can make a dent into Sumeria when deals run out in 11 turns we are on the right track.

 

[Hajime]

Got it.

I'm going to explicitly work on military development in preperation for Gozpel's turns then.

 

[t3h_m013]

ok. ill try my best to do exactly as you suggest, not kinda semi have a go at it.

 

[Hajime]

RL bit me in the arse - posting save + turn log tomorrow.

 

[t3h_m013]

just so you all know im away from wednesday afternoon till saturday morning ish... if my turn comes up then justy skip me and heopfully someone will see to the (very minimal) running of the game.

 

[Hajime]

Can't do crap. Client called - sorry folks.

Gozpel: Swap me.

 

[t3h_m013]

k, gozpels up



gozpel - up
hajime - on deck?
opac
t3h_m013 - benchwarming...in SILKS!
grs - just played

 

[gozpel]

I've got it and play today.

 

[gozpel]

Pre-turn - Our junkcity has built a harbor and library and no barracks. Weird.

A bunch of Sumerian knights in our territory, they are at war with Russia and probably going for that junktown up north. We are paying 5gpt to them to trample through our empire, I cancel the ROP. We need the gold ourselves.

560AD - Konigsberg court -> knight. The court saved us one shield and one gold.

Sumeria and Spain knows Theology.

I tell Sumeria to remove their troops and they obey. Block off the lands near their borders with units, so they don't come back.

570AD - Leipzig treb -> knight
Frankfurt treb -> settler

We lost 12gpt from France for some deal we had before, our income is down to 22gpt atm.

580AD - Join a couple of workers in to Konigsberg. I will join more in to Leipzig and Hamburg.

Upgrade a horse to knight.

590AD - Berlin knight -> knight
Hamburg knight -> knight

Our luxdeal with Russia is up for renewal, get it for another 20 turns for 17gpt and 18g.

Galley sinks after I sent out on treacherous waters, one unit less to pay upkeep for.

600AD - Sumeria starts Copernicus!

Sumeria wants us to join them against Russia, I decline.

Upgrade another horse to knight.

620AD - Konigsberg knight -> knight

Russia and Spain knows Gunpowder, neither wants to sell it for all our gold.

I take a calculated risk and give our only iron, 20gpt and 18g to Spain for Gunpowder.
I then sell it to Sumeria for all their 805g. Upgrade some pikes to muskets.

We have saltpeter next to Leipzig. Neither Spain, Russia or Sumeria has any hooked up!

We will have an army and around 15 knights for the war against Sumeria, plus the trebs and a few horses and swords. It should be enough to remove the 4 closest cities and then get peace.

630AD - Rome demands Chivalry, I say no and they declare on us.

Berlin knight -> musket
Leipzig knight -> musket
Frankfurt settler -> worker

640AD - Hamburg knight -> musket

Next turn the deal with Sumeria will be over, time to declare. We have 2 stacks that can raze the 2 closest cities. Then they should go for the capitol Ur and also Lagash, raze them and wait it out so we can get peace.

The settler should found a city on the red spot, abandon Frankfurt before you settle. I already sold off the harbor and the library.

I'm not sure how this will effect our trade-routes? grs, will our harbors be enough?

Whatever happens, we have to do something now, Sumeria is running away and they know Navigation as we can trade WM's.

I would also think about allies, if we can get them all against Sumeria, we might have a good chance to take them down all the way.

 

[grs]

Our junkcity has built a harbor and library and no barracks. Weird.

It built the cats, therefor it got no barracks.

The court saved us one shield and one gold.

So it will pay off in only 80turns

I'm not sure how this will effect our trade-routes? grs, will our harbors be enough?

They will all be cut and our rep will be trashed.

Whatever happens, we have to do something now, Sumeria is running away and they know Navigation as we can trade WM's.

I agree that we need to do something, but we will trash our rep if we do. Can we risk that? Waiting will mean Sumeria runs away even farther.

 

[Hajime]

Grs: Do I declare war on Sumeria during my turn, or not?

My personal instinct is no. Screwing our rep over isn't worth it imo.

 

[grs]

Hard deceison. I would really like to hear Gozpels thoughts about it, since I guess (hope?) he had something on his mind. Ruining our rep would be bad although we could still get gpt deals when renegotiating peace (a bit abusive) and we still could extort techs for peace. Waiting another 17 turns seems not to be a good idea anyways - especially since we can not build any more knights, since we traded our iron.

I am a bit clueless.

 

[gozpel]

The only thing on my mind is that Sumeria at this stage is running away and in other games with them as opponents, they proved very hard to catch. In a couple of games even impossible, so we lost.

I renewed the Russian luxdeal or we would sit with 40% luxes or something. The iron to Spain could've been avoided, bu we can build muskets at least.

I did save a bit of money for the possibility of keeping the peace, as you see we are running a deficit right now.

Lost rep is bad enough in a normal game, here we only have 4 cities and one I emptied more or less. If we want to keep our rep, we can wait until the deal are over in 18 turns. I only wonder if Sumeria will have tanks by then

We better discuss this a bit more before we do anything. I need more coffee before I can think.

 

[Hajime]

I'm going to just focus on building up military strength/infrastructure during my 10 turns then

 

[grs]

One option is as bad as the other. After thinking a lot about this, I would say we follow gozpel's attack plan now. We will utterly fail once Sumeria has muskets and we do not even have anything to build now. What infra are you going to build? We are already running a deficit, we can't pay for even more military...

Either deceision is bad, I can't tell what is worse.