Aabra02: Hammy Builds a House

We don't have the Military Academy built. Did I miss a discussion on this? Is there any reason I shouldn't start it?

Also, I've got some bad, bad news:
The Chinese got the ToE.

Based on that, it looks like we need the Chinese to have stronger neighbors. I can make the following trade and I'd like the team's input. It's 1:06 pm, GMT -6 and I'll plan on resuming play in a couple of hours.

Spoiler :
testquestiondg1.jpg
 
I think the French are the only ones who have cash to trade so I agree we need to keep them strong.

The military academy sounds fine to start. I was trying to prebuild towards a few infantry but that got knocked out by the lack of rubber. We'll need to take someone's rubber at some point.
 
Aabra02 1450 AD+

It takes me a little bit to get my head around the game, because I've been out for so long. Build workers. Clobber Chinese. The Chinese are building the ToE at Canton, which is a long, long way from antying we own. We don't have the gold to investigate Canton, so I'll just have to hope that the dogpile does us some good.

Ok. And away we go:

IBT:

A cannon is captured and a knight dies by Warwick. (0-1). [sarcasm]Well, guess I'm off to a great start![/sarcasm]
Henry cancels the iron deal. I'll worry about that in a bit.

1455 AD:
The strategic railnet in our core looks pretty much complete, so I begin railing around Mecca, as that is our "new" capitol.

Why is Babylon building arty? It produces net 27 spt. Why not cavs? It has a rax. I assume that there's a reason, so I'm going to let this arty build complete.

I'm still trying to get my head around this game, so I turn to the diplomacy screen to see what I can do. The iron deal with Henry just ended. If he had more cities and were closer to the Chinese core, I'd consider giving him iron and ponies just to make him a useful ally. As it is, though, even if we gave him those things, he just doesn't have the infrastructure to make good use of them. He'll just have to live without iron. I don't want to tie up perfectly tradable resources under these conditions.

We don't have the Military Academy?!? I switch the build in Mecca to the MA. Did I miss a discussion about this? Is there a reason we don't have it?

Fustat is about to riot. Hire a CE and cut the market from 15 to 11 turns.

IBT:
Lose our Ivory. I'll try to buy it back in a minute.

The Chinese are building the Hoover Dam.

01chinesehooverdamgy5.jpg


Bad, bad news:

02chinesetoeso5.jpg



1460
Raze Kaifeng. Gain 2 slaves. (2-1)
Kill a chinese vet cav (3-1)

I want the Maya's ivory and I want them to remain moderately powerful, as they're right next to the Chinese. I make the following trade

Spoiler :
03mayanivoryzc3.jpg


After getting Whomp's answer above, I trade RP to Joan for 130 gold, 123 gpt, WM, and TM. We need for Mao's neighbors to be strong, particularly if they're our allies.

Spoiler :
04joanrptradewt0.jpg


Bombard Hangchow to little effect. No point in attacking if my cannons can't hit 'em. I don't need to drive up my loss ratio.

I see that we still own some temples, so I slip one into the build qeue at Agedincum.

Completion of the hospital at Aden enables us to build Battlefield Medicine.

According to Livy, we are the happiest nation in the world.

1465 AD

Again bombard Hangchow to little effect. The Chinese are about to move in reinforcements (I can see the galleons) and these trebs and cannons aren't doing the trick. Time to upgrade to more advanced artillery.

I decided to see if Mao would talk, more because I want to know what he got from ToE than anything. Here's what I found:

Spoiler :
05chinesetechsrs7.jpg


I rush the harbor at Warwick after I discover that there's rubber underneath the city! :woohoo:

1470 AD:
We now have native Rubber!
Resistance at Macao ends.

1475
I start a rax at Warwick to upgrade those trebs. Hangchow is size 8 and bombarding infantry with 2 cannons and 2 trebs just isn't going to cut it. I'd rather rush a rax at Warwick and use 4 arty, thankee very much. Tactical retreat initiated.

The strategic railnet is almost complete. With the exception of Shiraz, all cities on our main continent can now be reached by rail.

vCav defeats LB near Warwick, promotes to elite. (4-1)

IBT:
Chinese request an audience. Sure, we'll listen. We can't take the deal because of alliances, but I want to know what they'll give. Basically, they'll give us 22 gold. No techs, no cities.

I'm going to have to stop here, but this game is great fun!

Nextplayer: We were only using 4 scientists and doing 50-turn research on Industrialization. I switched us to Lone Scientist and have amassed ~2500 gold. That ought to buy us a few treb-cannon-artillery upgrades and rush some stuff if we need it. I didn't make much headway against China and they got the ToE, but I did get some housecleaning done. We now have rubber, artillery, some cash, a few more workers and the strategic railnet is almost finished. Move the trebs and cannons back into nearby raxes. We've got artillery and there's no longer any need to use trebs. We're not going to stop the Chinese from getting the ToE now. . .

Oh, and I fortified an army in Macao to heal. Wake it up.
 

Attachments

Nice work Aabra! I was building arty since we need those more than anything to take out infantry. Good plan on gathering cash so we can upgrade those trebs and cannons. We'll need them.
 
Thanks, Whomp. The sliders were already set at 0% when I picked up the save, so I can't really take credit for the plan of gathering cash for upgrades. And the happy discovery that we have rubber only happened because I cleaned the map to try to see whose rubber would be the easiest to take. The next player could also swap some of the arty builds to infantry &/or cash rush a few. Including Joan's payments for RP , we've got ~750 gpt coming in, so we can afford a few rush items.
 
I'm glad that you could take it. I don't think that I can pick it up today so I'll try tomorrow if that's OK.

Good spot on the rubber! That makes our job a bit easier. I use the Misc. tab on CAII nowdays rather than clean map as I'm far too lazy to scan for resources anymore. It will have shown up as a disconnected resource on F2 as well but I must admit that I don't often bother with that one either.

What's under the final spoiler, Aabra? It's showing nothing.
 
Some of my other spoilers are acting a little strange, too. That was a picture of the diplo screen with Mao. IIRC, he's got Communism, Facism, Industrialization and Scientific Method. Oh, and he had 1 gold, I think. So I'm not sure what he took from the ToE. If he took Ind, and something further down that branch, we wouldn't be able to see it. I'm not where I can reupload the pic again, but I'll try to fix it later.

Edit: Final spoiler fixed.
 
:shake:

I'm really sorry. I had a busy week at work and so couldn't play earlier. However I could have played at the weekend as I had some civ time but I'd forgotten about this game by then. That's not really what this game needs at the moment! I would say skip me as I've (sort of) had it for a while now but we're short on players so is it OK if I look tomorrow as I'm now off work for a while?
 
The way things are looking I won't be able to touch this till next week so play on....anyone. :D
 
OK. I've finally taken a look. :faint: a couple of questions before I start.

Are we going to continue with min research? Personally I don't see the need as we have the cash for arty upgrades but maybe we could go that way and short rush stacks of units. An alternative is to get factories with Industrialisation and then hoard cash for short rushing. (Or maybe even continue to research, say for transports and/or tanks?) Views?

What is our long term goal? My view is that we need to squash the Chinese and so no PT with them. They, and their tech lead, is our only real concern in this game. Unless there have been some earlier wars between the Chinese and our allies, I'd expect them all to sign PTs in the next few turns. I would renew alliances everytime they accept peace to keep them all busy whilst we grind our way through the islands with our arty/armies combo. What do you guys think?
 
OK. I've finally taken a look. :faint: a couple of questions before I start.

Are we going to continue with min research? Personally I don't see the need as we have the cash for arty upgrades but maybe we could go that way and short rush stacks of units. An alternative is to get factories with Industrialisation and then hoard cash for short rushing. (Or maybe even continue to research, say for transports and/or tanks?) Views?
I haven't looked at the save since I posted, but I don't recall anyone except the Chinese having Industrialization. If that's the case, the only ways to get to it would be: (1) self-research; (2) buy it; or (3) get it in a PT. I think we still need to hurt the Chinese some more. They beat us to ToE and that's not a good sign. If we can ride out the alliances against Mao that we currently have (& I saw no indication that we can't), I would suggest continuing at minimum research until we've significantly hurt Mao. We'll know that we've "significantly hurt" him when he's willing to give us Industrialization (& SciMeth, if possible) in exchange for calling off our vicious hordes. Until then, I'd keep either stockpiling cash &/or upgrades, rushing units & front-line raxes. I don't really see cranking up for full-scale research while we're still trailing Mao in the tech race.

What is our long term goal? My view is that we need to squash the Chinese and so no PT with them. They, and their tech lead, is our only real concern in this game. Unless there have been some earlier wars between the Chinese and our allies, I'd expect them all to sign PTs in the next few turns. I would renew alliances everytime they accept peace to keep them all busy whilst we grind our way through the islands with our arty/armies combo. What do you guys think?
Not a bad plan. As stated above, I'd consider peace with Mao, but only under two conditions: (1) All of our obligations to our allies have been satisfied; and (2) we can get one or two techs to bring up to (or at least closer to) parity.

What's the :faint: for? Surely this game doesn't look that scary! ;)
 
I don't think that we'll hurt him enough to get IA techs in the PT until we hit the core. The purpose behind researching Industry is to get factories up and running. Note that we can research it in 5 turns @+199gpt or in 4 @+67gpt due to those crippling deals you struck with the French, so we are in a position to research if we want to. I am happy not to research at all (maybe waiting until some other civ gets it) but what's the point of min research if we don't intend to see it through?

Note that what I'm suggesting means that we'll be in the war for the long run so no quick PTs. I suspect that we'll be fighting them for another 20-25 turns as they will not be quick to sign a second PT when our allies redeclare.

Oh, and the :faint: was the shock/amazement that I'd actually looked at the save; not what the save contained! :lol:
 
Crippling? As I recall, I didn't even haggle! (Mainly because the last time I haggled with Joan, she couldn't afford the deal for very long and DOW'd us. That was in Gma02.)

You're probably right about the likelihood of getting IA techs in a PT, but I see your point. I guess it depends on how you feel about our military. I can sure see the advantages of grabbing Industry in 4-5 turns and if you feel OK with the forces we've got, I'm OK with turning up the research. Given the cost of factories, though, I don't feel like the ~2500 that I built up and an additional ~1000 (from 5 turns at +199 gpt) will buy us very many factories, though. Perhaps start some prebuilds in our 4-5 best towns?

I'm also not sure that I agree that there's no point in min research unless you see it through, though. I frequently run min until I have enough cash to do my upgrades/rushes/etc., then crank up the research and do a hard burn to the next tech. Sounds like we may be at the "turn it up" point, though. I have a long, long history of overkill, but if you think we've got the guns to put the hurt on Mao, I'm not opposed to turning up the science.

In any event, I'm all for pounding on Mao some more. :spank:

Beorn? Whomp? Anybody?
 
lurker's comment: I'd likely go to serious self-research. I've had the AI refuse to cough up IA techs even when I've been outside their capital walls. Also, it's easy to get bottlenecked at Industrializatin/Corporation/Steel/Refining and get cut off from the remainder of the tech tree. I'm just sayin'.
 
I say self research. I don't think we'll need all the cash rushing for units but maybe for factories. We can crush him with arty, armies and infantry (later maybe even tanks). He's our only competition and needs to be taken down a notch or three.
 
Well, we haven't heard from scoutsout in a while, so it looks like the consensus appears to be to move forward with self-research, unless Beorn has a good argument to go the other way.

Beorn, are you still with us?

Edit: Thanks for the input, SimpleMonkey. You're right about the Industrialization bottleneck.
 
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