Acid_04: The final frontier

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
WW is absolutely terrible..lovely really , decide to increase lux to 10%
will send our warlord to the front to attach to a gren for free upgrading later
wow, nobody has any gold for us to make money

1. 1160AD
well, we lost a musket to cav in the IT
kill the offender, pillage some cottages for some cash (68gold)
retreat to city as a big stack is coming

2. 1170AD
our friend suicided 2 cavs, and then stopped in front of our city
another 37gold for pillaging, attach warlord to a gren

the odds are so terrible, I wait for the IT to see what he is doing

3. 1180AD
Shaka didn't attack, but wants odds to go down by bombardment
unless I want our stack to be almost wiped out, it's better to hole in

4. 1190AD
Shaka kills 1 gren, but loses 2 units, our 2 pillager muskets get killed
decide it's time to counterattack, we also have our warlord gren inside
attack with 3 cats first. lose 1
final tally of the attack 11-7...not too bad

Regardless what Muti said, WW has gone down and I reduce culture to 0%
science to 50% and rifling due in 4

5. 1200AD
waiting for the next stack to arrive...it's there already

6. 1210AD
attack again as he is in front of our city
suicide 2 cats
our warlord unit is really good and gaining experience fast
go 10-7 this time (this includes our 2 suicde cats)

7. 1220AD
hmm, lose gren to Cav inside the city
a cultural revolution took place in Pyongyang...it's still our though
take out that cav

8. 1230AD
we finally have rifling, go for mil trad since our vassal researches cannons for us (switch off research so we can

upgrade our muskets)
2 cavs are trying to sneak through our land
1st taklen out with our warlord unit...now at 43exp points
defeat 2nd as well without loss, lucky RnG here

draft a rifle in Washington, it's badly starving, whip a jail there as well

9. 1240AD
hmm Toku askes us to join the war against Greeks, but we can't afford to
our navy gets it's first success as a trireme sinks a galley
get first rifles...leave whipping/drafting to next player to attack Shaka

10. 1250AD
we get a GE, maybe we can use it to rush the FP somewhere?
we can also whip the GT in Washington, it was started and now takes only 6 turns to complete

Shaka is rather static I think. We now have 2 rifles in the frontcity, we can upgrade 1/turn and more are on the way. I

would advance in a few round before it's too late. We have a massive force and with trebs we should be able to knock that fellow down
his power has recovered unfortunately, he has steel so we must be careful of cannons

good luck to the next player...you'll need it!

high noon in the east:

 

[ThERat]

I know it;s usually not popular to create a warlord unit, but in this case it really helped us a lot...and will is we use it with care and at the right moment

I would do the same for a rifle or cannon once we get the next warlord

 

[acidsatyr]

GA is for building population by working farms/cottages to get the bonus yield, not running specialists.

Ok i understand that my question was why do we run Caste System and not Slavery?

LOL, I'm not sure how this game is actually working, since we really are playing from completely different strategic perspectives here. When I played my turn I certainly didn't imagine that we would be drafting vast quantities of muskets, or I would have built up rather differently. I'm still against it in theory - I just hope it works out in practice.

How can you be against drafting in a game like this? How else is possible to get so many units in shortest amount of time possible??

Yeah our research at this point is not great, BUT it it is still best for this situations, imagine having cities with no famrs around and trying to use drafting strategy. And in this game it is the only way to win.

Mut, markets and forges were in fact left for you to be built since it was essential to get those muskets out asap (i am not sure why they werent built earlier however) . Look at my save, none of the cities is unhappy. Cities w/o forge didn't get whipped.


As for situation:

Why am i the only optimist here?? I think we'r making the best we can from our situation, both in terms of production and research...
We have to draft.

WW is worst i agree, but it wouldv been really stupid to wait for Shaka to declare on us first.

Actually your choice for Worlord theRat was best one. Nothing else we could use it for.

 

[acidsatyr]

Wild Egyptian Team consists of:
---------
acidsatyr AKA Seth
Mutineer AKA The Scorpion King
ThERat AKA Imhotep
Blake AKA Duamutef <<====== NEXT 10 turns!!!!
Mark AKA Wepwawet
Uberfish AKA Sobek

Good Luck Duamutef, make us proud

 

[ThERat]

WW is worst i agree, but it wouldv been really stupid to wait for Shaka to declare on us first.

well, as stated, holing in our own city was the best to do to wait for rifles. WW has gone down and we can run 0&#37; culture. this will of course change once we go out and attack.
My guess in the power spike by Shaka: he upgraded his cats to cannons. I am sure we will see some soon. But with rifles, we can take out cavs and grens can take care of cannons + rifles, brilliant!

 

[ThERat]

the game is fun and the team works well, even though we all have different strategies. I think that is why we are successful

Anyway, the turns were rather painful, modern wars are so damn laggy...why can't we get a better UI...stupid really

 

[acidsatyr]

Yeah i agree good team here.
But we need to agree on one strategy now.
I really think we should keep drafting rifles in out cities, that's the only way to win now. There should be a wide gap between rifles and infantry, if we don't sieze the chance now we never will. Every new turn is 3 new draftable units.

We are really unlucky in this game as far as who our opponents are... Shaka is def one of the worst AI you have to fight... along with Stalin i think

 

[ThERat]

agree with drafting all the way, Washington has GT soon, can then draft wildly. Our capital makes 2 turn rifles now.
With enough strength, we have to take Shaka down all the way.

 

[uberfish]

Ok i understand that my question was why do we run Caste System and not Slavery?

It doesn't matter since we should not whip anything during the GA either.

How can you be against drafting in a game like this? How else is possible to get so many units in shortest amount of time possible??

I wanted to tech full speed to rifles with Rep Caste and the economy related stuff I built, and draft those. Not muskets, which were obviously going to be obsolete soon on Deity...

I do like the unusual moves of getting Wang as a vassal and making a Great General unit, since we are all in with this campaign now. We had better do some damage soon though, to slow the enemy progress towards Infantry.

 

[Mutineer]

Yes, we need to start to take cities soon, as soon as resonable stack of riffles arived or upgraded.
Draft to hill and finish darn globe theater.
I see we lost all our fishes...

good Shaka does not have galeons, we do not have them to.

I am afraid we will need to research cannons ourself, wang probably would not trade, as we have -9 for declaration and by some reason we did not get more then +2 for share war.

 

[acidsatyr]

Yeah told you we shouldve finish him off for some extra cash

well, i haven't seen Blake around here, i hope he knows hes next. Mark can't play till 4th if i remember

 

[Blake]

Ok got it, I'll play within 48 hours, probably earlier.

Our position is strong really.

 

[Mutineer]

Finishing wang that was a question of speed.

It would had cost time and units and after we finish him off we would be venerable for a some time.

There is a question, if we did not draft/build muskets and was teching to riffles when building infrastructure, would existing war with Wang prevent Shaka from declaring on us?

Blake?

WE would had been using a hole in AI programming.
Phoni mutial war to prevent anigilation? If I remember correctly in 1.61
it garanties 50 turns war, I think. Blake?

But we build units, so, faster we declare, better it would be. That was my logic behind vassaling Wang.

Blake, did you notice my description of Shaka Trade mission? Money never become avalible in trade.

 

[acidsatyr]

There is a question, if we did not draft/build muskets and was teching to riffles when building infrastructure, would existing war with Wang prevent Shaka from declaring on us?

In our case , I cant tell.
But what i know is that there were rare times when Monty declared on me even tho he was fighting another war (and in all those cases, the civ he was fighting was almost completely already destroyed) so i assume he calculated that he could afford another war... all this in vanila version. It was really weird first time it happened i was thinking ai would never fight two wars at the same time

Its interesting we didnt get that money for trade, maybe he used it for upgrades in the same turn?

 

[Mutineer]

Do not take me wrong, I do believe that building units was a correct decision,
I agrued in it favor, did not I? It was relieble decision.

I am just discussing AI mechanic.

 

[acidsatyr]

What? Drafting? Hell yes it was, i wouldve done wether or not you voted for it We'd be missing units if we waited for rifles, probly dead by that time too

but yeah i was commenting on your question regarding mechanics not drafting

 

[Blake]

I'm not sure what the money thing was. I'd have to look in the worldbuilder to know for sure.

I configured it such that the typical AI might trade away 1/3rd of the cash bomb - they'll keep the lions share for themself. Upgrades cost nothing for a Deity AI (it's like 5&#37, so maybe he just decided to sink it all into tech, I would've thought a Deity AI would have a pretty high science% by default, but maybe his massive army and lack of shrine was dragging his economy down to the point where the cash bomb allowed a significant upgrade in research.

When you get a large cash trade is when the AI is already running 90-100% science so they have nowhere to spend the cash bomb - they figure they'll just trade it away.

 

[Blake]

Looking over at the save here's my plan of action:
Many cities have no draft anger, I plan to fix that, our economy can afford to bleed some more gold on units and Shaka's power is still massive.

I think we could really use some banks, since our economy is only stable at 60&#37; gold, a bank in thebes (base gold of 26) would bring in +13gpt, there are a couple other cities that could justify banks too, namely those over 20gpt (actually Heliopolis is the only other city to qualify I think).

Philly and a bunch of other coastal cities are currently working plains farms (2-1) I'm thinking that all of those should be moved to coastal tiles (2-0-3) since I tend to think that 3 comm beats 1h, especially with such a cheap hammer option in drafting. Plains farm river I think is ok to work.

We could have Military Tradition in 8 turns (or even less) and in that time get a couple of banks too, for a stronger economy.



I notice along the coast there's a fish/goldmine site

Is there any reason why we haven't founded a city there? I figure if we don't then someone else will - probably Ragnar or Wang, although since it's on the coast anyone could sail over and plant a city there. Being creative the site would at least break even in no time (fish + goldmine).

There are triremes being trained in two cities, any reason why we aren't training Caravels instead?

Since we have legions of inactive workers I'll wake them up to build windmills since a plains hill windmill is 1-3-1 better than a grassland hill mine (1-3-0), there are also some unirrigated crops so some farm chaining is on the agenda. Another use for idle workers is using them as bait for Shaka's units but I asked the workers what they'd rather and they said build windmills and irrigation chains.

Final point: Imhotep the Great Engineer in Thebes, what to do with him? I am tempted to simply settle him in Thebes where he will increase production by 10%, he could plop Westpoint somewhere but unfortunately Thebes is unavailable for that and Boston is a bit in the backlines. Another use would be for Ironworks somewhere but again Thebes is unavailable, Boston may be okay though.

There is the frontline city of Uppsala which with an irrigation chain will provide decent production and could be a potential forward hammer pump, problem with Westpoint there being that we need a settled GG to hit 10exp (although it DOES have a military academy!) and problem with Ironworks being it's some 20 turns off. If however we settle Imhotep there he would help with future works.
So atm for Imhotep I'm thinking either settle in Thebes, Westpoint in Uppsala to go with the Military Academy (and settle a later GG) or a much later Ironworks in Uppsala. At this point I lean most strongly towards Westpoint in Uppsala (with a stables we have 11exp cav).

 

[Mutineer]

Personally I will save engeneer for Statue of Liberty. For our kind of economy it would be huge.

 

[acidsatyr]

not sure what to do with eng.
not sure if we'll ever go to democracy.
probably use it for Ironforge

i wouldnt settle that city, too late for that now, theres tons of infrastructure that needts to be built, no food, no need to pay maintenance for that city let them have it that gold wont offset maintenance ....