Acid_04: The final frontier

[Blake]

Hmmm... SoL...

Alexander has Constitution but no Printing Press.
Shaka has Printing Press but no Constitution.
Tokugawa has both Constitution and Printing Press.


If we want to get SoL we'll want to hurry to Democracy.

Actually that's another question, why are we researching Mil.Trad and what's the next tech? I'm not that fond of Cavalry when we can draft rifles - not that Cav are a bad thing but on the horizon are Cannons and Infantry.

So tech: Continue with Mil.Trad? Switch to Steel for Cannons? Switch to Democracy for SoL? If we continue with Mil.Trad what do we get next, Democracy?

I think cannons are great because they bash 6 units for up to 60% damage, which reduces even infantry into paste. Shaka has wickedly promoted units (looks like he has a solid HE+settled GG pump running) and cannons will give us an edge over them.


edit: I'm pretty sure the city will pay off.
For a settling cost of 130h (settler and workboat) it'll immediately bring in +5c from city+fish, +6c from free specialist, then a few turns later +7 from the goldmine... that's 18cpt... most of our established cities have courthouses so the added empire upkeep wont be too bad (our civics are cheap too). And each time the city grows it has colossus coast to work.
edit2: Since it's not clear in the SS there IS a fish in the city radius.

 

[Mutineer]

I think discussion going about some moot points that had no value.

If we want to win we need to start taking his cities Now!

with tech we have on hands. It is Normal speed, if we wait untill Cannons and then befor we build enogth of them and move them on fron line... it will be too late.

Yes, Mil tradition probably was not a good decision, as we do not NEED cavalry, it is just nice to have. On a brigth side 2 move units will be getting to front line faster.

NO more waiting, first draft from near by cities enoght riffles to cover our big stack and go!

No building any stuped Unies, banks, build Greens for taking on cities which will be protected mostly by riffles.

Move as one stack, even with absolute units - bigger stack - more spread out collateral.

AFter drafting near by cities enoght to cover our greens to start an offence, start to draft the most remote cities, so riffles have chance to get to front line befor they get absolute. Then gradially move to the undrafted cities near fron line.

Build darn units!

I am in favor of finishing Mil Trad and research Democracy and build statue of liberty.

My logic again, WE can not wait for cannons, our preserved trebushets will take cultural defence in one shot. that should be enoght.
If we did not cripple in shaka in half with mass draft riffles/produced greens and a few cavalry in mis from most remote cities, we would not win at all.

If we do, it would not be matter if shaka have infantry or not. What would be metter is our own economy and as I see it, SoL is the best way for as to improve it.

So, draft to the hill and attack as soon as enoght cover riffles arived, my guest 10 should be enoght. Start taking Cities!

 

[Mutineer]

Under near by cities just calculate which you need to start to draft first so about 10 riffless arived simiulteniosly and you can finally go.

 

[acidsatyr]

WOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

I agree completely who cares if we settle that city or not we better take some cities NOW
btw, i saw that fish and i still think its a waste of time, let another ai worries about that

calvary was unecessary but oh well

DRAFT!!!!!!!!!!!!

i dont agree about SoL however, we need dem. for that and i dont see us having time to research it just for SoL.

I am in favor of finishing for calvary and going straight for cannons, while using GE for IronForge

 

[uberfish]

Shaka is fielding rifles with 3 promos. I think cavalry are not really going to be useful, and I vote we switch to STEEL now too, we do need cannons in order to make going on the offensive more efficient. Until then we had better sacrifice to lure out defenders; Jelling has 6 cav 6 rifles for example, we don't have a good attack against it without cannons.

Uppsala and several tiles around it are now more than 50% ours, so it is ok to sacrifice there to weaken the enemy without incurring WW.

 

[ThERat]

I agree with Muti, no infra, no new city (we will keep Shaka's cities for now and that will cost us anyway).

By the way, did I miss something here? I purposely did NOT go for steel as we asked our vassal to research it and he is 6 turns from obtaining it. Do we not SHARE the knowledge? Or at least able to trade for it? What is the point of a vassal then?

Mil Trad was done for a few turns on 0% science as I saved money to upgrade our promoted muskets. Now, draft and get the hell out and attack Shaka. I left it to the next player to mass draft and attack.

 

[Mutineer]

No , we do not share research, problem is with our -9 you declare on as and we seems can not get more then +2 for mutial war there is a small chance he will trade.

I was hoping for better +shared war bonus. May be adopt his religion, but still migth not be enogth.
Vassaling could be very usefull tool, if one does not accumulate lots of - befor
getting vassal, then you can direct his research and trade between, creating very powerfull research block, especially on highers levels.

I was expecting max -6, but we seems to declare war 3 times.

BTW what GE offer to research? He might offer steel.

I do not argue cannons could be usefull, but how the hell get them fast enoght?
I am in great favor if we do not burn GE for steel to build
SoL with it.
It is 10% increase of all our civ output, I think our average city size = 8 or 9.

In no case waste it to join city.

 

[ThERat]

maybe I am too critical of CIV already, but that concept of vassals is crap as it is. I mean the fellow will be your vassal only if he is small and that happens due to fighting him. Then due to negative war modifier, he doesn't trade with you? A vassal? Good joke, but what's the point of a vassal then?

 

[acidsatyr]

To help you fight wars (so its better to wipe him out rather than leave one city, or better then leave a few cities), and, if he still wants to trade with you, you tell him what to research, but not because youll get if for free but only so you can trade something for it later.. kinda stupid i agree.. its not like team concept if that what ou mean (vassal can still win a game theoreticaly by building a space ship for example, which is redicilous concept) also his teritory counts toward domination (but only 50&#37 ..so lots of negative sides, some positives, all in all i dont like it...never really create vassals just destroy them all...
The fact that we already started Mil. T. we should really finish it cavalry can be usefull as a fast unit to pick up some units 1 move units cant reach.

btw Happy New Year !!!

 

[uberfish]

Yeah, it's pretty dumb that you can't force a capitulated nation to give you at least a couple of techs...

 

[futurehermit]

I agree that capitulated vassals kinda suck UNLESS you plan for it early and get them to vassalize after you only declare war on them once. Take their critical cities, get them to vassalize, but leave them with enough that they can recover and be decent at fighting wars/researching techs. I'm tinkering with the idea of even gifting a couple decent cities back to them to help them be even stronger. If you only declare on them once and don't raze any cities you should be able to get relations to the point where they will trade with you again. Some civs are more ready to capitulate than others. You can also obtain vassals peacefully in which case they will usually trade with you (I've never had this happen though since I'm usually the aggressor )

Capitulated vassals need to be fixed though imo. You should be able to request ANYTHING and if they ever refuse, WAR!!!

Btw, looking forward to how this game pans out. I've learned a lot, great job guys.

 

[Mutineer]

you can not gift cities to vassal, I tryed that.

 

[Blake]

I question our ability to take on Shaka's super-promoted units with draftees.

The point of Cannons is not so much to break cities, but to bash incoming stacks

Wang Kon will not ever trade tech with us I think, his researching Steel will give us a discount but that is all.

Turn 0: Draft 3 rifles.

Turn 1: 3 Shaka cavalry have turned up, 2xdouble and 1xtriple combat promoted, I throw away 3 muskets to get winning odds, this gives our healthy rifle 70% odds, he loses causing minimal harm but the next rifle mops up and the remaining cav are too injured to put up any fight.

A Barbarian Longbow has appeared at Gold/Fish.

The korean hind/jew city has come out of revolt and provides a significant boost to our economy and research (it has an Academy).

Turn 2: Korea cancels his 1gpt gift to us. I briefly consider demanding it back as tribute....

More Shaka Cav's are incoming.

More drafting but no fights this turn, his cav are positioned such that any unit which finishes one off will get ganked the next turn.

Shaka mini-SOD on the radar:

Turn 3:
Shaka minor SOD moves close to our city, it's a PASTEMAKER, 12 Cannons evenly mixed between pure City Raider and pure Barrage, anything that stack hits turns to paste. The only hope is to counter-attack it, probably with a couple of catapults followed by everything including the kitchen sink. Luckily the Cav will be easy to peel off with Rifles and the Cannons are outmatched by Combat Grenadiers - it's a good thing he didn't bring any Rifles along.

In other cheery news that korean city revolts to Korea AGAIN plunging our economy back into the crapper of barely sustained 30%.

Out of cities to draft now - drafting will be at the cost of happy citizens. That doesn't mean they wont get drafted, they'll probably get drafted and then 2-pop whipped temple to make em shut up. But pushing more than 12 "HELL NO" into a city will probably be too much. Fortunately we get GT next turn and can draft their every turn pretty much (once the seas are reclaimed).

Turn 4:
In the IT 2 Shaka Cav's suicide against our city - huh? They did however forget the suicide part and both withdrawed, deferring their deaths until the turn when they got mopped up by a Crossbow and War Chariot.

The minor SoD is now up against our City. Draftees have 28% odds against the cav, that's no good.
1 catapult sacrificed, draftees now have 31% odds against the top cav. Another pult sacrificed, draftees now have 48% odds. Close enough, the remaining cavs aren't as well promoted as the top one... but huh... a 3rd catapult thrown against the stack anyway, no damage to top cav but the other should now be at ~70% odds for us, so we'll take significantly fewer losses. First rifle loses at 70% odds and now the Cannons have stepped up to the plate.
At this point the Cannons defend against Rifles, and the remaining cav against any non-rifles.. hum... I throw away our last two Catapults reducing most of the Cav to 9.9/15 hitpoints, a level where Muskets have survivable odds. I decide to throw away all five of our < 5exp muskets against the cannons, not like they're worth upgrading (knights are a better upgrade IMHO, if we upgrade anything). 2 of the muskets actually win and a GG is born. An argument could be made for settling him in Washington, but that would still have draftees only coming out at 3exp, so I send him to the frontline so we can start popping out 5exp units at Uppsala.

Back to the fight. I throw our 5 healthy, non-pinch Rifles at the Cannons, all rifles win, only 3 healthy Cannons left. 3 CombatI grenades (65% odds) - 2 die, no more healthy Zulu units. I take 6 non-pinch Grenades and throw them away, 4 win 2 die. Sargon (Grenade) wins at 95% odds bringing him up to 49 exp, remaining Shaka units cleaned up without fuss (all battles > 99.9%). Total losses:

5 Catapults (none retreated)
1 Rifle
4 Muskets
4 Grenades

Our attack force is left largely intact, but Uppsala is set to build Catapults since 3 catapults are better than 1 rifle (at least in moderation), throwing away 3 pults against 6 real unit will probably at least double our units survivable chances - to take out those Cav with rifles, at 33% odds for our rifles, would've resulted in losing 4 more rifles (or about 6 more muskets). So I'm going to rebuild the pults and maintain a buffer of 4-5

Here's our position:

Once the forces are mostly healed up it could be a good time to move out, I don't really like sending our army into the teeth of Shaka's army where our units "enjoy" 33% odds on defense - with luck this version of better AI isn't the one where the AI has been trained to build about ~25% defensive siege because having those smashing against an incoming stack makes life very miserable.

I doubt somewhat our ability to hold a city, luckily Shaka will have outgrown Dagger by now, so he wont be training as many City Raider units, but if this is a siege-happier version we could be in trouble because once siege starts hitting a city the defenders turn to paste. Fortunately we can do a smash-grab and sue for peace if the worst comes to the worst (ie Shaka puts his units in a winning position). All this flat land really does suck because we just have one advantage over Shaka's more highly promoted units - the only thing saving us is that in this version the promotion code is still braindead so you get those gems like a Cover Guerrilla Rifle... since his rifles aren't pinch our pinch rifles do have an edge over his rifles - unfortunately we don't have an answer to his cav as such.

A side effect of Shaka braindead promotion scheme is that our own Cavalry will do quite well (in later versions of BetterAI both rifles and Cav will take Formation). So I'm continuing to maximize commerce where doing so is not an unreasonable sacrifice.

Anyway I've run out of time for the moment I'll play the rest later.

 

[uberfish]

with luck this version of better AI isn't the one where the AI has been trained to build about ~25% defensive siege because having those smashing against an incoming stack makes life very miserable.

Please don't do this sort of thing without nerfing AI military production/upgrade bonuses too, our war in the current game is already extremely unenjoyable...

 

[uberfish]

For interest's sake I did a quick 'alternate future' few turns from after I handed off at 900AD playing my style:

I stayed in Caste system for extra Scientist/merchants (that's why I was building banks. They are actually better in SE than CE), healed up and finished off Korea, at which point I used tech whore diplomacy to get Astronomy, 900+ gold, Shaka to declare on Toku (make use of the shared military struggle bonus we had from Korea to keep him busy) and Alex to stop trading with Shaka.

Is the pen mightier than the sword? Perhaps. It's definitely mightier than the musket.

Used 2 GS on PP and chemistry as in the real game.

In 1160 I have rifling, Globe in 19 pop washington due next turn, next GP due in one turn, steel in ten turns with lots of population to whip for Cannons, and immunity from sneak attack as all AI are in a state of war with each other. I will have 50+ rifles with good numbers of cannon and frigate support by 1350 to attack with, and solid cultural control of the area around Uppsala (which should have been running its free specialist as an Artist btw) to avoid WW. It's a much better position and there really wasn't any extra risk since I could bribe Shaka to attack someone immediately when Wang was dead.

 

[Mutineer]

Well that was probably just my mistake, I forgot that I could bribed Shaka to attack some one when I Vassalage Wang.

 

[acidsatyr]

hmmmm...i tought you said Shaka was locked in "we have enough on hands.." right after we vassalaged Wong?

 

[futurehermit]

you can not gift cities to vassal, I tryed that.

aww, too bad i still think capitulated vassals could use some fixing. right now they're more a pain than anything.

 

[Blake]

Turn 5:
More shaka units incoming, 5 Cav and 2 Rifles, he is dribbling rather than mass attacking (although it is a lot of slobber)

Turn 6:
The 5 Cav 2 Rifle stack is now against the city, a new 1 Rifle 6 Cav 2 Cannon stack is right behind it.

Fight:
Suicide Catapult, it retreats.
Suicide another catapult, it dies.
Suicide a draftee Rifle, it dies and does no damage.
Another draftee rifle, dies doing minimal damage.
Next five rifles win, then another rifle dies.
Rommel dies in combat (Shaka Cavalry)
Finally I kill off a pillaging cav, our rifle simply wins.

Turn 7:
Settled GG in Uppsala.

Fight:
Sacrifice a catapult, it dies. No more catapults.
Some muskets have healed, I grab two CombatII promoted ones and throw them at the cav, 4&#37; odds. One musket lives and is renamed to Lucky, the other dies causing minimal harm.
I grab the 5 remaining healthy non-pinch rifles and throw them at the stack, only one rifle dies.
I try to use our Heal+Sentry chariot to mop up the dead cav, but the chariot dies causing no damage, oops (it was at 20/26 exp, guess it's luck ran out)
There's a pillaging pinch Cav, I throw our mismatched-promotion Jumbo at it, 33% odds, jumbo dies deals no damage. I throw a Grenade at it, dies dealing no damage. I throw some lame-ass Crossbow at it, dies dealing a little damage. I toss away another stupid crossbow, it dies but deals massive damage. Sargon then finishes off the beast, bringing him to 51/50 exp.

I think the lone pillager inflicted more losses than the entire stack

Turn 8:
Another pillager move up to the city, followed by a 2nd solo pillager, no more stacks right now. Both pillagers get gunned down by CombatII rifles, with both being ready to receive Formation next turn.

Turn 9:
Another pillager turns up, it kills the first rifle thrown at it but the second wins.
I promote one combat III knight with Sentry, the other is promoted with March and upgraded to a cav.

Oh ticklegawa has Democracy now - he doesn't "Have his reasons" for not trading it... not yet anyway. Beakers are going into Steel atm but I'm at 100%g so if we want to switch to Democracy not much will be wasted.

Turn 10:
Hindjew city revolts AGAIN, even before the last revolt had ended I think. Whose bright idea was it to vassalize that Korean dork?
On the bright side he no longer "Doesn't like us enough" to trade with us - now he only thinks we are too advanced .

Another Shakian stack is incoming, but this one is tiny, only 3 cav and 3 cannons. From the power graph it look like Shaka is actively pissing away all the units he trains rather than gestating a stack of doom, it might be time to push.

Here's Shaka's cities:

The city across the border is flatland, it will be difficult to hold against cannons, so is the floodplains city. On the other hand both Tensberg and uMgungung are on hills, once we do push I think we want to push hard enough to take Tensberg.

We have some highly promoted units now, a bunch of Formation Riflemen and heaps of Pinch units, it would be a good time to push on Zululand. I don't think we can get momentum going without cannons though, with the ~70% loss rate of trebs. Towards those ends I have started banks in a few cities (banks basically have diminishing returns since the higher they put your science slider the less return they give, hence it only really make sense to build them in the very commerce richest cities). But you can cancel the banks if you want.
A bunch of cities will be redraftable now since the first round I did will have just worn off.

If we want to go for Statue of Liberty there is no time to waste, Tokugawa has Demo and Shaka is in a position to get it. Tokugawa does not seem to have any strong production cities (his only wonder is The Great Lighthouse) so things are not so dire as they may seem when it comes to SoL - but we are not in a strong position to get it.

I would probably favor heading straight to cannons and using the GE on Ironworks - with Cannons we can beat Shaka into submission regardless of what units he fields. Collateral damage doesn't discriminate, infantry and machine gunners are fair game and Shaka doesn't seem super-interested in pursuing Artillery.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/84705/Acid_IV_AD-1350.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Mutineer]

I am surprised how poor drafted riffles perform, as in my expirience in Vanilla they were main counter to cavalry.

I suppous there is magor nerf to draft in Warlords. First, drafted units now come with no promotions, as result of decreasing barrack exp. IN vanilla drafted units got 2 ex, giving them one promotion. In Warlords they come with 1 ex, giving them 0 promotions.

Second cavalry got stable bonus expirience. That is a big cummulative nerf to draft.