AG6 - The OCC Space Race (Monarch)

[Aggie]

Good turn SAAM

We can think about razing the Egyptian city at one point, but the fact that the AI is so horribly backward makes it more difficult. No income, no military

Selling the granary is a good idea microbe. Max research is the way I would choose as well.

ROSTER:
-Aggie
-Microbe
-CarlosMM
-Jack Merchant
-Stuck as a Mac --> just played
-yoshi74 ----------> up
-Melifluous --------> on deck

 

[yoshi74]

Got it,

Good points microbe, i will try to stick to it.

For the iron: I dont think we should be too aggressive. We have to trade for a lot of resources anyway, and spending a lot of shield and money to war may slow the our tech pace and the ai too. Also every war has the risk of more war (alliances against us), which can turn out very nasty. Since every civ will try to settle on free land, we have to fight everyone to keep our island empty. And an AW isn't what we're doing, right?

 

[yoshi74]

Gallay shuffle

Here's my turns:

Preturn:

I sell engineering to cleo for spices, 23gpt and 31g.
Sell granary for 15 bucks
set science to 100%. Physics come in 7, +3g
move dromons to delay the egypt galley somewhat

Hit enter

1 - 760AD dromon shuffle

2 - 770AD more dromon shuffle, put worker to sleep

3 - 780AD d.s.

4 - 790AD science to 90%

5 - 800AD gift HBR to the mayan. They are sooo backward
Gift literature to sumer. The zulu already have it
Sell litarature to america dor 23 bucks, they can do some research too.

6 - 810AD science to 80%, physics next turn

IBT physics->ToG (at 100% 8 turns)
We get a second SGL [dance]
Egypt starts Sistine

7 - 820AD establish a embassy in Thebes. Its a small village of size 4, 12 spt, no need to worry for our Newtons prebuild

8 - 830AD sell invention to joan for 100gp. Egypt is two techs ahead of france, and we don't want to see a almighty Cleo, do we?

9 - 840AD gallay shuffle

We loose ivory, furs, silks, wines, gems

10 - 850AD sell invention to egypt for 24g, gems, furs, wines
Sell invention to france for 12 g, silks, ivory. They are still at war, so equal rights for both
Gift republic to america. How can they do some research under monarchy?

IBT egypt is building sun tru
a frensh gallay shows ups

11 - 860AD gallay shuffle

12 - 870AD g.s

IBT Two more egyptian galleys show up. I think we can't prevent landing much longer.

13 - 880AD g.s.

14 - 890AD g.s.

IBT - ToG comes in, next is metallurgy in 8 turns at 100% (will change after we get newtons next turn)

15 switch sistine to newtons. Will lose 75 shields. Oh well, let it be so...

I was able to prevent the galley from landing. We could shuffle her around for the rest of the game i think, but i've seen already 1 french and 2 other egypt galleys. Hopefully they destroy each other. But in the long run some settlers will reach us. And we can't afford a war against our best trading partner.
Maybe we should build some more units. How about some med.inf? The ability for some counter attacks can really help. Trebs can also be usefull. But too much military would cripple us too. Should find a middle way. At least our wonders already bring some cash

Heres a pic of the galley shuffle:

And here's the SAVE

 

[Aggie]

Excellent Biggest news of your turns: gpt deal with Cleo We can afford more Military now. About 3 Knights sound quite alright to me, but we lack horses. The Maya have horses to spare, but we need Magnetism to trade!!

Meli, you can renegotiate the lux-lux deal with France for 60 gold and maybe more! Also, we want to keep the SGL's for the Space Parts Two techs to go until we reach the Industrial Age

ROSTER:
-Aggie -------------> on deck
-Microbe
-CarlosMM
-Jack Merchant
-Stuck as a Mac
-yoshi74 ----------> just played
-Melifluous --------> up

 

[yoshi74]

The gpt deal goes only for 5 more turns, but i hope we can make another (even bigger ). Also we have enough lux for the next ~15 turns. I made the deal with france and egypt at turn 10.

 

[Melifluous]

I have the Save.

Will play tonight/tomorrow morning...

But probably wont be able to post until tomorrow night ok?

Melifluous

 

[Aggie]

OK...OK? Well.....OK

EDIT: I understand you need time to play the Ultra Huge Map, so...OK

 

[microbe]

First off, culture update: Newton in 900AD, exactly as I predicted. and culture win in about 1990AD.

Second the blockage.

I agree with yoshi that we don't want to be aggressive in protecting the iron. I.e., we should not wage war just to get it back (but if we can't get it otherwise, we have no choice - note we need it for railroads). However, a blockage is needed. We need more units to do this:

We'd like AI to settle on those dots only. Red and blue would be very safe as they require 3-4 expansion to get the iron. Pink requires 2 so they will get it in 50-60 turns but we still get a lot of time and by that time iron wouldn't be that important anymore.

Now, dromons wouldn't be able to hold the position for too long. So here is a plan which might work:

Put at least 3 units in the south corner (the two pink tiles AND the tile north to the red one) to let the AI land.If they land they will settle there. Once they do that, there will be much less room for another city, and at the very least it would be much easier to block. Be careful to use dromon to block east/west to make sure they can only land there. Build a couple of more units/dromons.

research

Should we research Magnetism first to enable the trading?

 

[Aggie]

Oh! I didn't see that Metallurgy was only started in the last turn! Yes, please switch it to Magnetism to allow us horses as prebuild for knights and cavalry

microbe: good idea to use three units to force the AI to settle at a place WE desire!

 

[yoshi74]

Actually newtons in 910AD. I forgot the year at the last turn. Still very close to your schedule

I doubt we will be able to keep the iron secure. From your dotmap i guess we need a lot of units to secure the iron. Everyone for 2gp upkeep each we need some very good gpt deals. Also i think it wo't take long before a settler pair from avaris crosses our territory.
Given that we need at least 3 other resources (coal, aluminium, uran) we will need to trade some of them anyway. And egypt already have a iron somewhere. The only one who lack iron are america, unless i overlooked someone. And there are two more depositis on the eastern island. So i think trading for iron isn't the problem of the future. But we need to trade for the 3 supposingly and have to gift a lot of techs to them to be able to trade for it. Especcialy uran and aluminium may be a problem, coal also isn't too often availible.
So don't overextend ourself for this iron. Its only a prelude for the hunt for resources.

 

[Aggie]

yoshi74: We also need rubber for the space ship! But in essence you are right that we can't fight off the AI forever for this iron. But microbe's idea is very good and only requires three extra units. Would be nice when these are horses which we could upgrade at one point.

 

[yoshi74]

With only 3 units more i'd say give it a go Your right about the rubber. Overlooked it.

But why we need knights? Their only advantage is the speed and the ability to retreat. Since we don't have to travel to much around, MI would do the job quite fine. I even would recommonate longbows. When attacking a stack they are save, the add defensiv fire when we get attacked and are cheap. I also would consider some artillery.
Knights can upgrade to cavs, but in the 3 OCC's i played at all saltpeter was a resource i never got for trade .

 

[Aggie]

Fast units have the advantage to attack and then retreat into the city again, where they can safely heal in one turn. Slow units will be exposed after the fight.

 

[yoshi74]

Slow units will be exposed after the fight.

Not when they attack a stack. While i agree that knights are quite better, they arn't a must for our game variant. If we can get horses, fine. We have some time for unit building, but longbows and some artillery could be better for a defence (if needed) than knights.
But i think defense won't be the problem in this game. In Sorens OCC on monarch with max agress we never had a war at all, if i remember correctly.
More challenge will be the the aquiring of the resources and to get the research done before CV comes in.

 

[Melifluous]

OK

I blocked our island properly...

Nobody can get to our island now before Navigation

It needed all four of our Dromons but now the AI cant get past the Grenoble island...

hehe.

Melifluous

PS. Still playing btw, hope to post tonight...
PPS. Aggie you aint on MSN?
PPPS. Anyone else wanna join us on MSN? my addy is stevebroad2002<at>hotmail.com

 

[microbe]

yoshi: yes I agree it's not worth if we have to maintain a large unit to secure the iron. However, what I try to do is to quickly direct Egypt to settle on a tile we desire, and at that point it would be much easier to protect it as there would be fewer tiles other AIs would settle.

I think we need a couple more dromons and land units, and after Egypt settles we can disband extra units immediately.

 

[microbe]

Originally posted by Aggie
Fast units have the advantage to attack and then retreat into the city again, where they can safely heal in one turn. Slow units will be exposed after the fight.

Agreed on fast units, however I doubt a prebuild makes sense. We don't have gold to upgrade (yet). Building knights from scratch looks more feasible. Note we won't have anything to build for quite some time (until Factory).

 

[Aggie]

yoshi: I think that you aren't at war with the AI in soren's game because of the aggresive settings. They attack each other

Seriously: I have played a couple of OCC's where things were different. One is posted on this site.

 

[yoshi74]

No problem when they attack each other

However i agree on a sizeable military. Unfortunatly in an OCC this normally means IA. Rifleman and artillery are great for the resourceless, with the needed resources everything is possible. And at this time there is enough money surplus.

 

[Melifluous]

This is the Blockade

Melifluous