AG8 - Let's try Sid

anarres, you ARE a very good player ;) But Nad and Greebly are too :love:

I tend to go with anarres' ideas, largely based on what I saw in a Sid pbem between Skyfish and Kingreno. They both went the warmonger route and hardly went for culture. Granted, they had a map which made warmongering easier. But a lot of their tactics worked out very well.
 
We also need to discuss the trades Aggie mentioned. I am inclined to hold trade for now...attempt the suicide crossing first, if that succeeds we're in a better brokering position.

I would buy map-making if we can broker it and keep praying we get to lit first so we can sell it as a monopolist.
 
Actually the war with Sumeria makes me more inclined to follow Anarres route if we think we can be ready soon enough to take advantage of said war. Its the AI who has been building up units and my attacking too soon that gets me in trouble (judging when to attack is one of my weaker skills in this game though I am getting better at it each game).

Unsure on the 2fer. I am afraid the that the trading value of Map Making may not be as high as we would like. I am guessing we could make an estimate by taking the price we pay for the tech dividing it by 2.5 or 3.0 and see what that buys from sumeria? I got 2.5 or 3 by the fact that we are paying 2x the price and adding in the fact the tech will devalue due to the fact that more ppl know it. Not sure if this is exactly right though.

If only India knows it and Sumeria is at war with them it might be better to wait. It is a risk as an unknown player could transfer it, but probably a lower risk for only 2 turns.
 
I want to add that Sumeria also knows Portugal... I don't know if Portugal is the only civ capable of getting to us (Lighthouse). But they at least are capable of selling it to Sumeria, since they are at peace. That's why I think it's a gamble to go for the curragh suicide mission. But the pay off could be great.
 
I don't think there is a right choice here - you either gamble or you don't. I would go with whatever choice feels best to you Aggie (and if it doesn't work out then worry about it as it could have easily been the right one instead).

[Edit: For some reason I was thinking Aggie was still up and making the call. So I did mean to say Nad's choice (i.e. whoever is playing next).
 
If I may add my pinch of salt Aggie, I think that KingReno will have a very hard time beating me in our Sid level PBEM precisely because he chose an EARLY warmonger route while I chose to build up infra and not attack before railroads. No ?
Its true that the map was geared towards a defensive position though.
Looking at this game, I have to say I am inclined to disagree with anarres :sad:
I *would* build up until Cavs I think...
I can still remember the huge SODs teh AI threw at us when we attacked them in the CDZ Sid SG, stacks of hundreds of units, can you guys handle that right now ? Or maybe we attacked too late (start of our MA) in that SG ?
Its a difficult choice...
 
I've not got enough experience at sid to have more than a gut feeling. But for what it's worth:

+ Our UU is at its most powerful now.
+ Our closest neighbour is already at war - thus most of India's forces are elsewhere.

- Can we can build enough vet MWs to capture 5 or 6 towns.
- Can we hold them against India's culture

I think our key objective is to capture or raze the Temple of Artemis thus stunting India's cultural expansion.

As I've not yet had time to look at the save I can't tell wether or not the above is a practical objective. If it is practical then I think that an early war could work for us.


Ted
 
Do we want India to be a weak neighbour who we have under the thumb now, or do we want to wait for Cavs to tackle them? For me this screams war, not peace.

I think if we wait we may totally miss our chance. When we have Cavs they will have Infantry...

Another minor point - we miss our GA until the end of the middle ages if we don't attack somone.
 
I'm going to play tonight when I get home in about an hour/hour and a half.

Seems like the consensus is to plan for war soonish, so I will look to accelerate our buildup, get some barracks going in core cities and train chariots/mounties mainly.
 
AG8, Inherited turn 750BC

First up I decide to broker immediately rather than lose out by trying to be greedy. If, as someone suggested, we would likely have to spend 2 turns at sea there is only a 25% chance that our curragh will make it across anyway, and no guarantee of contact or favourable contact. So I trade now.

Mapmaking from Portugal (effectively @ 3rd) for 302g + 37gpt. Ouch. I can't remember ever feeling so ripped off buying a non-monopoly ancient age tech.

Mapmaking, 10g + 9gpt to Sumeria for Warrior Code, Masonry and Bronze Working...I went for military techs that we'll need to go to war.

This reveals that India lacks horseback riding, which the others have! With a little bit of tinkering, we get horseback riding from Sumeria for 238g + 9gpt. India will not quite give us a tech for this, so we take the next best thing, gold, to the tune of 246g, most of our investment :).

I can now reconfigure our cities. Since we're going the military route it's the temples and granaries that will have to wait unless there's a very good reason. Niagara Falls changed to mountie, Centralia to worker, Allegheny to mountie (1 shield short so mm'd for gold), Cattaraugus to harbour (for potential trade route), Oil Springs to mountie, Tonawanda's galley is whipped, Mauch Chunk is configured for an extra shield this turn so its temple can be whipped next turn, Akwesanane to barracks, Tydenaga (with resident scientist) to galley.

[Btw Aggie, please do not consider that as a veto stamp on your choices! Had we decided to stay peaceful I would have kept your builds, but since we're preparing for an early war I'm gearing us towards that].


IT: Salamanca worker ----------> barracks
Allegheny mountie ----------> mountie
Chondote warrior ----------> worker
Tonawande galley ---------> worker


Turn 1, 730BC: on second thoughts I change Chondote to wealth as I'm about to chop the forest, so will switch back to worker just before the chop is due to complete.

I try the suicide crossing...it transpires we will only have to spend 1 turn at sea, but no border visible.

Mauch chunk whips last 20 on temple.


IT: Niagara Falls mountie ---------> mountie
Centralia's borders expand
Oil Springs mountie ----------> mountie
Mauch Chunk temple ----------> worker
St Regis barracks ---------> mountie

Curragh sinks :(


Turn 2, 710BC: I will use Niagara Falls, Allegheny and Grand River as the primary military build up points, as they are not flip threats. I'm not going to upgrade the chariots yet in case we need the cash for brokering.

India has joined Portugal in the Middle Ages, and will be close to jumbos and a GA soon :(


IT: Centralia worker ---------> barracks
Gandasetaigon warrior ----------> worker


Turn 3, 690BC: lux to 10% for our size 5 cities.

I choose to mine Grand River's horse tile for auto shield pick-up on growth.


IT: Cattaraugus borders expand.


Turn 4, 670BC: Chondote switched to worker for impending forest chop.


IT: forest chops.
Chondote worker ----------> worker


Turn 5, 650BC: there appears to be a significant bank of sea off Sumeria's west coast, so we should bear that in mind as a possible future galley-run.


IT: Salamanca barracks ---------> mountie (3 turn mounties for now, will be 2 turn mounties with another couple of sizes)
Niagara Falls mountie ---------> mountie
Mauch Chunk borders expand
Oka worker ----------> settler (future raze/replacements)
Gayagaahe worker ---------> temple


Turn 6, 630BC: nothing much.


IT: Tonawanda worker ----------> galley
Mauch Chunk worker ----------> barracks


Turn 7, 610BC: reward for exploration! Our currgh meets some Byzantine dromons. tey are at war with Sumeria, and are up the same techs as others.

This is interesting, however: we now know 4 of our 7 rivals and you know what? We have the most cities. We have outexpanded the AIs on Sid :p. Hurrah for settler factories! :D


IT: Sumeria and Byzantium make peace.

Allegheny mountie ----------> mountie
Oil Springs mountie ----------> mountie
St Regis mountie ----------> mountie


Turn 8, 590BC: dromons block our curragh path so i try a little suicide run to the west...

Whip temple in Caughnawaga. The shield pick-up at Grand River has workerd, but I reconfigure to max growth since we have plenty of happiness to spare and will gain more shields anyway at larger sizes.

Byzantium and Sumeria have also reached the Middle Ages. We're still 8 essential techs away, + our government tech, the Republic.


IT: Salamanca mountie ----------> mountie
Caughnawaga temple ----------> barracks


Turn 9, 570BC: curragh survived the turn at sea and returns to coast. Galley approaches the previous suicide run...


Turn 10, 550BC: galley starts suicide run again. The extra move reveals a maroon border, which will probably be Byzantine. It also reveals that it might even be the same continent as us. It appears that the Indian peninsula curves round and Byzantium is on the same landmass...so the suicide runs are unnecassary, we just need to go round further...

Summary: we're 2 turns from Literature and no-one has it yet, so fingers crossed everyone! If we do get it first, then I suggest that before selling we do our very best (through creative accounting if necassary) to buy either (maths + iron working) or (philosophy + code of laws). This is because, as a monopolist, we might be able to barter literature for either republic or construction/currency, but we need the prerequisite techs first.

The military build-up is going well and will accelerate in the next 15 turns. So far we're doing as well as we could hope.

AG8SidMilitary550BC.jpg


The Save
 
Ok, I got it. I will continue in a similar vein of building up troops. What is our timescale on attacking? I don't want to wait too long, nor attack before we are ready.

Currently, I am thinking that we won't be ready during my 10 so I will simply be building forces. I am very unsure what forces we will need for this.
 
One thing is sure: We don't like to fight Elephants. I guess they have them in 10 - 20 turns. We only have 11 horse-type units. I assume we need 5 per city that we want to attack? So 20 - 25 (Ganges, Karachi, Punjab, Bengal, Hyderabad)?

EDIT: Portugal has had the profit of the Lighthouse. But they are VERY small!
 
This is something we definitely need to discuss as a team, and those that have played Sid previously could offer an insight with their experience. I would think we need more than 5 per city. I would expect the Indians to have on average 4 defenders per city, and to be safe we want 2 mounties per defender, so I would say 8 per city :o. But that is from guesswork, not experience so I could well be wrong. Overall, I think we should attack when we have 25-30 mounties, which will likely be towards the end of annares' turn. Bear in mind also that we have virtually no defence! Just a bunch of regular warriors, not a single spear, so it's gonna have to be blitzkrieg when we do attack.
 
I agree Aggie....that's why it's a delicate balancing act and we need a team discussion and decision about how soon to attack.
 
Hmm, personally I think we just need a big stack. 30 seems like enough. We will get attacked back, more so than on Deity, so we will need some defensive units.

I find it best to optimise each city to either 5 or 6/7 shields for spears and 6 or 7/8 or even 10(?) for horses. If we can get 30 MW's and 5 spears that seems enough as a very rough estimate. This is not counting the few other defenders and MP units scattered around.

I find it best by far to always play wars by ear. I have never estimated "units per city" and added up how many cities we want, instead I estimate the counter attack and defense and work out what I need not to get stomped. We go with what we can muster, then give up when it gets too much. Since our stack of MW's will be together all we need to last is 6 turns, picking off the counter-attack at each city, then we can stop when necessary.

One important thing is to work out where their troops will be coming from. If they have several vectors of attack we should look at shutting some of them down before the war happens (pillaging roads, etc).

I would seriously not consider attacking with less than 20 MW's on Sid, although 30 is preferred....

BTW, I like this discussion between turns, I hope we keep it up! :)
 
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