iamnleth
Warlord
Since colonial maintenance is capped a twice the distance to palace maintenance, does State Property eliminate colonial maintenance?
ALC Game 20: Vikings/Ragnar
- Thread starter Sisiutil
- Start date
This analysis isn't quite right. Frigates are not affected by the bombard reduction associated with walls/castles the way trebuchets are. So when you're bombarding a city with a castle a frigate still causes 8% reduction/turn, while the accuracy promoted trebuchet only causes 6% reduction/turn.
The real advantage to attacking from the sea is that your units are immune to counter-attack. If you land your stack the AI will likely send multiple siege units at it to weaken the defenders. And in BtS the flank attack damage of enemy mounted units makes your siege units very vulnerable.
As Airefuego pointed out you can actually send Frigates ahead and bombard the cities over a number of turns while waiting for the actual city attack stack to arrive. In this specific case I think Sisiutil might want to declare war on Hannibal but not attack immediately. This will give Hannibal time to send a stack to attack the German cities, which will make it easier to take the Carthaginian cities. This will give Sisiutil several turns to slowly bombard the defenses of Hannibal's coastal cities.
You definitely have limited production in this game. That's why it's especially important to carefully consider how you use your precious
s. Infrastructure/wonders are a lower priority than in a normal game. It's also important that you spend the s on the right types of units. Efficiency is the key here.The low production situation is also why I suggested using the GG for a military academy and using the GE to rush Ironworks. Those are 2 things you wouldn't do in a normal game, but in these circumstances they may be the best move.
Yes.
pigswill
fly (one day)
Validator: I could be wrong but in my (limited) experience frigates don't ignore walls (they should but they don't) while Ships of the Line do ignore walls.
Y e s
Because of a bug both frigates and SotLs had their bombard percentage reduced by walls/castles when BtS was released. It was fixed in the patch (for both).
The somewhat confusing part is that the amount of cultural defense reduction you get from all post-gunpowder bombard units is affected by whether a castle is present or not. Specifically, when a castle is present the amount of reduction of a city's cultural defense is only a percentage of the base amount.
As an example, a frigate bombarding a city w/ 40% cultural defense and no wall/castle reduces it to 32% (40%-8%). If a castle is present the cultural defense would be reduced to 36 or 37% (40% - 3.2%).
There's no word from Firaxis whether this is a bug or not, but it wasn't fixed in the patch.
iamnleth
Warlord
How did you calculate 3.2%? Is it always that number?
It's 8% of the 40% cultural defense. If the city had a 60% cultural defense then it would be reduced by 4.8%.
Essentially when a castle is present it's reverting to the pre-BtS process of having bombard units reduce defenses by a percentage of the city's cultural defense value and not by a fixed amount.
QFT.
I'm no Emperor-level player, but I have realized that once you have enough units to take out a city in a single turn, you only need to build siege units. Ever.
And at a loss ratio of three or five trebs vs half a dozen macemen and ten longbows you don't need to be up to the victim civ's size to sustain your offensive.
I really appreciate how mounted units have gotten this flank boost, it was really badly needed to make wars exciting again.
(And now I'm not talking about the kind of war where your Grenadiers are attacked by Tanks...)
Magne
Chieftain
QFT.
I'm no Emperor-level player, but I have realized that once you have enough units to take out a city in a single turn, you only need to build siege units. Ever.
And at a loss ratio of three or five trebs vs half a dozen macemen and ten longbows you don't need to be up to the victim civ's size to sustain your offensive.
I really appreciate how mounted units have gotten this flank boost, it was really badly needed to make wars exciting again.
(And now I'm not talking about the kind of war where your Grenadiers are attacked by Tanks...)
I find this true when I only have 1 front and move from 1 city to the next. usaly how ever I tend to split up as I get more troops and attack more and more cities at the time. Reinforcement usaly consist of Garnison defence and sige weapons thought, since the main force suffer little too no loss.
Benford's Law
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2007
- Messages
- 116
Sisiutil,
I think you made a big mistake and you should have settled in place instead of on the stone hill. Let's start this game over again and see what would have happened.....
~Benford's Law
I think you made a big mistake and you should have settled in place instead of on the stone hill. Let's start this game over again and see what would have happened.....
~Benford's Law
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Sisiutil,
I think you made a big mistake and you should have settled in place instead of on the stone hill. Let's start this game over again and see what would have happened.....
~Benford's Law
Yes, because I'm obviously so far behind and the game's gone so poorly for me...
The next round will be posted tomorrow. Stay tuned!
fizbankovi
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2004
- Messages
- 279
i think SoL is not so important in this case.. it only gives free Spec. for the Continent...
carl corey
Deity
Yeah, all the continent-wide wonders won't give good enough benefits. So you can consider burning the GE on expensive national wonders instead.
Julian Delphiki
Anton's key
Sisiutil,
I think you made a big mistake and you should have settled in place instead of on the stone hill. Let's start this game over again and see what would have happened.....
I've got EVEN better idea. We really need to redo the discussion on where to settle before starting again
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Round 8: 1395 AD to 1495 AD (20 turns)
As I started the round I decided to take advantage of both the Golden Age and my big pile o' gold by changing civics to Universal Suffrage for a few turns:
This allowed me to rush most of the infrastructure builds and get back to producing military units, as several of you were urging.
I also captured Hamburg (rather than razing it).
I faced some German counter-attacks after that, but thanks to some assistance from the Cannons, my Berserkers held up well. Several of them even earned their City Raider III promotions.
I looked around shortly after this and saw that I had monasteries built for pretty much all of the religions in my cities. This would allow me to spread those religions for the FR happiness benefit. With those infrastructure elements in place, it was time to go see Mehmed about Scientific Method:
It seemed like the best deal at the time. Steel is, I've noticed, a very good mid/late game tech for trading. It's relatively expensive, which seems to be why the AI avoids researching it. Also, the main unit it enables are Cannons, and we know the AI has never been very adept at siege weaponry, prioritizing defensive units like Rifles instead. I guess it makes sense for the AI to play to its strengths.
Shortly after that, I finished researching my next tech, one which several of you had said I should have finished in the previous round. (What can I say? Bright shiny wonders catch my eye every now and then.)
I immediately took advantage of it in two respects. First of all, I upgraded my CR III Berserkers to amphibious CRIII Grenadiers:
Second, to accelerate military production on this hammer-challenged map, I used the Great General for a military academy in the Moai Statues city, Birka:
I considered using him elsewhere, but this seemed like the best spot. I built the Heroic Epic in Uppsala during this round once I finally had a level 4 unit, so it already had a military unit boost. The capital has to balance military builds with others to power research, as does Bjorgvin. Birka is my 2nd best production city after Uppsala, so it got the nod.
With one turn left to go in the Golden Age, I changed civics. The only swap was Representation for Universal Suffrage.
My Cannons and amphibious City Raider III Grenadiers (try saying that five times quickly) then finished off Germany:
Not wanting to try to fight off Babylonian culture, I decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I decided to go after some low-hanging fruit instead--the barbarian cities.
First off, this gave some of my new Cannons some hard-to-come-by XPs. Second, as you can see, it got me a supply of gems. Even against tiny Germany, war weariness was troublesome. My struggles with it made me realize that I needed more happiness resources (especially since when I go after Carthage I'll be losing access to spices and sugar temporarily). I'm also determined to go after a domination win this time, so the more population and territory I have, the better. Besides, with gems, this place will pay for itself. Finally, since Hannibal has Rifles, I'm going to need to build up a lot more units to take him on. I might as well be getting some use out of my military in the meantime.
I found some time (and hammers) to finally found another one of those cities back on the mainland that we'd discussed.
And captured a couple of other barb cities on a different island--this time to get access to incense.
It's very convenient that those cities came with barb Workers nearby, ripe for capturing.
My next tech I got to in a race against Mehmed:
And to the victor goes the spoils, in this case, a Great Spy.
Now I already have a (captured) Scotland Yard in Berlin (and I'm running a spy specialist there to enhance it a little further. A couple of uses for this guy come to mind. First off, I could settle him in Berlin to further enhance the effects of the SY there. Or I could use him for an infiltration mission. The obvious candidate is Hannibal, who has a few techs on me. More on that in the state-of-the-world post.
Finally, I didn't build many of them in this game, and perhaps that's for the best, for the days of the Privateers are numbered:
Yep, Hammurabi is the first AI leader to obtain both Astronomy and Chemistry. Nevertheless, my Privateers had done considerable damage to Hannibal, pillaging all of his seafood, sinking most of his ships, and blockading almost all of his coastal cities. But it looks like these guys are headed towards the Privateers I have in Carthaginian waters, so they may have to return to port until they can be upgraded to Destroyers later on. (Good news in that area: I have no less than three sources of oil on the main two Viking land masses.)
This is not to say I still can't get some use out of the Privateers. Once Frigates appear, I just duck the Privateers into my coastal cities. If a Caravel or Galleon happens to wander too close to that city, however, it gets the wrong end of a hit-and-run attack.
Anyway, that was the round. A state-of-the-world post will follow.
As I started the round I decided to take advantage of both the Golden Age and my big pile o' gold by changing civics to Universal Suffrage for a few turns:
This allowed me to rush most of the infrastructure builds and get back to producing military units, as several of you were urging.
I also captured Hamburg (rather than razing it).
I faced some German counter-attacks after that, but thanks to some assistance from the Cannons, my Berserkers held up well. Several of them even earned their City Raider III promotions.
I looked around shortly after this and saw that I had monasteries built for pretty much all of the religions in my cities. This would allow me to spread those religions for the FR happiness benefit. With those infrastructure elements in place, it was time to go see Mehmed about Scientific Method:
It seemed like the best deal at the time. Steel is, I've noticed, a very good mid/late game tech for trading. It's relatively expensive, which seems to be why the AI avoids researching it. Also, the main unit it enables are Cannons, and we know the AI has never been very adept at siege weaponry, prioritizing defensive units like Rifles instead. I guess it makes sense for the AI to play to its strengths.
Shortly after that, I finished researching my next tech, one which several of you had said I should have finished in the previous round. (What can I say? Bright shiny wonders catch my eye every now and then.)
I immediately took advantage of it in two respects. First of all, I upgraded my CR III Berserkers to amphibious CRIII Grenadiers:
Second, to accelerate military production on this hammer-challenged map, I used the Great General for a military academy in the Moai Statues city, Birka:
I considered using him elsewhere, but this seemed like the best spot. I built the Heroic Epic in Uppsala during this round once I finally had a level 4 unit, so it already had a military unit boost. The capital has to balance military builds with others to power research, as does Bjorgvin. Birka is my 2nd best production city after Uppsala, so it got the nod.
With one turn left to go in the Golden Age, I changed civics. The only swap was Representation for Universal Suffrage.
My Cannons and amphibious City Raider III Grenadiers (try saying that five times quickly) then finished off Germany:
Not wanting to try to fight off Babylonian culture, I decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I decided to go after some low-hanging fruit instead--the barbarian cities.
First off, this gave some of my new Cannons some hard-to-come-by XPs. Second, as you can see, it got me a supply of gems. Even against tiny Germany, war weariness was troublesome. My struggles with it made me realize that I needed more happiness resources (especially since when I go after Carthage I'll be losing access to spices and sugar temporarily). I'm also determined to go after a domination win this time, so the more population and territory I have, the better. Besides, with gems, this place will pay for itself. Finally, since Hannibal has Rifles, I'm going to need to build up a lot more units to take him on. I might as well be getting some use out of my military in the meantime.
I found some time (and hammers) to finally found another one of those cities back on the mainland that we'd discussed.
And captured a couple of other barb cities on a different island--this time to get access to incense.
It's very convenient that those cities came with barb Workers nearby, ripe for capturing.
My next tech I got to in a race against Mehmed:
And to the victor goes the spoils, in this case, a Great Spy.
Now I already have a (captured) Scotland Yard in Berlin (and I'm running a spy specialist there to enhance it a little further. A couple of uses for this guy come to mind. First off, I could settle him in Berlin to further enhance the effects of the SY there. Or I could use him for an infiltration mission. The obvious candidate is Hannibal, who has a few techs on me. More on that in the state-of-the-world post.
Finally, I didn't build many of them in this game, and perhaps that's for the best, for the days of the Privateers are numbered:
Yep, Hammurabi is the first AI leader to obtain both Astronomy and Chemistry. Nevertheless, my Privateers had done considerable damage to Hannibal, pillaging all of his seafood, sinking most of his ships, and blockading almost all of his coastal cities. But it looks like these guys are headed towards the Privateers I have in Carthaginian waters, so they may have to return to port until they can be upgraded to Destroyers later on. (Good news in that area: I have no less than three sources of oil on the main two Viking land masses.)
This is not to say I still can't get some use out of the Privateers. Once Frigates appear, I just duck the Privateers into my coastal cities. If a Caravel or Galleon happens to wander too close to that city, however, it gets the wrong end of a hit-and-run attack.
Anyway, that was the round. A state-of-the-world post will follow.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
The State of the World, 1495 AD
First off, a look at the maps of Viking territory, widely dispersed though it may be.
So I still have a couple of cities I could found on the mainland. The one at the SW tip is looking even more attractive now that oil has appeared there. Nevertheless, it's not urgent, since the oil tile won't contribute too many hammers until Combustion.
You can see not only my German acquisitions, but also most of Carthage. Interesting how Hippo is land-locked. I'm thinking it would be a natural choice for the Ironworks--unless someone has a better suggestion. Rushing the IW would be a logical use for the Great Engineer, especially since I won't own this city for several turns yet.
And the barbarian acquisitions:
Phrygian isn't in the best location--it has no food, missing out as it does on the two nearby fish tiles. But capturing it saved me a Settler, and I only really wanted it for the incense anyway. I may be able to fit in a city on the northern tip of that island later on, but I may not bother.
Domestic advisor:
15 cities--now that's more like it.
Foreign advisor, relations and glance:
Trade route income and civics:
I managed to get Hannibal to switch civics to Free Market; no one else would budge (and of course some weren't able to). The benefit of that switch will vanish once I declare war on him, but that won't be for several turns. Another option I have while building up a military to take him on is to go after someone smaller and easier like Sury or Roosevelt. Thoughts?
Since no one else is going to change economic civics anytime soon, I should switch to State Property right away, don't you think? Especially now that I have several far-flung cities with their maintenance costs.
Techs:
Like I said, the best use for the Great Spy might be to infiltrate Hannibal. If I can get Rifling or even Military Tradition from him, it would be worth it. The only thing that gives me pause there is that this late in the game, stealing techs is expensive. Even with the infiltration points, I may have to devote all my Espionage Points to Carthage for several turns, and maybe even pump up the slider, in order to steal any techs from him at all.
Military Advisor:
Oh yes, I earned another Great General. IIRC, he's either on his way to Berlin to found a military academy there, or he has already. Berlin has excellent production and food (typical capital, a very good acquisition), so it seemed like the best spot. It will also give me a top-notch military city on the same land mass as Carthage, making it invaluable in the upcoming war. I'm thinking of building West Point in Berlin.
Religion:
In anticipation of war weariness, I'm thinking I should sneak in some missionary builds to spread Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam to my various cities for the FR happiness bonus. (I missed out on building a Confucian monastery, unfortunately--but several of you urged me to get SM ASAP, which I did, as soon as I'd built an Islamic monastery in Nidaros.)
Victory conditions:
A long way to go for domination, but I am the leader in both categories. I'll have to take out the low-hanging fruit of Khmer and American sooner or later.
Power:
I'm gaining on Hannibal. Some of that is because of several Ships of the Line I've built to protect my seafood and coastline. But the Cannons and Grenadiers don't hurt.
Demographics:
#1 in production; that's very encouraging, especially on this map, and since I'm going to need a lot more military units.
Top 5 Cities/Wonders:
Okay, okay, I'll put my wonder addition on hold. Hey, it's my first game with this map type. Hannibal is researching Democracy and may start building the SoL, and that would be convenient, since he is on one of the biggest continents. So I may let him and then hope to capture it from him. However, that will take several turns--so perhaps that's another argument in favour of attacking someone weak like Sury or Roosevelt before taking on Carthage.
Espionage, with a focus on Hannibal:
If anyone can shed some light on how much stealing late game techs like Military Tradition, Rifling, or Constitution cost, I'd be delighted. Would infiltration versus Hannibal be worth it? I frankly think it would--for several turns I'd also have visibility into his cities as well. I could see if and where he's building the Statue of Liberty, for example, and leave that city to capture late in the war in the hopes that it gets built.
As usual, I look forward to your comments and insight!
First off, a look at the maps of Viking territory, widely dispersed though it may be.
So I still have a couple of cities I could found on the mainland. The one at the SW tip is looking even more attractive now that oil has appeared there. Nevertheless, it's not urgent, since the oil tile won't contribute too many hammers until Combustion.
You can see not only my German acquisitions, but also most of Carthage. Interesting how Hippo is land-locked. I'm thinking it would be a natural choice for the Ironworks--unless someone has a better suggestion. Rushing the IW would be a logical use for the Great Engineer, especially since I won't own this city for several turns yet.
And the barbarian acquisitions:
Phrygian isn't in the best location--it has no food, missing out as it does on the two nearby fish tiles. But capturing it saved me a Settler, and I only really wanted it for the incense anyway. I may be able to fit in a city on the northern tip of that island later on, but I may not bother.
Domestic advisor:
15 cities--now that's more like it.
Foreign advisor, relations and glance:
Trade route income and civics:
I managed to get Hannibal to switch civics to Free Market; no one else would budge (and of course some weren't able to). The benefit of that switch will vanish once I declare war on him, but that won't be for several turns. Another option I have while building up a military to take him on is to go after someone smaller and easier like Sury or Roosevelt. Thoughts?
Since no one else is going to change economic civics anytime soon, I should switch to State Property right away, don't you think? Especially now that I have several far-flung cities with their maintenance costs.
Techs:
Like I said, the best use for the Great Spy might be to infiltrate Hannibal. If I can get Rifling or even Military Tradition from him, it would be worth it. The only thing that gives me pause there is that this late in the game, stealing techs is expensive. Even with the infiltration points, I may have to devote all my Espionage Points to Carthage for several turns, and maybe even pump up the slider, in order to steal any techs from him at all.
Military Advisor:
Oh yes, I earned another Great General. IIRC, he's either on his way to Berlin to found a military academy there, or he has already. Berlin has excellent production and food (typical capital, a very good acquisition), so it seemed like the best spot. It will also give me a top-notch military city on the same land mass as Carthage, making it invaluable in the upcoming war. I'm thinking of building West Point in Berlin.
Religion:
In anticipation of war weariness, I'm thinking I should sneak in some missionary builds to spread Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam to my various cities for the FR happiness bonus. (I missed out on building a Confucian monastery, unfortunately--but several of you urged me to get SM ASAP, which I did, as soon as I'd built an Islamic monastery in Nidaros.)
Victory conditions:
A long way to go for domination, but I am the leader in both categories. I'll have to take out the low-hanging fruit of Khmer and American sooner or later.
Power:
I'm gaining on Hannibal. Some of that is because of several Ships of the Line I've built to protect my seafood and coastline. But the Cannons and Grenadiers don't hurt.
Demographics:
#1 in production; that's very encouraging, especially on this map, and since I'm going to need a lot more military units.
Top 5 Cities/Wonders:
Okay, okay, I'll put my wonder addition on hold. Hey, it's my first game with this map type. Hannibal is researching Democracy and may start building the SoL, and that would be convenient, since he is on one of the biggest continents. So I may let him and then hope to capture it from him. However, that will take several turns--so perhaps that's another argument in favour of attacking someone weak like Sury or Roosevelt before taking on Carthage.
Espionage, with a focus on Hannibal:
If anyone can shed some light on how much stealing late game techs like Military Tradition, Rifling, or Constitution cost, I'd be delighted. Would infiltration versus Hannibal be worth it? I frankly think it would--for several turns I'd also have visibility into his cities as well. I could see if and where he's building the Statue of Liberty, for example, and leave that city to capture late in the war in the hopes that it gets built.
As usual, I look forward to your comments and insight!
TRJS
Warlord
Berlin will be crucial in any attack on Hannibal so I agree with your thoughts on the Great General.
With regards to the Great Spy and tech stealing. I think you should be able to steal at least on tech. The trick is finding the cheapest city. Scroll through them all then head a spy or 4 over to visit the chepest.
With regards to the Great Spy and tech stealing. I think you should be able to steal at least on tech. The trick is finding the cheapest city. Scroll through them all then head a spy or 4 over to visit the chepest.
I don't see any advantage to attacking Hannibal now. Instead, try to take out someone with neither rifles nor grenadiers.
Fighting Hannibal is the only war right now where you'd have tech parity. Why put yourself through that? Fight someone else, and come back later (say, just after Artilery).
Fighting Hannibal is the only war right now where you'd have tech parity. Why put yourself through that? Fight someone else, and come back later (say, just after Artilery).
pigswill
fly (one day)
Gonna hafta disagree. Hannibal is quite able to keep on teching and if S goes after someone else the war will affect his economy in the short term allowing Hannibal to pull further ahead. Probably best to go after Hannibal next, don't need to annihilate him just capture a few of his cities to slow him down. Once Hannibal is out of the picture the rest should be pretty straightforward.
Scenario A:
Sis goes after Hannibal, fighting with Grens/Cannon vs Rifles/Cannon. After that he goes after the others... they've teched up in the mean time, so those wars are also Grens/Cannon vs Rifles/Cannon.
Scenario B:
Sis goes after someone else first. The war is Grens/Cannon vs Macemen/Catapults. Then he comes at Hannibal second. Nobody's had time to reach Artilery or Modern Armour, so this war is Grens/Cannon vs Rifles/Cannon.
What I'm saying is that if we wait a bit, the shape of the war against Hannibal doesn't change. However, the shape of the war against the other target (Mehmed? Roosy?) does change, significantly. We can have an easy war and a normal war... or two normal wars. I reckon I know which is better.
Sis goes after Hannibal, fighting with Grens/Cannon vs Rifles/Cannon. After that he goes after the others... they've teched up in the mean time, so those wars are also Grens/Cannon vs Rifles/Cannon.
Scenario B:
Sis goes after someone else first. The war is Grens/Cannon vs Macemen/Catapults. Then he comes at Hannibal second. Nobody's had time to reach Artilery or Modern Armour, so this war is Grens/Cannon vs Rifles/Cannon.
What I'm saying is that if we wait a bit, the shape of the war against Hannibal doesn't change. However, the shape of the war against the other target (Mehmed? Roosy?) does change, significantly. We can have an easy war and a normal war... or two normal wars. I reckon I know which is better.
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