ALC Game #24: Hammurabi/Babylon

[pigswill]

@Dirk1302. If you´ve got cannon then you´re one tech from grens and probably two or three techs from rifles or cuirassiers particularly if you´ve beelined chemistry.
My tendency is to go for steel first, then MI upgrading my experienced units to grens except pikes which I give anti-cav promotions until I can upgrade them to rifles.

 

[civvver]

what's WFYABTA short for?

 

[BlackMage]

what's WFYABTA short for?

We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced, a mechanism that prevents large amounts of tech brokering.

 

[civvver]

We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced, a mechanism that prevents large amounts of tech brokering.

Is this an actual response from AI when you try to trade with them? I've only seen we don't like you enough/you're our worst enemy and we don't want to start trading away this tech yet. Of course, I also play on prince level.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Dirk1302. If you´ve got cannon then you´re one tech from grens and probably two or three techs from rifles or cuirassiers particularly if you´ve beelined chemistry.
My tendency is to go for steel first, then MI upgrading my experienced units to grens except pikes which I give anti-cav promotions until I can upgrade them to rifles.

But what do these grens do then subsequently? Defend, against what? I'd certainly not use them for attack if i have cannons. I can see going grens if you don't have mil trad, even then pikes defend as well as grens against mounted and it's not likely you get massively attacked by other units. Drafted muskets defend against mace btw. MS could be reasonable to build mil. academies if you're short on units and have a long war before you. Personally i head to rifling after steel, i almost always get rp in trade by that time so MS or rifling are both 1 tech away at that time.

 

[Dirk1302]

Is this an actual response from AI when you try to trade with them? I've only seen we don't like you enough/you're our worst enemy and we don't want to start trading away this tech yet. Of course, I also play on prince level.

On immortal+ you'll see this message all the time.

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

On immortal+ you'll see this message all the time.

I've seen it happen on my level before (Noble). I tech broker like a mad man, and Mansa wasn't there, however.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

Is this an actual response from AI when you try to trade with them? I've only seen we don't like you enough/you're our worst enemy and we don't want to start trading away this tech yet. Of course, I also play on prince level.

You obviously don't tech whore very much Basically, there is a counter of how many techs the human has traded (it does eventually decay). Each AI has a limit of how many techs you can trade before they stop trading with you. Mansa Musa is the only AI who doesn't enter WFYABTA (which is why he is considered such a good trading partner). Also, if the AI is friendly they won't enter WFYABTA (see the Lincoln game for an example).

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Shoot: Mansa does have a cap, it's just obscene. I think it's 20 techs or something like that.

 

[CivCorpse]

I think the pro-Steel crowd is failing to take Saladin's tech path into consideration. Sal is researching MT. Which means his next tech is most definately going to be gunpowder for Curassiers.
This is what happens when Sis attacks a city other than Kufah. Kufah is an exception because Sis' cultural borders actually touch the city. Babylonian SoD moves next to the city in question. Arabian Curassiers attack the stack and the inherent flanking damage kills off the cannons. Sis now has a stack of CR2 Maces attacking fortified, uncollateralled, protective longbows defending a city with full cultural defenses.
Formation pikes are NOT as effective as Formation grens. A Formation pike is strength 14.7 vs a mounted unit. C2 Curassiers are strength 14.4. Nearly dead even. A Formation gren is strength 17.4 vs mounted.
Grens come 6 turns sooner than cannons. Sal needs 7 more turns to research. Going by the screen shots he has been researching it since turn 241 that means he is producing roughly 485 beakers per turn. At this rate he can research gunpowder in 5-6 turns, depending on overflow from MT. That means Curassiers in 12 turns. Giving sal 5-10 more turns to build a few muskets and to drop the slider for the upgrades. We probably have 15-25 more turns before Sal DoW. Not a lot of time to build cannons. And I think 25 turns is a best case scenario. I think the DoW will probably come sooner than that. Which means we haven't finished steel and are facing Curassiers/muskets with Medievil troops. If time was not so critical then Steel would be the obvious choice, but that is not the case. Time is the most important thing right now and it is NOT in our favor.
Another point in favor of Grens is that when attacking, a Formation Gren is superior to anything Saladin has access to. 17.4 vs mounted and 13.4 vs anything else. And in city attacking there is a good chance that our siege won't survive to make to more than 1 or 2 cities. Dropping defenses with a spy means a C1 CR2 Gren upgraded from a maceman has fairly even odds vs. CG3 muskets. 13.2 vs 13.95 for a fully fortified CG3 musket. There will be losses, but once every cg# musket is damaged attack with maces produced in Aksum under theo and vassalage. They are 1xp from CR3. Those that survive are upgraded to Grens. CR3 grens are 13.2 vs 11.25 CG3 muskets that are fully fortified.
Once MS is researched then begin steel for a solid counter attack. Though droping the slider for a bit to get cash for upgrades would be the best next step. As well as upping the espionage slider to garner enough points to drop defenses with spies.
Assuming MS is the tech path, then I respectfully make the following suggestions.
Whip a market and grocer in Babylon as soon as humanly possible. Not 2 pop whips, but 1 turn building-2nd turn whipping. Then run 4 merchants at all times. A GM for a trade mission would be a Godsend. Pray that you manage to beat the odds and get a merchant on the next GP. Probably won't happen so all further advice is based on getting something besides a GM. While running 4 merchants in Baylon, this will let you up the slider to 90% at about-10gpt. Shaving a turn or two off of MS. Build Caravels This will cost you 3 whole trebs. Big deal. The counter offensive is quite a ways away as well as the ability to upgrade to cannons. Take back the clams from nippur to regrow quickly after whipping. Nippur should have been built 2N of the sheep anyway. Now you have nippur and sippur costing you 10gpt plus increased maintanance in all your other cities and they produce squat. Instead of one city that has decent production and costs 5gpt. Minoan, Buy a whip. A big whip. Preferably a whip with a metal tip. If whipping bothers you, drop the slider to 0% for a few turns and use the gold for therapy. Whip a library/market/grocer. Run specialists. Work water tiles for commerce and to regrow quickly. Build caravels.
In 8 turns you are going to get a GP in babylon. Golden age to switch religions and civics to make Justinian love you oodles and oodles. For non-American readers, oodles is not in the civopedia. It is slang for "a lot". Even if you pop a GE, burn him. Send a nice letter to his next of kin apologising but burn him. Hopefully you get a Great artist so you won't hesitate. Work the water tiles in minoan during the GA for more oodles of hammers and commerce. The library, market and grocer will make this a good thing. Running 4 merchants in Babylon during a GA will quickly get you a GM for a trade mission. That means you don't have to drop the slider to pay for upgrades. Or you can do both for massive upgrades.
Now then remember the caravels you built in babylon and Minoan? Send 3-4 around to Mecca. and 1-2 to Baghdad. As soon as Sal DoW swoop in and pilliage his two seafood. Blockade mecca as well. Use the spy built in Nippur (unless you went with the baking muffins option) to poison his well. Mecca is size 20. It requires 40 food. Without the sea tiles it can produce 27 food. Mecca will not be size 20 for very long. Add some poison and it will shrink considerably. It will also lose the lucrative colossus commerce. Blockade Baghdad as well. Poisoning is entirely up to you. It can produce 15 food per turn without the water tiles and requires 32. shrivel shrivel shrivel. Plus it is working a lot of water tiles for collosus commerce. Blockading those 2 cities takes a big bite from Saladin's cashflow/research. And the rapidly dwindling population drops those cities down when trade routes are assigned. You may want to build a few extra caravels to protect your own seafood.
One last argument in favor of Ms vs steel. Cannons require iron. The Ai loves to pillage strategic resources. One spy can take out the lone source of iron and then you're not building cannons until you hustle some workers over to rebuild the mine. OK, two points. Grens get C1 from being aggressive.

 

[civvver]

You obviously don't tech whore very much Basically, there is a counter of how many techs the human has traded (it does eventually decay). Each AI has a limit of how many techs you can trade before they stop trading with you. Mansa Musa is the only AI who doesn't enter WFYABTA (which is why he is considered such a good trading partner). Also, if the AI is friendly they won't enter WFYABTA (see the Lincoln game for an example).

I just usually have such a large tech lead I don't have to trade I sell techs a lot, but rarely trade for them. Probably time to up my difficulty.

 

[CivCorpse]

But what do these grens do then subsequently? Defend, against what? I'd certainly not use them for attack if i have cannons. I can see going grens if you don't have mil trad, even then pikes defend as well as grens against mounted and it's not likely you get massively attacked by other units. Drafted muskets defend against mace btw. MS could be reasonable to build mil. academies if you're short on units and have a long war before you. Personally i head to rifling after steel, i almost always get rp in trade by that time so MS or rifling are both 1 tech away at that time.

Just a couple thoughts.
A. Sis can not draft due to not knowing Nationalism.
B. Sis is 3 techs from Rifling. And he isn't getting any of them in trade because of WFYABTA. So we're talking 60 turns of research. The war will be long decided before the first rifleman appears.
C. Pikes are NOT better vs mounted than Grens. Formation pikes barely have an advantage vs C2 Curassiers. 14.7 vs 14.4. Formation Grens are 17.4 vs mounted. Pikes are only good for defense vs mounted. when attacking an enemy stack they get mauled by maces/muskets/x-bows. Grens do not. The only time Pikes are superior to Grens vs mounted units is if the pikes are combat6/formation. Which makes them strength 18 vs mounted.

 

[carl corey]

CivCorpse, two things: your previous post got cut; and I think that caravels can't pillage, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[CivCorpse]

CivCorpse, two things: your previous post got cut; and I think that caravels can't pillage, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Fixed the cut post. And you are correct on caravels not pilliaging. They cannot blockade either. Triremes can and so can galleys. Build a few of them and use the caravels as defenders. Station them just off the coast of Jelling and with the circumnavigation bonus they can pounce on Mecca's seafood in 3 turns. A galley/2caravel stack north of minoan can blockade Bagdad within 2 turns.

 

[Dirk1302]

Just a couple thoughts.
A. Sis can not draft due to not knowing Nationalism.
B. Sis is 3 techs from Rifling. And he isn't getting any of them in trade because of WFYABTA. So we're talking 60 turns of research. The war will be long decided before the first rifleman appears.
C. Pikes are NOT better vs mounted than Grens. Formation pikes barely have an advantage vs C2 Curassiers. 14.7 vs 14.4. Formation Grens are 17.4 vs mounted. Pikes are only good for defense vs mounted. when attacking an enemy stack they get mauled by maces/muskets/x-bows. Grens do not. The only time Pikes are superior to Grens vs mounted units is if the pikes are combat6/formation. Which makes them strength 18 vs mounted.

You've got a good point there in A and B, i haven't followed the game that closely but i remember now having seen that Sis bypassed lib to get to chemistry (very original that one btw ).Since he doesn't have nationalism means he's far from mil trad too.

As for C, indeed going grens makes some sense in this situation, as you point out they're a bit stronger than pikes against mounted, they're also more expensive though. Overall Pikes can more or less hold out against cuirassiers, one dies but the remaining cuirassier can be picked subsequently. The cannons will sustain some flanking damage sometimes but grens won't fully protect them against this either. Bottom line imo,the difference between treb and cannon is huge, difference between gren and pike is a bit marginal.

On attack against muskets/maces in field the cannons rule (and trebs suck bigtime), on defence you have to build some mace/musket yourself (or better knights if that's possible). I agree that the need to build some defence units tilts the scale a bit more towards grens but not enough imo.

 

[CivCorpse]

You've got a good point there in A and B, i haven't followed the game that closely but i remember now having seen that Sis bypassed lib to get to chemistry (very original that one btw ).Since he doesn't have nationalism means he's far from mil trad too.

As for C, indeed going grens makes some sense in this situation, as you point out they're a bit stronger than pikes against mounted, they're also more expensive though. Overall Pikes can more or less hold out against cuirassiers, one dies but the remaining cuirassier can be picked subsequently. The cannons will sustain some flanking damage sometimes but grens won't fully protect them against this either. Bottom line imo,the difference between treb and cannon is huge, difference between gren and pike is a bit marginal.

On attack against muskets/maces in field the cannons rule (and trebs suck bigtime), on defence you have to build some mace/musket yourself (or better knights if that's possible). I agree that the need to build some defence units tilts the scale a bit more towards grens but not enough imo.

Healthy pikes can stand up to curassiers about 50% of the time. But just a little bit of collateral really weakens them since they rely so heavily on the inherent multipliers. They also are more suseptable to collateral from cats/trebs. Cats and trebs in the open field barely scratch grens. Without adequete stack defense vs curassiers cannons become a non factor due to being dead from flanking damage. All sal's CA's seem to be flanking promoted. When upgraded to Curassiers they will have a 45% retreat chance as well as fairly decent combat odds. He is going to have a LOT of them. The cannons will not be able to advance beyond Kurfah. If you read my previous post you will see that Grens can be used to take cities without relying on collateral damage. Using C1Cr2 grens to damage and even kill some of the top defenders allowing C1CR2 maces with 9xp to finish the job and then be promoted to Grens. C1CR3 grens take cities from even CG3muskets.
Pikes are 90 hammers vs 150 for a gren. You can build 3 pikes for every 2 grens. Grens will survive much more often and are more versatile than pikes. Fortification and terrain bonuses are twice as good for grens due to a higher base strength. Formation grens have no real counter until cavalry. They hold a slight advantage over pinch curassiers due to the free C1 from being Agg on flat terrain in the open. On hills or fortified they have a significant edge over everything including pinch promoted units.
As for grens protecting cannons from flanking damage, it is a nonfactor since going MS measn we don't have cannons to protect.

 

[fjordan]

I understand you would build grens over pikes. But that is not the question is it. It is, is the gren so much better than the pike it justifies delaying cannons. I still don't think so. Furthermore, since the latest patch all lower siege are flanked too, so the trebs will die from currasier attacks just as fast (faster?).

I think the trick is to get Sals SoD within reach of your SoD of cannons. If you can accomplish that, the war is won. With grens however I see a long and slow war and with all the money needed for upgrading your grens a crashed economy will be the result.

BTW, cannons also eat muskets for breakfast, maybe losing one for softening. No need for devious upgrade schemes here, just the CR line. Lastly, I see no problem researching MS or beelining rifling (if Sis can get someone to trade with him) after Steel, so we may see some of that shiny C1CR3 units anyway.

Finally some real discussion! No offense to the weather boys, I just like talking about Civ more.

 

[oldsaxon]

I understand you would build grens over pikes. But that is not the question is it. It is, is the gren so much better than the pike it justifies delaying cannons?

CivCorpse's line is that - thanks to the Flanking-promoted Camel Archers, soon to become Curassiers - Cannon are impossible to defend, and thus wouldn't actually play a major role in the war.

He's convinced me that Grenadiers are the more sensible first option, although I'm sceptical about the efficiency of his no-siege city taking option. Here's how I'd do things:

- Military Science first.
- Research Steel, whilst building a defensive force of (mainly) Grenadiers.
- Place the Gren stacks in forward positions on hills or in forests, with the relevant promotions. Don't stint! In my experience, you really take a pounding early on when your opponent has excessive mounted units. Besides, Hill Defense III has some nice attacking benefits.
- When the war starts, turtle for 10-15 turns while his Curs self-destruct on your Grens. Use those Trebs as bait if you have to - the AI loves to take out your siege stacks, and they're not good for much else. Meanwhile, you're building Cannon. Link them up with your Gren stacks, and go take some cities.
- If the Cannon aren't ready in time, you can always take one or two cities using CivCorpse's no siege stategy. However, I suspect that would consume too many hammers.

 

[Dirk1302]

@CivCorpse, you come up with some very good arguments indeed, i hadn't thought about collateral to pikes which can indeed be important. Your point about terrain bonuses also sticks. I looked at the save now and indeed Sal is upgrading everything to flanking II.

On the other hand, i've been in this position a few times myself on immortal, and i sure get some of my cannons damaged once in a while but i haven't seem massive killing ever due to cuirassiers. It is sure possible to get them killed but often the ai isn't focused enough to really do this. If you get your stack large enough btw you often won't be attacked at all.

I'm not a specialists on promotions or flanking myself, fjordan's remark about trebs being flanked is important here, i have once attacked with sumurai and trebs against a civ with knights, a lot of my trebs got killed. I'm not on firm ground here but isn't it likely that where cannons get damaged trebs can get killed outright much easier? I searched the forum for a quick answer but i couldn't find it.

I was wrong that non mounted units are a problem btw, cannons of course deal with mace and other sorts of non mounted units themselves so cuirassiers is the only thing we have to worry about.

Looking at the save btw it seems like Sal's stack's in Khufar ( i also think Sisiutil might be Sal's target btw looking at the location of this stack and Sal's wheeoh). If this stack ever crosses borders and you have cannons it's instantly dead, you can't do that with trebs. Cannons are superb at this sort of defence. So building cannons and wait a bit after declaration might be the way to go.

 

[r_rolo1]

Remember that the flanking ability is just a chance of making damage to certain siege units if the unit with flanking ability attacks and wins the fight....

My plan would simply move to cannons and take that city that sal has near the border and letting Sal to retake it.... cheesy but effective: Sal mounted don't get defensive bonuses and if we attack there is no fear of flanking ability