ALC Game #24: Hammurabi/Babylon

[r_rolo1]

The latest screenshot of kufah is misleading... the city has the full inner ring in Sal control and has IIRC 40% defense in the save.

 

[azzaman333]

Sally must die, or Hannibal will run off to space before you've realised it.

 

[CivCorpse]

Having actually looked at Sis´latest screenshot of Kufah I note that not only is it right on the border but it has 0% defence so cannon go straight to collateral rather than knocking down defences.
So I change camp to attack Kufah asap (within five turns max) and wipe out Sal´s SOC the same turn as declaring war. This will seriously dent his power rating making it harder for Sal to drag in allies against Sis.
Still go for golden age, nat/theo drafting, 100% cash to upgrade to rifles.

Actually Kufah is one tile from the border at the point of the save and has 60% defense. Which means parking the cannons in range of multiple flanking attacks. Even if sis chooses to use the forest there will be a good bit of flanking damage to the cannons which in turn means higher siege casualties when they attack to cause collateral damage. Which leads me to the new and improved CivCorpse's Revised Aggression Plan... C.R.A.P. for short.
The new C.R.A.P. is as follows.
Step 1. Domestic Infrastructure.
Babylon. Whip the grocer. It reduces the population by 2 hungry mouths and gets you a building to run merchants. Then get an aquaduct, baray and market place and Observatory. A recent study has shown that having a high food city like babylon with the National Epic is a dandy keen spiffy place to run specialists. To such an extent that there is a new fad called "GP farms" sweeping the nation. hint hint hint...perhaps a courthouse as well since you have been paying 2.75 gpt for mucho turnos that could have been saved if you had built CoL waaaaaaaaay back when. Plus the EPs babylon hasn't gotten.
Dar-kaligula or whatever that useless crappy city in the SW is called wants a courthouse too. The perhaps a momastary to build missionaries forever and ever. Current City Maint there is over 8gpt. an extra cannon 23 turns from now is not game breaking. 4gpt isn't either but it's a heck of a lot better.
Sippar the not-nearly-as-crappy-but-not-exactly-decent city with the sheep needs a courthouse as well 3gpt then the city can slowly produce naval units for the next trillion turns. Or maybe spies. Or islamic missionaries since you're grabbing a shrine in Mecca.
Borssippa, the SE coastal city needs a courthouse as well. Over 9gpt city maintanance. Then a forge and maybe a dry dock. The naval units for a very long time. It will take a while for units produced on the western coast to go aaaalllllll the way up and around.
That is 4 courthouses built for a savings of roughly 15gpt AND 8 when you consider your current espionage ouptput is a blazing 21 per turn.

A GA would be quite nice at this point. For the production boost and the civics switches. Speaking of which, here are my my humble (and amazingly shrewd) civics reccommendations.

Goverment: Representation. I realize this drops Pacal down to pleased and Sis hits WFYABTA, but honestly, he has nothing to trade to Pacal regardless of diplomatic status. Same thing with Hannibal.
Legal: Nationhood. The +2 happiness will help offset lost happiness from losing the resources you are getting from saladin (temporarily until you take them by force). The lost exp will be regained from Theocracy to be explained in a bit. The free 17 units from vassalage are recouped from the 11gpt in civics cost and by the 15gpt from the four courthouses. The 25% boost helps as well. Between the new courthouses and Nationhood your per turn doubles. Very helpful since the other civs have democracy and are surely building secrurity bureaus and jails.
Labor: Caste System. The improved hammer output from workshops helps alleviate the lost whipping hammers. Especially since the kinder gentler sis seems to have lost his whip. And with Representation, maybe Babylon and Minoan will actually run some specialists. Nippur has reached the point where it can work all but one decent tile in the BFC. And it can work that one too fairly soon. So it is time for babylon to reclaim the clams. And run a pile of specialists for lots of GPP and representation beakers. Labiela and Gondar are almost at their peak commerce output and you are falling steadily behind in tech. Rep and max specialists can really give you a much needed boost. And with such sparing use of the whip, slavery is a waste of a civic.
Economic: Mercantilism. You currently have 118 commerce from trade routes. You will get 30-40 back from internal trade routes plus 50-60 from the free specialists boosted by representation. The deciding factor in this was WHO your trade routes are going to. 90 of that commerce is going to Hannibal and Mehmed. They are already whipping you in the tech department. They both have education so they are getting more bang for the buck. Especially since you still don't have any observatories built. If they have Unis/Obsveries built then they are getting an extra 50% back on their commerce applied towards science.
Religion: Theocracy. This replaces the lost exp from vassalage so that drafted rifles are C1 plus a promotion. More importantly Islam and Theocracy get you big diplomatic points with Justinian. Justinian is WFYABTA. He also has techs sis wants and better yet techs sis can afford. Pacal's willingness to trade is pretty much like me going to a Mercedes dealership. They'll let me in the door but I can't afford a Mercedes. Justinian on the other hand has a couple used 8 year old Toyota Celicas in a variety of nice colors. And keeping him out of the war could be crucial. This involves adopting a religion and diplomatic hits from a number of world leaders. Hannibal will eventually drop to +4 (-1 from declaring on sal and -3 for heathenity) This is still pleased i think. Mehmed drops to even at 0 for cautious( this takes into account the lost civics bonus as well) and darius becomes annoyed. It's time to get off the fence. After the war sis can switch back to FR after the war if needed. But he needs drafting to offset sal's 50% advantage in cities and immortal upgrade/production bonuses. Sal is already tops in the powergraph and if he upgrades all those longbows sis is going to need a lot of troops.

The second load of C.R.A.P. (or how the war is waged)

Up to and during the GA Akkad and Aksum build troops. Cannons in Akkad and maces in Aksum. Or just a pile of cannons in both while relying on upgrading (at a sizable cost) the existing CR units. Minoan builds and whips Naval units. Nippur finishes a forge and courthouse and begins naval units. Especially some SoTL once MS is completed. When MS is completed build Grens in aksum and possibly Akkad. You will want about 8 Grens and leave them unpromoted.
Following the Civics change. Three rifles per turn are drafted throughout the empire. There is a lot of room under the happy cap in most of the cities. Borsipurra is way under the cap and has some nice food to regrow quickly if sis work just the seafood/deer and coastal tiles, so it can be well abused for quite a while. Twelve turns of GA means 36 rifles. Babylon,Gondor and Minoan should be careful about drafting because when WW hits their high populations will feel the draft anger. Jails in all three might be a good idea. Especially with the bonus from nationhood. Labiela should build spies the entire time. You want a spy in every city and one on the iron. Saladin has a big bonus in cost. The only city exempt from the draft is Dar-nitIWhyDidIBuildThisCrappyCity in the far SW because it is so food poor.
All mounted units and a nice chunk of cannons should remain in Akkad to decimate the SOD. Maybe 25 of the Drafted rifles as well for mop up since there will be lots of units to kill off. This means you can delay building a barracks in some of the newer cities that do not have one when the GA starts. they will have 1exp each and gain one during the mop up. That gives them 2 for a single promotion. That is plenty since they are going to be garrison units anyway.
A road needs to be built on the desert hill 1SW of damascus' wheat. The main SOD stays back 2 tiles from that wheat. After sal's SOD commits to Akkad, the main force can be over the border and next to damascus in one turn. Taking damascus and 2 turns later Kufah means the roads between kufah and damascus are nuetral or even under babylonian culture so the troops used in the SoD massacre can quickly rejoin the main force. It is a one turn march from Kurfah to Damascus.
A couple cheap drafted rifles and a Guerilla1/Pinc gren should be put on the three hills in the SE border to deny sal's pilliagers terrain defense when they cross over. The hill 1SW of Kurasan. The Mine 2E of akkad and the grassland hill 2N3E of Labiella. Kurasan is on a hill with decent culture. it would require a number of cannons to be taken from the main force. Aksum could build a small force once the invasion begins to take it out or just wait for the mop up action.
SoTL should be in position to blockade Mecca and Bagdad. (as described in the Great Grenadier/Cannon debate). This will greatly hinder sal's ability to whip or draft his own defenders. It will also take a toll on his navy since it appears he has mostly frigates.
After Damascuc falls, proceed to Mecca. By this point You should have a GG. if so make a mash unit. I recommend an explorer built in aksum. It will never ever be the stack defender. After Mecca falls load 3 galleons with 3 cannons and some CR grens. Use frigates/SoL to drop defenses in Bagdad suicide the three cannons and take bagdad. Send drafted rifles from minoan/babylon up the coast to garrison. Ship the surviving grens back to mecca. by this point the main stack should be healed and on it's way to medina. Once medina falls the rest is tedious mop up.
Four of the recommended 8 grens should be promoted to pinch/CG1 for garrison duty in Kurfah/Damascus and 4 with C2Pinch for stack defense.

Tech path should be MS->MT->Democracy Following the war switch civics back to FR/Vassalage/Emancipation. If you feel you have the troop strength needed to finish sal off, consider switching after you take Mecca. IIRC the unrest timer for captured cities continues even during anarchy. This way you don't lose an extra 3 turns in your new cities. I wouldn't wait for free market because you want to regain your positive diplomatic bonuses with Hannibal and Mehmed as soon as possible. hopefully Mehmed and Darius are still at war during this time. At the very least you will lose the heathenity penalty with them.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

The new C.R.A.P. is as follows.

On first reading it sounds promising... However it's so lengthy and detailed that I'll need to read it a few times to get my head around it.

 

[dutchfire]

Sisiutil, might it be an idea to add the date a round is posted to your opening post? That'd make it easier if you're trying to see if anything new has been added.

 

[Killroyan]

Wow, civcorpse, that is one huge pile of C.R.A.P. but sound advice if you ask me.

 

[Artichoker]

Actually Kufah is one tile from the border at the point of the save and has 60% defense. Which means parking the cannons in range of multiple flanking attacks. Even if sis chooses to use the forest there will be a good bit of flanking damage to the cannons which in turn means higher siege casualties when they attack to cause collateral damage. Which leads me to the new and improved CivCorpse's Revised Aggression Plan... C.R.A.P. for short.

Use 1 cannon with CR/Accuracy as bait for the Cuirassiers. Back them up with 4 Riflemen and 5 Pikemen. While that mini-stack is holed up in the forest, use the cannon to bombard defenses.

The remaining cannons should remain in home territory as a reactionary force until the invasion is ready to begin.

...

Legal: Nationhood. The +2 happiness will help offset lost happiness from losing the resources you are getting from saladin (temporarily until you take them by force). The lost exp will be regained from Theocracy to be explained in a bit. The free 17 units from vassalage are recouped from the 11gpt in civics cost and by the 15gpt from the four courthouses. The 25% boost helps as well. Between the new courthouses and Nationhood your per turn doubles. Very helpful since the other civs have democracy and are surely building secrurity bureaus and jails.

You don't get the Courthouse bonuses until you have completed them. And they can be built just as easily under Vassalage as under Nationhood. Also, Free Religion has both a +10% science boost and costs 3 gold less than Theocracy.

Tech path should be MS->MT->Democracy Following the war switch civics back to FR/Vassalage/Emancipation. If you feel you have the troop strength needed to finish sal off, consider switching after you take Mecca. IIRC the unrest timer for captured cities continues even during anarchy. This way you don't lose an extra 3 turns in your new cities. I wouldn't wait for free market because you want to regain your positive diplomatic bonuses with Hannibal and Mehmed as soon as possible. hopefully Mehmed and Darius are still at war during this time. At the very least you will lose the heathenity penalty with them.

At least you acknowledge that Vassalage/Free Religion has some advantages over Nationhood/Theocracy. Namely, they are:

1) +17 Free Units (and growing) from Vassalage

This results in an upkeep savings that's more than the savings from civics upkeep for Nationhood. Actually, since Theocracy costs 3 gold more than Free Religion, the net savings (counting only civics costs) from Nationhood+Theocracy is only 8 gold cheaper than Vassalage+Free Religion.

We can attribute this economic advantage to the Organized trait. Without it, Nationhood+Theocracy would have a civics cost savings of 16 gold, just barely breaking even with the Vassalage unit discount.


2) +10% science boost from Free Religion

With the high emphasis (up to 80% of total commerce) on science and the Great Library, this easily dwarfs the +25% espionage boost from Nationhood. Also, since Sisiutil has skipped the Education tech path in favor of the Guilds path, science multipliers are lower than in a usual game. This increases the significance of the +10% science boost.


Don't get me wrong, I also think drafting will help. But only a temporary use of Nationhood is necessary (with the help of a Golden Age), since the unhappiness will make drafting difficult to sustain during war.

 

[Lekdevil.NL]

The new C.R.A.P. is as follows.

I'd say you've given us the Basic Outline Leveraging Lots Of Cannons Killing Saladin, or B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S., for short.

 

[Dirk1302]

I'd go nationhood for draft preferably in GA if possible and then I'd just go ahead asap with rifles/cannons.I doubt Sal'll attack such a stack in a forest with cuirassiers as he knows they'll die so not much flanking damage i think.

Delay building infrastructure/teching until after the war.

 

[Artichoker]

Placing a secondary stack in the forest tile next to Kufah may cause Saladin to split his forces.

Saladin will probably want to defend that city well, but with his big stack of Cuirassiers, there's a good chance he may send some to counterattack Sisiutil's lands.

If that happens, then the counterattacking Arabian cuirassiers can be picked off by Riflemen in home territory, resulting in less WW. Since Saladin will devote strong defensive units to the defense of Kufah, there will be less units available to act as stack protectors for the cuirassiers.

 

[CivCorpse]

I'd go nationhood for draft preferably in GA if possible and then I'd just go ahead asap with rifles/cannons.I doubt Sal'll attack such a stack in a forest with cuirassiers as he knows they'll die so not much flanking damage i think.

Delay building infrastructure/teching until after the war.

Sis delayed a lot of his infrastructure building while reponding to the false alarm from Sal. It really can't be put off any longer. Mehmed/Pacal/Ragnar have significant tech leads which are going to grow even larger during the war. The majority of the cities only need 1-2 buildings and the two that need a lot of infrastructure are super food cities that can whip a few of those buildings before the GA.
As for the forest giving protection. Sal just recently reclaimed that tile. There is a chance it will be chopped when the war starts. Saladin also has a few siege units in Kufah. Those will get suicided to weaken the our SoD and most of those flanking promoted Curassiers will retreat Saladin has a LOT of troops in Kufah. It would be best to deal with them in Babylonian lands because of the WW factor. I counted 41 units in Kurfah. That is a lot of WW. If we pause the one turn and let them cross the border we suffer no WW. And they lose all the defensive bonuses from the city.

 

[CivCorpse]

Use 1 cannon with CR/Accuracy as bait for the Cuirassiers. Back them up with 4 Riflemen and 5 Pikemen. While that mini-stack is holed up in the forest, use the cannon to bombard defenses.

Pikes are definately yesterdays news. An unpromoted riflemen is better than pretty much any pikeman. Your strategy relies heavily on that patch of forest still being there when the invasion begins. If it is gone then Sals grenadiers will maul the rifles,pikes and cannon.

The remaining cannons should remain in home territory as a reactionary force until the invasion is ready to begin.

...

You don't get the Courthouse bonuses until you have completed them. And they can be built just as easily under Vassalage as under Nationhood. Also, Free Religion has both a +10% science boost and costs 3 gold less than Theocracy.

The courthouses are built/whipped in the 10 turns until sis pops his next GP in Babylon to start the GA. He has a GS now, but there is a 20% chance for either a GP or GA. It would be better to burn one of them and save the GS to bulb a chunk of Education

At least you acknowledge that Vassalage/Free Religion has some advantages over Nationhood/Theocracy. Namely, they are:

1) +17 Free Units (and growing) from Vassalage

This results in an upkeep savings that's more than the savings from civics upkeep for Nationhood. Actually, since Theocracy costs 3 gold more than Free Religion, the net savings (counting only civics costs) from Nationhood+Theocracy is only 8 gold cheaper than Vassalage+Free Religion.

We can attribute this economic advantage to the Organized trait. Without it, Nationhood+Theocracy would have a civics cost savings of 16 gold, just barely breaking even with the Vassalage unit discount.


2) +10% science boost from Free Religion

With the high emphasis (up to 80% of total commerce) on science and the Great Library, this easily dwarfs the +25% espionage boost from Nationhood. Also, since Sisiutil has skipped the Education tech path in favor of the Guilds path, science multipliers are lower than in a usual game. This increases the significance of the +10% science boost.


Don't get me wrong, I also think drafting will help. But only a temporary use of Nationhood is necessary (with the help of a Golden Age), since the unhappiness will make drafting difficult to sustain during war.

Nationhood is not a good civic for the long run, but 36 drafted rifles far outweigh the gold savings from vassalage. Personally I rarely use nationhood because I am a devout CE player and even when using an SE or Hybrid have a heavily cottaged Capital with Oxford University so I tend to remain in Bureaucracy for the majority of the game. I am not advocating Nationhood for beyond the war. But Vassalage is really best if you have an empire capable of producing a large number of units. After the war Sis should work towards liberalism and Free Speech. While switching back to Free Religion.

 

[CivCorpse]

Just another thought. (or the piece of C.R.A.P. that didn't come out with the rest)

Pacal will trade MT for RP and 995gold. That price should seriously drop if Sis first researchs MT for a turn. Cavalry. Sal has the counter units for rifles and cannons but not for cavalry. A quick tech-n-trade will allow Aksum do put some Cavalry into play. Especially for dealing with those annoying pilliager pairs that the AI loves. Hannibal already has RP so it is already available for trade. Hannibal also has rifling. And Corporation...and a lot of other goodies. Have you looked over carthaginian lands recently. It is a sea of villiages. I suspect Hannibal will soon tech or trade for Democracy. Once he is in Emancipation those become towns then poof he is in free speech/US and takes off like a rocket. Maybe if we find a way to switch to Confucism he will let us be his vassal and ride in the space ship with him.

 

[Artichoker]

Nationhood is not a good civic for the long run, but 36 drafted rifles far outweigh the gold savings from vassalage. Personally I rarely use nationhood because I am a devout CE player and even when using an SE or Hybrid have a heavily cottaged Capital with Oxford University so I tend to remain in Bureaucracy for the majority of the game. I am not advocating Nationhood for beyond the war. But Vassalage is really best if you have an empire capable of producing a large number of units. After the war Sis should work towards liberalism and Free Speech. While switching back to Free Religion.

36 drafted rifles will take at least 12 turns to accomplish. And the total amount of unhappiness will be 36*3 = 108. Assuming this is distributed across 9 cities, that's still 12 unhappiness per city...so Nationhood also requires a big empire in order to draft effectively, considering the side effects.

On the other hand, 18 drafted rifles takes only 6 turns to accomplish...which is just within the window of time offered by a Golden Age. But the amount of unhappiness created is also cut in half to 54.

If the switch back to Vassalage/Free Religion can be made right before the Golden Age ends, then the anarchy can be avoided while also conserving enough net happiness to sustain production.

 

[CivCorpse]

Use 1 cannon with CR/Accuracy as bait for the Cuirassiers. Back them up with 4 Riflemen and 5 Pikemen. While that mini-stack is holed up in the forest, use the cannon to bombard defenses.

The remaining cannons should remain in home territory as a reactionary force until the invasion is ready to begin.

...



You don't get the Courthouse bonuses until you have completed them. And they can be built just as easily under Vassalage as under Nationhood. Also, Free Religion has both a +10% science boost and costs 3 gold less than Theocracy.



At least you acknowledge that Vassalage/Free Religion has some advantages over Nationhood/Theocracy. Namely, they are:

1) +17 Free Units (and growing) from Vassalage

This results in an upkeep savings that's more than the savings from civics upkeep for Nationhood. Actually, since Theocracy costs 3 gold more than Free Religion, the net savings (counting only civics costs) from Nationhood+Theocracy is only 8 gold cheaper than Vassalage+Free Religion.

We can attribute this economic advantage to the Organized trait. Without it, Nationhood+Theocracy would have a civics cost savings of 16 gold, just barely breaking even with the Vassalage unit discount.


2) +10% science boost from Free Religion

With the high emphasis (up to 80% of total commerce) on science and the Great Library, this easily dwarfs the +25% espionage boost from Nationhood. Also, since Sisiutil has skipped the Education tech path in favor of the Guilds path, science multipliers are lower than in a usual game. This increases the significance of the +10% science boost.


Don't get me wrong, I also think drafting will help. But only a temporary use of Nationhood is necessary (with the help of a Golden Age), since the unhappiness will make drafting difficult to sustain during war.

36 drafted rifles will take at least 12 turns to accomplish. And the total amount of unhappiness will be 36*3 = 108. Assuming this is distributed across 9 cities, that's still 12 unhappiness per city...so Nationhood also requires a big empire in order to draft effectively, considering the side effects.

On the other hand, 18 drafted rifles takes only 6 turns to accomplish...which is just within the window of time offered by a Golden Age. But the amount of unhappiness created is also cut in half to 54.

If the switch back to Vassalage/Free Religion can be made right before the Golden Age ends, then the anarchy can be avoided while also conserving enough net happiness to sustain production.

Sis has considerable room under the happy cap to absorb roughly 3 drafts per city. Or 27 rifles. Even 18 rifles makes Nationhood worthwhile.

 

[Dirk1302]

@civcorpse,

I agree that baiting the cuirassiers is a good plan. There are only 12 cuirassiers in Kufah btw, the rest is completely outdated rubbish. Building infra letting the military advantage slip away is imo not ok. The sooner land is doubled the longer we can enjoy it. Infra can always be built later. No problem being behind in techs if you've got land to catch up. And if you build the infra now, you still need to go to war and research'll halt during that time.

Tech wise i agree with MT to counter grens but MS is not necessary, i'd go to communism so we don't suffer distance maintainance.

Sal doesn't have a counter to cannons, if we destroy his stack in our land, never a problem, i also doubt he'll attack rifles with cuirassiers and if so i don't think we'll lose lots of cannons (sure some'll be damaged,it's war after all). Never happened to me at least and i sure played lots of wars against cuirassiers. It's important to build a really large drafted stack, it scares the ai off from attacking.

 

[Artichoker]

Sis has considerable room under the happy cap to absorb roughly 3 drafts per city. Or 27 rifles. Even 18 rifles makes Nationhood worthwhile.

Nationhood becomes more worthwhile if you can fit the drafting phase within the duration of a Golden Age.

However, it becomes less worthwhile if the drafting causes excessive unhappiness...or takes too many turns...or causes too much population loss...or results in an excessively large peacetime army.

At some point, conquered cities gained during the war will improve military production to a point where the lower XP of the drafted units is less favorable than making them normally, since they both require the same amount of upkeep.

 

[Dirk1302]

The war should be over in ~20-25 turns so i doubt the conquered cities can contribute much.

 

[Artichoker]

Pikes are definately yesterdays news. An unpromoted riflemen is better than pretty much any pikeman. Your strategy relies heavily on that patch of forest still being there when the invasion begins. If it is gone then Sals grenadiers will maul the rifles,pikes and cannon.

So that icon with the soldier saluting is Military Science? I didn't notice it at first glance. In that case, Riflemen can be countered after all.


I'm not so sure about Free Speech, though. The next milestone will be Assembly Line. With Representation, the need for towns is lessened since extra beakers can be gained by having Farms and specialists. But as more cities are conquered, the XP bonus results in an extra promotion for more cities, and a snowball effect can be achieved.

 

[Dirk1302]

No that icon is military tradition.