Always War

[PaulisKhan]

Got it, I'm going to be playing fairly soon as I'll be away for a week after that so get your suggestions in soon! =D

Primary goal: Get some cottages down so we can support a dozen or so swords so we can take Zara down.

Secondary goal: Maintain the choke.

Techs: toast, jam.

 

[Rusten]

Nothing to add -- this game is pretty much in the bag.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, not so sure....

We will need to kill two two stooges before having some peace. We haven't found no one else, so , as far as we know, we might find a budha lovefest out there teching as mad people. We know that the AI is not that smart regarding naval invasions, but it might be complicated to defend our selfs of 4 SoD landing on the same turn in diferent spots .

Don't misjudge me: zara and saladin are as good as dead. My problem is the rest :/

 

[PaulisKhan]

Just a couple of quick checks.

Tech writing

I would prefer to wait until after writing to found the next two cities, any dispute?

Will build a couple of swords to get down south asap, they will provide the chariots with much needed cover at key points.

Any objections?

 

[r_rolo1]

I fully agree with that line of action

 

[Duckweed]

Play as you wish. There is no menace at the moment and we grabbed the 2 early most important wonders -- Oracle and mids. I agree on r_rolo1, the only possible challenge might come from other continent. Listen to the GG spawn.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Played through to writing+2 turns.
I made a mistake with our chariots in the south, leaving them vulnerable to a counter attack while injured, but Saladin turned out to be chicken and didn't attack. The upshot is that we now have a chariot at 8xp. One more good fight and we'll unlock HE.

The situation at writing
Home:

Saladin

Zara

You can see in the south of the Saladin screenshot, I attacked 2 archers on the desert at 80% odds in the hope of moving us closer to our 10xp unit, I won both but Saladin turned out to have another archer adjacent to the tile that was previously hidden. He had a chance of killing a chariot with 2.8 health which would have weakened our position in the south, guarding that Iron.

In the screenshot of our home cities you can also see Saladins stack of 5 archers moving in our capital. I confess to getting greedy here, I had been shadowing the stack home with some swords and had three ready to strike the moment they crossed into our grasslands.
Killing three archers would generate a GG for us so I played 2 more turns to bring them into our territory and killed them. We now have a GG to settle somewhere (really want CR II swords to deal with protective archers)

I grew our GP farm to pop 7 prior to Writing, this let me 3pop whip the library 1 turn later and run 2 scientists immediately aftwards.

We also popped a GProph in our capital

There is a barb axe sitting on our horses in the north, I whipped an axe in the city to defend, I also moved the chariot MP in our gp farm across to finish off the axe if our defending axe loses (the chariot will need to head back aftwards to relieve our swordsman who is currently healing there.

I managed to get a sword down to Saladins land in time to stop his worker hooking up Iron again

We need to move our extra settler who is currently threatened by the Arabian archers near our capital, I didn't know where to send him.
Our workers are currently roading south or running for their lives.

-edit- I did do something pretty dumb. I've noticed SG players talk about "banking beakers" for a couple of turns. Instead of asking what that meant I just assumed it had something to do with not selecting a tech to research in between turns, and that doing this would stockpile those beakers until one was selected. I decided to give it a go, since even though I thought CoL was our best bet to research I didn't want to go ahead with it without feedback. So for the two turns after teching writing I just ended the turns with no tech targeted.
What actually happened was that beakers got dumped into archery or something. This was straight up stupid from me, a noob SG mistake.
Sorry about that one.

 

[Duckweed]

Got it, will look at it tomorrow.

 

[Dirk1302]

Looks good. Banking beakers? Don't know about that. But i guess what they mean is setting research to 0 accumulating gold waiting for science modifiers. Since it'll be ages before the next GS i guess we won't be waiting for an academy.

 

[Rusten]

He means that if you leave the research option blank you can postpone investing beakers. I've had the same problem when doing it after the early phase. The only time I use it now is the first (few) turn(s) to avoid putting beakers into a tech and then pop it from a hut.

 

[r_rolo1]

I read somewhere ( probably in the BUG forum ) that you can only bank beakers if you have less than enough to get the cheapest tech avaliable.

 

[Dirk1302]

You can only do that for one turn right? Otherwise no one would be researching anything anymore.

 

[Duckweed]

There are a couple of decisions needed for the moment.

Tech path:

I don't have a strong inclination. I'll set research to 0% until the lib on capital is up. With 2 scientists we still have 15 BPT, that's not trivial. What I have in mind is:
Sailing (GLH is still available, we'll gain for building any wonder. Hamburg still have three trees available)
Alpha (enable us to build research and spy, also leads to currency)


Next city site:

Dirk mentioned the two choices in his post. I prefer to go for Corn/2Gems/2Ivorys since this is going to be a great city and I don't like to lose 1 gem.

I don't have much interest in pure sword war. The major reason is that their capitals are pretty far away and not that great. I'd rather let them settle more cities as long as we can take them before LB.

Suggestions?

 

[Dirk1302]

We don't have much to fear from the ais here so we should just take the best spot with corn and max gems which was not on the hill iirc. I'm a bit surprised this city isn't up yet, i teched iw first to work the gem(s) asap. I guess the incoming archers had something to do with that.

GLH will help us a bit (not much), it denies it to the ais oth which is a good thing. It would be ok to let Zara and Sal build up a bit as long as we keep on denying them metal. This means we will probably have to build some more units to be sure.

 

[Duckweed]

GLH is still very useful for ourselves in this setting, that's instant 2 commerce for each coastal city. I'm afraid that we might not be able to get it, however, the cash gain is still good.

I'll play tomorrow if there is no other objection.

 

[Duckweed]

Turn 97
Settle GP in Berlin. Promote 2 level3 swords to WoodmanII.

Turn 98
Axe win in Hamburg vs Barb Axe. Saladin's 2 archers retreat to jungle.


Turn 99
Settle GG in Berlin. Settle Cologne, AI's archers wander around. GLH built, so change research to Alpha.

Turn 101
Zara settle the copper city.

Turn 102
We're the hopeless in teching. How come even Zara and Saladin beat us? Libs are up in Berlin and Hamburg and resume teching.

Turn 104
Stone improvement is destroyed.

Turn 106
Settle Frankfurt

Turn 107
Alpha in, Set research on Math

Roster:
Duckweed--just played
Ungy--UP
Rusten
Dirk1302
r_rolo1
PaulisKhan

 

[ungy]

OK- got it.

Plan: maintain choke--build a sword or 2 in Berlin to get a better look at the south so we don't get a nasty surprise. Look to steal workers with woody 2 swords.

Research-math-currency-(con)

Start colosseus--we're ind so while we won't get it 1.5g is still better than research.

maybe build a spy and try to steal something?

I'm assuming we'll war with jumbos/cats/swords.

 

[Duckweed]

There's another iron southern of Mecca, our 2 chariots have to escort the stolen worker back and are coming back now. Our 3 chariots in Zara's land are heading south to check the area undiscovered, the WoodmanII sword should be enough for watching the iron near his capital.

I hold on the sword build in Hamburg and Berlin since the current forces are enough for defense now and we have already paid fee for units.

 

[ungy]

OK-then just build research and only build units as necessary.
change Munich to Colosseus.
IBT barb archer pillages road near Munich.
200

175 our 8XP chariot kills a wounded archer by the southern iron--it's all clear.

150 hmm spoke too soon about that--Sal is sending a settler down to try and claim it:

125 math in-currency. Sal settler retreats we kill an archer.

There's another iron to the S:

100 I kill a few more archers but unfortunately I leave a wounded sword that is vulnurable . So I decide to complete the sword in Berlin to replace it.

75 the AI does not kill our wounded sword we capture a worker by Aksum--iron almost mined there.

50 we steal a worker by Medina.

25..

1AD we kill an archer by Mecca, we now have 2 9XP chars.

25 currency in--con.

50 damn--I left it open for a few turns--didn't see any workers around after I stole one but I let Zara get iron. We should be able to pillage it next turn at least.

We have a decision to make--we can whip the colosseus:

I'm inclined to do it--we won't be hurrying to astro and we'll grow back fast. It'll slow the academy but we can research at 0%.

The tech screen:

nobody's got monarchy

there's horse and a barb city to the S, the E is clear:

 

[ungy]

save is here: