AW Shucks

[astre]

I'm afraid that before we are talking about going rampage in the new world, we have cleaning to make in the new first

a city off land will be a plus but only Falklands leave me a good impression but it is so far away...

for expoit cuba, i usually prefere to settle miamy than a carabian island. And that's just the plan we are talking at this time

 

[vanatteveldt]

I really don't understand the reasoning.

An island city will provide 1 extra commerce to every city we have. This is currently already 11 commerce, but this will increase to 20-30 when we populate the americas. In addition, the city itself has 2x2 commerce in trade routes plus at least one coastal tile. So, at the cost of a settler and maintenance penalty we get 18 instant commerce, which is equal to 2.5 gold mines. How can we not want this? Also, the commerce will grow as the city slowgrows onto more coast and as we build more other cities. In effect, it is a sort of instant holy city without having to spread religion. (albeit less concentrated so less bank bonus etc., but you get the idea)

I don't see anything wrong with galapagos. I agree that falklands are far away, which is why I suggested cuba.

 

[pigswill]

Looking at city maintenance it may be worth considering whipping out courthouses sooner rather than later and maybe consider Forbidden Palace. Do we build FP up north or down south while moving palace?

I'm wondering if we should try to annihilate Roos as soon as possible and focus EP on Monte while driving him northwards.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Looking at city maintenance it may be worth considering whipping out courthouses sooner rather than later and maybe consider Forbidden Palace. Do we build FP up north or down south while moving palace?

I agree with Tachy that NY would be a fine cottaged palace. A brasilian city would be better (as in, 20 riverside cottages), but (1) jungles need to be cut, (2) the city needs to grow without any food source, and (3) the cottages need to mature after that. So, I think NY will do (and IIRC it already has an academy!), and from that it follows that the FP should go to the south, or at least in current venezuela (to avoid the trap of never building the FP because there is a "more perfecter" site.

I'm wondering if we should try to annihilate Roos as soon as possible and focus EP on Monte while driving him northwards.

I'm all for getting rid of roosy, and as I suggested earlier EP should go back on monty as it is too late to hope for anything useful from monty. Only consideration is to raze monty's northern city first as it is on the way to roosy's cities from our army and it will cripply monty even further, meaning a lot less risk to our american cities. I don't really have much to say about the order of attack after getting Roosy, and that will be after my turnset anyway ;-)


Our current finances are:

income:
@100% tax = 155
wealth = 44
specialist = 5 (GProphet in Tenochtitlan)

cost (including 19% inflation, which I can just multiply in right?):
unit costs: 46 (this will go down a bit but not a lot)
city maintenance 57 distance + 6 number of cities
civic upkeep: 43

City maintenance will certainly go up as the most expensive cities are still in revolt. If I understand the city screen is correct, this will add another 18 gpt maintenance.

All in all, I think there are three ways of (non-incrementally) improving the economy at the moment

1) building the FP. Difficult to estimate, but I think this should save at least 20 in distance maintenance
2) building courthouses everywhere, especially in our old homeland while we move the palace. This can potentially save about 40 gold with our current cities
3) building two island cities. As explained above, this should get us 40 commerce at the expense of 2 city maintenance. *

If we do all three that should buy us enough income to absorb the rest of NA and pay for colonizing SA. Note that we will lose 44 gold per turn when we switch our cities to building courthouses, forges etc., effectively bringing us to +0@100% tax in our current state.

*) If I'm overestimating the effect of island cities please do tell me, I'm not trying to win the argument by repeating myself as often as possible...

 

[pigswill]

I'm guessing the delay is over the island proposal. Tachywaxon doesn't want the cuban hut popped prematurely, let's hope the europeans don't send a scout on board a caravel. I can't remember the caribean layout that well, there may be a one tile hilly island somewhere just waiting to repel amphibious invaders. Or even the Galapagos, boost to trade routes will easily repay city maintenance and pay back the cost of the settler+defenders in time.

 

[vanatteveldt]

There are at least three islands (cuba, galapagos, and falklands), so we can do 2 without doing cuba. I'm not convinced that waiting out for a 20% chance at a tech is the right choice (I believe in rewards now more than rewards later), but if that is the consensus I am fine with that. We can also build an island city off the guyanan coast (Trinidad), but those cities are quite useless.

I was indeed hoping for a bit more debate, since I think that after so many turns it is good to get everyone back in the game. But I guess it's time to move on.

I will play a set tonight:

Military: Heal two turns, move north and raze the Aztec city there, turn east and capture the two cities of Roosevelt that we can see, and burn/capture any new city he might have founded. I will leave a smallish garrison in the border towns but move as many troops as possible to the front. I will also send two axemen to south america to get some control of the amazon. If Roosy is done I will probably turn to Texcoco depending on the situation, but that will presumably be in the next turnset.

Science: CoL -> Alphabet -> Meditation -> Taoism (bulb) -> Poly -> Mono -> Metal Casting. Will post for advice if Taoism is FIDL earlier

Empire: First order of business is whipping/building courthouses practically everywhere. As soon as NY is done with basic infra it will get the Palace.

As soon as Roosy is defeated I want to settle a city in Wyoming on the riverside plains hill with gold + deer + marble and a city in New Orleans, which can use the Fish as Teoti gets its corn back.

Even while waging war in the North I want to start building some settlers to settle the south. I want to build a venezuelan clam/corn and a Guyanan crab/silver city. If possible we should also start from the Montevideo area as that land is productive much more quickly and has more food resources. If I can spare a settler I will settle Galapagos, and if I start colonising the Montevideo region I will settle the Falklands. I will move most of our workers south as the north is relatively well developed. I think a new city in the jungle really needs at least 2 workers and preferably 4 to keep pace with population growth (farming over a jungle tile costs 2 workers 6 turns, and will want some roads as well).

Final questions, although I will start playing tonight anyway:

1) Do I build FP in Colombia? The location is not perfect, but an imperfect FP is better than an FP that is not built

2) How fast should I expand? After the round of courthouses I want to build a lot of settlers and settle SA as fast as possible, as we need that land developed quickly to be able to outgrow or at least outproduce the old world. But can we afford a three pronged expansion (NA + Northern SA + Southern SA)? Even ignoring maintenance cost, stopping production of wealth will create difficulties with keeping up our tech rate, so I think at least half the empire should probably continue building wealth.

3) Shall I revolt to caste system + OR after taoism + mono? OR will make spreading easier and help building infra (but it's not worth delaying courthouses over, I think) I'm not sure about caste.

4) Shall I try to farm a prophet? This will be a long affair as I think the only building we have now that allows a priest is a temple, which requires priesthood and only allows a single priest. Then again we can use the coin, so it can't harm to run a priest in every city with specialists and hope that we get lucky?

5) What is the economic plan for south america? Cottages are easy, but we might need the production (flexibility) more than the long term potential, so maybe farms + mines + workshops(mc)/watermills(machinery) make more sense? This is a pretty long term question as the first improvements will be farms anyway, but it is important to get a consensus on this.

Edit: added some questions

 

[nocho]

Yeah, we're a bit silenced in awe after tachy's mighty display. SGOTM won't help either.

Plan sounds good to me. Regarding your points:
1) Yeah, why not.
2) I'd like to settle montevideo rather quickly as it can be brought up to speed relatively quickly and expand from there. Ok with some islands. Would settle as quick as our workforce allows it. No sense settling the jungle without deforestation taskforces nearby.
3) I highly prefer food and hammer improvements over cottages in south america.

Good luck!

 

[vanatteveldt]

Good luck!

Did a bit more thinking about priests. I realised that it might make sense to build angkor wat. We have stone, so it will cost 500 / 2.25 = 222 hammers. This is a lot but it will allow 3 priest specialists plus make all priest specialists as productive as engineers. Frankly I think this is the only reasonable way to farm a prophet for a shrine; but it is also quite a big investment at a time where we might rather build two and a half settlers...

 

[pigswill]

Maybe build settlers while waiting to see if we get Taoism before thinking about shrines.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Heh . I will certainly build some settlers before Tao, but not too many - Tao is 8 turns away, and the first three will be spend finishing col, building ch, whipping ch. After that, I don't dare put research below 100%, so I will have to keep quite a lot of cities on building wealth...

 

[vanatteveldt]

Bad news :-(

T0 - set espionage to monty, lower slider to 60%

T1 - CoL is in, research to alphabet - 4 turns @60%
     All (!) cities set to CH, will whip as soon as feasible
     Healthy part of army (2cat, 7 axe) moves north over new road

T2 - Notre Dame BIDL (900 AD). Old world has engineering. Could be worse
     Put some cities (old homeland, Tenochtitlan) back to wealth temporarily to avoid bankruptcy (why doesn't greece just build wealth??)

[B]T3 - Taoism FIDL[/B]

So, no taoism for us. We should rething our tech path, as neither alphabet nor pacificsm will give us a lot of immediate advantage. The only religion still out there is divine right, which is not exactly a direction I am thrilled to take.

I propose switching to metal casting, to get cheap forges for +3 happy (with gems). After that, we should probably go down the CS -> education route, although a lower route (machinery, monarchy, feudalism, guilds) may also make sense.

I will continue play tomorrow after we've decided on tech strat.

 

[astre]

how long before alphabet?
if 1-2 turn, finish it to build some spies (is calendar can be stolen?).
It will be needed anyway to get print press (a not so distanced required tech)

for techpath, my proposition:

MC/machinery /civil service/paper/print press

with calendar to be added somewhere or better to be stollen if possible

 

[vanatteveldt]

Well at 100% science it is 2 turns. Problem is, we can only afford 100% science for zero turns.

At 30% science we are -7/t, which we can afford for one turn, but hopefully conquest money and courthouses can stretch that; alphabet will then take 5 turns (we are at 177/540 beakers). Metal Casting will be 11 turns at that rate.

We have 360 EP invested against monty, but our EP rate will go up with the new courthouses. The cheapest tech, presumably hunting, is 169EP, so 85EP at 50% discount, so an EP is worth around 85 beakercents. City revolt costs 1000, so at 50% discount we are not far off.

We already have calendar, so that is not the consideration. Stealable techs are probably the really ancient ones (hunting and friends; but they are not worth the spy I think), and the religious techs, which are pretty useless without a religion except for opening up monarchy.

My opinion is to go MC before finishing alphabet, as MC has immediate advantages (+2/3 happy and +25% production at the cost of 60 hammers) while alphabet doesn't.


Now for something completely different:
I'm not sure we should, but IF we want to try for a religion, I think the only path is:
Tech the ancient religious techs plus monarchy (which has its benefits) and theology (=34 turns in total) while generating a stonehenge prophet in Tenochtitlan (=17 turns). In that case, we could decide to steal the "bottom" ancient religious techs while researching monarchy, although it wouldn't really help time wise as alphabet is as expensive as these two techs, but at least we will have alphabet. On second though, this is a silly idea, so I guess we'll have to get used to the idea of being pagan... (bad luck really, as in my experience monty founds a religion more often than not)

 

[astre]

I say stop alphabet and go for MC.
We will continue alphabet just after MC.

I'm not for religious path. In 34 turns, islam will be founded.

 

[vanatteveldt]

T3 - Taoism FIDL. Rats. Guess we'll stay pagan most of this game. Switched from alpha to MC and put a scientist in cuzco to work in the mines. No hurry now.
Sent a vanguard axeman north. Combined with a lakeview towards Roosy's new
capital we can see the troops:

Pretty pathetic. Monty has 1 archer, 1 axe, 1 jag. Roosy has 1 spearman, 2 archers, and an axe. We have 16 axes (counting three in the northeast that can strike philly) and 9 cats. I decide to split the stack, sending 5 cats and 8 axes to monty and 4 cats and the rest to roosy. Let's plunder!

T4 - Razed monty's northern city at the cost of one catapult (and a lucky shot). Second army will be next to philly next turn. Roosy built Seattle on the Hudson bay.
Moving tons of workers to the south, whipped a settler in Colombia (already at 40/100) to build Venezuela.

T5 - Captured Philly (Ontario) at the loss of one catapult. Seattle is guarded by 2 archers so sent a small task force to clear it.

T6 - Burned Seattle without loss, with two workers and a great general as bounty. Roosy has another city further north, what the hell is he doing up there. Will need to regroup and raze that as well.

T8 - Army is ready to move again. We can whip the palace in NY, but it's probably better to wait at least until Ontario comes out of revolt.

T9 - Galapagos founded, immediately adding 12 net commerce.

T10 - Arctic City razed at no losses. Montreal (Atlanta) captured at the loss of 4 catapults, with some really bad luck (lost 3 >70% odds. O well, it happens..) Roosevelt is no longer with us... Invented hunting to get the happy resource online.

T12 - Palace built in NY, MC invented, GS popped in the Cuzco. Decided to end the turnset here.

Economy wise we are doing a lot better. Palace brought down distance maintenance from 57 to 42, after 25% inflation that is 18 gold saved. We are now even at 20% science without building wealth. All the old cities have courthouses except Colombia and Santiago, which can both whip it (I was hestitant to whip in Santiago because it has no food source, but after moving the palace distance maintenance is 12 so I guess we should whip anyway.

There is an army of workers in the south clearing jungle and preparing for cities on the northern shore of SA. A settler is underway to found Guyana for gems.

Most of the army is on its way to Austin. I put 4 axemen on two boats and shipping them across the Carrabean to help fight the barbarians who are getting quite uppity.


What needs to be done?

- Build the FP. Distance maintenance for a city down in Chile is >10, so it will be hard to build a lot of cities without the FP. We can whip the courthouse in Colombia and start the FP there?
- Build some forges, especially in high production or happiness needing towns. Whip anger shouldn't matter too much as a forge will add two happy immediately.
- Kill Monty. The army is heading south. We only have 5 cats left, so we might need to either use a spy in texcoco (requires alphabet!), build a couple more catapults, or accept some losses. I think there are 11 axemen on their way south.
- Settling SA. I think we should send over enough axemen to get rid of the barbarians, and settle at least gems and montevideo, and I think there are some more cities with food below the Amazon.
- Backfill NA. I think we should build three more cities: a Colorado deer+gold city, a Calgary city to get the iron plus grassland and become the northern frontier, and New Orleans. These cities
will have less maintenance with the new palace should should pay for themselves quickly.

Note: We have a GScientist in Cuzco and two generals in Tenochtitlan and Colombia. There is a lonely axeman around Vancouver who chased a worker there.

-----

astre is UP

lymond on deck

nocho

pigswill

r_rolo1

Tachywaxon

vanetteveldt

 

[Manco Capac]

Looking elsewhere I was surprised on how to rate an AW and this one equals to an easy deity game.

Oh no. IMM AW is a HARD deity map. Duckweed posted some where that a good IMM AW start is like a deity game that is 8.5/10 on the difficultly scale. So a really good Emp AW is probably like an easy Deity.

Our AW map wasn't awesome at first, so according to the logics that was an middle ranged deity map.

Nah, I think AW are less intensive as we go lower levels.

Anyways, shall come back soon.
RL is back to normal levels.

And looking at Van's résumé, I see I did not make a decent job. Next time, I shall raise more discussions by presenting my intentions and record more what I did.

I noticed there is a noticeable difference in succession games as some has more meat than others in term of story. Is that depending of the main host?

 

[pigswill]

It depends partly on the main host setting up the tone of the game.

It also depends on the rest of the team and how comfortable they feel making suggestions and observations.

Its looking like no tech trading is indeed slowing down the AIs, not a caravel in sight (so one will turn up next turn!).

Some questions for the team:

Should we finish off settling north america before going south?

How likely is it that AIs will settle the unclaimed bits of north and south america?

What's the balance between expansion, research and unit building?

What victory should we pursue?

 

[vanatteveldt]

@Tachy: I think you did a great job gearing up the pre-game discussion, without that we would still be fighting barbarians in the Amazon by now. So don't worry about it

@pigswill All very good questions.

Should we finish off settling north america before going south?

I think we should settle the south ASAP, as these cities will be slow to develop and we now have a large force of workers down there. We only need a couple more cities in NA anyway, so there is no reason to hold off settling the south.

I think the bigger question is whether we should work from both the south and the north of SA. The juicier cities in the south suggest we should, but (1) it is logistically much easier to push down from the north, and (2) the maintenance on southern cities will be quite hefty until we get a FP set up.

Regarding the FP, if we decide that Colombia is not cenrtal enough (which is quite understandable), we should settle a mid-amazonian city asap for the FP. There is a location down there with 100% riverside grass flat and hills, which would make a great city given enough workers, and the hills will allow it to build the FP before the world ends...

How likely is it that AIs will settle the unclaimed bits of north and south america?

I've never played AW america, but in a normal game they will certainly settle the fringes. This is probably a good thing, as it allows espionage and I think it will be easier to defend/inflict losses against a known bridgehead than against a naval invasion.

What's the balance between expansion, research and unit building?

This is a difficult question. MY intuition is to go that order, ie first expand to get all the juicy spots in NA and SA going, then research till we can actually build something useful, then build units. We won't have the money to mass upgrade troops, so every cohort will be a loss of capital if the AI don't come. But if the AI do catch us with our guard down it will be very tough. I guess Tenochtitlan should switch to 100% units asap to get some production going...

What victory should we pursue?

I would vote for space. We could try invading the new world but this will be an enormous slog, as all AI will only be building units to attack us and there are no vassals. If we get our science+production machine set up we should be able to out tech the AI easily as he has no tech trading, so space is probably the easiest victory possible.

Another option is a nuclear cataclysm followed by either conquest or space. On second thought, it sounds kind of fun. The densely packed resource heavy cities of the old world should be particularly vulnerable to nuclear attack, so if we lob twoscore nukes across the pond the AI should be a lot less annoying.

Which reminds us, whatever we do, it might be wise to win before the AI gets nukes . Will they use them?

 

[astre]

well, first, we should try to overcome the first waves of old continents armies.
After that, we will try to win ^^

space is the most easiest win condition for us but the most effective would be invasion of europe and fight the asians superpowers step by step.

this is a got it, will look at the save and make a plan.

 

[astre]

a plan:
- gather armies to destroy monty (easy)
- take texaco
- raze or take other monty cities (optional, if i have time)
- build 1 city in the north (ruin site)
- build guyana (gem city)
- prepare to build santiago (can't do it in 10 turns).
- build FP in cuzco (quite central) and decent production
- build economy in every possible city not already on settler duty: forge, courthouse, library, market in that order
- move panama canal

for tech, i see 3 options:
- alphabet to try to spend our spy points before it is too late
- machinery to build watermill cities in the amazon (we will need at least one, 2 is better)
- civil service for burocracy.

it is the only techs we need for print press, so i would stay focus on one of these.

question:
what to do with our navy?
Is there is a precise goal?
I prospect to keep 2 in the north to fight barbarians, 1 to make the ferry between north and south and the 2 last ones in the south...

Is the settler in the ferry aiming for south or north?