BTS 3.13: Infinite City Sprawl 01 - Manhattan Empire

[mystyfly]

I agree going teching steel and chem, as we avoid SciMeth to keep our monasteries' bonuses (as we discussed earlier).
Instead of finishing off Alex we also could attack Cyrus, make him lose as much land as needed for Alex to break free and vassallize alex.
But I think I'll mostly be building an army, and the fun will be Khan's and Betruger's.

But I have another question. If a persian city fits into our pattern, can we keep it if we settle the city in between the persian and our the same turn we take it?

 

[mystyfly]

Well this clearly wasn't the best turnset. We learnt Rifling and Chemistry and now have about 50 rifles, 20 trebs and 15 spies. We've also got a huge amount of EPs and a GA awaiting orders.

Inherited Turn - 1525 AD
I change a few builds (research) to trebs and spies and get the slider a bit more up to get rifling this turn.
We also have way too much eps on gilgamesh and so I go to a 3:1 ratio so we get insight in cyrus' cities sometime perhaps.

(1) 1530 AD
Gilgamesh cancels Cows for Wine deal. Now several cities are unhealthy so I take Cows for Ivory from Gil and Banana for Wine from GK.

I get 70 gold from GK.
I switch to nationhood.
Draft mode /on.
Gil seems to dislike his people and decided to starve them:

(4) 1545 AD
I find a fortified GG in Delhi, where I settle him. We've got one Medic Chariot and we get CR-II Rifles from there. I didn't switch to theocracy because all cities are pretty hammer poor so I'd rather have some weakly-promoted rifles than only a few C-II promoted Rifles. Also some newly-founded cities (last turnset or so) desperately need it.

(5) 1550 AD
Chemistry is in > Steel, due in 8.
I find a fortified settler in Bombay, move him somewhere.

(6) 1555 AD
Get 270 gold from Cyrus and so sign a Peace Treaty.
I think it is better to go after Gilgamesh first. He is weaker and has fewer land so the war won't take that long. We also won't face that much WW when we redeclare on Alex. With the sumer land we can strike at greece at several points and so finish him off fast. We then can take 1-3 cities from Cyrus and eventually sign peace. Gilgamesh is the only AI with Democracy and will surely switch to emancipation soon. He doesn't have chemistry or replacable parts.
So I start moving our units towards him. This is nightmare, we desperately need railroads

(7) 1560 AD
I now switched to a 4:1 EP-ratio. Not that it really mattered...
Cyrus cancels Dyes for Iron deal.

(8) 1565 AD
Delhi pops a GA We need to wait for another GP to start another GA. Otherwise I see no use for him.

I played 10 turns. Someone should play 15 to get us back to a nice number, I'm too tired atm. These turns take ages. Moving units is hell.
It'll take our army some more turns to reach sumer borders. I marked 3 spots from where to attack. I don't expect to face a real sod from Gilgamesh. He pretty much stagnated powerwise, unlike us, of course:

Cyrus teched SciMeth and gifted it to Alex later. We still can't get any trade that really would benefit us as we want to delay SciMeth. I've been stockpiling some gold for trebupdates. I definitely should've moved the units on the inherited turn and attacked asap... oh well. I think we should wait for cannons now to minimize losses. OTOH we have enought EPs and spies to get revolts in about every city. No real need to wait the 5 turns inside the cities to get cheaper missions.

Also I found 2 cities that match our pattern. One is Corinth, current greek capital. We could settle the city connecting Corinth the turn we capture it, if we raze some surrounding cities first.

A sumer city also matches the pattern but we won't be able to 'connect' it the turn we capture it.

I think Wang and GK are at war (?) but there were no GG spawings or city captures.

I think the game is just a mob up now. Neither Cyrus nor gil seems to favour military techs atm. Fighting the sumer only will give us the xp to deal with the persians more easily. At some point we should produce almost nothing but settlers. We'll need that many of them (I started by building 3 ). We should go for Domination and fill the world with our nice grid. That'll look awesome!

ZK is up!

View attachment ICC01 AD-1575.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Betruger]

The game seems to be progressing smoothly 2 comments:

1. Why oh why no Theocracy?

I didn't switch to theocracy because all cities are pretty hammer poor so I'd rather have some weakly-promoted rifles than only a few C-II promoted Rifles. Also some newly-founded cities (last turnset or so) desperately need it.

I don't undestand. How staying out of Theo is going to increase hammer output towards producing units? Not to mention most of our army was/will be drafted, so hammers are really irrelevant.
Drafting Combat I Rifles vs drafting unpromoted Rifles is quite a difference.

2. Noticed on the last screenshot that Gilga is building Security Bureaus, so if we want to fully utilize our spies, the time to attack is now.

 

[ungy]

I think Gilgamesh first is quite reasonable but I think theo was clear.

We'll be OK anyway--our army is massive .

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Org Rel is only for buildings. Theo would have been a winner.

That said, the minimap + the scoreboard + the power graph kind of makes me all warm inside.

Can't we keep that Sumer city if we raze the northernmore cities first to get rid of all the other culture?

 

[Betruger]

I think it's unlikely given that Sumerians are creative.
It may be possible but is it really worth the effort?

 

[stuge]

I don't think it is. Getting new cities up to speed on pre-improved terrain is quite easy and it would be horrible to juggle our forces to isolate certain cities.

Not switching to theocracy was a slight blunder but otherwise good job.

I just noticed that we're making 434 beakers on 0% science. Hot damn.

 

[mystyfly]

No theocracy was pretty bad then. I assumed it also works for units. many of them are being created by hammers. Our rifles aren't going to face real threats given the best the AI has is protective muskets. Also note that on the beginning of my set, we had 0.6 of cyrus' power and 1.0 of sumer. At the end, we had 1.2 vs cyrus and 1.8 vs gilgamesh. We almost have twice his army! Research and money still is very good atm. We should probabely turn up the slider to finish steel the turn the units arrive to update as many as possible asap and strike fast. I have some settlers waiting to settle sumer lands. Also I was too lazy to turn off go-to orders.

I don't think gil will have that many bueraus up when we go to war. It'll also delay his military production. Since we have sooooo much EPs vs gil it'll be easy to get revolts, even if the spies don't stay in the city 5 turns. ZK, you should build some more settlers. And keep demanding gold from AIs that are at pleased but make sure not from gilgamesh so we don't sign a peace treaty. This leaves GK and Cyrus.

 

[ungy]

And keep demanding gold from AIs that are at pleased but make sure not from gilgamesh so we don't sign a peace treaty. This leaves GK and Cyrus.

My understanding is that you can make this request only periodically--something like every 40 turns or so, and making the request more frequently not only guarantees a turndown but resets the clock.
Anybody know more on this?

 

[Zherak_Khan]

I've got it, by the way, and will be playing this evening. I will try to get the capture->settle going on Gilgamesh - at this point, it seems we are both most advanced and have by far the best infrastructure, so it should really not be anything but a mop-up, but oh well.

I figure we should just be trying to get Cannons, and then move on towards Infantry to make the conquest that much easier. IIRC, we will not even have to get Sci.Meth, meaning less obsoletion. I would have loved to pick up SoL, but there is probably not much point, other than patting ourselves on the back.

Overall strategy for domination (I actually think that will be the easiest, even though we need those x% land - it is easier to settle cities than to wipe out AIs:
Kill Gilgamesh and settle him
Declare on Cyrus - prepare a stack to counter his SoD while killing and settling Alex
Kill and Settle Cyrus
??
Profit

 

[mystyfly]

Has someone an idea about what to do with our GA other than waiting for another GP to start a golden age?

 

[shyuhe]

My understanding is that you can make this request only periodically--something like every 40 turns or so, and making the request more frequently not only guarantees a turndown but resets the clock.
Anybody know more on this?

The turndown resetting the clock is correct. I think the actual math is something like a 5% chance each turn that they'll forget the past gift. So if you do out the math, it's something like 40 turns to have a high chance that they'll forget the past gift. If you get lucky, who knows

Vassalizing will speed up the domination process. If we outstrip the AI's power, they'll be more willing to capitulate. Depending on the circumstances, you can force capitulation after taking 1-2 cities. For example we're almost double Gilgamesh's power so razing 2 cities should probably be enough to capitulate him (assuming we do it with minimal losses). This will save the trouble of resettling the cities (and keep our # of cities maintenance down).

SoL is just overkill 30 scientists = 180 base beakers Compare that to the GL which produces 12 base beakers!

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Okay, I'm not going to take the time to pretty this up with screenshots and longwinded reports.

I played fifteen turns. This is what happened:

- Revolt to Theocracy, upgrade trebs, draft rifles. I already had a ridiculously large inherited army. Three seperate SoDs snaked through his empire, basically a large mass of Rifle/Cannon/Leftover classic-age units/Spies. Each SoD razed two cities each in four turns. One SoD encountered Gilgamesh's play-pretend SoD, consisting of about 10 Catas and 4 Cuirassiers, which promptly suicided against Rifles.

- Approximate total losses: 5 Rifles, 2 Cannons. The first battle of the war was me losing a CR3 Rifle at 97.3% or so.

- Gilgamesh capitulated, giving us crappy techs, gold, gpt and dyes. I founded the three possible new cities, which had an upkeep of about 12GPT. Actually, with Buddhism, 3 traderoutes and a free civilian specialist, they were at about break-even from the get-go.

- I eventually switched over to civilian builds. We are paying ridiculous amounts of unit support, and their movement speed is really the key limiting factor at the moment.

- We have Scientist + Artist ready to go GA.

- We are three turns away from Infantry. Cyrus is somewhat advanced, but still doesn't field anything but Muskets and Knights. We have infinte Rifle/Cannon ready to kill him. We could fit in some Infantry upgrades/Drafts while our army fields are marches up to his border.

- After Infantry, we need Railroads.

- We are still in a lot of civilian builds. Seriously, more units are nothing but a pain to move around, and we are still making at least 3RPT (Rifles per turn ). We don't really need anything more to win this game, but it is cute to get IW and WS in Delhi plus spread some Confucianism to pretty up our economy. It is completely, insanely, ridiculously strong.

- The big surprise: In addition to completely trashing everybody else in power, we are also researching like nobody's business. Had we not been stiffling our economy with 4823526 units and not building market/library/SoL/etc, we could reasonably have been producing 1k-3k beakers per turn. Our economy is essentially pure Traderoute/Shrine/UoS/SM/Mercantilism, and it is working.

- This is probably not going to get back to me again. While we have already won the game for all practical purposes, I don't know what it is going to take to actually get the formal win. Capitulating Cyrus and resettling his lands, plus Capitulating Alex might be enough?

PS: Gilgamesh is actually above the 50% land break-free treshold. Must he also break the 50% pop to actually break free?
EDIT: We should probably revolt to Caste. Nobody cares enough to whip anyway, and we are running three Civilians.

Betruger up. Feel free to actually be tired of managing 100Rifles+50Cannons.

(We popped two free coppers in fifteen turns.)

 

[Betruger]

Ok, got it.
It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum.

 

[shyuhe]

He needs to be above both the pop and land requirement to break free. Either that or lose 50% of the land that he had at the point of being capitulated. Unless one of these conditions is met, he's stuck with us.

I say we just take it to Cyrus and get this over with. Unfortunately he has a vassal so I think we'll have to take out Alex before we can capitulate Cyrus. Capitulating Cyrus alone will not provide the land necessary to win...

 

[Betruger]

omg, I just checked and we have extacly 87 Rifles and 30 cannons.
Nice!

 

[mystyfly]

I don't think Cyrus' land and Alex' land will be enought (althought I don't know how close we are atm) as vassals land and pop only counts half as ours. I think once cyrus capitulates, our army should push on (after being upgraded to inf for the hell of it ) vs GK and WK, probabely at the same time, just until they capitulate as well.

We could use the whip to get some settlers out...

edit: and start that GA. Otherwise, we'll probabely be still in when the game is won

 

[stuge]

omg, I just checked and we have extacly 87 Rifles and 30 cannons.
Nice!

"Get the mop."

 

[Killroyan]

Ok, got it.
It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum.

Lurkers comment:With that amount of units I guess you are all out of bubblegum

 

[Betruger]

Just to show you our military might, here's one of our four stacks of doom.

inherited turn:
I fire a golden age and declare war on cyrus/alex, not seeing any reason to delay that. We immediately get 4 WW in all cities, but that's ok. We've got plenty of happiness. I don't move any units into enemy territory yet, as some of them are healing, but most importantly I want to lure Cyrus' SOD into our lands, so that I can kill it without any WW.

turn 1:
And it worked like a charm. At the cost of a single worker as a bait, we have lured Persian army into a trap

Needless to say his army was anihillated. It was so numerous I had to attack with nearby Axemen as well
Meanwhile I sent our 2nd stack towards Cyrus' closest city

Our 3rd stack towards Alex's lands

I'm not sure if Cyrus can Vassalize to us while he has his own Vassal, so I'm gonna concentrate on killing Alex first.


One mini-stack to clean up Greek southern cities:

The rest of our troops are healing at the moment.
btw here's powergraph:

turn 3:
Assembly line is in. So is war weariness.
After razing 2 Persian cities WW jumped from 4 to 13.
I go for Facism to be able to build Mt. Rushmore (due in 4)
Police State might not be good, because we're getting a LOT of beakers from representation. I think increasing slider is better here.

Good news: Alex has renounced protection of Cyrus and is now a free state.

turn 4:
Alex capitulates:

I also present him with this great deal. He was more than happy to oblige:

Presented this wonderful opportunity to GIlgamesh as well and he also gladly agreed.

That helped our happiness porblem a little bit.

Cyrus offers 330 gold for peace.
Umm... no I don't think so.

I start sending units towards Khan and Wang in case Persian lands won't be enough to win

turn 8:
Cyrus still not willing to Capitulate. I declare war on GK and Wang to give our units something to do while our main sod is marching through Cyrus' lands.

turn 15:
Err Cyrus would capitulate now but he is "afraid of your enemies".
Maybe declaring on Khan was not such a great move

We could take peace with Khan and then Vassalize Cyrus but I'm not sure if that'd be enough to win domination. We can also just start destroying Khan, until Cyrus is no longer afraid of him, but WW is a real problem now. Railroad is due in 3, after that we can just shut down research and switch to police state I guess.

Few notes:
-We've got about 60 rifles 60 Infantry and 60 cannon.
-It's micromanagement nightmare right now.
-I left our workers on automated, I hope it's all right.
-Some of our units might be on go-to, I tried not to allow that to happen but there's just too many of them to be sure.
-We're crushing every AI from every direction, that's the biggest mop up I've ever seen

I played 15 turns thinking that I can end it, but I didn't manage to, so it's now up to Shyuhe.