BTS 3.13: Infinite City Sprawl 01 - Manhattan Empire

[r_rolo1]

Lurker comment

The only thing that monasteries give after Sci Met is:

- Culture
- Missionaries

All the rest goes away.....

 

[MosquitoE]

Lurker-
Great game to follow, its interesting to read the different opinions you all have in regards to possible paths.

 

[ungy]

Played about half the set--will finish and post tomorrow.

 

[ungy]

OK-here we go:

inherited turn:

I cancel the EP spending and redirect our espionage to Persia and Sumeria.
Cancel Versailles--I add a theater to be able to start the Globe in Ujjain.

As for research--at breakeven here we are researching about 270/turn.
merc w/o rep is more or less a wash. merc+rep adds 3/turn*26 cities--adding around 80/turn (and will be more later). So it's worth the detour to constitution I think. Additionally merc will probably soon be a winner as the AI will shortly adopt it. As for guilds, we are about 75% there so might as well finish it. Look to trade for banking.

1360: I use our Greek EP's to steal fishing and sailing.
We raze Athens but get a little unlucky and lose 3 WE. 5 Phalanx spawn.
We settle a couple more cities.

1370 Alex has a mini-SOD near Knossos.
Guilds in--constitution.

1380 Alex sends his SOD towards Saxon-we destoy it.

1390 bring up more forces towards Knossos. We'll lose a lot of units there and WW is building up. I think we'll take peace after that.

1400 more forces for Knossos.

1410 Taj completed!
We get a couple of water supplies poisoned.
The battle for Knossos:





Our losses:3 cat, 2 axe, 2 sword.


We get this message from Alex regarding capitulation.




So I decide to make peace with Wang.

Hmm still no cap from Alex.

We're getting about 80% WW and we're in a golden age so I take peace anyway:

I take calender and some gold. Calender might be debatable here but I go for it anyway.

Mongols come with a demand:






OK-he can have it.


1420 Alex vassals to Cyrus.

1430 We make a trade with Cyrus:





1440 Constitution in--we make a civic change: Rep and merc.



Since nobody has it, I make a detour to economics.


1450 Prophet is born. I start mausoleums in our larger cities in preparation for extended war.

Over to the next emperor...

 

[ungy]

save is here:

 

[stuge]

It looks like my job will mostly be to propel us towards rifling. What should we do
the (drunken) prophet (early in th' morning)?

 

[mystyfly]

Alex capitulation to Cyrus if pretty bad. Look how many land Cyrus already has
Stuge, I think you'll mainly have to backfill exgreek land.
Probabely save the Prophet for a GA?

 

[shyuhe]

We will have to revoltto nationalism (and probably theocracy) at some point so I'd save the GP for a GA. It sucks that Alex capitulated but he's still a non-factor. He's been broken pretty well at this point - we just have to make sure he doesn't resettle the land that was near Athens.

So the question is - Gilgamesh or Cyrus first? I think Cyrus because he has better techs and has more land. We need to whittle him first and Gilgamesh can be taken out fairly quickly later.

 

[mystyfly]

I agree, lets go for cyrus first.

But shyuhe - didn't you write something about a spiritual addiction somewhere? We're Asoka - Spi/Org. We don't need a GA to switch civics

 

[ungy]

So the question is - Gilgamesh or Cyrus first? I think Cyrus because he has better techs and has more land. We need to whittle him first and Gilgamesh can be taken out fairly quickly later.

Not sure about this one. We have some major WW with Alex that will kick in from the start (was about 80% of pop). If so, then I think we need to start with Alex to solve that.

 

[Betruger]

I had a look at the save and we're generating ~550 beakers per turn now!!
I know it's a golden age, but still, most of our research comes from sources that are not affected by GA.

I think we may have ended our war vs Alex prematurely. We still have lots of units and his main defensive forces were killed in the battle of Knossos.
WW should not be such a great deal, because we can turn up the culture slider if neccesary (most of our income/research is from sources that are not affected by slider).

Still, we're in a very strong position now. I think it's finally the time to go for Rifles and start drafting.

Not sure what to do with the Great Merchant we'll get from Economics.
Saving him for Cereal Mills corp. would be fun, but I doubt the game will last that long.

 

[ungy]

I think we may have ended our war vs Alex prematurely. We still have lots of units and his main defensive forces were killed in the battle of Knossos.

I did think about that--however 3 factors led me to stop:
1. it kind of pained me to crank up the slider during a GA.
2. I was worried he might vassal to someone else--we really aren't all that prepared for another front.
3. It seemed like we had him crippled, and our real objective was rifles and drafting, which would be pretty substantially delayed by continuing the war.
We needed a few turns to heal, and were short on seige (the trebs having just been produced).
Anyway not sure it was correct to stop--just seemed like that was the safer play.

 

[Betruger]

I agree, it was a sensible decission, certainly not a bad one.
I still think continuing war might be better, but that's only because I know now that Alex vassalized to Cyrus on his own.

 

[mystyfly]

I think we would've signed peace when Alex vassalized, wouldn't we?

I don't think we'll use corps. SP is rather a better option. Also, corps would need more MM and would leave us with a few better cities while the others still are rather bad. SP's +10% production in all cities is great for our variant.

 

[ungy]

I think we would've signed peace when Alex vassalized, wouldn't we?

You only get peace when a fellow combatant vassals your enemy. Otherwise you get war with the new master.

 

[shyuhe]

I agree, lets go for cyrus first.

But shyuhe - didn't you write something about a spiritual addiction somewhere? We're Asoka - Spi/Org. We don't need a GA to switch civics

That's what I get for posting at 3 in the morning

I think taking peace was the safe decision - Alex could have vassalized to Cyrus or Gilgamesh and forced us into a premature war with one of the two, which wouldn't have been pretty considering the long borders that we share.

 

[stuge]

Quick update: I'll post the report tomorrow evening, so hold tight until then.

 

[stuge]

Sorry for being late with this, but I spent the whole of yesterday skiing and nodded off in the evening before I could even think about writing this

Anyway...

The ICS monster is doing quite well. After finishing economics, printing press, replacable parts and gunpowder were knocked off in eight turns. And the big one will hit next turn. Next turn, rifling will come in. Switch to nationalism and theocracy and start drafting and building rifles. After ten turns, we should have about fifty of them. Remember to draft every turn from our Globe city.

Our GP was used to launch our second GA when the first one ended. We got the GM, Hanno, from economic and I sent him to Persepolis for a trade mission. That netted us 1300 gold, a large chunk of which was used on defict research. We still have a nice surplus for upgrades, though. (If we need them.)

Lots of forges and mausoleums were built in our established cities, while the newer ones got granaries, courthouses and buddhist buildings. The Globe was finished and the Oxford and the FP are being built. Lots of cities are building research in order to get rifling next turn without completely emptying our treasury.

Thanks to all those mausoleums, our EP output has doubled. The points are distributed 2:1 between Cyrus and Gil. We already have visibility into Sumerian cities and will have soon into Persian ones. A number of spies are being built to make good use of our EPs. Remember to perform a counterespionage mission before the war.

I built one new city, in the extreme nortwest corner of our empire but forgot to take a pic.

Enjoy the power.

 

[mystyfly]

Got it, I'll probabely play & report this evening or tomorrow morning. Right now I'm in no state to play civ (hangover sucks)

So I'll draftbuild an army of rifles to attack cyrus (and Alex). Most 'normal' builds will be trebs and spies however.

 

[ungy]

So I'll draftbuild an army of rifles to attack cyrus (and Alex). Most 'normal' builds will be trebs and spies however.

We need to remember that we have major WW with Alex. It was about 80% of population when I signed peace. If we go for Cyrus I recommend taking Alex out first to solve that otherwise we could really stagnate.

I'd also recommend researching chem-steel then upgrading all the trebs. The cannon/draft rifle wave is unstoppable at this stage of game.