'Cause I'm the Taxman

[Rusten]

I play the 4 turns.

Open borders with Stalin. Our newest city now gets +2 commerce trade routes.
Also open borders with Joao to start working on the relations.

Athens is amazing.

Turn 80: Pericles wants us to stop trading with Kublai -- denied!

Buddhism spreads to Tolosa. I change build to granary. We can 2x chop and 1-pop whip it at size 2.

Granaries in. I take a look at Pericles's territory and find no suspicious yields (no iron mines) -- thus I put the overflow into a barracks.

Turn 82: IW in and we don't have iron.

The good news is that Pericles has no metal either -- well, sort of....

We can easily stop him from hooking up this. I think we will be able to attack him with (ridiculously late) chariots. We only have to make sure we get this done before feudalism. If we decide to take this city we will have iron too.

The archers/settler is on the forest, not the hill, fortunately!

 

[stuge]

The nefarious plan:

Keep our current three chariots in the north to deny Pericles iron and defend Tolosa.

Finish the barracks in Vienna and Bib, build&whip eight chariots ASAP and go straight for Athens, reaching it in six turns. Six or seven chariots might do the trick but I'd like to make sure that our trip to Athens accomplishes more than providing lots of dead horses for the greeks to get fat on.

 

[Rusten]

I want much more than 8 chariots. This is such a great city (well, cities) that it's easily worth it. Furthermore we have a bit of a "dead" period waiting for currency. IMO we want +/- 20 chariots. We'll strike sooner if he changes tech to feudalism (preferrably pause the set).

IMO take Sparta first and taunt Greek units towards Corinth.

While plans might change depending on how Pericles shapes his territory by the time we strike, here's an initial one.

Orange = 1st turn. We move our chariots onto the jungle. If this jungle has been cut we immediately threaten Corinth while getting visibility on Athens.

If the jungle has not been cut we send 1 chariot SW (blue) the next turn to have a look at Athens. If Athens has too many defenders follow blue and threaten Corinth. If we feel we can take Athens move the chariot (and all the other ones) as per yellow to get within range.

We should postpone the granary in Tolosa and chop chariots instead (no barracks). Try to have 2 ivory patches improved by the time we reach size 2 and start working them then.

 

[stuge]

I'm afraid that Pericles will force our hand by starting to mine the iron before we can get over ten chariots ready. I'll start massing the troops while keeping an eye on Pericles. I agree about Tolosa.

 

[Rusten]

Yes, you definitely have to stop him from hooking up the iron. He has no workers nearby though (fortunately). Probably a good idea to pause when you're forced to stop him from hooking up this iron and see where we stand. We should also keep a chariot near Athens/Sparta to monitor his troop count (our chances for success).

Also, connect Tolosa to Khmer trade network before DoW.

 

[stuge]

The situation in the north:

Pericles is protecting his workers with an archer, but we can move the selected chariot to the desert hill overlooking Thebes and attack in three turns.

South:

The screen is showing Greek troops in Corinth. Athens and Sparta have two archers each.

Next turn we'll have five chariots ready in the south. I signed OB with the Khmer and Tolosa is hooked up to their network.

I still advocate going for Athens first. We can reach the city in five turns if we start from Khmer territory. But whatever we do, this is as prepared as we're going to get.

 

[Rusten]

Why only 1 chariot near the iron.. WHY? This is very bad, we might not be able to pillage it, at least not prior to him getting a unit or 2.

Awful whip in Capital. We will be many hammers over the overflow limit and in this patch we don't even get gold for it.

I'm sorry, but attacking Athens with 5 or 6 chariots is a joke. We need much more than 2 per archer to be safe when it has 60% cultural defense. He will whip at least 1 archer.

The best way to handle this is to take his iron city (and perhaps Sparta) while getting more troops and then sign a temporary cease fire.

Sorry if I'm too harsh.

 

[Emperor Peter]

^^ I agree, Thebes first for Iron, Sparta if possible then a truce. Better to use swords attacking athens.

btw the annoying khmer have settled sugar island

 

[Dirk1302]

Is it necessary to go to war here? Quite a few islands to settle + the big southern island looks nice. I don't know how high the colonial maintenance would be but GLH gives you some leeway here. Greeks have iron hooked up in 3 turns, he'll probably build phalanxes next. Only a few phalanxes and/or spears will make your task very difficult.

 

[Rusten]

You clearly overrate the GLH. It's not instant win, especially not with no good land, and even more so with this variant. The islands are awful.
Greece is never going to have any iron, that was the whole idea.

 

[Rusten]

Plan:
Pillage this iron as soon as possible. Send Tolosa chariot towards iron and whip the one being made.
Keep making chariots. Hold off on taking cities unless given a good opportunity (Thebes/Sparta).

Joao and Sury are worst enemies. I suggest we try to make friends with Sury instead and cancel deals with Portugal. We'll be able to share religion and can run OR together.

 

[Dirk1302]

It's difficult to overrate GLH on a map like this. Some of the islands have 2 food resources, these are not awful. The big southern island seems to be ok but might be too expensive in colonial cost.

A chariot war against Greece will probably succeed but you need a lot of them to be independent of bad rng. The variant indeed points to war but it won't be possible to extort too much techs from Pericles.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

We needed a couple chariots sitting in stalin's territory right next to that iron, so that there was absolutely no chance of him making metal units. As it is, move onto the red so you can pillage it instantly IMO.

GLH is very powerful but not as powerful as taking pericles down.

 

[Rusten]

OK, TMIT didn't post anything about taking the next set so I will get it officially. Unless someone suddenly disagree I will play tomorrow.

1: Rusten - got it
2: RRRaskolnikov - on deck
3: ungy
4: TMIT
5: Emperor Peter
6: stuge

 

[Rusten]

Routine check shows Suryavarman is in WHEOOH. This is probably a good thing as I doubt we're the target (annoyed towards so many).
Whip/move according to plan/comments.

T90: We have good chances against the archer guarding the workers/iron so I decide to try to kill it immediately. If it fails we only lose a chariot, no big deal, and if it wins we won't have to battle any metal units.
-the chariot wins with 2.6 health left and we get 2 workers as well.
I send 2 chariots within range of Thebes in case Pericles wants to counter.

T92: Chariot on hill reveals a poorly defended Sparta. We have 7 chariots able to attack it next turn -> I move in.

Pericles whips an archer IBT making it 7v3, but we have reinforcements coming as well next turn so I attack. We fail to take it -- 1 archer remains at 0.6 health which gives me a scare, but fortunately it falls the turn after. We get 100 gold from taking it.

T95: Scout Athens as mentioned in an earlier comment and find 3 archers lurking there -- we're not ready to take it yet so I continue to circle Corinth.

T97: Scout Athens and find 2 archers and a galley there! There was a settler there earlier, so clearly these guys are now loaded in the galley and headed away.
-Send all chariots on the jungle tile ready to move on Athens.

T98: Galley gone and still only 2 archers left in Athens (+2 jewish missionaries) -> move in further.

T99: Still only 2 archers in Athens! However, there's a buddhist missionary there all of a sudden -- Pericles.
We have 7 nicely promoted chariots and as one would expect we capture Athens and 168 gold (lose 4 chariots). This was a very lucky break, but with this start I welcome it.
Pericles is very vulnerable to war, but even so I wasn't expecting to take this city for quite a while.

Other stuff:
We have a settler sitting in a galley.
Traded for furs with Kublai to help battle whip unhappiness.
We can attack Corinth the same turn we DoW if we ever get a cease fire (Khmer pig) -- this could prove useful. We definitely need to take the iron city first though.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Nice warring Rusten!
Got it... from a quick look at the save I agree that taking peace after iron city is down then move on Corinth is the way to go. iirc we have 7 chariots and Corinth has 4 archers right now so we need to be where he doesn't expect us

I am up in sgotm as well but should be able to post a plan today

 

[Silu]

Lurkerage:

Seems my maligned idea from a few pages back of getting GLH and "rushing" Pericles anyway turned out quite nicely Also that archipelago is ridiculous... I count 10 food sources free for the taking. Still not quite as ridiculous as Athens.

Doesn't look quite as unwinnable now, does it? Diplo is definitely a problem though as gifting techs for fair trade isn't an option either for a while. A few resource gift/trade options available.

I guess Priesthood is high up in the whiney priority tree to get priest grinding up for those juicy shrines (easiest by far to whine as well)?

 

[bestsss]

lurker
>>Diplo is definitely a problem though as gifting techs for fair trade isn't an option either for a while.
Gifting money triggers that too (even map does). resources are also an option. After the great merchant there will be plenty of money to buy tech (and start brokering them as well).

 

[Silu]

lurkerGifting money triggers that too (even map does). resources are also an option. After the great merchant there will be plenty of money to buy tech (and start brokering them as well).

Sure, but gifting money for fair trade is...well, inefficient to say the least for Civs known 100+ turns (learned that the hard way when playing around with AggAI&NoTechTrades), I'm surprised if this variant can afford to spend cash on that (though if there's no other way there may not be much choice). Good point about the GM leg-up though, might open good broker fair trade options right when someone discovers Currency with the religion polarization (+ Stalin in the mix on top of that).

 

[bestsss]

Well, money have 1.5gold weight, tech weight is beakers based (can't remember by heart the initial multiplier, I think it was less than the gold) but includes all the discounts the AIs get. So simply it will take more money to gift (a few hundreds won't cut at some point).