CBob01 AWM Training Day Game

[Phaedo]

actually, once we get the pentagon we could add an extra unit to already existing armies. The thing is that it's not verly effective to add an MI to a sword army. Now adding a musket to it might up the defensive value enough to keep it out of harm's way for pillaging but I'm really not sure. The number of potential armies is city dependent (Cbob seems to have that info) so there may be value in disbanding in the future. We also only need a city to upload a unit to an army so the pentagon is still a valuable asset, we just have to remember not to load the extra unit in until it is on the new continent.

Another thing I was thinking about while reading was that as we have allowed ourselves the turn to play before we start war, we can build embassies with the civs we meet. I don't think we can do embassy spy missions while at war until we get the IA but if we end up going commie, it would be useful.

EDIT: Wow, we were all over that issue eh? Cross posts galore

 

[Phaedo]

Not if we want to get any use out of the GLib. Galleons come after Education.

Isn't the GL on the other continent? Moot point (unless I'm mistaken and then I will appropriately crawl back under my rock )

 

[Aabraxan]

Isn't the GL on the other continent? Moot point (unless I'm mistaken and then I will appropriately crawl back under my rock )

Yes, I believe it is, and that's my point. If we want to get a whole bunch of techs out of capturing the GLib, we can't know Education when we capture it. If we don't know Education, then we have to ship our mighty cossack armies over to the other continent in galleys. If we want a faster, safer invasion, shipping them in galleons, then we've just got to accept that we won't capture the Great Library. We'll capture a Fairly Good Branch Library, which won't have anything we don't already know.

 

[Phaedo]

Sorry. I didn't even consider sending troops over ocean squares in galleys. Let's take the culture from the GL and do the research ourselves

 

[Norton II]

Not if we want to get any use out of the GLib. Galleons come after Education.

I wasn't really thinking about the GLib when I posted that--just about how to get 4-unit armies to the other continent before transports.

 

[Aabraxan]

And, apparently, Norton II, I overlooked where you posted the same basic argument:

@CommandoBob: The Great Library's on the other continent, so unless there's a safe passage between the continents for galleys, we'd pretty much have to research education (prereq for astronomy) to be able to capture it, thus defeating the purpose. Also, we might not be that far behind in tech; after all, nobody on the other continent has built any medieval wonders yet.

 

[Norton II]

And, apparently, Norton II, I overlooked where you posted the same basic argument:

No problem--I've done it myself once in a while.

 

[D'Artagnan59]

OK, I hate disbanding armies too.

Unless they're weak for the time being.

 

[Bucephalus]

lurker's comment:

Are you all comfortable with resource connect/disconnect (?); many players regard that as an exploit.

 

[Phaedo]

T0 1050AD
Start by taking a bit of a tour around the empire. shuffle a pike to YakYak for MP duty and upgrade the cat that was there in Moscow.
Change a bunch of builds to settlers. Some won't come in on my set but we can really use them.
I've given up on the idea of building warriors with a disconnected city (although it may be a good idea to do it with newly founded cities). There are so many improvements that would help us I think that timing our GA to after the war is definately necessary which means disposing of our enemies as quickly as possible.

IBT A few builds come in. Murmur->market (it will help with both the happiness issue and help our cash), JB->Lib, YarYar->Lib

T1 1060AD
Kill some wandering Bab units (2-0)
Take Frankfurt and kill an LB outside the city (3-0)
We are leaving our offensive units behind to quell resistance. I think horses aren't really a bad call. They cost the same as pikes, can be upgraded to cossacks if we want and most importantly, the 2 movement will get them to where we want them faster so I change some builds.
Bomb Munich with horrible RNG luck
Take a Bab settler pair (4-0)

IBT Lose an MI to 2 German LBs (5-1) and the Babs drop off an LB near Tarsus. We don't have any offensive units to deal with him but Somewhere is empty so hopefully he'll go for that rather than pillage.

T2 1070AD
Raze Ninevah
Found Dyesville
lots of shuffling
kill a German LB near munich and a pike in the city with our eMI. (6-1)? I don't know if we count the unit in the city or not.

IBT Sorry guys I made a HUGE error in judgement. The Bab LB took Tarsus! AND a barb horse pillaged Hattusas (6-2)

T3 1080AD
Take out the Barb camp and take Munich.
shuffle some units to get some defence down near Hattusas. I should be able to take Tarsus back easily enough but there's a german galley heading that way as well

IBT Nada

T4 1090AD
Found Vladimir
Kill a couple of Bab LBs around Akkad (7-2)
Move into position to take a German city next turn.

IBT Germans drop off 2 LBs near Philly

T5 1100AD
Turns down the science slider to 0 and we will get guns in 1
Recapture Tarsus
Take one of the LBs out with a horse that becomes elite (8-2)
Have terrible RNG luck bombing Cologne so don't attack.
I should be able to take Boston in 2 turns.

IBT the germans take Philly but we'll get it back next turn and destroy their galley (8-3)

T6 1110AD
Retake Philly
Take Cologne. I had to leave a stack of Trebs but they're safe
Take Ashur
Found Hilton
I thought about Mike's workshop but decided against it because of the cascade issue. I forgot all about it at the beginning.

IBT Not much

T7 1120AD
Take Boston
Found Whale City
Leipzig should fall next turn.
Kill a Bab spear near Ashur. (9-3)

IBT Aztecs finished the Sistine Chapel

T8 1130AD
Take Leipzig
Take out 2 German LBs near Frankfurt (11-3)
Pillage the German iron, not that it really matters at this point.

IBT Zzzzz

T9 1140AD
Kill a Deutch LB with the 1st sword army (12-3)
Take Eulbar

IBT Zzzz

T10 1150AD
Kill a lone LB (13-3)
Kill a Bab MI near Hilton. In retrospect, I should have brought an army back to keep the Babs off iron. Fighting MIs and pikes is going to be a lot slower than LBs and spears. There is an army near YakYak so maybe it should come back. Of course, you may not need it by the time it reaches the iron.
Lost an MI to a Bab pike and then killed it with the army (14-4)

And that's it. The next player may be able to clear out the Germans although thanks to my lack of judgement about the army, the Babs will take a bit longer.

There are some market builds (for happiness and cash) which can be changed without loss. We have SP connected near TakYak as I have been building horses for MPs. They can take out an LB and have great movement so they are much better than pikes for us.

Our Army
1 settler (a couple in the pipe)
6 workers (54 slaves)
1 archer
10 swords
9 horses
24 pikes
20 cats
24 trebs
25 MI
4 armies

41 cities (4 in resistance)

We have room for lots more cities so settlers should continue to be pumped out. Maybe as builds in corrupt towns.

Sorry about the fumble in the beginning. I guess my head wasn't workign today.

Some pics

The army and cats have actually been moved out of Cologne and into German territory in the save. Cologne has a 3%-5% flip chance. The army and cats can take towns easily enough. They usually have 2 defenders and there are a couple of MIs moving up to help. I think we should leave Seattle for our GA

I would make Berlin the next target. That stack in the forest takes a town and quells resistance in a turn (maybe longer for the capital)

The Babs are sending units towards Hilton. You may want to let the army heal a bit while the trebs catch up.


P.S. I didn't have any idea connect/disconnect was considered an exploit. I didn't do it anyway so there's no issues at this point.

 

[Bucephalus]

Aztecs finished the Sistine Chapel

lurker's comment: This is a timely reminder of a point that I made right at the beginning of the game; the unmet civs will almost certainly be running Republic economies and will be forging ahead in techs. The sooner that you meet them and declare war, the sooner they will begin to feel the bite of WW, and be forced in to a less commerially beneficial government.

 

[Phaedo]

You are correct. I was just thinking that I should have made some galley builds. It would be nice to finish off the Yanks too (wherever they are).

I really missed a lot that set. I appologize.

 

[Norton II]

So that's 6 cities captured and 1 razed--not too shabby! Hopefully, CA can take Babylon and hook up the silks in his set; with those, no city with a market will riot until it hits size 12, and we can station an MP there to prevent that. As for galleys, Yakkity Yakutsk can start building them right away, and if we need more, Halifax and Gold Hill can start once their harbors finish. One thing I noticed: we can drop lux to zero and still have no riots until the population grows; that'll let us raise science to 70 and get chemistry in 6.

 

[Aabraxan]

lurker's comment:
Are you all comfortable with resource connect/disconnect (?); many players regard that as an exploit.

I've never really thought about it much, to be quite frank.

 

[CommandoBob]

I don't see anything too bad.

Sure, we had two cities captured, but that didn't last for long, so we got easy kills and they lost units. The cities that were captured didn't have anything important in them.

Babylon may have reconnected Iron, but these could also be older units from when Iron was connected.

But in your dark clouds of gloom I did see some silver things in the lining.

First, and biggest by far, Germany has learned Gunpowder but has no Saltpeter.

And even it the height of its power, Germany had no Saltpeter.



Second, of the four sources of Saltpeter, we control three of them, with only one of them connected, 1SE of YarYar. Babylon has the fourth location but does not know Gunpowder.

Also, Germany has six cities we can see and one island fortress (just a guess on this last city). Babylon has six cities we can see and two more we cannot.

I like how you are handling the unrest in Cologne.

Cologne 1150 AD

Cologne is size 3 and has one resister. The best time to squash resistance is on the turn of capture, by simply moving a lot of units into the city. Most of the time, resistance is crushed on the IBT and then we are left with just another corrupt city.

But what if that cannot be done for some reason? How do you handle the resistance after the first turn?

What I normally do is build a worker, make everyone a specialist and let the city starve. Cologne needs four food to feed the two geeks, but is only producing two food. Someone will starve, probably a geek in this case. If the city is larger, it can take several turns to have the city starve down to size two, where it can be easily pacified by just a handful of troops.

After the city starves down a size, the citizens will be reassigned by the game governor on the IBT. Which means going to the city each turn and making specialists to ensure that the city starves.

Building a worker does two things. One, it reduces the city size by one, and this one is normally not Russian. This means we have built a slave, a foriegn worker. No upkeep (nice). Two, when the city grows back, the new citizen will be Russian and thus the city becomes more stable.

At times, even in pacificied cities, I will build a slave just to make the city easier to manage.


Quick Next Turn Notes

• Let's rush the settler in Ugarit for 4 gold.
• Lets' build a city 3E of Ashur on the grassland. From there we can quickly connect one silk.
• We need to disconnect the Saltpeter near YarYar. This won't really affect YarYar, since it will still be connected to the Empire through Lava Town.
• We need to disconnect Babylon's Saltpeter and Iron, to protect our forces. Disconnecting Eridu from the rest of Babylon will take care of the Saltpeter, but we'll need to send the Second Mace Army to investigate the Iron, once it has healed.

Disconnecting Resources
I don't have a strong opinion on disconnecting resources to make cheaper units.

Disconnecting Saltpeter so we can make Pikes instead of Muskets, when all we need is Pikes, that is not an exploit (at least not to me). That is smart gaming.
Building Warriors in Ashur and Eulbar when those cities have no access to Iron (instead of Spears) and using the Warriors for crowd control is okay, too. Sorta exploitve, sorta not, really depends on the game dynamics. We pillaged their Iron to keep them weak, right?
Now, refusing to connect Ashur and Eulbar so that they can produce Warriors and we use those Warriors for crowd control (instead of Spears or Pikes or other units), that seems like an exploit.
So for me, is resource connection/disconnection an exploit? I don't have any hard and fast personal rules on this. It just depends.

 

[Phaedo]

The thing with Cologne was that I took the city with just bombing units and an army. I left the army there for maybe 2-3 turns but it didn't bring the resistance down quickly enough. Regardless, I think taking cities quickly was more important than pacifying the locals.

Horses are a much better call than pikes for us. While spears in the beginning were effective, offensive units are much better. Having the extended movement and the option to take out LBs that may land make them much more effective. While we may want to take a couple of muskets with us when we go invade, they will quickly fall behind the cossacks we bring and be effectively useless after we defend our landing city.

The MI I killed at the end of my set was definately new. If they had it before, they would have sent it at us. I killed a number of LBs from Babylon. Germany is a foregone conclusion at this point. They may be able to get out a couple of LBs against us but those stacks can easily take out a city and any pathetic attempts they make to harry us along the way in a turn. Even if they have an island city, we want to leave a city on the continent to time our GA.

Although Philly wasn't a huge deal as it was corrupt anyway, losing Tarsus was a real pain. We effectively lost 2 pop which slowed down both our cash and research while those Aztecs are growing. Although truthfully, it was probably more of an emotional blow than anything else.

I think we have the troops to finish both remaining civs. It will take a dog's age to get the greman force back to Babylon so building a few more might be a better call but I think there are someting like 4-5 MIs in the area with an army and enough trebs to take any city on the table. We just need to do the mopping up. To me, this means our rel concerns are getting our infrastructure up to snuff (Libs, courthouses and Makets) and planning the invasion of the beta continent. To do the planning we need some info and that means some hard-core exploring. I think suicide galleys are in order and researching gallions as fast as we can are the key at this point. We may even want to hold off on researching Military Tradition for a bit and keeping a MGL in reserve (if we get one) to build more horses for MP duty and getting our empire ready for its GA. Probably not, but it's something to think about. Having Unis as an optional build for our GA could give us quite a research jump.

And building the 5agon from scratch is an option I like. We can always switch to the MA (a better option if we have to choose because of it's immediate effect and the transport issue) if we don't get a leader.

 

[CivActuary]

6 workers (54 slaves)

-Did we build 2 more native workers at some point that I missed? (I'm at work and can't open the save to see) With our unit support cost I would probably prefer to use slaves almost exclusively.

-Resource connection/disconnection
This is a grey area for me.
a) To me, there is no difference between disconnecting a resource that we have versus refusing to connect one in the first place - both are done only to build cheaper obsolete units.
b) Building pikes instead of muskets does not seem to be an exploit to me. Heck, historically, even as late as Napoleonic times there were still pike units - granted no match for musket units of course, but the Russians had a couple armed with pikes. And in the US Civil War the GA governor wanted some pikes for units.

Although the soldiers from Habersham County seemed content to parade with their pikes, the practice of being armed with an ancient style spear was not always accepted by those being issued the weapons. For example, at Big Shanty (Kennesaw), where the Andrew's Raiders stole the Confederate supply train and locomotive "General," the soldiers on guard at Camp McDonald (next to the railroad station) were armed with pikes. Henry Whitley, assigned to Company F, 56th Georgia Infantry, on guard duty at the station at the time of the raid complained that he was powerless to do anything because he and the other soldiers were only armed with pikes.17

Knowing they would shortly be sent to the front in Virginia, Confederate conscript units were bitterly opposed to being armed with a pike, which was in their eyes little better than a sharpened stick, facing an enemy equipped with a modern rifle and bayonet. For example, when pikes were about to be issued to the 31st Georgia Regiment, it almost caused a revolt among the troops. They had no illusion about the killing efficiency of the modern firepower they were about to face in the north.

c) Refusing to connect a town so it can build warriors? Not sure about this one.

All that said, I think I would rather build a couple horses - good idea Phaedo. They cost the same, have better offense to deal with longbows, and can move quicker to towns were MPs are needed.

 

[Phaedo]

As for the workers, I think a couple were built to reduce the foreign populations of towns. If we control the city, they coulnt as regular workers for upkeep (but keep their nationality for purposes of joining cities).

I really don't know what to think about the exploit issue. If we are using history as the model, it becomes diffucult. Both the French and the British used allied Native American tribes to fight their war (despite being as connected as they were with colonies they didn't trade them up to equal military strength). In the middle east leading up to, during and after WWI arab tribes were used as attack units and MP in key cities and they were paid a pretty penny for it. There isn't anything in the game to account for this so it is a judgement call I guess. At the end of the day I think the exploit thing is nothing more than a convention. We can justify just about any move historically. ROP rape is used by the AI and without a doubt has historical precident but I'm comfortable with seeing it as an exploit. Suicide boats aren't used by the AI and aren't considered an exploit. I've heard the historical argument for it but it's as justifyable as anything else. I'm happy to follow whatever the people I'm playing go with. I don't the\ink hard and fast rules can be made unless they are explicitly stated (as the GOTM rules are)

 

[CivActuary]

Ok, I'll admit, I'm confused

What I normally do is build a worker, make everyone a specialist and let the city starve. Cologne needs four food to feed the two geeks, but is only producing two food. Someone will starve, probably a geek in this case. If the city is larger, it can take several turns to have the city starve down to size two, where it can be easily pacified by just a handful of troops.

After the city starves down a size, the citizens will be reassigned by the game governor on the IBT. Which means going to the city each turn and making specialists to ensure that the city starves.

Building a worker does two things. One, it reduces the city size by one, and this one is normally not Russian. This means we have built a slave, a foriegn worker. No upkeep (nice).

As for the workers, I think a couple were built to reduce the foreign populations of towns. If we control the city, they coulnt as regular workers for upkeep (but keep their nationality for purposes of joining cities).

Which is it? Do we pay support for these workers or not?

 

[CommandoBob]

The only sure way to know is when the worker is created. If it is named 'Worker (German)', we built a slave. It is a worker, it cost us 10 shields, but it works at half speed.

IIRC, the worker takes on the nationality of the last citizen added to the city. So if we capture a city, allow it to grow in size, the new worker will be Russian. If the city doesn't grow, the new worker will not be Russian, but something else.

So, if the unit we build is named 'Worker' by the game, we pay upkeep. If it is 'Worker (' some AI civ ')', then it is a slave and we don't pay upkeep.

I need to test this. I know it worked this way in PTW, where I was able to build foriegn settlers. I haven't tried to duplicate it in C3C.