CBob02 Jaguar Conquest

[Phaedo]

Just remember that is we have feud, so will everyone else. The longer everyone stays in the AA, the better for us. Rushing towards a government in the MA is not I think an ideal strategy. We could switch when we eventually there but I think we want to slow down research which would mean stopping research and holding off on trades.

 

[CommandoBob]

I like despotism for us. I also like cats for the next tech but after that I think we might want to shut down research.... The quicker the AI gets to Feudalism, the faster they get pikes.

Jags vs. Pikes, ouch.

Unit support vs. stronger defenders.

Stonger defenders works against us as we will have to build more units to attack and kill Pikes. That makes our overall task harder. I think I would rather pay upkeep on 'extra' units, knowing that the amount of upkeep would vary from turn to turn due to city growth and military losses.

Math as a next tech sounds good, to get catapults. They will cost 30 shields, so only the bigger cities will able to build them in 5 turns or less. They are also slower, so we will have to concentrate our workers on making roads for them to use, all the way to the front lines. And don't forget that cities make instant roads, so we can settle and road to the front lines.

 

[Phaedo]

Thanks for responding Cbob

I realized that I haven't really put my thought forward as much as make a few comments. I apologize. So, in light of that, here are my feeling about tech.

First, I am not averse to Feudalism as a gov't. I just don't want to rush to get there.

As I see it, our challenge is to win the game as soon as possible. this doesn't just mean time and turns, but tech pace also. The longer the game goes, the slimmer our odds get (granted at monarch, we can out manage the AI to overcome those difficulties but that counts as a strategic loss).

Obviously, we all know we need a slew of Jags to win this thing. We need them because we will need about a 4:1ish ratio to beat swords and spears. The longer the game stays in the AA, the better for us. This means a couple of things:

1st, it means that we want to kill the research pace as much as possible. Trading techs to Civs that don't have them speeds up the pace. It keeps the leaders researching new stuff and allows the lagers to research new techs and everyone gets smartter quicker. Yes, we want Cats (I love cats), but right now, we can't afford to build them so it is a wasted tech for us. I'm not saying don't research it, but we don't need to get to it in record time. The other way to slow down research is to get the AI into a war economy. We may want to think about taking an AW strategy with exploring units. It is a bit of a gamble as it will mean more units, but maybe we can focus on luxes and try to buy alliances. The extra gold will be far more helpful to us than techs we don't need.

2nd, the mass of units we need will eat into our UU. BUT, if we are not researching, we will have the economy to support the extra cost. The extra free unit from Feud is fine, but we can afford to pay the extra upkeep if we aren't researching. It does mean we need a bunch of cities. We are getting on the settler builds now and we need to keep that up. HH has great potential to be a pump and IMO should stay that way. Once we get 5ish cities as 1-2 turn Jag pumps, I think we should go for a cxc pattern. That will easily cover our UU and give us great cash.

War-wise, I think we should concentrate our eventual artillery on defense. We can take out attacking units, defend with a minimum of units and save our monster stacks for attack (and not slow them down with artillery).

It's a new variant for me but that's how I see it. I think we can trade luxes (for cash) fairly effectively and usefully but tech 2 fers, actually hurt us in the long run.

 

[TimBentley]

I'd get math as the free tech and save money for embassies and alliances. For example it would be good to get an alliance with the Mongols against the Celts.

 

[CommandoBob]

I realized that I haven't really put my thought forward as much as make a few comments. I apologize.

That goes for me, too. I haven't taken the time to really speak on what my tech thoughts were. They've been sort of fuzzy, and I got lazy.

Having said that, I'll just second what you said, and add to it some goals and objectives for the next few turn sets.

(I don't have the game open. Mrs. CommandoBob is in a house painting mood, so C3C is safely protected in the underwear drawer as we paint, rearrange and sort the stuff/junk in the schoolroom/office where the computer and I live.)

Our Needs
We need embassies with some of the world, if we don't have them already. Don't know who (yet).

We need to get keep the world at war to keep the tech pace low. This means Military Alliances (and we must have an embassy to make an MA) on the far side of the world. It could also mean we MA with whoever lives on the far side of the Celts when we get ready to make war with the Celts.

We need more cities. Each city lets us 1) support more units and 2) make more units.

We need more workers to connect the cities and the newly conquered cities. Slaves will help, and are a nice bonus. But we should not base our plans (right now) on having slaves available to make roads to our forward cities.

We need veteran Jaguars, no more regulars.

We don't need to go to war with the Celts right away.

We need to find the Ottomans.

We don't need to make more Jags in the near future.

We don't need to be real smart. We thrive in an ignorant world.

We don't need to make an active war until we at least 3 vJags being produced each turn. (Yeah, that will be tough and might be unrealistic. But let's keep it for now.)

We need more native luxuries, to keep our people happy.

Our Plans
Before we make war, we need to be able to out produce the AI on Jags. We expect rather heavy losses and we need to be able to replace those losses quickly, so that the AI won't be able to make us retreat and capture our cities. We got lucky with Rome. I doubt we will be so lucky with the Celts.

So, let's figure on having from 5 to 7, (I would like 10) cities before we start banging on the Celts.

We start that war with at least 20 Jags (we have 16 now). With 20 Jags we roughly figure on defeating 3 or 4 Celts and taking a city. Then we have to rebuild.
So maybe we bump that number higher, to 30 or 40, before we attack? Then we could attack, capture and defend (rather well) on one turn. And not be too weak on the second turn.

We'll need at least two, or maybe three, settler pumps.

We'll need to plan carefully where our next 3 to 4 settlers will go. We have some good land around Rome and we need to take advantage of it. Around AzAz we'll need some irrigation to help everyone grow faster. I don't think we need aqueducts. With six citizens working we should be able to net 5 shields per turn in most places, giving us 3 turns Jags.

With this map our route of conquest is easy. We just keep marching. We might face some seaborne invasions, but with several Jags on the way to the front each turn, this 2 unit intrusions can be dealt with quickly.

Summary
This is just the high points. I don't think I've covered everything, so this plan is in no way the last word on how we will proceed. We'll need to fine tune the details as we move forward, and perhaps even change some things.

Let's try to discuss these things before Lboogie13 plays his turns. The clearer the plans, the easier the turns.

 

[Bucephalus]

lurker's comment:

I think perhaps it's a mistake to wait until you are ready to invade the Celts before declaring war; one of the main advantages of a fast unit like the Jag is it's ability to pillage.

If you used a vanguard of Jags to pillage Celt lands, it would soften them up in advance of your invasion.

Consider: When you pillage their roads, you hit their economy (slows the tech pace, hits unit support); when you pillage their mines you hurt their production capacity (so you face fewer units, and fewer Settlers are produced so you have fewer cities to take down).

I also agree with Tim that an optimum strategy would be to foster war between as many civs as possible.

Oh, and good luck - this is an interesting variant.

 

[Lboogie13]

Consider this a got it but waiting for more comments before I play my turn. I will work on a settler or two. Where should I put the next cities?

 

[CommandoBob]

Consider this a got it but waiting for more comments before I play my turn. I will work on a settler or two. Where should I put the next cities?

Here is a dot map I made before we conquered Rome.

As you can see it is somewhat out of date. Norton II's screen shot of Rome is also helpful here. It is just a few posts back.

My dotmap was based on the idea that we would build towards Rome. Rome is now gone and so that dot map is almost no good, but it does serve as a common reference point.

One new city needs to go on the grassland that is 1SW of Light Blue Dot. Placed here, this city can work the mined grassland that Rome improved but the city of Rome cannot work. Rome (the city) will only be able to work the tiles that are immediately adjacent to the city for a very long time, perhaps the rest of the game. We plan to conquer and culutral expansion is not very critical to our plans. Thus, unless we built a temple or library in Rome, Rome will not be able to work the mined grassland this is SE-S of the city. This new city, placed just SW of the Light Blue Dot, has that tile in its initial nine tiles and can work that tile right away.

The other new city will also be on a grassland, the grassland that is E-SE of the Light Blue Dot. This tile will have 2 cows and two bonus grassland in its inital nine tiles. Cows add +2 food and +1 shield and the BG is +1 shield also, before we add mines. Once these three tiles were mined and we were at size 4, this city would produce 9 shields per turn (before corruption), probably 7 or 8 shields per turn after corruption, so this place could be cranking out vJags every other turn with no problem, while at size 4. Not bad at all.

These are not the only places to build cities, but they look to be the places where we get the biggest and quickest return on our settler investment.

To create a dot map is fairly simple. Open the game and center the map on the area you are interested in. Click Alt and Print-Screen together. That will put a copy of the screen into the short term storage known as the Clipboard. Now open up Paint or some other image editing software and paste the image into that software and save it. Come back later and add lines and dots and other notation. Uplaod that new image to an image hosting web site (and there are several that are free), past the URL into Image tags in your post and then show it for all the world to see.

 

[Lboogie13]

Thanks for the tip c-bob. If I get a settler I think the first spot you mentioned, SW of the light blue dot, seems like a good place.

I will wait a few more hours for more comments and then begin playing. However, Mrs. Lboogie13 may decide we need to spend time together on a Saturday. In that case, I will probably start game play tomorrow.

 

[Lboogie13]

Well gents I waited for a while but here it is....

Pre-flight: My goal was to found a new city, establish an embassy or two and attack the Celts if possible.

1475- AZ AZ is on a 1 turn jag cycle, will pop out a few more and possibly go for a settler. I started moving workers to build a literal warpath to Celtic territory. Move a few jags toward Celts.

1450 - zzzzz

IBT - We get philosophy. I chose math next for the cats and we get that, research set to maps for right of passage agreements

1425 - moving more jags and building the warpath

1400 - AZ AZ gives me a settler, jag disbursed a barb camp and we pick up some cash

1375 - zzzz, killing a wandering barb

1350 - Our stupid analysts have reported the end of our GA

1325 - move into Celt territory, they are up horseback on us for tech, stack of doom outside Lungdum defended by a regular spear. I declare war and attack. It took 5 jags to kill the spear, 3 died, 1 retreated and the last one killed the spear and gets promoted. We auto raze Lungdum, much to our military advisor's joy.

1300 - set a few jags who attacked Lungdum to restore health and move the rest closer to next Celtic city. On a side note we lose a jag trying to disperse a barb camp.

1275 - Found a new city Just South of Rome located, well, just south of Rome in a spot suggested by C-bob. I set it to produce a jag in 10. I figure the next player could change it if need be. Disperse a barb camp and pick up some cash. We establish an embassy with the Mongols, who are right next to Celtic territory. They are not interested in an alliance though.

Here is a shot of the Mongol capital though.



1250- Granary in Hooka is done, I set it to jag in 3 turns. Again, it can be changed if necessary. I attack a regular Celtic archer blockign the road to Alesia, next Celt target, with a jag and win. Alesia is guarded by a reg spear but my hunch is there is a second unit there or on the way. There are five units outside Alesia with 2 more one turn away and others closing in.



Post-flight: I think we are poised to take down the Celts next city. The workers have made some progress in building a road up to the Celts. I should have created more workers. I was torn between focusing on Jags versus workers and losing population (and thus production) in the short term. If we want to have any shot of taking a city without needing 100 jags to kill a single defender, speed is obviously the key. Well here is a shot of our empire as it stands.



I tried my best and IMHO I think it wasn't too bad.

 

[Bucephalus]

1325 - move into Celt territory, they are up horseback on us for tech, stack of doom outside Lungdum defended by a regular spear. I declare war and attack..

lurker's comment:

Bang goes your rep....

 

[Sashie VII]

lurker's comment:IMO they get an attitude hit, not rep. Right?

 

[Bucephalus]

lurker's comment:IMO they get an attitude hit, not rep. Right?

lurker's comment:

Not so; it was ROP Rape.

 

[Sashie VII]

another lurker's comment:But they weren't in ROP agreement?

 

[Bucephalus]

another lurker's comment:But they weren't in ROP agreement?

lurker's comment:

It's not necessary that they were, unfortunately; if you declare war while inside AI territory, it is viewed as ROP rape, regardless.

 

[Norton II]

2 comments:
1. Need the save.
2. We shouldn't worry about our ROP rep. After all, we're not trying to make friends in this one, and it won't affect our ability to make alliances.

 

[Phaedo]

I agree the lack of rep doesn't hurt us too much. It might make alliances more pricey though. Slowly making our way to maps is fine but lets start hoarding some gold.

BTW Norton, good call on keeping AzAz up in production. I think pushing for 1-turn Jags from the Cap initially and then other cities is the road to victory.

We need more settlers but HH seems well positioned for that. I'll try to post a dot map but spacing our first cities more will be helpful if they can get up to 1-2 turns Jags.

 

[Norton II]

I agree the lack of rep doesn't hurt us too much. It might make alliances more pricey though. Slowly making our way to maps is fine but lets start hoarding some gold.

Will it? ROP rep is totally separate from trading rep unless there's another per-turn trade involved in the ROP, which wasn't the case here since we only violated an implicit ROP.

BTW Norton, good call on keeping AzAz up in production. I think pushing for 1-turn Jags from the Cap initially and then other cities is the road to victory.

Thanks. Unfortunately, now that our GA is over, we'll have to settle for 2-turn jags from the capital until the population goes up a little.

We need more settlers but HH seems well positioned for that. I'll try to post a dot map but spacing our first cities more will be helpful if they can get up to 1-2 turns Jags.

Agreed, and unless we need lots of settlers fast, it'll have to be our only settler factory for a while. As for spacing, CxxC should get us plenty of 2-3 turn jags--I doubt any city besides the capital will be able to give us 1-turn jags.

 

[Phaedo]

How does this look for a tentative plan? Red> Blue> Green?
Green requires some chops and mines on the hills and Blue would need water everywhere but I think they could get up to 2-turn Jags with some 'ducts.

My city placement can use some work but it something to work with.

 

[CommandoBob]

City Builds

How does this look for a tentative plan? Red> Blue> Green?

Uh, Green Dot was just built by Lboogie13 in 1275 BC. It goes by the clever non-Aztec name of Just South of Rome.

What if we build Pink/Yellow before Red/Blue. Pink/Yellow look to be more prodcutive than Red/Blue. They are also further from HH. If we settle Pink/Yellow first and then Red/Blue, all should become productive at about the same time.

I see two Dyes in the forest NE of Pink/Yellow. I also see the marshes and a quick glance tells me it will take 2 marsh roads to get those Dyes. But with Dyes we would have three luxuries and could let some of our MPs join the war.

ROP Rape
I'm not sure of the long term effects of declaring war on an AI while you have units inside the AI's borders. I know the AI doesn't like it, so I try to avoid it. Even having naval units inside the wrong border when declaring a war is considered by the AI to be bad manners. (Picky AI).

I don't think this consideration is given when an AI declares war on another AI. Just when a living player does it.

The Save
This does need to be either linked (see Upload File) at the bottom of the page or attached to a post.

Roster
I need to be skipped (lots of painting and sorting to do) so the Roster looks like this:

CommandoBob -skipped
Phaedo - UP!
CivActuary - on deck
TimBentley - warming up
Norton II
Lboogie13 - just played