CO-3: Immortal Emperors

[RRRaskolnikov]

Not to 1 or 2!!! If you whip once in 15 turns, your happy cap will be 4 in Aksum and 3 in Gondar. You can skip the last whip (I advocated) ... we made three workers, let's make full use of them chopping!

 

[colony]

Indeed, it just makes me think about what I'm doing slightly when I see people posting Deity games with massive amounts of unhappinness due to slavery, I tend to wonder if there's something important that I missed along the way.

 

[stuge]

Well, if the entire game hangs on that first rush, you do everything you can to make sure it works. What is some unhappiness compared to a couple of extra axes that could win you the game?

 

[Sweetacshon]

^Right. Ideally you just always want to be on the happy cap, so you'd want to time the whip with popping back to full (15 turns), and if you wanted to get right down to it you could calculate and yields along with the fact that 26 odd can be whipped into 45 odd , but in reality, as stated, we just want to get as many axes in as short a timespan before Cathy chokes and then rapes us. In immortal, how many axes (and spears) are enough for a 3 city Cathy?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Well I think 8 axes and a spear will be enough for Moscou...
I think a lot of rushes have been done in the Immortal Series hosted by SilverBullet in the Strategy forum... I don't have time right now but I am sure numbers can be found there...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

 

[colony]

^Right. Ideally you just always want to be on the happy cap, so you'd want to time the whip with popping back to full (15 turns), and if you wanted to get right down to it you could calculate and yields along with the fact that 26 odd can be whipped into 45 odd , but in reality, as stated, we just want to get as many axes in as short a timespan before Cathy chokes and then rapes us. In immortal, how many axes (and spears) are enough for a 3 city Cathy?

I'd have thought 10-12 axes would be enough, but that's just an estimate made by taking the 8-10 I'd use on Emperor and adding a couple more to account for the creative trait and the faster unit building times. It also depends on whether she has any copper of her own and how many cities are on hills. Hopefully only Moscow will have 40% cultural defence by the time we're ready, but it never hurts to be prepared. I'll see if I can dig out one of the threads Raskalnikov mentioned.

I'll try to play my turns in about an hour or two.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

@Colony: there you go

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270866

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

 

[colony]

@Colony: there you go

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270866

Thanks, I'll have a read through it later.

Not much to really say, both cities now have a barracks and the first axe is finished, with 2 more ready in a couple of turns. I met Gandhi too, although it was through a work boat, so he may not be on the same landmass. He's founded Hinduism too,

Spoiler :

0 - 2225 BC - Move new worker to the hill SW of Aksum

1 - 2200 BC - Corn near Gondar farmed, I skip the road to start chopping earlier

3 - 2150 BC - The Persian ambassador makes a bad joke and Cathy now has a worst enemy, though it's a shame it's unlikely to help us at all

5 - 2100 BC - Aksum grows to size 3

6 - 2075 BC - Pottery's finished, start researching Writing. Cathy converts to Hinduism. Barracks --> Axeman in Gondar

7 - 2050 BC - Barracks --> Axeman in Aksum

8 - 2025 BC - Axeman --> Axeman in Gondar

9 - 2000 BC - Meet Gandhi through his work boat from the north, who's founded Hinduism. We apparently have a trade connection with him.

10 - 1975 BC - Aksum grows to size 4

Gondar will only have 2 forests left after the current chops are complete, but Aksum still has more than 5, so there's a lot of hammers left before things slow down a bit. Nothing changed on the actual map, so I haven't included any screenshots. There are 10 turns left before Writing's finished, so our research shouldn't be too terrible once there are some libraries and cottages up, hopefully making the economic recovery a bit easier.

Good luck with it Sweetacshon, although I can't see there being too many problems. They come when we find that all of Cathy's cities are on hills with 40% cultural defence

 

[Sweetacshon]

Me again already? OK, but I'm up (mid TS) in sgotm8, so it may be delayed a little. I'll play until writing is in, and we can decide whether we want to OB with Cath for 10 turns so we can scope her lands.

 

[colony]

Me again already? OK, but I'm up (mid TS) in sgotm8, so it may be delayed a little. I'll play until writing is in, and we can decide whether we want to OB with Cath for 10 turns so we can scope her lands.

I know you said you've got the SGotM to play, but do you know roughly how long you'll take? Don't want this game to stall too early.

 

[Sweetacshon]

I know you said you've got the SGotM to play, but do you know roughly how long you'll take? Don't want this game to stall too early.

Meaning that you want it to stall later?

Yeah, I had a bit of a smitfraud issue which compounded the SG queue problem, but I am playing now.

 

[Sweetacshon]

I won't bore you with the details, because it was all chop chop whip. Nothing eventful happened in terms of troops, although Cathy has a chariot skirting our southern border.

I have fortified an axe and spear on the copper for now. One of the axes was sent south to see if Cathy had done any more rexxing, but the barbs are fierce, and he's on level 3 recovering in the mountains. He still has his MP left in case he should be brought back to the cities.

So, in all we have 6 axes, 3 spears, and 2 warriors. We should be good to go after, or perhaps even during, the next set. Oh, yeah, writing finshed, and research was set to alpha with 0 invested.

OK, so I will bore you with the details, but only in spoiler form (not sure what happened to the formatting??)

Spoiler :

Other Player Actions:

After End Turn:
Aksum finishes: Axeman

Other Player Actions:
Aksum begins: Spearman (13 turns)

After End Turn:
Gondar finishes: Axeman

Other Player Actions:
Gondar begins: Spearman (9 turns)

After End Turn:
Gondar grows to size 4
Gondar finishes: Spearman

Other Player Actions:
Gondar begins: Axeman (8 turns)

After End Turn:
The whip was applied in Aksum
The whip was applied in Gondar
Aksum grows to size 4
Aksum finishes: Spearman
Gondar finishes: Axeman

Other Player Actions:
Aksum begins: Axeman (13 turns)
Gondar begins: Spearman (11 turns)

Other Player Actions:
While defending in the wild near Novgorod, Axeman (5.00/5) defeats Barbarian Warrior (Prob Victory: 100.0%)
Axeman promoted: Combat I

Other Player Actions:
While attacking in the wild near Novgorod, Axeman (2.90/5) defeats Barbarian Archer (Prob Victory: 98.3%)

After End Turn:
Aksum finishes: Axeman

Other Player Actions:
Aksum begins: Axeman (7 turns)

After End Turn:
Aksum finishes: Axeman
Gondar finishes: Spearman

Other Player Actions:
Aksum begins: Axeman (7 turns)
Gondar begins: Axeman (11 turns)

After End Turn:
Tech research finished: Writing

Other Player Actions:
Research begun: Alphabet (53 Turns)

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

OK Got it...........

Ralph

 

[colony]

Meaning that you want it to stall later?

Yeah, I had a bit of a smitfraud issue which compounded the SG queue problem, but I am playing now.

No worries, it was only an hour over 48. Looks good, assuming we can capture cities fast enough to keep research going until Libraries can be built. Seeing as the axe in the southern area already has combat 1 it might be worth making it a medic, if it turns out that Cathy doesn't have Copper.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi team!

Good turns Sweetacshon...

I think the next two rounds are very important... hopefully the rush will work nicely.
What do we want to research: alpha (but we could be beaten to that) or aesthetic? Or perhaps a run to COL (via meditation and priesthood)...

About the war: I suppose we want to begin with Moscou ( to cripple Cathy's prod and to cut her horses) but then cow city or floodplains city? And Cathy has already 4 cities...


@Ralph: good luck for your turns

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

OK as we are at a crucial stage I want to run some questions pass people, it will only take me half an hour to knock out the turns tomorrow evening if we reach consensus.

Research. A nice simple one, at this level Aesthetics is the tech with trade value as even if we beat the AI to Alphabet they will have partially researched it diminishing its trade value. With Aesthetics we should pick up Alpha 9with probably 1 turn of self research) and some others e.g. IW, Maths..
Additionally as we are hoping to pick up Cathy’s Marble the Great lib is a viable proposition..

Invasion Plan.
Three linked questions in order..
Which cities and hence route in do we follow. We need to capture her capital which I estimate to the NW of the horse a couple of squares
Now just getting Moscow alone won’t help us as we will be sandwiched between 3 cities
1. Hill City 2. the city by her horses labelled Cathy and 3. her unknown 4th city somewhere to the W.
So we at least need to take her horse city but this will leave Moscow sandwiched between Hill City and 4th Cities culture..

So in an ideal world we would take Hill city with a small stack and one large stack goes from Cathy City to Moscow. This as marked on the map but needs 4 axes + 1 Spear for group2 to take hill city and 8+ axes + 2 spears for stack 1 (losing 2 axes to take Cathy city I estimate)
So question 1.
Do we just go
a) Cathy city then Moscow where a stack will be ready in about 10 turns.
b) Two stacks where we need I guess 15 turns to be ready
If we decide on b) then we have the chance to sign OB with Cathy and scout whilst building the stack without the peace treaty delaying our plans, if a) I don’t think we have time and need to go in blind on the route marked..
Do people agree if b) its worth OB to scout as the invasion is over 10 turns away

Lastly people’s views on stack size(s)

 

[Sweetacshon]

I was thinking that there was more forest cover to approach Moscow from the NE, so that the larger stack could go through hill city. The smaller stack can take Cathy city, or if not big enough, can destroy the quarry and cut the road and then support the Moscow assault. The risk of this plan is that the hill city takes more troops by virtue of it's defencive capacity, so perhaps the cathy route is more straightforward. The stack numbers sound fair to me - at least, that's what I take on emp level.

Aesth does usually have good trade value, and as a bonus heads toward the GL, assuming the economy can run at more than 10%, something the workers can address soon considering our lack of trees.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi everyone,

My concern with hill city is that it is at 60% already so this battle will be really hard... and I think Moscou is more important for Cathy than this city.
Another stuff, if we attack while Cathy has alpha, there is a great chance she bribes someone against us...
So if he we have time, IMO go with two stacks +OB for scouting as Sweetacshon said (big for hill city, small for marble and meeting at Moscou doors), otherwise small stack-> marble city -> Moscou...(I wonder if Moscou -> marble city is not best in this case)

On tech, I agree aesthetics seems a no brainer...

Good luck Ralph...

Cheers,

Raskolnikov

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

OK where are we at:-

1. Aesthetics agreed

2. Attack Route

@Sweetacshon. I think we would like Cathy to attack our stack as we have seen her with Chariots not Axemen so it would be a +ve but unlikely development for us to need cover whilst going for Moscow..

@RRRaskolnikov. The reason for going Horse then onto Moscow as opposed to Moscow first is we will be able to leave a limited garrison at Horse city whilst we advance on Moscow.If we take Moscow first then the garrison would need to be non-trivial as we are exposed to counter attack from troops as we advance towards Horse City. Any troops wanting to attack horse city would need to go passed our stack en route to Moscow so we should be able just to leave a single wounded axe /spear in Horse city leaving the bulk of our stack free to advance on Moscow.

Additionally going Moscow first would cost us non-trivial cash for the maintenance costs of troops outside our culture in the lead up to the war.

@RRaskolonikov. Re Cathy war bribes. I was assuming that Darius and Gandhi will accept OB with us immediately prior to attacking Cathy and that this would generate a 10 turn peace treaty so she couldn't bribe them into war However wouldn't mind people confirming that this "would work" as I am still not 100% as to what trades generate 10 turns treaty and which ones don't (e.g Tech demand does, tech trade doesn't..)

Anyway I think we have enough for my set which is
i) Aesthetics
ii) up to 15 turns to assemble the stacks in the jump off point + OB with Cathy + scouting
iii) and we can leave exact split of the stack(s) to post scouting

Will play report on this basis tonight unless someone spots a major flaw in the next few hours

ralph

 

[stuge]

Just contain the troops in hill city. Assaulting a hill in an early rush always leads to a lot of casualties. Take out the horses and Moscow. After those objectives have been achieved, we can decide on the rest.