Competing VC's

We wouldn't want to raze Babylon anyways. It's filled with awesome wonders.

I'm on board for trying to capitulate Charlie. I'd go for his capital as it will make it more likely that he'll become our vassal if we take his capital.
 
Okay, I have not looked at the saved game (and I honestly wasn't paying attention to Babylon's City defenders since I thought that we'd either be at war with Charle or Justinian), but if Babylon does not yet have Longbowmen, then that factor could influence an earlier attack.

If, however, Babylon has Longbowmen or is likely to get them within a few turns (i.e. before our armies can get into position), then an attack on the Babylonians can be safely delayed--they are unlikely to suddently decide to start spamming units while remaining at peace, while it will also be a long time before they get to Musketmen/Riflemen, so whether we delay an attack or not won't be a big deal... the only difference would be "do we have a window of opportunity before he gets Longbowmen," and I forget whether or not he already has them.
 
Okay, I have not looked at the saved game (and I honestly wasn't paying attention to Babylon's City defenders since I thought that we'd either be at war with Charle or Justinian), but if Babylon does not yet have Longbowmen, then that factor could influence an earlier attack.
Nobody EXCEPT CHARLY has lbows :D No telling though how long it'll take for him to tech it (well maybe there is but right now I'm too lazy to check whether he's teching it atm).

Well, the point whether or not our opponent has the best defence unit until the renaissance era is a pretty big point imo. Especially in not-so-strongly defended border cities. Which are not on a hill. (OK I'm repeating myself :p). My point is, we could easily get a handful of cities with very little effort and if we do it properly we'll also get sistine, parth, shweda and shrine, IIRC.
 
Charlie is a tougher AI to crack than Hammy. If we can vassal Charlie, I'm pretty sure we can grab some nice cities from Hammy with relative ease.
 
Like I said, I'll leave it up to mystyfly to decide what's best. If we want to vassalize an AI, we can probably more efficiently do it later. Civil Service probably shouldn't be delayed too much longer, so that we don't completely fall behind in tech (and so that those Cottages don't go to waste), and if you see a good opportunity to poach some Cities off of Babylon, I say go for it.
 
Yeah, I'm still kinda trying to figure out what to do... will play soon though.
 
OK now I lost my report twice due to some server error. First time I copied it to the clipboard but must've accidentally overwritten by photobucket. Juuuuust fantastic...


So here we go for the third time...

I thought teching feud directly would be best as we want to cap charly asap. No luck so far though. After 2 turns of fighting, 16:6 kills, aachen falls. Vienna falls a few turns later as well but a HRE-stack near aachen causes some trouble as our units are pretty damaged and we lose quite many. When vienna is captured most return and that charly stack is killed.

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We now also have a super-medic-chariot. Situation on the charly-border now:

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After feud I started on archery to get those HAs going. Then, thanks to all the war money, CS was not taking too long. I finished it about 2t before the end of my set and I didn't revolt to give the next player all options. Picked poly as filler and as it's on the way to the epics.

Moai is due in 1t. Tundra city was founded as well.

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Uhm, why is it again that I don't launch games with random events on...? Aaaaaah, yes, right...

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Hatty built the judish AP, as expected.

Eco is pretty much down the drain, again. WW is kicking in and our cities need courthouses. OTOH we can start chainirrigating now to get rid of those silly cottages everywhere. Started running 3 specs in bombay and delhi, both should pop GPs in ~15 turns, for a GA or so. There is a decent stack of 1MP units including 3 phants for ham. HAs are under construction though one city is no longer reachable in 1t as ham's borders are popping like mad. Pretty much all AIs have maces and lbows. We should've turned off techtrading altogether as I said in the beginning, if we don't trade but the AIs do it's a huge stone on the leg.


I apologise for the crappy report but I'm not in the mood, for once writing it for the 3rd time and for another having to restart the PC continually after crashes prolly due to the heat... Might have missed something now but the most important things are there.
 

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Had a quick luck over the save and looks ok, Charl we give us lots of things for peace so should be close to capping (honestly I thought he'd probably of capped by now). As for Babylon, if all the HA hit the city thats possible on first turn of war with a longbow or two following to hold it, then the rest of troops should be able to take the other city on t3 of war esp if whip afew LB in charl old cap to hold that now so we can move the troops there to help take it. We should spread the AP religion too for the hammers, I think we'll need it with building wealth soon until we can get the courthouses whip in the furthest cities :)
 
:lol: our war looks good but our empire looks horrible. I'd try to capitulate HRE quickly at this point so that we can concentrate on fixing our economy. This no tech trading thing is killing us isn't it...

Courtesy of random.org, the next turn set order:

Dhoom
mysty
rolo
Habitus
shyuhe
 
I am still on vacation for a couple of days, so if you want to give further suggestions on what you might like to see me doing next, now would be a good time to do so.

For example, it appears that we have made good headway against Charle. Assuming that we can get in there and pillage his Iron, is there anything that stops us from simply pressing the attack? I see a nice Gold Resource in Prague that could help our Happiness levels.

I am a tiny bit disappointed to see a Road being placed on the barren Tundra square that is SW + S of our northern Fish + Horse City. That Road will cut the chances of a Forest growing there in half. Oh well, there's nothing that we can do about it now, since you cannot Pillage a Route type of square improvement.

As for our Horse Archer armies, what's the thinking there... just keep spamming Horse Archers or are they only really good for the first couple of turns of war, after which we should use a mixed group of forces?

It sounds like we have Feudalism, so I'd really like to pump out a couple of Longbowmen, so that we can more lightly defend our captured Charle Cities.


Also, what are the thoughts on the placement of The National Epic? If we can capture The Great Library (I THINK that Babylon had it but I can't open saved games from where I am now), could we consider building it in the same City, while leaving our Banana City for our Heroic Epic?
 
I can't comment right now as the toughest part of my exam session is starting. No way you'll get anything useful out of me until next week at least... too bad random.org picked me 2nd (and not last as last round :p). Good luck dhoomstriker ;)
 
Banana city will probably go best with the HE. I wouldn't complain too much to see the NE there but then we'd have to find an alternative for the HE. Although it's probably easier to do that than find a replacement NE city.

I think we should move our "reinforcements" towards Charlie to speed up that war. We need to capitulate him quickly to give us a chance to fix our economy or we are going to start falling behind a LOT in techs. Not that that's fatal to our game plans, but it'll make things a lot harder than they need to be.
 
After looking at the saved game, here is some of the bad news...
Our army of 5 Horse Archers really isn't up to the task of taking down Babylonian border Cities. I don't see how we can possibly declare war on Babylon at this point, so all troops are going to be sent towards Charle.

We Chopped one of the 4 Forests in our Banana-less City, so that's -1 Health in terms of running Specialists... which is not so great an action to take if one is trying to gather support for building the National Epic and running Specialists there. Let's just say that this action pushes us closer to building the Heroic Epic here, since that's 0.5 less of a Specialist. There was a good reason for the "do not chop" signs that got removed.

We are still trading away Ivory to two of the AIs (Justinian and Sitting Bull). Let's hope that this fact does not come back to haunt us.

We're building a Courthouse instead of a Cultural Building in the first City that we captured from Charle and have emptied the City of units. Of course, the City is in revolt--how can it not be without an army stationed there to quell the revolts until we BUILD UP enough of a Cultural presence there? A Courthouse (which will have to be finished) won't help us in speeding-up the time when our armies will be free to leave the City.

We still have yet to spread Hinduism to our Banana-less City, so that's yet one more strike against putting our National Epic there, since Pacifism only works if the relevant Religion is in the City.

We do not have a single Apostolic Palace building built.


Now for the good news...
We have some War Elephants and Horse Archers, so once those units get into position, I should be able to take down another City or two of Charle's before capping him. In the worst case, he will Peace Vassal to someone else first, which is entirely plausible since he is FRIENDLY towards both Hammurabi and Justinian.

We also appear to be hurting for Happiness in multiple Cities, but only marginally, and mostly due to war weariness. Let's see how quickly I can take down Charle for the capitulation to get rid of this issue.

Another bit of good news is that since we teched Feudalism, I will be able to build us some defensive Longbowmen. We really could use one or two of these on the front lines NOW, so that Charle's Macemen can't just sit there picking off our units that are cowering in a captured City.


I'm going to start putting signs on the maps on top of Towns. Call it an "in your face" reminder not to pave over them. Please leave those signs there.

My goal is to capture the Gold City (we could use that +1 Happiness--+2 with a Forge) and then go for the capitulation before Charle Peace Vassals. While it is also an option to take Peace, if we go for Peace at the present time, he'll almost 100% certain Peace Vassal to another AI as soon as Peace is declared, creating a future headache for us.
 
Yaaa, we completed Moai Statues and are pumping out some Wealth until we can get Monotheism for Organized Religion.
EDIT: Whoops, in reassigning citizens from working land-based squares to working water-based squares, it looks like I started working Ocean squares instead of Coast squares. That'll be a mistake to avoid repeating in future turnsets.
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Muahahahaha, hello Charle! After fending off his Longbowmen and Crossbowmen assaults on our captured City using Horse Archers, as well as killing off one of his Unique Units that wounded itself on a War Elephant, our main force finally arrived at his new capital.
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It was only a matter of time before Prague fell. Charle capitulated and gave us a City, to boot. I took some Gold, some Gold per Turn, and his World Map, but had to say "no" to the techs that he was offering to us.
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Uhhhhh... well, another war is in the works! Fortunately, we are not the target this time.
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We have mostly been building infrastructure during this turnset and have Forges and the Apostolic Palace's Temples and Monasteries going up or built in most of our core Cities.


I did totally slack off on Great Person production, but I felt that doing so was justified while we got our infrastructure up and running. Okay, I cave... we can build the National Epic in the Fish + Banana + Cow City, but I do ask that we keep building Cultural buildings there after completing the National Epic (we know Literature and can start on the National Epic next turn), so that we'll have a reasonable chance of reclaiming that Banana.


As requested, I pumped out a few Courthouses, too.


I figured that we might as well go after Education next, so as to be able to build our cheap Universities.


I cancelled our Ivory trades but started one up with our Vassal (we are also giving a Horse Resource to our Vassal). I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind our Vassal being a contributor in any future wars.


On that note, we are not really READY to go to war, but the pumping-out of infrastructure sets us up nicely to either spam Military units or to spam Wealth plus Universities, depending upon your Victory Condition.


I queued-up Jewish Temples and Monasteries so that the next player would be able to remember which buildings were still needed where. It's tough to say "no" to the free Hammers, particularly for a Spirtitual Civ, which gives both cheap Monasteries (since they are already a cheap building) and even cheaper Temples.


There is also definitely a window of opportunity to run Pacifism for a while, if we want to do so, since our Military forces are still relatively small (i.e. the Civic will be cheap to run), although be careful about doing so, since we're currently buiding a Jewish Missionary in the Moai Statues City without a Monastery there yet, so you'll need to remember to continue building the Missionary later if you switch Civics immediately. Of course, it might be better just to stick it out in Org Rel for much of the turnset while we pump out the National Epic and Heroic Epic.
 
Well, we've roaded lots of tiles that could give us good events if unroaded as well as roading stuff to stop forest spawning. Since we've stopped good events being possible it means there is a greater chance of when we get an event its going to be bad. We could do a fake war on sitting bull for diplo and charl might even grab a city to help make him abit more useful. I'd direct his research to beeling military techs, probably infantry, if we're lucky and he's first there it be handy for any more wars :)
 
Hmm. Do we want to consider switching to an EP economy? I'm not sure that a normal economy is going to let us catch up at this point to the AI given our limit on tech trades.

I think we should keep OR while we build the epics. Pacifism may be useful for a short burst though.
 
Well, we've roaded lots of tiles that could give us good events if unroaded
You mentioned Desert squares, so I have tried to avoid Roading any of them since you made that statement. What other square types are there?


We could do a fake war
I don't see why. If we're going to go to war, we might as well do so opportunistically with the intent to actually capture or raze some Cities, to hurt the AIs. The last thing that we want to do is sit there with a tiny army, declare war on an AI, and then find that one of the AI combatants capitulates to the other. We could then be at war with 2 AIs in a situation without any military units.


I'd direct his research to beeling military techs, probably infantry, if we're lucky and he's first there it be handy for any more wars :)
Infantry? Probably the only AI that we might need that high a level of military units against would be Babylon. They're running away with the tech... but they are so far ahead that they won't have good trading partners and are probably best ignored until later, after we have beaten down another AI or two.

Other AIs could die with our current tech level if we utilized our newfound production almost exclusively on military units. Failing that, Cuirassiers would be more than enough to clean up non-Babylon AIs.
 
Hmm. Do we want to consider switching to an EP economy? I'm not sure that a normal economy is going to let us catch up at this point to the AI given our limit on tech trades.
We probably would have been okay had we been allowed to accept techs as part of a peace deal, since Charle was ready to hand over nearly every tech that he had up on us as part of the Capitulation deal. However, I understood the rules to be only allowing us to get techs from AIs that decide to "gift" them to us, which hasn't happened yet while I was playing.


If we want to switch to an Espionage Economy, then:
1. After Education (for our cheap Universities), we'll probably want to tech Engineering, so that we can build Castles everywhere. We don't have Stone, so it would be nice if we could capture a source via war, but it's not 100% necessary to do so.

2. We will probably want to beeline Democracy at some point soon thereafter, for the additional Espionage Buildings.

3. We will want to avoid the Economics tech, so that our Castles will continue to provide a boost to Espionage.


I think we should keep OR while we build the epics. Pacifism may be useful for a short burst though.
Ideally, if and when we spawn that Golden Age that mystyfly was talking about, we'll be able to slip into Caste System + Pacifism at the same time and hire a ton of Specialists everywhere.

In order to GET that Great Person for the Golden Age, though, we'll probably first have to slip into Pacifism at some point (say, after completing the National Epic).

Since we are Spiritual, a Golden Age isn't valuable for its Civic-swapping ability but is still quite useful for the bonus to Great Person generation.
 
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