Emperor Domination

[futurehermit]

Thanks Snaaty I feel like playing in a SG adds about 1 skill level so I'm confident as well that we can win this game

I'm going to try and play my offline games 10-turns at a time from now on as well to try and increase my concentration. I think that would help a lot...

 

[lilnev]

I haven't finished the turnset. Something came up that might call for a change in plans, or at least deserves a bit of discussion:


Uncalled for, eh? Options:

Proceed as planned with a Gold-Rice city on the west bank of the river. We're going to war with him anyway. What's a few close borders and an early raze among friends? Potential problems: I think we can control the Rice if we get a monument up fast, but there's a chance he could beat us to it; that would leave the city weak until we can raze Sparta. Also, close borders could provoke him to DoW us before we're ready, particularly if we don't have metal and have to go to Construction.

Put the second city somewhere else, either Ivory-Rice-Wine or one of the Stone possibilities.

Delay the second city (queuing a workboat ahead of the settler) until BW is in and we have a better idea of when we want to fight Alex.

Thoughts?

peace,
lilnev

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, interesting!!!

My thoughts:

-Delay the settler until bronzeworking is done (try and time them together or roughly together imo)

-If copper, settle it and prepare to axerush Alex

-If no copper, settle one of the stone sites and go for pyramids and GL with the goal of having 3 total early cities while beelining construction next with representation-enhanced scientists...then go to war vs. Alex w/cata + ele with the goal of wiping him out...

 

[Giaur]

Put the second city 5E from capital.
Sparta is to be razed anyway ...
10 turns of waiting is too much.

 

[johnny_rico]

I'm in Minneapolis, MN. GMT -6

futurehermit, visited Toronto last fall for the first time. Caught a leafs/habs game and blue jays/red sox game. Great city!

lilnev, my roots are Boston. lifelong sawx fan.

I agree that lilnev should finish BW before switching turns.

If no copper, then perhaps we should turtle and try to get to the pyramids. Then build up a cats/elephants army to smash alex. Still, elephants are going to have a rough time with the phalanx. We'll probably need an additional +20% elephants than normal for a war with alex.

I am leaving town on friday and will not return until the following Monday. I feel as if my turn will fall then. I've got no problem taking the save with me on the road and playing my turn but wouldn't be able to post until I return to town. Since I don't spend much time here during the weekends, it doesn't affect me too much. However, if a lot of you are weekend residents here, I would defer my turn if preferred. I wouldn't want the lot of you deprived from your succesion game fix.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^hi johnny rico, i will defer to the majority, but my vote would be you should defer your turn if you can't play and post within your 5-day period (2 for "got it", 3 for "played and posted")...

@ giaur, i would be fine with building the city in that location, but if we do that then we should strongly consider chariot-rushing if we have no copper...if alex attacked us when we only had chariots for defence it could be a short game...that would mean we would need to scout alex for copper asap!!!

 

[johnny_rico]

well, if it means grabbing the save on friday and posting on tuesday, then I am in the window for 'got it' and 'posting'. We'll wait for the masses to respond.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^yep, that would be fine. I thought you meant you'd be gone for 11 days, but if you can do it from fri-tues that would be good

 

[lilnev]

2760 BC. Worker mines the hill he's on (this hill should have been mined first, by the way, for the extra riverside commerce). Scout moves to his fogbusting station by Stone. Warrior explores just a bit more....

... and Alex founds Sparta near our Rice. See above. After a bit of discussion, I decide we don't care. Alex isn't Creative, and the AI is pretty bad at rushing monuments, so I think we can control the Rice. We might get a close-borders demerit, but that's fine -- we're already planning to kill him. Sparta is in a lousy spot, so in the long run we're going to raze it anyway.



Hamburg is founded. The worker is roading towards it by way of the Horses. A route SE from Berlin would be a few turns faster (and would offer several turn savings towards connecting an eventual Rice-Wine city), but there's a significant chance that we're going to want those Horses online as soon as they're available. I'm tempted to switch to Mysticism at this point, but I don't. I'm not sure what happened to the barb archer, but he's probably still lurking to the north or east.

2480 BC. Workboat complete, build a warrior.

2360 BC. And the Copper is ...



... in Alex's possession. Damn. I thought the odds were pretty good that we'd have Copper, if not immediately available then claimable by a third city.



Borders pop again in 10 turns. I've set Berlin to work the Spice (plus Cows and Clams, of course) such that it will grow to size 4 and another warrior (fogbuster for the south or spare defender for Hamburg) will be produced in four turns. Alternatively, a barracks could be started to power up future chariots. I think we want to grow onto another tile and then build a second worker (should take 5 turns, ready just in time to pasteurize).



I've set research to Mysticism, and I strongly recommend that the next player not change this. Hamburg's monument is a priority to control the Rice, so I think the existing worker should finish the road to Hamburg, then pre-chop a forest for the monument.

Note that Alex is still in Tribalism, suggesting he doesn't have BW yet. I'll be surprised if that lasts, however. Also, props to the players who provided good scouting. We can see almost all of his tiles, so I believe he has just the one source of Copper. I think we should produce a chariot ASAP. If we think he hasn't connected it yet, take a chance on early war and try to keep his workers turtled. If he switches to Slavery in the next few turns, we have to decide between massing a bunch of chariots (he'll probably only build one phalanx initially, possibly two) or waiting for Iron or Construction.

We are not in Slavery, and I'm not sure we want to be. When Berlin is working Cows + 3 mines, that's 13 hammers/turn, a chariot every other turn and better than we would get from whipping. If we do want to make the civics change, however, I would suggest the window after the border pop but before the Horses are connected.

peace,
lilnev

 

[futurehermit]

good point about the river-side mine. sorry about that everyone!! i believe i inherited the initial grasslands mine and then did the plains one for the increased production, but you're right the commerce should've taken priority!

that location of copper is going to be hard to prevent him from getting it hooked up. *IF* we can deny him it, then I think chariot-rushing is the way to go. at the minimum if we can raze a city or two (keeping any that are close and in good position if possible) then we should be able to cripple him so he's no threat and then can mop up post-construction.

however, i suspect we won't be able to deny him the copper. i don't recommend generating enough chariots to attack him if he gets even one phalanx...i've lost upwards of a dozen regular chariots against a fortified regular spear on a hill before...it wasn't pretty. not to mention that many units are a serious drain on the economy...

instead, i would suggest beelining alphabet in the hopes of trading for IW and hopefully we will have iron...then construction and a mixed cata-ele-axe army should be able to take him out fairly quickly...

what does everyone think?

p.s., lilnev, what are those symbols on the right-hand side of your screens? i've never seen them before

p.p.s., nice turn set!

 

[lasombra]

so let's rush him with chariots? how many do we need? when are the horses going to be online?

no civic change with that output in berlin.

stay with mysticism!!!

i say "got it". tell if there are any objections towards playing tomorrow. if I don't hear anything I'll play and prepare the chariot rush and watch out for Alex' copper.

thanks for the detailed posts lilnev and futurehermit

 

[lasombra]

we could just declare with a couple of chariots and take care of the copper until we have enough chariots and then cripple him...

 

[lilnev]

You mean the fist, beaker, warrior? They're always there indicating what was produced that turn (beaker = tech discovered; not sure about the fist).

Anyone know how to avoid the "Enter screen shot name" text box?

 

[futurehermit]

@ lasombra, I would say scout the copper first. If he has it hooked up I would say open borders and see if he has any phalanxes. If yes and yes, then I would avoid chariot rushing (my opinion, i'm open to changing it). If no and no then I think we should chariot rush. If yes and no then if we can pillage it then also chariot rushing.

However, my experience with declaring war before I am totally ready (e.g., I pillage copper early and then raise an army) is that the 2.08 AI starts cranking unhealthy amounts of archers in most/all of its cities essentially tripling the number of units you need...Has anyone else had this experience?

In short, my thinking is that if we can deny the copper and get probably 9 or so (3 per archer assuming 2 archers and the potential of 1 more being whipped) chariots then rush him. If not, I would say wait and pray for iron.

Hopefully a few more people will chime in before you play your round. I made it clear at the outset that discussion is required (although if you are away for awhile that's ok, just say so please!), so hopefully I won't need to harass people to do so

@ lilnev, yeah, the fist/beaker/warrior...is that an option you can turn on or something, I don't have that...thks

 

[lilnev]

The Copper is diagonally adjacent to his capital, and without a convenient hill we won't be able to see it after his second border pop. It's on flat grassland, already roaded. We won't have Writing, and I doubt he will, so no Open Borders for a bit. I think our best indication will be whether he switches to Slavery. If that happens on lasombra's watch, we can expect a phalanx fortified on the mine, and probably another in Athens. Not good, and I would agree with Alphabet, trade for IW. We won't be able to build chariots until shortly after lasombra's turnset.

I don't think I did anything specific to turn on the fist/beaker/warrior. It's just always been there. Fist may mean an enemy (barbarian) is in sight?

peace,
lilnev

 

[shadow2k]

However, my experience with declaring war before I am totally ready (e.g., I pillage copper early and then raise an army) is that the 2.08 AI starts cranking unhealthy amounts of archers in most/all of its cities essentially tripling the number of units you need...Has anyone else had this experience?

Yes, that's what they do now. Only makes sense though. If you make a tactical error like alerting another civ of it's impending destruction, you should pay for that mistake.

 

[Giaur]

Who "has got it" now?

edit: If we found Confuncianism (Oracle), Hamburg might be our Holy city and Sparta has no chance to win with our culture. If not, we can always run there Artist (Caste System) to win Rice. Just chop some trees near Hamburg, but be careful on what those hammers go, and improve land with farms. Do not rely on Rice. It will become effective only after CS. We found our city there to get Gold mainly.

 

[futurehermit]

Lasombra posted "got it", but here is the roster:

Roster:

Galileo44
vra379971
Futurehermit
Lilnev
Lasombra-Up!
Giaur-On Deck
Johnny_Rico

 

[johnny_rico]

Is it a given that alex would switch to slavery once researching BW? I suppose that is the usual trend but I didn't know it was absolute. Anyway, w/o open borders we will not be able to accurately scout the copper and because of that, I am against a chariot rush. I think it will be a waste of hammers. Yes, future hermit, once you declare war early on warlords 2.08, the AI seems to build archers and nothing but making for a tough war. You need to have everything in place before declaring thus minimizing the number of extra archers the AI builds.

What I do like now is getting the pyramids. I like of the idea of establishing a real solid foundation and boom tech wise. We've got options. Oracle -> CoL plus the pyramids would be amazing. Of course, that probably makes the GL doubtful which is a big plus with a philo civ. Personally, I think the former works out better but I don't know if it is attainable on emperor. That's a lot of wonder building and since we haven't beelined for these things, it may not be possible. No priesthood or masonry yet.

Chariots will be sufficient defenders unless Alex declares on us! Then we'll have a problem.

So, we could go for the wonders as outlined above. It's risky with huge rewards if we pull it off. Or, we get alphabet in and trade for IW. A more conservative route, but with a much higher chance of success. Then, we can at least declare war with Alex and rough up his turf with axes.

 

[lasombra]

haven't played, yet. since we're all not sold on what to do now I'll wait until tomorrow night.

considering the options you convinced me to vote against the chariot rush. I'm not sure if we can pull off the pyramids. we would need the stone city quick. oh wait berlins borders pop in 10 turns right? until then we would need masonry. should be possible. we could finish mysticism go masonry afterwards and to hook it up faster biuld another worker in berlin. so in 14 turns we would be starting on the pyramids and have 2 worker to chop forests. sounds ok to me.

after that go straight for literature and skip the oracle. GL is much better suited for us. that would mean hamburg has to supply our defense. we could throw in archery after masonry for additional protection.

i think that actually sounds like a plan, doesn't it?