Emperor Domination

[lilnev]

Ah, damn. I really thought Washington would hold out longer. Yeah, now we have to go after Hannibal instead. We need to figure out where he's getting his horses from. Check the Active Trades screen, it's possible we traded them to him and forgot about it. And turn on resource bubbles -- either he or Nappy might have built a city on top of Horses.

Then the question is, do we hit him quickly or build up first? My hunch is that our present army isn't up to the job, and we should stockpile trebs and knights until Mil Trad.

And what are relationships like between Nappy and Hannibal? They're different religions, and close borders should be registering at least.... We definitely need to gift a tech to Nappy to get Fair Trade diplo up to +4. Assuming he's figured out CS by now, I'd recommend Paper, since it doesn't lead anywhere, or perhaps Optics (if he meets the other continent, he might decide one of them is his new worst enemy). I think we can avoid war with Nappy until we're ready for it.

Do we know if this continent is 60% of the land?

peace,
lilnev

 

[johnny_rico]

Giaur,

What do you mean by 'you cannot capitulate. Can You?'

All,

I thought Gee-dubs would have held out longer as well. It must have been the 3 on 1 thing.

I hadn't checked the active trades tab. I was late for work this morning as it was, and hung it up as soon as GW caved to Nappy. He must be getting the horse from us. I did have the resources up on the map and saw Han with zero horses and Nappy with only one. I only one single knight belonging to Han but if he hits Mil Trad before us, and he should, that means cavalry.

For the remainder of my turns, I am going to stock up on trebs and knights as well as build some longbows for all of our cities without a single unit (there are four) and Athens has a catapult which I'd like on the front lines.

Great idea, lilnev, reagarding gifting optics to nappy in the hope he'll want to beat up someone else who lies across the ocean. I'll see what we can gift to him.

 

[Giaur]

I mean that human players cannot capitulate.

Haniball has source of horses near Sicca. Washington had 3 sources of horses. Nappy gotta have horses from Boston. That source is closer to Boston than Orleans, but we do not know the cultural influence of this city.

 

[johnny_rico]

I mean that human players cannot capitulate.

Haniball has source of horses near Sicca. Washington had 3 sources of horses. Nappy gotta have horses from Boston. That source is closer to Boston than Orleans, but we do not know the cultural influence of this city.

Yeah, I don't think the AI would ever look to vassalize a human player, nor can you offer such submission. It was a joke when I mentioned it.

Good eyes on Hannibal. I simply missed it this morning. Where is Sicca in relation to our borders. Seems like a good place to stirke, or at least send in a pillaging stack.

 

[futurehermit]

Seems like everyone has horses and will soon have military tradition...yikes!

I think we MUST try and sour relations between Hannibal and Nappy lest we end up in a 3-on-1 situation.

I must say that the capitulation of Washington to Nappy only reinforces my earlier belief that we would've been better off trying to prop up Washington while focusing on Hannibal. But perhaps that was just not feasible.

As it is now I think we are definitely in a difficult spot for pursuing a domination victory and should really put our heads together to come up with a solution to this situation

I strongly feel like the renaissance era might not be the best time to strike a protracted war (shorter one could be ok, depending). The diplo situation is not great for us and I think we risk getting double/triple teamed.

We may want to consider taking out Hannibal and leaving Nappy/GW alone if they are too much to handle and instead attack the other likely-backwards continent. However, I am not sure we can trust Nappy that long...

What we may need to do is get an industrial-era tech advantage and try and wipe out the whole damn continent. I would suggest tanks in this case...

 

[johnny_rico]

Turn 0 : We have several cities w/o units. Whip a forge in sparta and start on a theatre.

Turn 1: There was a worker left unprotected on the hanny/GW border and I didn't see him. He was eaten by an American catapult which fell to a HA. Nappy builds the Notre Dame.

Turn 2: nada

Turn 3: Banking in, switch to Economics. Change civics to include mercantilism and free religion. NY gets dogpiled.

Turn 4: GW capitulates to Nappy. Gift Drama to Nappy. Sell paper for cash to Nappy.

Turn 5: nada

Turn 6: nada

Turn 7: Whip angkor wat in athens as someone just got a GE. Seems I always lose out on a wonder to an AI GE at an inopportune time. If we were hoping to lose this for cash, I apologize, I don't recall reading that anywhere in the thread. I switch athens to a caravel for our GM from Econ.

Turn 8: Hanny asks for liberalism. I tell him to pound sand. We fall to cautious with him. Most of our troops are assembled on his north border.

Turn 9: nada

Turn 10: Hanny beats us to Econ by 1 turn. Bummer; it is however, my forte in this game. We get another GE in Berlin.

All in all a boring turnset. Got all of our troops back. Made a couple of longbows for cities w/o units. Some are still vacant. Some trebs and knights came online along with a Xbow. I don't really see how relations are going to sour between Nappy and Hanny. I do like the idea of gifting optics to nappy and see if he feels inclined to raise hell on another continent. I'm also thinking if we go to war with Hanny, we'll have some success, and maybe Nappy will dogpile him from the south.

 

[futurehermit]

Nappy can't attack anyone overseas until astronomy and even then i'm sure he would prefer going after us Sux that we delayed MT for econ and didn't get econ

Well guys, what are your thoughts on how we're going to approach the next phase of this game?

 

[Giaur]

Strike Han this turn ...

I do not understand why are you producing Trebs not Elephants. Our siege equipement is numerous enough. Who will prevent us from enemy's Knights?

edit: GE for SoL

Military Tradition next

Anyway ... good civic switch

edit2: In munich replace scientist by engineer.

 

[lilnev]

Mil Trad next, save the GE for SoL. Can we trade for Gunpowder? I have a hard time calling war without actually looking at the save, hopefully tonight. What does the power graph look like? On the bright side, if Hannibal went for Ed and Econ, he didn't go for Mil Trad himself (yet). Gotta find a bright side somewhere....

peace,
lilnev

 

[johnny_rico]

Yeah, the scientists can be traded off for engineers. I was trying to dump as many beakers as possible into economics because I knew Hannibal was going for it. One turn! I'd rather lose by five.

I'm not certain about the elephants. Just trudged the army back through Hanny's territory and it didn't seem like he had that many mounted units. I didn't see Sicca all the way down south. That city doesn't appear to have been up for very long so my guess is horses are new to him. In running through his territory, seems to me maces, xbows, and trebs are the way to go. Use our knights to cover distance in our empire to deal with counter-attacks.

I think we should strike at Hippo (kind of obvious) and Hadrumetum. His cities to the west and northwest only had pairs of longbows so not much offense coming from that direction. If we can drop Hippo in 1-2 turns, Hannibal will focus his efforts to retake the city keeping most of our 'germanic' turf safe.

As soon as econ is in (1 turn), I say mil trad and then head towards democracy. As we gobble up hannibals land, we should come into a lot of cottages, hamlets, etc...

 

[johnny_rico]

Mil Trad next, save the GE for SoL. Can we trade for Gunpowder? I have a hard time calling war without actually looking at the save, hopefully tonight. What does the power graph look like? On the bright side, if Hannibal went for Ed and Econ, he didn't go for Mil Trad himself (yet). Gotta find a bright side somewhere....

peace,
lilnev

Nobody was willing to trade gunpowder on my last turn. Power graph: Nappy way up high, Hannibal slightly above us, Wash and Alex below us. But Hannibal has nationalism so if he goes mil trad, he'll get it faster than us. Still, he doesn't have it yet (bright side you were mentioning)

I also think we need to get overseas. We should be done trading with nappy. Grinding through hannibal quickly will enable us to hit nappy with superior units. We can declare and decimate his attacking stacks with cannons and cavalry because he should be sending medieval troops. It would be nice to get this going before nappy hits his groove (which isn't too far away).

 

[Galileo44]

Nice turnset. Sucks that Hannibal beat us. I got it.

 

[Galileo44]

The German Empire: 1250-1300AD
Ok, here is my turnset. I made some interesting decisions that I'm not sure everyone will support, but I think that I chose correctly:

Turn 0 (1250):
I start off with moving the scientist in Munich to engineer as was suggested. Then, I send the caravel around Berlin off to circumnavigate as Hannibal (our next enemy) has no port cities on that coast. I whip a courthouse in Knossos as it would be worth more than the citizen who died laboring over the 7 turns to grow back.Then I make this trade with Washington:

I don't see how this could possibly hurt us and washington is no threat at the moment. plus, we need the gold.

Turn 1 (1260):
Economics in, set research to Military Tradition.
Berlin Treb-->University
Cologne Lighthouse--> granary

Turn 2 (1270):
Hamburg Treb-->forge (for increased production and engineer slot)

Turn 3 (1280):
Yawn.

Turn 4 (1290):
Athens L-bow-->Courthouse
Nappy gets Islam in Orleans. Good, he isn't going for MilTrad

Turn 5 (1300):
This is the big turn that will make me a hero or goat as I realize something. After some scouting, I see that Hannibal has only 2 sources of metal, both within two turns of our borders. With his power not that high, and several pretty weakly garrisoned cities on our border, you all know what I chose to do:
EMPEROR DOMINATION TEAM DECLARES WAR!!!

Our stack moves up to Hippo and the sabotage knights in the east run off toward their target, Hannibal's Iron. Other than that, Knossos started a Pike, and Argos a Longbow. And Nappy spread Judaism to Berlin. Perhaps we should convert for diplo pluses. I thought about it, but 2 turns in Anarchy (one to get out of free religion and one to convert) was not something we could afford at the beginning of a war.

Turn 6 (1310):
Education goes to Nappy for Gunpowder and 140 gold. This is the opportunity we were looking for to grab Gunpowder! I shoot the defenses of Hippo down from 100% to 0 in one shot!

We kill two of H's units and pillage his copper.

Turn 7 (1320):
Berlin Univ-->Granary
Munich Knight-->Musket
Athens L-bow-->Library
Pillage Hannibal's Iron:

And that leads to this:

You can see the two sources of metal in Hannibal's territory, and I just pillaged both. That means no knights or maces or crossbows or pikes!
Then my wandering Caravel spots this guy:

He is upset because Nappy is his worst enemy and we trade. But on the good side, Nappy hate someone more than us!
And this turn just keeps going, with the Capture of Hippo after 3 suicide units! I keep the city.

Turn 8 (1330):
Sparta Pike-->Musket
Nappy builds the Muslim Shrine.
I meet this ugly mug on the other continent, rounding out our crew:

He and Mehmed are very behind, no Lit! no Drama! no Paper!

Turn 9 (1340):
ALEX DECLARES WAR! I'm really quaking in my boots now!

Turn 10 (1350):
Miltrad in! Chem is lined up next. I shoot down the defenses of another city of H's, it will be captured next turn. We have to bring up the culture slider for as our Greecian holdings are unhappy. We should just finish Alex soon. We have a pretty comfortable tech lead over everyone but Hannibal. He has Printing Press and Theology on us and we have Military Tradition and Liberalism on him. We have MilTrad, Lib, and Econ on Nappy. The Power graph looks ok.

I hope I didn't screw anything up too badly. I think that I made the right choice to go after Hannibal.

 

[Galileo44]

The save. (ten chars)

 

[vra379971]

I'm going to need a skip.

That said, can anyone spring for a picture of what Alex has for teritory?

 

[carl corey]

lurker's comment: I'm not sure if the continent map is up to date, but Alex has only one city left in the eastern part of Nappy's territory. (look at the 3rd image after the war declaration)

Interesting way of taking advantage of metal pillaging. Hopefully Nappy won't trade Hannibal any of his excess Iron/Copper. By the way, have you noticed Hannibal's horse city? It's right below Alex's capital. A sea expedition to take out both would be very beneficial, although it will take time to carry it.

Good luck for the continuation!

 

[lilnev]

I got to turn 9, ALEX DECLARES WAR. And my mind read it as NAPPY DECLARES WAR. Then I realized, and my heart settled down again.

Pillaging metal is good, though it's really the horses for cavalry that worry me. We should move as fast as we can now, targeting high-production cities when there's a reasonable choice.

Set research to zero for several turns to support upgrades to cavalry? Next tech is probably Printing Press.

vra is a skip, so you're up, futurehermit. And I'm on deck.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Galileo44]

Well chem has no beakers invested. I support the turning off research as well, as we have a lead. It is nice to see that my decision was well-received.

 

[lasombra]

very good job galileo. that was really a nice one!

turn off research and get some cavs going, that should be enough for han. I'm not quite sure about an expedition to the south to take out alex. does han even have horses? I couldn't find them.

could we bribe mehmed into war with nappy?

someone should build a theatre in athens. that will save us some money and make them happy...

 

[Giaur]

Build forge and monasteries in the capital (additional production and research)
Spread buddism to the capital (one of our cities has buddism monastery)
What about adopting Police state?
I think we should prioritize Astronomy, not chemistry or printing press. Merchantilism is good for a short run.