Emperor Domination

[lilnev]

Option 1) Bribe Nappy, tech to Combustion, field a navy, invade Ghengis. I don't think Nappy will be very effective overseas, but it would distract him and gain us a mutual struggle bonus. How backwards is Ghengis? Would infantry/cannons still be relevent by the time we got there? Drawbacks: overseas combat is expensive and slow.

Option 2) Bribe Nappy, tech to Democracy, Emancipate a bunch of cottages (I'm kind of alarmed at how slow we're teching), build infrastructure, plan for a modern war. Drawbacks: we need to either clear our continent and get a foothold overseas, or else overrun both Ghengis and Mehmed. That's a lot to do in a short time.

Option 3) Bribe Nappy, wait for his army to sail, then backstab him. We probably won't see another wave from Ghengis for a while (it's a big ocean), and might even be able to get peace with him first. That would put Nappy in a three-way war, but he would have infantry and artillery, so we'd have to fight with numbers. How much of a navy, specifically transport capacity, does Nappy have?

Option 4) Don't bribe Nappy, try to invade Ghengis on our own. This seems like a terrible idea, strictly worse than (1).

Option 5) Don't bribe Nappy. Attack Nappy and try to get peace with Ghengis as soon as possible. Drawbacks: we're either waiting for peace before we DoW (Nappy gets further ahead) or we're volunteering for a two-front war.

 

[futurehermit]

I like option one and believe that infantry/cannons would still be relevant. Genghis is notoriously backwards late game with no economic bonuses.

I am fairly confident that our tech pace will pick up once we get bio online and run some specialists. I think we only need to target key techs so our tech pace is not that big of a deal (per se).

I think we are looking at a modern era war with Nappy, and I am not convinced we will win it.

If we are going to face Nappy, I would say go with option 3 and whip/draft like crazy people. Again, this is where bio comes into play...

BIOLOGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[futurehermit]

BTW, I've got it and will play on Monday. I think we need to work on playing consistently. The game has been lagging a bit much lately

 

[lilnev]

Ghengis has Combustion, so he can't be too backwards. Machine guns at least. If we go to war with GK now, I think Mehmed becomes the logical final target, and we hope to win without ever fighting Nappy. If that becomes the plan, we need to do all we can to keep him happy.

I think I like either option 1 or option 3. Though giving Nappy Assembly Line right before we attack him seems mad, it would draw off some of his mobile forces and bring two allies into the fight....

Maybe the thing to do is bribe Nappy, finish Bio while drafting infantry, and not decide which side of the war we want to be on until (1) we know how many of Nappy's troops have left vs. stayed, and (2) we see whether Ghengis can be easily settled with. It'll take a little time to put together an invasion fleet anyway.

I think it's still Galileo's turnset. He hit a major decision point and wanted some group discussion/consensus before proceeding.

peace,
lilnev

 

[futurehermit]

That sounds good. forgot Galileo wasn't finished yet, but will still play on Monday assuming he finishes before then

 

[lasombra]

what happened with GK? wasn't he pleased almost friendly? anyway...

I don't have much experience with modern wars, because they are so time consuming. so no ICBM's from my point of view.

invasion fleet: how many units fit on a transport? eight? so that means 3 to 4 fully loaded transports plus escort navy. hmm lot of troops that are not in our homeland anymore then.

if we give nappy AL we loose our only advantage we have over him. so backstabbing him becomes really really hard and 29 units alone in paris is also pretty intimidating...

I'm unsure what to do...

 

[Galileo44]

I think that the bribe of Nappy into war is very important. As we all know, while at war, the tech pace plunges and many units will be moved out. He will get ALine soon anyway, why not use it to hurt everyone who is left in the game. Plus, if his power drops, Washington is large enough to break away. I'll play today, bribing Nappy, finish Bio, and draft.

 

[futurehermit]

That sounds good. At this point, I'm really leaning toward taking out Genghis and Mehmed. I'm convinced that they will fall further and further behind as the game goes on, especially if they are not trading with Nappy or us.

I really think we should go for nukes though in case we have to attack Nappy. Nukes will give us the chance to compete with him...

 

[Melior Traiano]

Lurker's comment:

That sounds good. At this point, I'm really leaning toward taking out Genghis and Mehmed. I'm convinced that they will fall further and further behind as the game goes on, especially if they are not trading with Nappy or us.

Considering the amount of cottage spam both Mehmed & GK have done, I wouldn't count on being able to fight with more advanced units than they. Even if they don't trade techs with you guys or Nappy, they will trade with each other & that's enough to keep them competitive, if nothing else. It's possible Mehmed & GK will farm over some of the towns when Biology comes in, but still, I wouldn't count on holding a technological edge over them. That said, you will want to roll those Panzers sooner rather than later to get the most utility from them before Gunships show up.

Also, if you guys decide to duke it out in a conventional war with Nappy, might want to consider going after the American cities first. Resistance will be lighter than driving through the heart of France. Chances are Nappy will respond by launching attacks on Carthage. When you get back the tiles immediately south of Carthage, his attack stacks will stop there & wait a turn to give his Artillery a chance to bombard, in which case you whittle them down using massed Artillery and/or Bombers. If your Panzers drive through America, they will have made a flanking movement so that from the former American cities, they can strike into Nappy's heartland. The French-American frontier is too wide of a front to defend effectively for an AI. And the American cities give you bases from which to operate Bombers, so your advance won't be slowed down by Artillery slogging through hostile culture.

 

[vra379971]

That's exactly my point.

We should use Carthage as a bottleneck, and I vote for sending Nappy to war, and then DoWing on him. We have no fleet, and going 'cross the sea atm is crazy.

 

[futurehermit]

Well, it's hard to say. One reality is that Nappy has a ton of advanced troops and if he doesn't ship a whole lot of them overseas (the ai is notoriously crappy at attack overseas) then we are gonna get smacked when we DoW on him.

I'm not convinced that the overseas duo won't be backwards lategame. I've never seen Genghis competitive technologically late game. Neither of them have economic traits. Mehmed has some land, so that is a bit of an issue, but I really don't believe it will take us much to surpass them in tech.

 

[vra379971]

...but I really don't believe it will take us much to surpass them in tech.

This is emperor. It will take much more than we have to surpass them in tech.

We don't have enough to beat Nappy's army. But, we won't have to beat his army - we have to beat whatever he throws at us. Which we can do - especially with artillery. The big thing is to reduce cultural pressure at Carthage to permit us to control the surrounding country so we can artillery them before they bash us.

I still say the best move consists of Internet beelining at this point.

Oh, and do remember. Nappy is an oppertunist. We are the lowest in power. He is the highest. He WILL declare war UNLESS at Friendly. So, unless we want to frain our lands of troops, invest hammers into a non-existant Navy nad attempt a sea-invasion NOT backed by the Luftwaffe on Emperor....

 

[futurehermit]

He may also still declare even if at friendly, if he decides to attack us prior to getting to friendly. This happened in one of the acidsatyr games.

I am pretty confident we can outtech the guys overseas. It is true that we would need to create a navy, which would take time.

If we are going to focus on Nappy, which seems like the most reasonable approach right now, at least to trim him back, then I think we should make the bribe and then DoW on him after. We will need to have some kind of a plan and make sure our border/coastal cities are defended.

There is also a lot of game left between us and the internet. I seriously hope we can wrap the game up before it gets to that point. I'm thinking that we will want to try and close things out if possible with panzers backed by a mixed industrial army. Nappy has been behind on tech and if there is no one trading with him that should help us even more.

 

[pigswill]

Lurking

Haven't followed the game closely enough to know if you've picked up communism. If you were to get some spies out and about it would take a lot of the guesswork out of your planning. Obviously that needs to be compared to other tech priorities (like biology).

 

[Galileo44]

Not much to report:
Nappy got Pentagon
We got a Prophet, saved for GA in Athens
Production going way up due to Assembly Plants and Coal Plants
Oxford in Berlin
Bio-->Communism (1 turn invested)
The Last turn, GK turned up in a destroyer!

The Save:

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, good timing, I finished my 2nd term paper tonight and can play tomorrow.

I need to have some sense of what the heck I'm gonna do though...so hopefully people will chime in with advice.

 

[vra379971]

I'll try to have a look at it tonight.

 

[futurehermit]

Alrighty, things get even more "interesting"...

IHT: Well, I notice that we are in diplomatic hell. Nappy is our best friend amongst the remaining civs and we are planning on backstabbing him! I also notice that Nappy's empire is pretty much pure farms. I also notice that we are not running artists in most of our border cities that are fighting culture wars!

-I decide to use our GS on physics. Why? It's prereq for: artillery and electricity, the latter leading to fission and industrialism. I figure this needs to be our tech path. Artillery for short-term combat and nukes and panzers for when we want to launch our main assault on Nappy (if that is the way we go). I MM our entire empire to run specialists and our best economic tiles to try and squeeze every beaker out of our empire that I can. My goal is artillery, if possible, by the end of my 10 turns. The trick is, I also want to draft as many infantry as possible in this same time frame...LOTS of MM went into my turnset! Draft 3.

Turn 2-Draft 3...having sent boats to explore Nappy's coastal cities, I learn over the course of these turns that Nappy has NO TRANSPORT-TYPE BOATS WHATSOEVER, NADDA!!!

Turn 3-Draft 3

Turn 4-Draft 3, and spot...

Yep, Mehmed bringing some boats. I'm not sure if he ever landed or not, he outpaced my boat and I don't know what happened to them, it's almost like they disappeared...I don't think Nappy killed them. Bermuda triangle?

Turn 5-Draft 3

Turn 6-PHYSICS IS IN; draft 3... Mehmed comes along...

Come on, buddy, the medieval era was soooo yesterday...decline (I was tempted to aid diplomatic relations, but we need to be drafting).

I do some trading...

Figure we might get what we can out of physics.

Turn 7-Draft 3; Nappy cancels deals involving ivory:

Renegotiate banana for 27 gpt. Could've got crab, but need the $.

Give Ed to Alex for 50, need $.

Turn 8-Draft 3

Turn 9-Can't really afford to draft anymore, happiness and population. Fix deals with Washington:

...to be fish + clam for gems + 12

Also trade with Nappy fish for hit musicals

Turn 10-Finally get our sole source of oil donkied and start a navy in case we decide to go overseas. 1 turn away from artillery! Genghis still won't talk. I counted and he has about 50 cottaged-tiles empire-wide. Some are developed, some aren't.

Tech situation:

Power:

 

[futurehermit]

Save

I believe this means Lilnev is up.

 

[lilnev]

Got it. I'll take a look tonight, but won't play until tomorrow. Sounds like you had an important but kind of tedious turnset. Thoughts on what comes next?

peace,
lilnev