Expansive Dreams

[cripp7]

1) Go to your Civilizations IV folder and create a directory called 'Beyond the Sword 3.17',

2) Copy your Beyond the Sword files into the new directory

3) Update to 3.19.

4) Run the game from the 3.17 folder, a new folder in your My Games\Beyond the Sword 3.17 will be created. Exit the game

5) Move ALL YOUR 3.17 SAVES to the 3.17 saves directory so you don't get them confused.

 

[sturick]

Thank you Cripp...I will try that tomorrow!

 

[Sirloin]

I don't want the game to stall out here on account of my autopatching issues so I want to follow up and see where all of the other players are at in terms of patching or copying their install to maintain two versions. If its not clear within the next 24h that the rest of the team is able to continue a game at 3.19, I would recommend someone just-replay my set and I'll drop out.

(updated as people respond)
Grandad1982 - will patch if the team goes to 3.19
Charles Li - unknown
pigswill - staying at 3.17
Sirloin - stuck at 3.19
sturick - will try a copied install
cripp7 - ready for 3.17 and 3.19

Please post with your intentions (or if you're unwilling/unable to patch), as well as if you have 3.19 game ready to continue. Apologies again for causing this headache.

 

[cripp7]

already patched for both version

 

[sturick]

I haven't had a chance to try it yet...hopefully I can try tonight.

I know I am up next...but I figure we don't want to play anything until we hear from the rest of the group.

 

[grandad1982]

I'll just go straight to 3.19 as I have nothing holding me back in 3.17 if this game goes to 3.19.

 

[pigswill]

I'm still playing sgotm and too lazy (and/or stupid) to go for dual install so I'll drop out and let Sirloin play 3.19.

I will no doubt lurk and make dumb and unhelpful comments.

 

[Sirloin]

Charles?

We haven't heard from you in over a week when we needed you to post a save from your set. You still out there? Can you patch up or copy your install to continue a 3.19 game?

 

[grandad1982]

I might tentativally put Charles as MIA. If and when he reappears he will have to patch to 3.19 to join back in.

Its a real shame to loss you pigswill. Please feel free to join in again at any point! Also lurk and comment as much as you like.

Roster
Grandad1982 - 3.19
Charles Li - MIA
pigswill - Lurking
Sirloin - 3.19
sturick - Up now 3.19
cripp7 - On deck 3.19

Right now that the patch buisness has been sorted lets get down to the game!

 

[sturick]

I'm in and will play my set tomorrow!!!

Maybe a recap of the plan would do us some good...

 

[grandad1982]

Well at the moment I would say our plan is to keep our economy improving and whilst preparing to hit Wang.

What do we want to do with the GSci? Acadamy in which ever city we might want to make our main sci city (we'd need to decide that)? Bulb (not sure what he'll bulb)? Settle?
I'd probably go with the Acadamy. Maybe Ulundi? Or is that a waste if we concentrate on hammers here?

ATM we are teching Currency. Maybe we should swap out to Construction so we can build some cats sooner rather than later. Then whilst we tech currency (and then probably CoL) we finish our war prep and go bash some heads.

If we're lucky after our war with Wang we might be able to hit Asoka almost straight away. Its a little way off but begining to prepare now will give us more options in the future.

 

[Sirloin]

Tech:
Currency and Construction will take about 20-25 turns each at current research rates. Both are important, so its your choice which is first.

Econ: We're at 40% research right now (although when Bula grows in 2t it can work a goldmine and we can bump to 50%)

Military:
Swordsmen quest requires 8 total. General buildup ahead of cats is important.

Expansion:
Ironfish needs a settler built if you want to go here
Northeastern Barb city can be taken whenever you want with the force we have at/near Bula.

 

[grandad1982]

I forgot about Iron/Fish. If your whipping out some swords etc then maybe overflow build it.

 

[sturick]

Lets get this ball rolling again!

Preturn

I take a look at the cities to refresh myself with the game again.

Ulundi is looking good. It's gonna need a couple more cottages soon though.

Umung has got a farm cooking which is good as the extra food is needed here.
Plus that spot will irrigate the corn later.

Nobamba is getting a mine...I think I will send the second worker here back to Ulundi to make those cottages.

Bula needs to grow to size 4 before comfortably working the goldmine.
That shouldn't take too long.

Kwa is 6 turns away from blowing up with its fishies!

Tech I will switch to Construction...it will let us build cats sooner.
Plus we have lousy trade routes as it is...getting more right now doesn't help.

My goal for the set is to finish the swordsman quest, raze the barb city of Bactrian (we don't need the maintenance right now...plus I think 1S is a slightly better location anyways) and to found the ironfish city.

I have to turn down science to 30%...construction in 24 turns.

(1) 395 BC

I shuffle some workers around and finish building the workboat at Kwa.

(2) 380 BC

Kwa granary>ik

Christianity spreads in Nobamba.

(3)365 BC

Umgu sword>sword
Plus they get a border pop.

I think we should have enough to take down Bactrian so the forces are on their way.

(4) 350 BC

Asoka completes the Oracle.

Ulundi sword>settler for ironfish.
21 freakin turns though.

I notice that Wang has Construction now.
That means he can field Hwachas.
BOO!!!

(5) 335 BC

Not bad...third most powerful nation.
I can live with that.

Wang is sixth...he probably can't live much longer with that!

(6) 320 BC

Kwa pops its borders so the fishing boat finally hooks it up.

Umung sword>sword

(7) 305 BC

Great Scientist due in 7 turns.
I'm not sure what the best play for him is right now.
Lets wait until we see what he can bulb for us before thinking too hard about it.

Bulwalyo finally grows into its gold mine.
I can safely bump up research to 40% and construction now due in 12 turns!

I whip the library in Nobabma so we can hopefully work another scientist spec here.
Plus we can start in on the ikhanda here.

(8) 290 BC

Nothing much to say...

(9) 275 BC

Same story, different day...

(10) 260 BC

I whip out the Ik at Nobamba...with 5 in maintenance here this should help alot!

(11) 245 BC

Nobamba puts its overflow from the Ik into a worker (5 turns)

Sury gets a great scientist.

(12) 230 BC

Willem gets declared upon my Sury.
Willem wants help from the civ furthest away from his enemy.

Maybe if you didn't spam nothing but missionaries you might have an army to defend yourself.

Sury is most likely to be our competition in this game methinks.
If he can acquire Willems Christian shrine he will become a powerhouse!

Umung builds sword #7 and gets started on sword #8!

My troops are waiting outside of Bactrian to wipe it out.
However, I think I will wait until we have completed the sword quest before attacking.
This way I don't lose any swords prolonging our quest.
Secondly, the quest will provide us with CRI. I would be wasting promos until that happens.

Only three more turns.

(13) 215 BC

As I predicted...Willem has no army to defend himself.
Utrecht falls to the Khmer empire...
Surys culture allowed him to move right next to the city upon declaring.

Asoka wants us to cancel deals with Mao...no deal!
You are number two on our hit list buddy!

(14) 200 BC

Mao joins the war against Sury.

Bulwalyo library>worker

Okay so we get our great scientist...here is my plan.
It probably isn't the most optimal play but I did put good thought into it so if it is a bad play don't be too mad.

Construction is due in probably 4 turns (actually 5 but just barely)
I say we sit on the GP until we finish Construction.
Then we trade it to someone for Alphabet. 3 civs currently don't know it and everyone else has Alpha to trade.
We also should try and backfill as much as possible.
This will make the scientist bulb something else.
According to a list I found the scientist should buld Aesethetics now.
I say that we do that.

No one currently knows about Aesthetics (monopolies are always good) so we have a trade piece if we need it.
That would also let us tech Literature next (assuming we can backfill Poly) and get Ulundi started on the Great Library. It would only take 12 turns at current rates. Not to mention Lit opens up the Heroic Epic that we want to build in Umung. We can't unlock it yet but we should be pretty close!

If I have wasted 4 turns of extra research then so be it...I hope that won't be the case!

I whip out the Ikhanda in Kwa...we don't want to whip this city below size two.
We always want to work the fish and gems tiles here. Thats why I waited until it was 1 turn shy of size 4.

(15) 185 BC

Umung sword #8>impi for stack protection
Wang is running around a couple of chariots.

Kwa ik>library

Jules gets a great scientist.

We complete the swordman quest and taking Bactrian will be cake!
I promote one of our swords to CRII and he has 98% odds to win!

We win handily...and I notice the first new aspect of version 3.19
You can now inspect a city before choosing to keep or raze it!

Excellent feature! Now you should never accidentaly raze a city with 4 GGs or wonders ever again!

We only get 67 gold from the pillage of the city but thats enough to bump science to speed up Construction by a turn. I do so.

The three victories by our swordsmen will allow them to become CR III!
I think it behooves us to take three more swords and train them on the barb city to our west, Harappan. It is on a hill so it might not be quite as easy but we should still have good odds in our favor. Worth at least checking it out!

65.4% odds with a CR II sword...not great but not too bad either.
What does the group think?

(16) 170 BC

Nobamba worker>worker
I think we should switch to cats when construction comes in. Whip out the cats and put the overflows into the worker.

(17) 155 BC

A turn of silly requests...

No we will open the borders in our own special way very soon Wang!

No we do not cave to the demands of the weakest civ on the planet!

(18) 140 BC

Construction arrives...I queue up Currency but I think if my plan works out like I think it should then we can go for Lit.

Umung impi>impi

Well lets see who we can trade Construction with.

Sury will give us Alpha and Archery for Construction and Mysticism.
Sounds good to me.

Alright now I can backfill Sailing, Meditation and Poly with Asoka.
But first I want to bulb Aesthetics with our GS.
Getting sailing will make him bulb Compass and we don't want that!

I bulb Aesthetics.

Lets now go to Asoka and get us some backfill techs...

That is a great stopping point!

Wrapup

I think this is going to work out perfectly.
Ulundi will finish its settler in 7 turns.
Lit will be done in 8 turns...we can probably micro it to finish in 7 turns I bet.
Then it can start in on the Great Library.
We probably will want to fire the two scientist temporarily to speed up the process.
We have 3 good forests that are ready to chop too.
Plus we have no competition for it so we should win the GL race with no worries.

I think we should try and raze Harappan and train a few more of our swords.
5 or 6 CR III swords and a good number of cats should plow through even protective archers no problem!

I have a worker getting everything roaded up for Ironfish.

Roster
Grandad1982 --->on deck
CharlesLi --->???
Pigswill ---> lurking
Sirloin ---> cool pink center
Sturick ---> just played
Cripp7 ---> up next

 

[cripp7]

I think we're at a good place atm. Just keep working on cats. Right now we have 8swords, our stack should be 9-10 swords, 3-5axe, 6-8 cats to take Wang. maybe more cats though, everyone pitch in on how big our stack should be

 

[sturick]

I envision the stack looking like this:
10 swords...they will be quite strong and CRII out of the gate so we will be using them almost exclusively for city attacks.
2 axes...for stack defense and killing any melee stragglers outside of city limits
3 impis...for stack defense and unhooking of resources if need be.
The number of cats depends on if we want to finish the war in one fell swoop...or if we want to take Wonsan and then stop after taking Seoul.
I say we take around 12 cats and try to finish him off all at once...if after we take Seoul it looks like we don't have enough siege then we can stop and regroup.

 

[Sirloin]

Stack sizes sound about right. I tend to favor more cats, but ultimately it depends what the situation looks like once we get our 6th cat or so - whether we want to wait for more or just hit it. In this case I think we should drop the hammer once we've got six-eight.

Looking at the save we're in good shape. I'm fine with building GL in the capital.

Some trading stuff:
Surya will do gold silver for gems.
A few people have calendar. We have banana, 2x dye, 2x sugar, and silk so its worth shopping around for this once we're ready to trade away Aesth.

Random note:
Horseback riding. I usually skip HBR, but we should at least see if anyone's willing to trade it when we're about ready to attack. A horse archer or two would add a lot of depth to our stack against Hwachas.


Overall, we're on very solid footing and WK's FPs will make some great cities. I look forward to some war.

 

[grandad1982]

10 or so swords, 2-5 Axes, 2-3 Impi and at least 10 Cats (I like to stock up on cats so you can move fast so even more is fine by me).

I also like the idea of getting a few HA to protect the stack so lookinh to trade for HBR is a good idea.

If we over stock the stack then we could even role on into Asoka a take a few of his cities to weaken him for later.

Looks like a nice set sturick. I like the backfilling.

If we're going for the GLib then the next GSci should go on an Academy.

Trading for Calender would be pretty powerful as the extra would help our economy no end when it comes to working cottages.

 

[sturick]

I just looked for the fun of it and a CRII sword will have about 50% odds when attacking Wonsan.
That is before we break down the 20% cultural defenses.
With CRIII swords it will only get easier.

We might only have to throw 2-3 cats at each city before the swords can easily clean up the mess. Just enough to reduce all defenders health down by a quarter.

If Horseback Riding is available without too much hassle then take it.
I wouldn't lose the monopoly for it though.

Calendar is a different story altogether...almost all of our cities have access to some calendar resources that will benefit us with the bonuses from the tile improvements alone.
We would have zero happy cap worries for quite some time thats for sure.

But with the beaker difference we won't be able to trade it for Aes alone.
Perhaps we trade Aes to someone for HBR.
Then we can trade Aes and HBR to someone for Calendar and Priesthood.

Agreed Grandad, definitely an Acad in Ulundi for sure.

 

[grandad1982]

Just a quike note to say that as with every weekend this is a bad one for me as I have a birthday to attend in Bristol (over 100 miles away from my computer).

So if I 'm up over the weekend then please don't skip me as I'd like a turn! Its been so long now....

The only thing more cats than 2/3 a city would allow is to bombard and colateral in the same turn reducing the number of PRO archers Wang can whip. However bombarding a city thats at 20% might not really be an issue if we're willing to lose a cat or 2 softening up the defenders.

Even though war is still a set or 2 off we should start to consider which cities to keep and which to raze.

On the home front if you need to run the sci slider high and at a loss to dovetail Lit and the Ulundi settler being ready then it seems like a good idea.