Five take on the world revisited (5CCC - deity)

[hotrod0823]

Here is an update: Was playing then Conquests crashed so I didn't finish will complete tomorrow.

450 AD (0): Survey the situation and we need something to happen quickly. I don't think we are ready to hit the Dutch quite yet and the Aztecs will be an option in 7 turns. Hope china gets another tech to pull a two-fer.

INBT: Well I don't think we want a fight with Sumeria so I pay up with WM and 28 gold. He also was kind enough to cancel our iron deal. He was kind enough to re-deal for a mere 6 gold more.

460 AD (1): More immortals out of Pasargadae. MM to get the next 1 in 2 turns vs. 3. Sumeria has horse available but want to conserve money for tech buys hopefully soon.

470 AD (2): Persepolis builds an immortal and starts another. Trying to get situated to protect the homefront and make a play at the Dutch at the same time. Holding some immortals back.

480 AD (3): Pasargadae immortal parade continues. Oh and BTW Summeria just went industrial .

490 AD (4):Not terribly pleased with our techs and we are in okay shape as far as dutch units are conserned so I politely as him to get the heck out of dodge and he declares war on us. Kill a few randow dutch units and we have a golden age. Move stack to hit Middleburg. Wake the AC stack to hit Rotterdam.

INBT: Sumeria just took out Japan.

500 AD (5): Raze Middelburg with only the loss of 1 immortal. Without any loses Rotterdam at size 10 is razed to the ground. Move the unuses AC towards Maastricht. Hopefully Bactra will expand to give us Horses in 2 more turns.

INBT: sumeria takes out teh Vikes.

510 AD (6): Sumeria builds Magellenes, like they need it. The immortal building continues. The Dutch recalled units in Sumeria to come at us. We need to use the locals to fend them off. For good measure build and Aztec embassy. The ACs get the job done in Maastricht and it is razed to the ground.

520 AD (7): We can now builds horses but immortals are still the way to go.

530 AD (8): Kill many Dutch units via Defence. More immortals are built. Bactra gets a baracks. Clean up a half dozen Dutch in our territories. He will now give up tech for peace but don't want it yet. I have my eye on a nice silk colony.

 

[Aggie]

Very good job Hotrod Ouch on Sumeria though

 

[LKendter]

He will now give up tech for peace but don't want it yet.

I think we have 2 needed techs visible. As long as we aren't at risk lets pointy stick both.

Tech is our biggest danger. I don't want pikes defending against Sumerian cavalry. We need to take advantage of point stick. If he run out of techs, maybe get a good world map as bonus.

 

[LKendter]

A few more thoughts now that we are starting to turn the corner.

1) Let's merge some native workers into our cities while we have the chance (cities under size 12). We should have picked up a few free workers, and we need to start lowering our unit support cost.

2) The Aztecs need to feel pain next. Please don't renew any deals with them. Even with 2 free techs from the Dutch we have a long way to go to catch up. Now if backwards China gets something we don't have maybe we can get further up the tree from the Dutch.

3) We don't want to cripple the Dutch and Aztecs to badly. We will need to start a dogpile against Sumeria soon. We have to stop the run away leader...

 

[Aggie]

I agree with the points Lee makes.

 

[hotrod0823]

Replayed

530 AD (8): Kill some straggling Dutch. Seems like we had more losses this time. Must have been some thing done different.

540 AD (9): Kill more Dutch units. Build more immortals. Add some workers as lee suggested. He will give up Invention and Theology for 515 gold. One more turn of war and see if I can't get that down a little. Also the troups are getting thin at the front.

550 AD (10): Not really happy with the amount of units on the front line I go for the peace deal. So we get Peace, Theology and Invention for 407 gold. Can cancel the ivory deal next turn and the lux deal with the Aztecs anytime.
I changed up a few Immortals to project to get some legs out of the GA.

 

[Aggie]

ROSTER:
Nad---------on deck
gozpel
Aggie
LKendter
Hotrod0823
microbe-------up

 

[Aggie]

Good job Hotrod. But two big question pop up now:

-How to fight a civ that has cavalry and rifles with Immortals, AC's and pikes?
-How to get back into the tech race?

I can't see us profit from a dogpile on Sumeria. We probably are victim number 1. Can we really survive a 20-turn war vs them? We have to wait 10 turns anyway.

What should our plan be now?

Next turn our spices for ivory deal runs out. Please don't renew it!

EDIT: No other civ has Printing Press. Shouldn't we go for this? We would have it in 8 turns with max science (-82 gpt). But could also try a min science run.

 

[LKendter]

I agree we aren't ready for Sumeria yet. We are at least catching up some with tech. I

think the Aztecs owe us some tech and are the next victim. I hope we can pointy-stick some from them.

 

[LKendter]

Note: I will be on vacation from Aug 3 to Aug 9. I will have net access, but will not have any time to play games.

 

[microbe]

I can only play this tomorrow night the earliest. A swap would be fine with me too.

 

[Aggie]

If Nad can play before than, it's ok. But otherwise tomorrow night is fine by me too.

 

[LKendter]

I noticed China is still backwards. We should take advantage of this. Right know we can give them theology for $2 and 2 workers. Our trading with China works out good as we may be able to do a two for one at some point. If they die, we may as well control those workers.

The terrible news is Sumeria has RIFLES deployed already. We need to head toward cavalry ASAP. We can start with gunpowder to locate the salt. We should buy the world map at this point. We really need to judge how much of a monster Sumeria is.

 

[microbe]

preturn: I switch Bactra to temple. Switch Persepolis and Arbela to library. Why is Arbela building a granary at size 11?

Raise sci to 70 to get Printing Press in 10. Invention to China for 2 workers plus 2g.

Moving units out of Netherlands.

(1)560AD: Movement. With a library built PP is due in 8 turns.

IBT Sumeria establishes embassy with us.

(2)570AD: Another library makes PP in 6. I raise sci to 80 and get it in 5 instead.

WM is too expensive so I hold.

IBT China and Netherlands MA vs Aztecs.

(3)580AD: Bactra built temple.

Very bad news, Aztecs have cavalry now!

I hire a clown and a scientist in Gordium, a scientist in Bactra and lower lux to 10.

IBT Lots of Aztec knights pass our territory. Double palace expansion.

(4)590AD: zzz

IBT Sumaria builds Newton.

(5)600AD: Aztecs has 4 cav and 10 knigts in our territory!

IBT Aztecs capture a new Dutch town.

(6)610AD: I start blocking Aztecs as I don't want them to freely trespass us.

IBT we get Printing Press.

(7)620AD:

Printing Press to Sumeria for Gunpowder + 259g.
Two pieces of good news: 1. We have saltpeter! 2. Zulu has no chemistry!
PP+64gpt to Aztecs for Chemistry as it offers much better price than Netherlands.
PP+chemistry+WM+44gpt+11g to Zulu for Chivalry + Education.
PP to Netherlands for WM+96g.
Lower lux to 0 and hire a taxman so we can pay WM+84gpt+411g to Aztecs for Metallury.
I ask her to leave and she declares!
So now we can trade Metallury+WM+5g to Zulu for Banking otherwise I'd have to sell it cheaply to get the 44gpt back to avoid negative income.
Theology to China for Monarchy+3g.

7 techs for 44gpt+72g, plus a serious war.

We have 134gpt income. After GA it probably will drop to almost zero, so I have to hold buying Military Tradition.

Now let's see the bad part. There are about 14 units next to Bactra. We are really in trouble as we have about 7-8 units in it with only ONE pike.

We lose one immortal but kill 2 musket.
AC kills redlined cavalry.

I have to use several slave workers to distract the Aztec SoD. Hope we can hold the city.

We are trading our only ivory to sumeria for spices, and we should have cancelled it long time back. I cancel it as the ivory might be pillaged.

IBT we lose 7 immortals, 2 pike, 1 AC and 2 archers. The best unit in Bactra was once archers, but the city holds. We had some luck as in many battles we win by 1-hp.

(8)630AD: We already have WW. I buy wines+furs from Zulu with 17gpt+2g.

2 AC kill 2 knights, another AC loses to knight and immortal finishes it off. Now the stack is gone. Immortal loses to vet cav, takes 2-hp and promotes it, another immortal finishes it off.

I loan 31g from Sumeria to be able to upgrade 2 pikes to musketmen.

IBT Zulu destroyed China. We lose 3 immortals and one pike to Aztecs. Not THAT bad.

(9)640AD: More movement.

We have 65g so I establish embassy with Netherlands by 50g. It has iron/horses but not saltpeter. Capital has 5 clowns with 3 lux!

I then sign RoP with it so it could get to Aztecs sooner.

There is one bad thing that Netlerlands found a city next to horses and will get it from us after expansion. But this guy has no saltpeter so we can deal with it later. [EDIT: I am not sure if I messed up and moved away some units positioned there by previous players to prevent this situation]

IBT we lose a couple of immortals. The RoP also pays off as Dutch kills a cav for us.

(10)650AD: We kill a reg musket and a redlined cav. We are relatively safe now as I now see only one cav in our territory.

I hope Aztecs will talk soon, but we are more or less OK. Most of units we lost were immortals, but I'd rather they kill them instead of attacking cities or resources.

There is a 2-fer opportunity as Zulu doesn't have Military Tradition, but our GA will end soon so we shouldn't use up all our gpt.

Aztec's horses is very close to us. I would send a knight or AC to pillage it asap. Every turn there is one or two cav coming out of the fog and attacking our immortals, very annoying.

During the war I didn't attack much. I let AI attack mostly instead. There is an MDI in the north and we don't need to care much, as usually Netherlands will kill them for us.

Try to build fort on the ivory next turn when the nearby stack of workers finishes the current job.

I didn't really prepare for the war very well as I moved most of our units to the south, while when the war started there were lots of Aztec units in the north, but I took the risk and I think we've survived the worst turns. I've got us 8 techs and we are still making +145gpt!

 

[microbe]

 

[Aggie]

I can't judge the situation exactly, because I have no access to civ. But from what I read we are doing ok in the war and have a lot of techs. If we survive/keep up in tech until artillery things look well.

ROSTER:
Nad---------up
gozpel------on deck
Aggie
LKendter
Hotrod0823
microbe

 

[LKendter]

7 techs for 44gpt+72g,

Is a 7 for a new trading record?
That definitely qualifies as catching up on tech even if some was optional (Monarchy).

================================

 

[Aggie]

One runaway civ and three stronger AI who are still in the MA. I must say that those Aztecs look scary. We probably have to pay for peace, but that would still net us a lot of money.

7 techs is certainly great, but he took a risk

 

[LKendter]

7 techs is certainly great, but he took a risk

I agree it was a gamble, but we needed something to catch up to Sumeria!
We now can build those important banks to improve the economy during the next peace break. We still have work to catch up, but the hole doesn't feel hopeless like it did during my turns.

 

[Aggie]

I am very happy that microbe took that risk, make no mistake. But the next player may still have a lot to do. I see Aztec forces around our empire.