FM01 Team Barbarian OCC (Prince)

[friskymike]

OK great discussion guys
I was thinking of the Engineer super specialist myself, as the +3 hammers will really add up over the course of the game, and it means we will be able to build more units to help the barbs. However I think really at any stage the barbs will probably only be advancing against a one or two cities at a time so we don't need huge production. Tech advantage is probably more important, and the great people points from GL are huge, the more GPs we can add to London the more powerful it will be.

 

[friskymike]

AD 755 we made peace with Monty at the cost of Org Rel & CoL, so that Memphis can survive and grow.
We build the Great Library in AD 770 and GP points increased +8.
Pillaging HA discovers a road leading to the east... which leads to another Russian city which has a source of Copper.
AD 820 barely defeat a defending spear on the Copper.
AI weed as they have an Axe in the city which could have easily killed the weaked HA, now we are free to pillage.
AD 830 Machinery completes, and we start on Compass for Harbours. Feudalism (Longbows) -> Guilds (Knights) should be next.
Towards the end of my turns we started attacking Moscow, lost an Axe and retreated some City Attack cats, but it is now down to one weakened Archer and the Barbs should take it next turn.

I'll post some screenshots later, sorry bit pressed for time. We are building the National Epic, maybe we want to change this to a Harbour for growth.

 

[rddc05]

Things are looking good. I wonder why the barbs aren't making maces, though. Do they lack iron? They should discover calendar in 18 turns and we can hook up the dyes for them and make them a lot more cash money.

I was wondering whether it might be worth it to send a galley southeast and around the coast of the "C" shaped continent to see if we can get some better trade routes going, maybe trade resources too. I think you (or the AI player) have to actually map the route with a boat to hook up the trade network without roads. It would be interesting to see if the barbs get trade routes from our exploration. If they do, it might be worth making a detour to currency as they need a lot of gold for city and troop upkeep.

 

[friskymike]

Screenshots...

AD 755 - We make peace with the Monty...

AD 755 - pillaging HA discovers a road going somewhere...

AD 800 - the road goes to Yekaterinburg, AI weed as the axe could have destroyed the damaged HA to prevent us pillaging the copper next turn

AD 950 - Moscow about to fall to the barb HA under our HA

 

[JerichoHill]

Okay, well I see it is my turn, so I should be able to play tonight. I will ensure that the campaign against Peter continues

Please leave advice and recs

 

[friskymike]

Things are looking good. I wonder why the barbs aren't making maces, though. Do they lack iron?

Yes they do. There is some 2 tiles south-east of Novgorod, see the last screenshot, that will probably be their next target once they get Moscow.

I was wondering whether it might be worth it to send a galley southeast and around the coast of the "C" shaped continent to see if we can get some better trade routes going, maybe trade resources too. I think you (or the AI player) have to actually map the route with a boat to hook up the trade network without roads. It would be interesting to see if the barbs get trade routes from our exploration. If they do, it might be worth making a detour to currency as they need a lot of gold for city and troop upkeep.

Well, this is a good idea but theres no point at the moment as I don't think the trade route can go through waters controlled by a civ you are at war with (Russia). Actually I'm not sure now, anyone know? Currency might still be useful, depending on what tax rate our friends are running with.

Also, I noticed that even though Memphis is now at peace with its surrounding civs, the barbs kept building more horse archers there rather than infrastructure. Perhaps there is nothing it can build? Although quite often barbs will build the colussus if they have a chance, and Memphis already has a forge. Or maybe its because they want to go attack Russia... but at the moment they can't go anywhere unless we got OB with Monty which won't happen.

 

[friskymike]

JH: We need to build a Harbour sooner rather than later for health, then complete the National Epic for great people and also build some maces as we only have HAs left for pillaging/city attack.

Tech target is Guilds for Knights then its up to you. Currency may help our friends, Music would give us a great artist, and its required for Military Tradition, Education for a University & Oxford Uni to really cement our tech lead, lots of options.

For later we should remember that Scientific Method expires the Great Library, so we should try and research other things until we really need it.

edit: Just thought currency would be useful for us too, or maybe caste system (we don't need slavery anymore), to run some merchants and try and generate a Great Merchant. A merchant super specialist gets +1 food which would be really useful as London is relatively food-poor. We'd probably need some Great Merchant generating wonders too to the boost the chances of generating a GM. Something to think about.

 

[rddc05]

The barbs are running at 70% coin.

Great Merchant Wonders are: Colossus, Great Lighthouse, Statue of Liberty, UN and Versailles. Nat'l wonders are FP and Wall Street. Not sure about trade routes through closed borders/war.

Go get 'em JH.

 

[JerichoHill]

Me Want To Smashy Smash Smash, at the Monster Bash

Okay, so I load up the save and I'm looking at the greatest capital known to uncivilized man. What a mess! I think its better to get a few more turns out of the National Epic, so I will not switch production. My Order of Production will be (FINISH) National Epic, then Harbor, then switch to Macemen. Maybe I'll try to get some seafood resources.

I applaud the HA at Peter's Y city, as its preventing Peter from moving his workers out. Brilliant tactical move there, whoever did it, you get a from me.

I switch from Feudalism to Music to get the Great Artist. I plan on doing some cultural bombing in Russian territory.

Uhhh...

GE spawned = Hanging Gardens
GA from Music = GA in umm...that barbarian city that was near Peter but has Iron 1 cultural expansion away from it...joined with city to help get that started.

Built a harbor, macemen, confucian missionary (to help our barb cities grow...)

Armies on route to Peter's land

Smashy Smashy was achieved. Barbs razed Novrogod and Moscow
Smashy Smashy bonus is Monty just destroying Washington...

 

[rddc05]

Nicely done JH. I would guess that the OCC city razing rule applies to the barbs too, but they captured cities earlier. I wonder why they are razing them now.

I'm a little confused about the roster, is it my turn now?

 

[UNCpenguin]

Lurker's Comment: Well it seems that y'all and the barbs are starting to clean house. It would be very interesting if the game lasted long enough to get a spy in a barb city to see what crazyness actually goes on in their cities because most of us only get to see whats happened post capture which knocks it down a peg or two.

 

[friskymike]

We have done some swapping for individual rounds, but this is the original roster (20 turns each):
Friskymike
JerichoHill
Pvblivs - up now
rddc05

I don't know *why* the barbs are razing cities? I ran a test game last night and the barbs were able to capture cities still in 1.61 (I thought it might have been a 'feature' of the patch), although on one occasion they chose to raze a city. Maybe their economy cannot handle extra cities at this stage? It might be worth some more testing of this if anyone has time. Maybe find an old savegame (not from this game obv) in the middle ages and give the barbs a bunch of modern armour, see how many cities they capture and how many they raze.

Btw in my test game last night with a bit of help from the world builder I achieved the domination, conquest and spaceship victory conditions, but the game did not end. The victory conditions are shown on the info screen but the game does not end - so the game is rigged so the barbs cannot win. We'll have to award ourselves the victory when we reach the required victory conditions. Also, with conquest victory allowed (unlike this game) if it comes down to the player's barbarian team and one AI that AI is given the conquest victory win, as the player is not counted as a civilisation by the game obviously - similarly to how our score is not listed in the bottom right of the screen, only the AI scores.

UNCPenguin: We can see in all the barb cities, look back in the thread for some screenshots inside their cities. Maybe some more screenies of the barb's empire would be in order by the next player?

 

[Pvblivs]

Got it and will play tomorrow!

I think we should raze the smaller AI cities ourselves hoping that more barbs spawn there. It would be not that good if the barbs conquered a small city and razed the bigger next one because the newer is expensive. What do you think?

What can we do to lower the barbarian costs? If we can't we will have to go for conquest.

Our next target after Peter is Montezuma. We should be careful to catch him in a war that is largest stacks do not harrass us.

 

[friskymike]

Well, I think we need to run some tests try and find out if it is cost that is causing the barbs to raze cities.

Also we need to carefully consider which cities to raze. I *think* we need to keep a "path" between cities, such that when the barbs take one city, the culture of the next AI city they are at ware with is within the viewing range of that city once its borders expand (ie. not in the barbs fog). Otherwise the barbs will stop building military and just build infrastructure. I'm not entirely certain on this but its what I've observed, JH would probably agree. (?)

If we want to make the game more interesting we can certainly declare war on a few more AI, and start pillaging them to **** to slow their growth. Maybe wait for cavalry to do this, so we have time to lay down a bit more infrastructure in London (eg. Unis/Oxford) before going 100% military.

Currency will give the barbs an extra trade route, also if they can capture St Petersburg rather than razing it that has the Great Lighthouse. If we get a Great Prophet we could send it to Memphis for the shrine, provided judaism has spread naturally so there will be some shrine income. We can also of course also change some of their farms to cottages.

We can't go for conquest as the victory condition was disallowed. However see my previous post - as we are the barb team the game will not let us win, we have to check the victory conditions screen to see when we meet the victory conditions. I think we should still try and go for domination. Cultural is possible by generating Great Artists and religions to add to barb cities, but we probably would have needed to start down that route much earlier, plus London is not the best GP farm. Spaceship is also possible but thats boring as we would build all the pieces (barbs will build some wonders but they don't seem to build spaceship parts). Diplo is probably out as nobody likes us as we "declared war on them" in 4000 BC

 

[rddc05]

Well, a kind of unscientific test in the current game would be to get the dyes hooked up for the barbs, which will up their current income a great deal and we could see what happens. The markets and trade routes might help also, it is difficult to tell until we get connected to the trade network of another civ. Is it possible that we can't get connected because we are teamed with the barbs and they are not allowed trade routes with civs they are not teamed with? A galley around the coast might shed some light on these questions.

 

[JerichoHill]

The barbs are taking the cities because the maintenance cost would bring down their economy. There a rule they're obeying somewhere. Thus, currency is in order, plus maybe helping our friends build some courthouses?

If we want to jumpstart the war machine, we can declare on Hatty, but not until we get some units to Memphis to help out defense

 

[Pvblivs]

Hatty is always tough - in military concerns. She usually bunkers hell a lot of units and if there's war it is always very bloody for the opponent.

I would feel better with Monty. As he is always in a different struggle. And I don't want to see him growing too strong.

 

[friskymike]

As a plan going forward, how about getting currency ASAP, that will give the barbs another trade route per city immediately, and start making some more cottages for them. NB Memphis is probably outside the trade network, we would need open borders with hatty to give it some trade routes I think (check the city).

Then we raze all of Peters cities, except St Petersburg which has the Great Lighthouse, hopefully with the small improvements to the barbarian economy above they can capture and keep at least this.

Then as we will be at peace with everyone the barbs will build infrastructure, and we can concentrate on helping them improve their economy. So we want Guilds for grocers then Banking to get their economy healthy before taking on the next AI - which should definitely be Washington or Monty as they will have lost their stacks in their war against each other anyway.

 

[JerichoHill]

Prolly Monty, because Washington is getting trounced by him

 

[friskymike]

Cool, I wasn't sure who was winning, Monty sounds good. Washington normally gets dangerous in the late game when his cottages mature, we'll have to prevent him getting to that stage.