Gator02 - Learning to Walk

[SkunkDoctor]

Rant Warning!



Come on Bez, it's really not much fun when a key player keeps threatening to take his ball and go home.

LURKY:
Really, that isn't much of a rant. At the risk of offending a player who fits my playstyle much better than brad, and who I have learned much from in this SG, I would like to extend this rant.
@Bez: You aren't being a team player here. It isn't just a matter of you taking your ball and going home because you are tired of playing. The guys on the court, depending on you to hold your position, wanted to try out Brad's brand new ball. The basket, however, is still ten feet high. Just because Brad's strat...er ball... may have less grip and more bounce doesn't mean the way the game's played changes. You aren't even quitting when things are going wrong, you are quitting when you don't get your way.
Also, keep in mind that the entire SG community is watching this thread with interest.
No blackmail intended.

 

[DJMGator13]

Question on saving the promotions: It appears that City Raider I promo is not one of the options for a newly built Grenadier, but if you promo a maceman to CR1 it remains when the unit is upgraded. Is Combat1 the best option for the newly built grenadiers? The other choices are mostly defensive.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

Nice eye, Gator. Promotion carryover in upgraded units is indeed a big part of cIV. When going the grenadier route, continuing to build macemen with CR II and upgrading them to grenadiers is often better than just building grenadiers. As you say, most of the grenadier promotions are defensive, so it is best to only build regular grenadiers to defend a stack or for a medic (unless you don't really need the extra firepower of CRII).

 

[DJMGator13]

Incase you can't tell I'm in the warfare mode of that test game. How long does it take a captured city to come out of resistence and does the number of troops stationed there make it any faster?

 

[Gaspar~]

Number of turns is based on some combination of Population and ethnicity of its inhabitants (ie a border town where your culture as already encroached will come out of resistance faster.) Troops has no effect. The only way to make it happen faster is by dropping a culture bomb there. I'm sure Brad or someone has better numbers than that though.

 

[DJMGator13]

Thanks Gaspar.

Man the war unhappiness hits pretty quick also. I'm losing production in my core cities. Should wars be fought in quick burst? Grab some cities, make a cease fire, wait the 10 turns then repeat process. Also if you change targets do that same war unhappiness continue or is it like in C3 where war weariness was tracked seperately for each civ you were at war with?

 

[bradleyfeanor]

It is good to keep wars short and sweet, and weariness is tracked separately for different civs, just like in Civ3.

 

[Bezhukov]

"You aren't even quitting when things are going wrong, you are quitting when you don't get your way."

Correct you are. The former to me being a far more serious offense than the latter, BTW, the latter being trivial in the absence of the former. I attempted to make a statement about where I see the play of this interesting new game headed before many of the most interesting parts have even been considered. If one chooses to hear that statement as mere schoolyard pettiness, that's one's prerogative.

"Nice eye, Gator. Promotion carryover in upgraded units is indeed a big part of cIV. When going the grenadier route, continuing to build macemen with CR II and upgrading them to grenadiers is often better than just building grenadiers. As you say, most of the grenadier promotions are defensive, so it is best to only build regular grenadiers to defend a stack or for a medic (unless you don't really need the extra firepower of CRII)."

Yes, I had forgotten about this. Good reason to invade sooner rather than later. I'm (also) having some difficulty thinking in terms of an isolated start. Usually when I have border to negotiate, I'll have some City Raider units on hand as a matter of course that continue to get upgraded througout the game. I still like to build naturals that can eventually get the march promotion.

I have played one AW game where many of my experienced units had march and commando, and that was great fun.

"The strats you list above are what I would call finesse strategies."



Compared to the grim inevitability of sheer financial dominance, I can assure you your chosen course of action will require considerably more finesse.

 

[DJMGator13]

We definately need to make sure we have some cats in our attack group. Being able to bombard city defenses is huge, especially when you get the accuracy promo. They are reducing the city defenses by 15 per hit in my current game. With 4 cats you can reduce a 60% city defense bonus to zero in 1 turn.

 

[Bezhukov]

Might not hurt to bring some HA's as well, as they have a bonus vs cats and we gave Mansa the ability to build his own (cats, that is - we need to keep our maces healthy for city-taking duties).

 

[bradleyfeanor]

I still like to build naturals that can eventually get the march promotion.

That is a promotion I have been meaning to explore/test. Does a unit with March heal only itself as it moves or all the units in a moving stack?

 

[Bezhukov]

Only itself, but the stack only needs one medic to heal all units faster, including the march units, so the ideal is to bring one medic (I usually use a cat, although explorers work nicely), and have the rest be march. March units heal each turn regardless of what action they've taken, including attacks.

 

[leif erikson]

OK, so where are we and what are we doing now?

Who is up and where are we going. To visit Mursa? With Galleons full of Maces, with some Cats and a few Horse Archers?

 

[Bezhukov]

And maybe even a medic explorer tagging along! Their mobility is nice, and they're unlikely to be inadvertently killed.

 

[DJMGator13]

Roster
bradleyfeanor - Laying out our battle plans
Gator - having to work some tonight instead of playing cIV
Bede - just played and meet the neighbors
Bezhukov - skip, at his request
leif - Up

One thing that remains the same from prior versions of Civ is to have a Battle Plan with troop movement goals. In my practice game I wasted alot of time running troops from one place to another instead having a focused plan. The war weariness sets in quick and affects your production.

 

[Bezhukov]

"The war weariness sets in quick and affects your production."

WW also results from success, which I believe is different and should be allowed for. I tend not to notice it much, as my larger cities have most of the infra you guys are forgoing (theaters give 2 happies per 10% lux, markets also provide extra happies), I tend to be in Rep or Nationalism or Free Religion, which all give happiness cushion, etc...

You guys will have exclusive access to many of the world's happiness resources soon though, which will help.

 

[DJMGator13]

You guys will have exclusive access to many of the world's happiness resources soon though, which will help.

I hear you. My practice game I had very few resources when I started the campaign. Now I have a wide variety of items and my economy is thriving even as I have tripled the number of cities. I should finish up that game this week and I'll post it. It won't be a great date, because of my poor troop movement, but it has given me a chance to put some of the things I learned here into action.

 

[leif erikson]

Roster
bradleyfeanor - Laying out our battle plans
Gator - having to work some tonight instead of playing cIV
Bede - just played and meet the neighbors
Bezhukov - skip, at his request
leif - Up

OK, I've got it. Will try to post a to do list in tomorrow before playing.

As far as rushing troops is concerned, I was thinking we should probably rush one per city, except the capitol, keeping it in the queue while starting another so that once we switch to Theocracy, the overflow hammers should help complete the second one fairly quickly. I'm not sure I know how to move the items in the queue around. Is it click and drag or something else?

In addition, with four Galleons we can transport 12 units. What force structure do we need: something like 8 Maces, 3 Cats and a Horse Archer?

 

[Bezhukov]

Does Mansa have any minerals or horses? Might be good to bring an intial spear/xbow/longbow in the stack as well. I've had good results with combined arms. Maybe go light on the cats on the initial landing to handle counters, then bring the cats on the second wave.

Shift-select something to put in on the end of the queue. It will remember if that thing has hammers already spent toward its production, so you can produce it for a while, deselect it, then shift select while something else is at the head of the queue.

 

[Bezhukov]

"My practice game I had very few resources when I started the campaign"

This is a very crucial constraint, along the lines of the old despotism penalty. I've had to reconsider my disinclination toward early religions, as if you're missing early happies, its really tough to get enough research together to grow expeditiously.