GK2- The Training Day Experiment

[Mistfit]

Do you have a link to how this was done in game play? I'd be interested to read the specifics of how this was used. This is why I love this thread.

2000 posts most of them are Alerums

 

[mad-bax]

8. Avoid enemy units that do not garrison cities
(I'm afraid I don't really understand this one. If your eventual goal is the cities, what's the concern with the units that aren't garrisoning them? Is it mostly a question of pulling troops into cities for extra defense?)

The point here is that people will attack a stray enemy unit just because they can. People do it. I don't know why. This disperses their SOD and it uses a movement turn of a unit that could be used another way (healing, pillaging, moving). OTOH killing those units does have some marginal benefits sometimes. It increases war weariness in the opponent and it prevents that unit disappearing into the fog only to appear on top of your only source of iron 4 turns later. But generally, chasing strays is a in my opinion.

 

[mad-bax]

Mistfit: Go to the Hall of Fame thread and look up Sir Plebs Sid game. The other game is Bamspeedies "Beyond Sid" game which is so impressive it is disheartening. He kept a log of units killed where he was killing 3 or 4 hundred units EVERY turn for the loss of half a dozen of his own. I haven't go links to hand I'm afraid, and I am at work and should really do some I think

 

[Mistfit]

Ok I found Sir Pleb's

SirPleb, Going for Sid

 

[GJ]

And, for those interested, here's Bamspeedy's Beyond Sid game.

Edit: Wow, 50:1 kill ratios are commonplace in this game. Incredible! It looks like it's often the result of cannon bombardment followed by attacks with armies...maybe I should reconsider siege weapons for the Persepolis job?

 

[Dianthus]

If you rush a barracks in a captured city, you must do this instead of rushing a temple (because of the rate at which you are advancing and the time it takes to quell resistance). This puts your healing units at high flip risk. By razing and replacing a city and then rushing the rax, the flip risk is far lower.

mad-bax, I'm sure you know this, I just wanted to clarify it. Building a temple makes no immediate difference to the flip-probability. The only difference a temple will make is when it accumulates enough local culture that you exceed the AIs local culture it will halve the flip risk. This is unlikely to happen if the AI has owned the city for a long time. The main things to do to avoid flips are:

1. Ensure all 20 surrounding tiles are not controlled by an AI civ.
2. Get rid of resistors (a resistor is 2x as bad as a foreignor).
3. Get rid of foreignors.
4. Don't let the city riot (rioting doubles the flip risk)
5. If possible get the city into WLTKD (so halving the flip risk).
6. This ones more long term, wipe out the AI.

Garissoning is also possible, but may not be a good use of your troops unless it's essential to hold the city.


Razing and resettling will give a zero flip risk, assuming:

1. All 20 surrounding tiles are not controlled by an AI civ.
2. The settler was native, so all citizens in the city are also native.

 

[alerum68]

Bede, are you like me and when you play your solo games, you try to get your outlying cities up to the max their land can hold, and hiring specialist all over the place? I love when I can use Engingers in the modern age, and make those huge cities that are somewhat compact pumping units the same as the core.

Alot was brought up over the last 24 hours... going to take a while to digest and comment on, but basically I'd suggest stopping, regrouping into 2 stacks, and healing for 2-3 turns, then going at it again. That would be much quicker then building arty, and then moving him all the way down through panama, and to the bottom of the contient. That will take 1-2 players turns in itself. Just heal, regroup, and go from there. We may be tired, but he has no one to be tired with. Also, waiting those 2-3 turns hill cause him to rush at least that many of citizens to make units. If we can get him down to size 6, the city will be ours. Even on a hill, we can take it at that point, with min loss.

 

[Mistfit]

In the six turns from 1555 to 1580 the FOD (Funnel Of Doom ) was operating at full capacity. During this stage 189 Incan units attacked my city and died in the attempt, and I destroyed another 482 Incans further down the funnel. Average 112 Incans/turn. I lost 12 Cavalry during this time, average 2/turn. A good kill ratio. I was very happy with the funnel!

SirPleb calls this a "good" kill ratio! I think this is a bit of an understatement.

 

[scoutsout]

Wow - it's hard to believe I didn't get a word in edgewise on Page 100...

Those of you who didn't catch Mad-Bax's questions and advice would be well served to back up a page and read those (and Mistfit/GJs answers). There is a lot of Good Stuff there.

Some questions on the current tactical situation:

1) Is a Combined Arms approach feasible in this campaign? How would you go about the business of preparing a Combined Arms Stack? What unit mix would you use, and how would you marshall those forces? (Hint: Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics...)

2) Alerum suggested regrouping and renewing the offensive. What kinds of things might you do to strengthen this approach? (Hint: what do you get when you upgrade a redlined or an Elite* Mounted Warrior?)

 

[Mistfit]

1) Is a Combined Arms approach feasible in this campaign? How would you go about the business of preparing a Combined Arms Stack? What unit mix would you use, and how would you marshall those forces?

I'll have to look at the save tonight or tomorrow to answer this. I don't know what forces we have there to mix.

2) Alerum suggested regrouping and renewing the offensive. What kinds of things might you do to strengthen this approach?

Good one scout... you can upgrade a redlined or *elite unit to a cav and "poof" one turn later it will be instantly healed.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

It is nice to know that when I have a busy day at work there are always guys like mad-bax who can pick up the conversation.

Thanks MB for some really great insights.

 

[coletite]

In the case of an elite, it "demotes" to vet when upgraded. An elite* would then have an oportunity to promote and produce another leader.

As far as combined arms, the most value would be in MWs/cats. I don't remember us having many cats and it would probably be a waste to build a bunch right now. A spear/MW (or knight) combo might be useful, since we will want to station our units on the hill to not cross the river. We won't need many spears though since there shouldn't be much of a counter attack left.

While we are resting up our units, sending some pillagers in could be useful. If we can starve Persepolis a bit and keep them struggling, we can reduce X-man's ability to marshal the forces.

 

[Bede]

@alerum,

Yes indeedy I do love those IA specialists, cops and engineers. They can really make a big empire hum right along.

@Mistfit,
A small hint: you have cash to work with and an upgrade path.

 

[denyd]

I would think the #1 short term goal is to get Persia off the map ASAP. That would prevent anymore flips and allow you to go back to builder mode and prepare for a cross the ocean invasion (if domination/conquest is the team goal). If I were playing this solo, I would be tempted to collect all my MW for a single thrust at Persepolis. If the retreating MW can dish out 1-2 HP per attack, you should be able to take the city. No war weariness to worry about in case the losses are high (Though personally I hate to burn up units just to win battles).

 

[Sir Bugsy]

In the case of an elite, it "demotes" to vet when upgraded. An elite* would then have an oportunity to promote and produce another leader.

Excellent point coletite. A lot of people do not know this. That is why most people will keep an elite unit and not upgrade it. When using your obsolete elite units you want to carefully pick your fights. I once got a leader using an elite horse on a redlined rifle. And then there is always the elite spear

 

[Bede]

I would think the #1 short term goal is to get Persia off the map ASAP. That would prevent anymore flips and allow you to go back to builder mode and prepare for a cross the ocean invasion (if domination/conquest is the team goal). If I were playing this solo, I would be tempted to collect all my MW for a single thrust at Persepolis. If the retreating MW can dish out 1-2 HP per attack, you should be able to take the city. No war weariness to worry about in case the losses are high (Though personally I hate to burn up units just to win battles).

Concur, especially as regards the objective>

 

[scoutsout]

If there are some Warlord/Regent/Monarch level players lurking ere who would like to get in on a friendly Regent/Variant SG, Mauer still has a spot or two open his new SG. Just post in the thread if you want to play.

 

[Mistfit]

First things First:
I do not believe that with the troops we have available that the Persians can be killed off within the next 10 turns. We have no troops being made in our mainland for reinforcement and we are lacking about 8 units in the south to finish the Persians off. I'd also say that talking about mixed units is a moot point because the only thing we can mix with are non-existant units. Sure I'd love to have 15-20 Cat's to mix in but they are not there. We can mix in a Knight or two once we can afford them. Other than that I don't see a good mix at this point. Also we need units in the Jungle to the north to take out the town on our penisula. I think that the war machine was turned off too soon. We moved to making city improvements way to early. This of course is my opinion. I'd love someone to tell me how it can be done. I personally can;t see it happening. But this is why I'm here...I wanna learn.

Note: The english have a settler pair out on the ex-zulu lands in the East.

 

[mad-bax]

mad-bax, I'm sure you know this, I just wanted to clarify it. Building a temple makes no immediate difference to the flip-probability. The only difference a temple will make is when it accumulates enough local culture that you exceed the AIs local culture it will halve the flip risk. This is unlikely to happen if the AI has owned the city for a long time. The main things to do to avoid flips are:

Quite. So the easy question is why is it that the first build people put into a captured city is often a temple, even late in the game? Barracks, workers, settlers and even wealth are often a better use of the city. Often, all a temple does is cost you maintenance. This can be extapolated to the captured improvements in totally corrupt cities. Banks, stock exchanges etc. are generating nothing, and just eating maintenance costs. Similarly, abandoning large cities which will give you workers, and replacing the city gives you a free city (roughly) with much reduced flip risk (no resistors, foreigners or accumulated culture).

 

[alerum68]

Mistfit, there was a good reason why military was shut off as early as it was. Golden Age. I was the one that triggered the golden age, and felt it was a huge waste to build militray when we had 20+ units sitting on the doorstep of Persia. I still feel it would have been foolish to keep building unit that would quickly be useless, when we could be building markets and such. What now? Now we can either wait, pull some defenders out of cities, and attack their capitol with all we have left. Or we can wait, and let our GA end and switch back over to military at that point. Or we can wait, and build units during our golden age... IMHO a bad idea.

The easiest, most fesiable, and probably our best option is just to pull all unneeded defenders out of the Persian cities and send them towards the capitol. Let our current unit there heal, and then when everyone's ready one massive assult on their capitol. Their other 2 cities will crumble.