GOMAW 29 AW wheel replay

[romeothemonk]

Am I up again?
One of the questions that we need to answer is how we want to utilize our lands.
I will be at an IMAPS Conference in Denver all next week and unable to play during that time.

 

[Greebley]

I figured out why it feels like we have too few workers. I usually have one or two more, but I'm also usually whipping the pop we've been trying to have work unimproved tiles. Only Guan was really set up for whipping, so it got a whipped forge after it finished the worker, Shanghai had to stay on troop duty, though it would have been ideal for a granary whip and regrow (once things cool down, we can use its new farms to get this done).

I think it is a tradeoff between shields vs commerce. If you irrigate and whip your towns are smaller and not working cottages, but obviously getting a goodly number of shields from the whip. Conversely, if you build cottages (+1 or 2 irrigation) and don't whip then you don't need Granaries as much as you don't lose pop to whipping. You hit the max pop quick enough this way - as you state we have more pop than if you had been whipping.

So if you think shields are more important early then whipping is the way to go. If you want to have an early edge in tech, then cottages is the way to go.

 

[ThERat]

Romeo, you're up again, but I am not sure whether that was a got it.

As for the strategy:
I usually avoid whips except for very food heavy/shield poor towns or some badly needed stuff.
In my mind that pays off in the long run. Some other people love whipping. I think in the AW games a tech edge is essential, so let's keep research up here.
And I concur to go for our UU sooner rather than later. That collateral x-bow should be great.

Rat - on deck
Greebley
Knupp -
T_McC -
Bez
Romeo - up yet again

 

[Bezhukov]

I actually went back and played from the original save (40 turns in) and didn't have greatly improved results. Its a somewhat awkward map and missing minerals is a huge pain, especially in AW. I'd like to have a crack at the original 4000BC save as I think starting with BW and chopping the second worker/settler ASAP might have made a substantial difference.

I disagree about the commerce/production tradeoff as you get to work all cottages once the cities reach the happy limit, which they do quite quickly with granaries and access to high food tiles - you switch off the high food to work mines/cottages at the limit. Where I'm not sure is how applicable my general approach is to AW, as it does require dedicating pretty much all chops to workers/settlers. The only AW game I played was on hub, so was substantially easier than this.

Also wonder whether some suppression/worker stealing is required on this level to survive.

 

[romeothemonk]

Alrighty: Play till 500 turns left. Got it.

In the first 5 turns we lose 1 archer, kill an axe and an archer.
Huyana founds a city in our area. Ridiculus. Going after that with newly created axes, at least once it grows.
Whip a lighthouse in Guan.

Kill 4 archers at Xian, we now have a City defender 3 guy there. Kill some quetcha.
Get 1 axe to Xian finally.

We really need to expand soon. I would suggest that after the rax in Guan finishes and it grows to size 5, we whip a settler, and send him west to the plains hill.
He will have 2 foods, a 2 hammer square and help seal off that edge, to prevent Khan from wandering around.

I lost 1 unit, and I built 1 worker and 3 axes.

not much to do or say but trudge onward. 2-3 Elephants will really make a huge difference, but we gotta plunk down 2-3 cities soon.
If we aren't expanding, we are dead.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/GOMAW29_BC-0100.Civ4SavedGame

@Bez's last post. I am not sure that we can at this time, technically play the game any better than we have this time. If we lose that can mean several different things.
1) we aren't as good as we hoped we are.
2) The game is tough
3) Not every start is winnable
4) We overreached on the map type, size and difficulty.

 

[Bezhukov]

I think we need to get Guan and Shanghai working the grass hills in the safe area between them. This means no more whips in Guan for awhile. I don't see us expanding until we get a lot more units out and about, as one stack of axes could kill us.

Bejing's whip unhappy should be wearing off soon, so see if we can sneak in a little growth there to take advantage of Bureaucracy.

 

[T_McC]

I think we're doing ok. Many thanks to Huyana for founding a city on my dotmap, so that's one free city for us. The barb City is ours once we research Construction or Machinery, so that's two free cities for us. And then one built Settler for the Marble/Cow/Sugar site and we're up to a fairly healthy 8 cities, while only having to build 1 Settler (and none in the next 20 turns).

Xian looks fairly secure, but I would try to get a Spear down there to deal with the HA's we're soon to see. We can also look to promote an Axe to Woodsman II and build a Fortress on the Jungle tile, forcing the AI units to attack from flat ground. The jungle doesn't get cleared by the Fortress build, which might be new in 1.61. Xian will also want Barracks soon, with the two food bonuses this is whip central. I think we can hustle the Granary and Barracks along with Forest chops and save the whip for troops.

Machinery is really expensive, so we should plan our defense around Cats and Jumbos for the next 30 turns. We should certainly be able to take out the Incan and Barb cities with those units.

Great Prophet due in 12, so we'll get a boost from our Shrine. Looks like enough extra cash to cut 4 turns off of Machinery, so maybe we'll have Cho-Ko-Nu in the next 25 after all.

Once Guangzhou can build troops efficiently we can allow Beijing to build a Library and possibly a Granary. Maybe the best plan would be Library in Beijing - Forge in Shanghai - Granary in Beijing while Guangzhou and the non-infra city build troops.

I would say the priority for worker tasks is to mine the jungle Hill near Guangzhou, chop a Forest near Xian to speed the Granary or Barracks, and chopping the grassland Forest at Guangzhou to get an Axe/Spear out more quickly while Beijing is on infrastructure. Putting a Fortess on the jungle tile will have to wait until we can stack three units on top of the workers there.

 

[T_McC]

I think the critical problem in this game was not exploring a bit farther south initially. If we knew the Iron was down there with two accessible food bonuses we would have built our 3rd city there, had metals about 25 turns sooner, and likely had Walls built/whipped by the time the first AI showed up to attack us. But hindsight is 20/20.

I disagree about the commerce/production tradeoff as you get to work all cottages once the cities reach the happy limit, which they do quite quickly with granaries and access to high food tiles - you switch off the high food to work mines/cottages at the limit. Where I'm not sure is how applicable my general approach is to AW, as it does require dedicating pretty much all chops to workers/settlers. The only AW game I played was on hub, so was substantially easier than this.

Yeah. My philosophy of AW is 3 steps: (1) Protect what you've got, (2) Improve what you've got, (3) Go take somebody else's. Trying to do (2) before (1) is possible ... if you're playing on an Archipelago. The Hub map is a near equivalent due to the distances the AI have to travel to reach you. You have the time necessary to allow you to toss the first 50-60 turns of a city's life on food and whips without hammers and commerce, and get to reap the benefits of the accelerated growth curve that follows.

We've had to actively defend our capital three times already and even with a greater emphasis on hammers still had only 3 real troops in excess of our number of cities at the beginning of my last round. Yup, 8 troops (Warriors don't count, they're not real troops) and 5 cities. Farmer's Gambit/Eat-n-Whip wasn't really a good option on this map. Doesn't mean it won't work in another situation, but AW is a real different beast than non-AW and a strong emphasis on food ahead of natural hammers is a high risk/high reward strategy in AW, whereas it is a much lower risk in non-AW.

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
Vilcas is in a real nice spot, however it needs to grow before we can take it
Khan has settled a town in the southwest, once he shows up with keshiks we got to be really on our toes
thus, spears are in order as T_McC pointed out rightly

1. 85BC
Guangzhou has a rax and goes for spear
spot 2 stacks in Xian, park an axe in the jungle to prevent the enemy from using that tile

2. 70BC
this worked as Huayna's units avoid the jungle and go next to town
we get construction
Bejing finishes an axe and goes for a phant just to be safe
Shanghai starts a cat

use chariot to beat an archer at Xian

3. 55BC
the whip unhappiness in bejing wore off and we could now grow even to pop 9, but this will take a while

4. 40BC
beat a lone Greek archer at Xian

5. 25BC
Xian looks pretty nicely defended by now with 2 axes in the forest and 4 units inside and 1 spear on the way

6.10BC
Khan now shows up with 2 units at Xian

7. 5AD
Bejing finished a phant and goes now for granary for faster growth/health
send phant east so we can take that Incan town once it grows to 2

8. 20AD
Khan attacked at Xian and lost an axe versus our archer
Shanghai finished a cat and gfoes for forge now, we reached happy limit
Vilcas has grown to 2 and should be taken asap

take out that lone archer with an axe

9. 35AD
Xian has a granary now and goes for a chop aided rax
Gunagshou could actually build the Great Lighthouse in a mere 13 turns, go for a phant now though

10. 50AD
spot a German chariot coming from the west, we have a spear that was built in Guangzhou closeby, send it west to meet them

Xian's chop just finished, we have 3 workers around to build that fort on the jungle soon

machinery is due in 14, but with the prophet we get soonish, it should be faster

Vilcas should be taken once we have the phant there with the cat as support
but there is a stack coming with galleys which we also need to take care of now

the western chariot, we need to focus on the west soon

the south is secured with 5 units in the city and 2 axes in the forest, 3 workers around to start fort

 

[Bezhukov]

Why the lighthouse in nanjing? huyana's camped outside and it has plenty of land tiles to work (FP's and plains hills make for good production). Did it whip the forge I had queued? With the granary and flood plains it whips well until we get more hills mined.

 

[Greebley]

I disagree about the commerce/production tradeoff as you get to work all cottages once the cities reach the happy limit, which they do quite quickly with granaries and access to high food tiles - you switch off the high food to work mines/cottages at the limit. Where I'm not sure is how applicable my general approach is to AW, as it does require dedicating pretty much all chops to workers/settlers. The only AW game I played was on hub, so was substantially easier than this.

If you do what you state above, you are not whipping. It takes longer for the cottages to reach maturity than it does to get the towns to full size. Building the cottages earlier is usually beneficial. If you whip your max size is1 less due to happiness considerations at your max size and you also have to grow again rather than just growing once. That means working irrigated land rather than improving your cottages.

I don't see very early growth when nothing is improved as being more beneficial than starting the cottages earlier.

For a town that has floodplains, I see no reason to irrigate - go straight for cottages. For a town that is all grassland, then irrigate 2 squares gets your growth good enough that you can then start on cottages right away. The town will grow about the same rate as you build up the squares. Of course resource squares come first.

The change to forest chops may change the strategy a bit. One reason whipping wasn't as necessary is that forest chops gave your the shields you needed. I suspect the whipping strategy will be better in 1.61 than in the previous version.

So the tradeoff is definitely there. It also almost certain that neither extreme is good. If you build only cottages for a grassland city, then of course things will be worse. Conversely, growing at max speed and whipping means no cottages and science is in the sewer. The real question is what is the right mix. My feeling is that if you have 4-5 food extra, then you have enough if you want to concentrate on science and get the cottages up and running. Towns with more food than that probably would be whipped. Additionally, a start with very few trees makes whipping more appealing. I am yet unsure how the changes in chopping will affect my game as I haven't tried 1.61 from the start yet.

 

[Bezhukov]

The only thing I whip in basically every city is the granary (and sometimes I'll also whip the forge later on or a lighthouse if I have seafood to recover the pop quickly) so you can gain pop quickly by working a high growth configuration whenever the happiness limit goes up/or in new cities getting up to pop. If a city is low on hills, I'll also whip other infra there or a worker/settler if one is needed quickly. For this to work I need to make sure cities have both high growth tiles and good tiles to work with the new pop, which usually means lots of workers or working coastal tiles as improvements complete.

I build a lot of cottages on plains so that I have a zero-growth configuration once I'd reached the happy limit (I retain the grass farms so I can switch when new happiness becomes available).

 

[ThERat]

Rat
Greebley - up
Knupp -
T_McC -
Bez
Romeo

I agree on those basics, whipping lighthouse, the payoff is guaranteed etc etc.

As for this game, I fear that more units might come from the west, that is why I kept a spear and axe around, just in case. if there is more to come we might want to switch production in our capital for a while

 

[Greebley]

Ok, I got it. I will play this weekend.

 

[Greebley]

Early: Captured Vilcas. We lost an elephant at around 95% chance to win.

Mid: We get a lot of activity on the southern border. We lose control of the Jungle due to poor RNG.

Late: All Infra builds aborted for Military as we get a huge rush of units from the West. South also sees fairly heavy activity, but the lack of any kind of front to the west makes it really hard.

Even worse there was a landing of 4 units by boat just north of our capitol. We were pillaged a good bit. We would of had around a 10-20% chance of losing our capitol if they attacked that instead, but they didn't

Notes:
Our western border is a mess. I also had to do chops and rushed units to hold it. Things look ok now but we have unhappiness (and fewer trees) because of it. Our army went from being fine, to being massively outclassed very quickly. With 5 elephants and a decent number of Axe I think we are about equal to the AI. We have no way to stop the AI from attacking from the west which may mean we need to attack them at odds that will cost us too many troops.

I am hoping the next player can consolidate the line. We will have a chance if we can. We also will need Catapults. Stacks are getting bigger to make them worthwhile.

I feel we are growing too slowly. We really need to own all the land that we start with before the AD era begins, or we end up with a front which is uncontrolled and very hard to deal with. If we can't grow fast enough, we might be able to build more units and capture the choke cities as they appear.

Here are some picture from the turn

We built a thingy:

Here is a list of the current seen enemies on the red flashing dots:

Here is what the front looks like:

 

[knupp715]

We could try to capture the Mongolian city or barb city to use as a front for now. A city up there would attract the AI's attention.

I don't think we have a chance to control the seas in this game. We will have to put up with naval invasions. We should probably have a garrison of 3troops in coastal cities for now to make sure we don't have a disaster on our hands.

Got It

 

[Greebley]

Grabbing the Mongol city does seem the best to me if we can do it. We can deal with the barbarian town later.

 

[T_McC]

200 AD (0)
The city MM is extraordinarily loose. Fire the specialist in the capital so it will grow next turn, go back to working the matured cottage.

215 AD (1)
Win three on IT, then kill a Barb Archer in the West. I will invite the Roman troops to attack Beijing (defended by single Archer) across a river. But first, I'll get a crack at them with some of our units (and there will be three defenders by the time they get to attack ).

In the South, a bit of a pickle ... kill two units, but leave a non-optimal setup in the city. Still good odds.

230 AD (2)
Pisser. The AI knew to move across the river. Still have four units vs. 4 Attackers, and a 60% cultural defense to fall back on.

In the south, we win 3 on the IT and 2 more afterwards, and the coast is clear for a turn. We need the break to heal and then we can think about moving out into the jungle with our first Mace, which will be whipped on the turn we discover Machinery, and promoted to Woodsman I immediately.

We lost a unit in the North on a fairly bad pRNG roll. The Romans advanced with a CR II Axe and a pair of Archers towards Nanjing, but the Axe I put on the forested hill relieved them of the Axe. They'll pillage next turn and I'll yawn.

245 AD (3)
Clear out the balance of the Roman units around Beijing, winning three on defense and another on offense. Although it appeared as though a unit went *poof*. Could the AI go broke?

Lose a farm, kill an Archer. There are still a Roman Archer and Axe wandering around, but they really aren't any threat.

Kill another Keshik in the south and the final Roman unit that I thought went poof.

Assembling the Great Wall of Dumbo in anticipation of our move on the western choke.

260 AD (4)
I think we just lost a fight where the raw strength was 18.5 to 6.6. I think that's about 10,000 - 1. (Combat II/Shock Axe behind Walls vs Sword).

Also, the wrong Archer defended vs. the 2nd attack? WTH? This happened in another game.

275 AD (5)
A comically bad IT at Xian and we're down to 2 units defending. A whipped Mace should calm things down, and another Jumbo and Axe are on the way. But this all goes back to whatever happened on the previous turn.

On a lighter note, we're about ready to push out to seal off the west.

320 AD (8)
Turn off research in case we need cash for an emergency upgrade. Doing a real dance in the south because we didn't get the chance to knock down the forest behind Xian, and we got reamed by the bug/pRNG.

335 AD (9)
The Incans have 4 more Chariots on a boat, so I've got a couple of Spears in production and a Jumbo peeling back for defense. Only really a pillaging threat, even vs. our Archers.

350 AD (10)
Raze Samarqand and we should be able to block the west con fromage. There is a Keshik loose that has gotten away from our Elephants. Just keep the workers out of the way and he shouldn't do too much damage.

We now have a Woodsman II Mace in the South. This guy defends at 16 in the Jungle so we should be able to close off and recover from the pillaging we have taken.

We'll soon be out from under the whips Greebley laid on the cities, so the unhappiness is temporary. I figure next task is to capture the Barb city (after closing off the west) and recover from pillaging damage. We will soon be able to afford another settler, although not out of Shanghai. That city makes too many hammers to waste on a Settler. Pick someplace where we can use more food.

Once we recover from the pillaging (and Huyana's Chariots will likely do more nuisance damage next round) Xian will be on a nice 5-3 whip cycle for Maces and Cho-Ko-Nu. So soon we should be able to outclass the AI enough to not be so dependent on defense-by-volume in the south. Right now it's living down the Mace whip and has lost both of its food bonuses. I'd keep it on the Archer since the next few units from the North will have to be committed to whacking the Incan Chariots.

Built a lot of roads, particularly in the west. We need to maintain superior mobility to the AI in our own territory. Alphabet is just a suggestion, Engineering or Currency are a long way off and I think we're going to want access to the culture slider sooner rather than later. We're starting to bump against our Happy limit and I don't think we want to rely on MP beyond the single required.

 

[T_McC]

Ack ... I now realize it wasn't my turn. Well, if Knupp posts without reading my turns, we'll play from there. If he does read this he can just pick up from my save.

 

[Greebley]

200 AD (0)
The city MM is extraordinarily loose. Fire the specialist in the capital so it will grow next turn, go back to working the matured cottage.
[\QUOTE]

I probably forgot to MM after whipping.