GR12 - AWM vs 30 civs, Pangea

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I think the settler idea is good, for few that we can time it with the full box and they can grow back from 11 to 12 quickly. Or we can use it on cities with boxes full already. They'll work their 11th tile back on growth the next turn so, in practice, little is lost. Workers would be a bit of a waste besides settlers IMHO.

The arabs will fall qwuickly. We have 4 armies in position to damage them. Spain might become tickling after that, however, since they spent a lot of time without bothering us while on their arabic crusade. I'm for razing them if they are big enough - the free workers are never wasted and we're sure spain will not be on our toes. With the core settler plan, we'll have enough settlers to manage the reconstruction anyways. If they are small though, keeping them is sensible since we don't get the workers by razing.

 

[Greebley]

Skimming off workers can still be a good idea if you remerge them in with slow growing towns. Essentially, you are giving the growth of one town to another one. I still skim even if I don't necessarily need the workers.

 

[Northern Pike]

I think we could certainly afford to pull settlers out of size-twelve towns with full food boxes and granaries.

Of course, there's an ultra-refinement in which we could take a settler out of one size-twelve town, a worker out of another, and use the worker to merge the settler-producing city back to size twelve immediately.

 

[markh]

0) 1380AD : set lux back to 10%, hire scientists

IBT : lose an exposed mace to a Bab longbow (0-1)

1) 1385AD : difficult to get into this game again. It changed much after my last set.
kill 2 Jap pikes
1 German spear
3 NumMercs
2 Arab pikes, 2 spears, 1 longbow
4 Aztec swords, 3 spears
1 Bab longbow (19-1)

I cannot believe it I get my first leader in this game -> knight army

Take Medina

IBT : lose undefended Ivory Coast , did not see the Aztec units on the hill, mm to avoid riots

2) 1390AD : kill 2 Jap pikes, 1 MDI
1 German longbow
2 NumMercs
1 Sumerian MDI, 1 sword
3 Iroq knights
2 Arab pikes, 1 longbow
2 Aztec spears, 2 swords
2 Bab spears (40-1)

raze Edo
take Nippur, Basra
take back Ivory Coast

Almost missed another sneaky Aztec spear at Canal Town, didn't know that ancient troops wore camouflage gear

IBT : lose 2 pikes and an MDI, kill two NumMercs on defense (42-4)

3) 1395AD : kill 4 NumMercs, 1 archer
4 Iroq knights
1 Jap MDI
1 German horse, 3 longbows
1 Aztec horse, 2 swords
3 Bab spear
lose an elite knight to a Aztec horse, ridiculous
lose 1 knight to a German spear (62-6)

take Evora (Bab island town)

IBT : lose an exposed knight to a German spear
kill a longbow on defense (63-7)
Uruk flips, silks are gone, again mm for no riots
Iroqs move 12 MDI-pike combos towards Kanesh, reaching the city in 2 turns

4) 1400AD : kill 1 German spear
3 Iroq knights
2 EnkWarrior giving us another leader -> knight army
1 NumMerc
1 Aztec horse, 2 spears, 2 swords giving us another leader, not enough cities to support another army, next turn
2 Bab spears (77-7)

take Ellipi

IBT : kill one Sum sword on defense (78-7)
England completes Copernicus

5) 1405AD : kill 1 Bab spear
1 Iroq knight, 2 MDIs
1 Arab pike
2 Aztec spears
1 NumMerc, 1 MDI
1 German 2 longbows, 1 horse, 1 pike (91-7)

IBT : nothing

6) 1410AD : new contact, war on Netherlands
kill 2 Iroq pikes, 1 knight
2 Sum swords, 1 MDI,1 EnkWarrior
2 NumMercs
3 Aztec spears, 3 swords
2 Arab pikes, 1 spear
4 Spanish spears (113-7)

raze Gaya...
take back Uruk
found 60th city and another knight army
take Baghdad and the Arabs are destroyed
raze Susa

IBT : lose an exposed MDI (113-8)
gunpowder is in -> chemistry in 12

7) 1415AD : kill 1 Aztec sword
1 NumMerc
6 Iroq knights, 7 pikes
2 Sum swords, 1 EnkWarrior and another leader
3 Spanish spears, 1 archer
2 Aztec spears
lose 2 knights to redlined Iroq knights
lose a knight and a longbow to a redlined enkWarrrior (137-11)

IBT : lose a pike and MDI, defeat one sword on defense (138-13)

8) 1420AD : kill 2 Aztec swords, 4 spears
4 Iroq pikes, 14 MDIs
3 Sum swords, 1 archer
3 Spanish archers, 1 spear
1 German longbow
lose 2 knights (171-15)

raze Barcelona

IBT : no fights, but three more enemies, France, England and Ottomans offered us printing press and went home with a declaration of war

9) 1425AD : kill 5 Aztec swords, 2 spears
6 Iroq pikes, 2 MDIs
2 Sum archers
1 Spanish horse, 1 spear, 2 archers
1 German longbow (194-15)

raze Santiago

I am too tired to play another turn and give to the next better player as tomorrow I have to watch our match against Sweden.

We have a leader in Aleppo, but 2 cities are missing to form another army.

Chemistry is due in 9.

Most of the armies need healing, but I should have cleared everything for the next player. I hope so.

Roster:
Greebley - on deck
ThERat
Northern Pike
Beorn-eL-Feared
markh - just played
Vxma - Up

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/GR12_1425AD.zip

 

[vmxa]

Ok, I have it. Will either start tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Three new civs? How did they make contact? Are they in our sight or did they get contacts from some heathens? It is just for my information, if you know the answer.

It is very easy to lose sight of some enemies with so much going on and so much area to keep track of.

 

[vmxa]

Ok, I can see at least Rome and Engalnd in plain view. Anyway I wanted to asked about saltpetter. Do you want to cut it? Is that what the workers are doing on that tile?

I had noticed one town making a musket and checked on F2 to see we only have the one, so we could keep making pikes till we have MT??? Is that allowed and do we want to do it? No rush for a response as I have a few turns before it needs to be done, but the workers are there now.

I take it that no cavs have been encountered as nothing has been mentioned. I see that three civs have Chem and they probably had time to do at least one more tech. So I would expect them to go with MT and then head for Demo or at least one of them to do it.

That is going to make spreading out very painful once those 3 movers show up.

 

[Greebley]

I was thinking we would start meeting all the civs soon. They have the tech to trade diplo. - Printing Press? I'm not sure after playing Civ4 so much.

Keep an eye on Diplo as we may meet more as they gain the tech or have something to trade.

I am not at home to look at the map, but killing the Babs might be nice for the flips.

 

[markh]

There are two Dutch galleys moving in our southwest. France and Otto must have got our contact through others as I did not see any of their units.

The workers on the salt have irrigated the tile. Did not want to cut it. There is at least one more salt available when we let the borders of one city expand. Do not remember which city though.

No cavs or muskets seen, yet.

 

[markh]

I took all Bab cities in view. I do not know in which hole they have hidden. Hopefully they have not settled on another island.

 

[vmxa]

Well I played the IT and it is muskets at twice the price or cut the salt. When we get another, it can be cut, till MT it seems to me.

Anyway I am a very cautious fellow with so many civs at war and I do not like trying to get slaves and cats back under a single unit. I do not know how many cats and workers/slaves were near New Hattusha, but a single LB killed the pike across a river and they are gone now.

It is one thing when they are in our borders, but outside they can be reached from units we cannot even see. I would rather they be disbanded than have the other guys get them back. At least in our lands we can recapture them, but they just swoop away with use of roads.

So I will wait to cut the roads a bit to see how everyone see it. We are not making enough units to staff al the border town as it is now.

Another question I have is on the deficit spending on research. We are making 362 at -59gpt. We have about 2080. We currently have 64 knights and I wonder how far into the stash you want to get.

Is burning off the money needed to upgrade to cavs worth getting the techs a turn faster? At current pace it is 9 turns as was stated by Markh, We may gain some of that back, but it looks like not likely as we are close to the right count. At 10 turns we go -16 and probably can gain the single turn back before the end.

So what is the consensus on research, shall I go all out or conserve some cash?

 

[vmxa]

1340AD:
22 knights
20 settlers
11 pikes
6 other items under construction.
Ankuwa finished a settler and starts a knight
Kultepe pike to musket that can be switched, if salt cut.
Irontown and Karhuyuk both finsih K and start another. So we only yield two new knights.

Uruk and Ashur are in resistance and so are Ellipi and Nippur. The latter two though have one or more citizens working tiles? This gains only food, so I am in favor of making specialist instead. You can sometimes prevent a flip with clowns, but I go with taxmen. Scientist would gain nothing right now.

We have 2834 beakers left and make 362. 4 more beakerheads is not enough to get to 405bpt needed to shave off a turn. The gold cuts the deficit to -6. Now here is my question. How many flips are we willing to deal with to hold those cities?

We have no idea where the Babs are and we are going to end up with towns anyway. Ashur is the only one that would not need an aqua. We have little on hand to even recapture them and nothing to replace the MP. I know we lose the town count, but we have settlers that could replace them, if needed.

Anyway I do not see capturing any cities at this point. It is just going to be a problem to hold them and defend them. Better to bring up a settler and let the armies clear more room to make attacking the new places harder to do.

I would at least abandon Uruk. We have a town right next to it and we do not risk losing the lux on a flip. I would raze any that flipped on recpature, just not worth the trouble and the stress.

Anyway I will stop until tomorrow to get some responses. So I can adjust to any persuasive feedback. So just looking for a sanity check.

BTW if I counted right we have only one knight next turn and 2 the next. No pikes for at least 5 turns and not much after that. I know it was felt that we needed to make lots of settlers, but we have 15 civs fighting us right now and will be seeing the rest soon.

More pikes and knight are going to be needed now. We cannot defend 12 more towns with this output. There are 12 settlers available right now and 20 building. That seems a bit excessive, but I am willing to be convinced.

Remember that cavs cannot be far from showing up and the borders are getting longer and longer.

 

[Greebley]

Ya, if we can't see how to destroy them, I would only keep cities that have wonders we want to keep, though small towns can be starved if in a good spot.

I agree on being cautious. With several civs on the way we do want to be careful. Nothing wrong with playing defensively. We can pause growth for a while without harm while we deal with the initial units.

 

[Northern Pike]

Unhooking saltpetre to keep building pikemen is obviously right.

We shouldn't use up our savings just to get a given tech one or two turns earlier.

By all means deal with non-Wonder cities as you see fit.

 

[ThERat]

do raze for more slaves and no flips. I hate flips and we do not need those, we can always replace with settlers. Also, since Cvas will show up at one point, it would be good to have some room between us and the AI. So, go and raze a s many towns as possible while we expand at out own leisure

 

[Northern Pike]

There's nothing excessive about our settler production, when we need to get at least fifteen cities down within the lines we already hold, and can found another six or so by pushing our southeastern border forward in a uniform fashion which won't make it any longer. Our position would be no harder to defend with these twenty or more extra cities than it is now...

...unless the Spanish start building Conquistadors, which is why eliminating them should be a high priority. They only have three cities and we know their approximate locations from the cultural borders.

Bear in mind that CxxC is a maximum in AW, not a minimum; CxC is fine, especially when we're going to have dozens or hundreds of science camps which will never grow beyond size six. Every four-tile or six-tile hole in our position calls for the founding of another city; we're not likely to fill such gaps with cultural expansions.

 

[ThERat]

Agree with NP, I had a look at the last save. MM with some more scientists will get our research down. Our main source of research will soon be specialists. That's why it is even more important to raze towns and set up sicence farms. We cannot afford to waste units trying to quell resistance. New cities will grow much faster.

By the way, once we hit the city limit, we might want to abandon a few towns in our core, that overlap too much with others. Fringes can be cluttered, no issue there.

 

[vmxa]

Ok, sounds good to me, just wanted to be sure I was not getting crazy or that the cutting of the salt was not allowed. From some of the post I take it that we can make any deals upon contact, other than gpt and then declare.

I presume we do not want to build any embassies, but that point was not addressed. I don't know if the opportunity will arise in my set anyway, but they are all going to be over 100 gold and do us no good.

It is a lot to spend to locate a capitol that we will see eventually. That for reminding me about Spain.

 

[vmxa]

This is just an update not a completed set...

1430AD:
9th kills spanish spear and capture cat, send to Pinot.
Kx3 kills Sumerian sword x3 (4-0)
K kills Port K (5-0)
4th kills EW and I disband it for a knight so I can found 4th Knight army (6-0)
New 4th kills 2 Sum swords (7-0)
K kills Sum sword goes E (8-0)
5/5 kills Az spear (9-0)
10th kills 3 spanish units (12-0)
5th kills Port pike and MDI (14-0)
13th kills 2 Port MDI (16-0)
3rd kills pike (17-0)
1st kills Bab LB (18-0)
7th kills 2 swords at Niv (20-0) [20-0].
That was probably a mistake on my part as I now see 9 knights and 7 units from Rome near Eliipi and New Kadesh. Each has a weak army in it only. I considered moving 2nd from Elip to cover Kadesh and abandoning Eliipi, but cross fingers instead. The problem is that nothing is available and heading their way and I have no idea what will come out of the fog and when. Not to mention the flip risk.

IBT:
Whoops I spent so much time running errands, I forgot that three knight had landed at Evora and they attacked the MDI. 1-1

The knights move on and do not attack the MDI army that was only 12/18? All nine are now lose. I may wish I had abandoned and use the smaller area as a choke.

Only 2 MDI attack Elipi and they die (2-0) [23-1].

 

[vmxa]

1435AD:
10th kills Spanish archer (1-0)
12th kills Nippon MDI (2-0)
5/5 kills Port pike (3-0)
MDI kills last knight on Evora (4-0)
4th kills Sumerian MDI (5-0) (4th filled now)
5/5 kills Port pike (6-0)
8th kills Port pike (7-0)
K kills Bab LB goes E (8-0)
K kills Sumerian sword (9-0)
5/5 K kills Az sword gets leader (10-0)

Uruk still has the same number of resisters.

I used the leader to rush aqua and switch to knight in New Ankuwa. Yes we only need one more town, but the leader cannot get to any place that could fill it for some time and this area is at risk.

5/5 MDI killsAz spear (11-0)
Take stock on armies and find 3/4/8/10/12th all used this turn and damaged.
Not moved this turn, but damaged 1/5/7/9/11/13/15th.
Not used and not damaged this turn 2nd, 6th and 14th. These are all in the Az/Rome/Korea front and it has 9 knights and still 9 other units. There is three towns with a healed army and one also has a 7/18 army and 2 other units damaged.

Took a chance and pike kills redlined archer 12-0)
3rd kills Sumerian MDI (13-0)
K kills Sumeria MDI (14-0) [37-1]

Ok it has been a busy day and I was not able to spend much time plaing today. I wanted to go ahead and post a screen of where I ended for the day. The question I want to ask is what is the consensus on this front at Elipi/New Kadesh and New Ankuwa.

What course would you take here? I am afraid to send out the 18/18 army from Ank to either attack or defend as that could expose that town to attack from the 3 swords or the 5 knights or both stacks. Not to mention Niv could have units to send.

Kadesh may be ok as the Knights probably will not attack. They did not on the prior turn and are likely looking to head back into the open towns. There is nothing (1 knight not that close) coming this direction. If they move past Babylon we will not be able to head them off. One army could pursue, but there are 9 knights.

Eliipi is a concern as it only hs a sword army. As long as the knights do not head its way, it is fine for now. That presumes nothing is coming from the fog.

One of the reason I lean towards disbanding those 2 move armies (not right now) is they cannot strike and return for much distance. Anyway max aggression model is take the sword army and hit the knights and return to town and hope it does not take much damage and is not attacked by the rest of the knight on its side. Even Rome's MDI could be a danger.

Then take the army in Kadesh and hit twice the 5xknights. Take the army from Ank and hit the same stack and enter town. If all goes well the stacks may be reduce to a safe level.

Most CYA is to abandon Eliipi send the swords into Kadesh and use the knights to the max.

So I figured I could post this and see if anyone weights in with a better plan. I am too tired right now to think straight anyway.

Whoops forgot I founded New Adana and spotted one of the Spanish cities.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

How are the resistances coming up? Any news with how close we are to a dominion over the once-frightening babs?

Sensible call on the leader IMHO, although I might have considered doing it the other way around: disband the sword army, make an army ourt of the leader and abandon Ellippi.

My habit is to strike first. These knights could be dangerous if they are headed towards the silks. Eliminating them now would be good, and for that we need to attack them. You can keep a low profile assault, see how it goes and if it turns out good, involve troops all-out. Else, rinse and repeat next or the other turn.