GR13 - AWE on LK's world map

Do we intend to make a temple in Tanis? It is 3 turns away and does not need an expansion.
 
Preturn: A few changes. Nothing major.

650 AD: Capture Gao.

670 AD: Capture Ulundi and Kuyika. Ulundi gives us Wine.
We step next to a Persian town and they already have Muskets!
Use the leader to build our 8th Army.

IBT: Mongols finish Knights Templar.

680 AD: Capture Ghulaman (for now at least - it is Persian so we may want to replace) after killing 2 Muskets.

690 AD: Capture Nioro and Jenne.

710 AD: Auto-destroy Isipezi, Tagazand
Capture Hombori

720 AD Auto-destroy some town or other.

730 AD: Capture Walata.
Ghulaman abandoned.

740 AD

IBT: I miscalculate and we lose the wines town.

750 AD: Thebes riots - adjust rest. I was unable to take wines town back this turn.

Notes:
Rounded off years to 750 AD.

I rushed the kill for Songhai. We have an army next to the last Songhai city we can see, but that doesn't mean it is the last one. There are Archers around - if that is the last city and we can take it next turn, we don't need to worry about it. If there is another city then we need to track them down. I think we have enough units to do this if need be, but it looks a bit chaotic.

I built a goodly number of libraries and less markets which we will need. I am thinking that once we settle Africa, there will be a pause where we can build the Markets. (also once we have 4 lux they make sense for happiness).

We are definitely behind in tech. We have 2 1/2 more techs needed for the middle ages and Persia at least has Gunpowder. There is a solution to this - Take 4 armies after we conquer Africa and walk them until we find the GLib - then take it. If we heal up, I think we could wear it down and grab it for a turn for tech parity. This will take a while so we may be using Knights vs Cavalry and Rifles before we get to it. It does seem our best bet though. Catching up via research will be difficult even with all of Africa.

We have 2 Lux and there are two more (the wines we lost last turn and Spices within visual range) so Africa has at least 4 luxes.

I have been recently working on settlers - we have 5 with 7 in production. We also have 2 backup iron to connect - first one connected in 3 and the other one has enemy Zulu on it. I think we have enough space for all those and it allows us to raze the high culture civ cities.

We need to close the choke again. This last turn I needed the unit that was keeping it closed.

Persia is definitely the worst civ actively attacking us with large numbers of knights coming at us. The 8th army went North so again we have 3 armies at the choke. Since we have been building Libraries most recently we need more swordsmen up north. Army absorbed a lot of the existing ones.

GR13-AD750a.jpg


GR13-AD750b.jpg


The 750 AD save
 
A third lux will be very nice. Even 3 lux is good for a market as we get 1 extra happy. Glad we can get another iron for 2 reasons. First is we could have ours deplete. The second reason is we may want to let the iron town go as it ties us down too much.

It makes us have too many tiles to defend. I too think we may need to locate the GLB, if we can.
 
Well you can either be aggressive or be safe. You can't do both and if you want to be aggressive you can expect to step in it once in a while.

At times aggression is the way to go and at other times, safe is the way to go. Now if you are lucky you always pick the right times, but so far I have not met anyone that can do it 100%.

Like you say we will get it back. I am just glad to hear a 4th is in the area, that is very big. The real crunch looks to be heading our way fairly soon in the form of lots of fast strong units and not much more of the easy archers and spears.
 
Good work getting libraries built. :goodjob:

Gao is micromanaged to starve down, which isn't necessary with the Songhai about to disappear.

This is just a quick thought and comes with no guarantee of sense ;), but might we want to seal the choke with armies, abandon Byblos if necessary, and then send armies out to make as many contacts as possible? We'll probably be in contact with all the Eurasian civs anyway by the time we're in position to attack beyond the choke, and the real question is whether it happens in time to help us with research.

vmxa said:
I am able to load the 630AD save.

Thanks for the help. I can load the 750 AD save, so I hope it was just a random quirk.
 
I like Greebley'sTGL grab and further more, NP's plan to go all out to go after everyone on our continent. This game should be fun that way. We could seal the choke from time to time and kill many units as the choke it pretty small. We want to expand towards Europe anyway I guess, thus the chole will lose it's all-important role sooner or later.
Most important is to get knights and take the TGL for 1 turn
 
ThERat said:
I like Greebley'sTGL grab and further more, NP's plan to go all out to go after everyone on our continent.

Doing both would be a stretch, even for this crew.;) Everyone keep thinking, and let's see see if the next ten bring about the end of the Songhai and come close to pushing the Zulu off the continent.
 
Yes I would be concerned with the choke being over run, if most have knights. If we do get all the contacts, we should consider making a pike army (when we can) for defense of the choke.

These boys will not be all that long in getting to MT, I fear and then sword armies could be at risk.
 
That puts me up. I got it and will play tomorrow. I like the idea of the GLib catch. I'll see what I can do about it.
 
FWIW, I don't care for the GLib plan at this point. Our only units with staying power are the armies. They are the only thing on which we can base effective offensive action. If we send half of them off across the plains, consider that they will certainly encounter every Eurasian civ. So we will then be bringing in Keshiks, riders and war elephants plus the Russians and Germans. And the plan is to hold the choke until this group gets to Karakorum? That goes against what we've always practiced which is an expand or die strategy. This sounds like the latter.

I also have doubts that four armies are enough. Their knights were already attacking our armies defending behind walls in Byblios. If we get to Karakorum, let's say after four attacks against vet muskets that our strongest army in the stack is 10-12 hp. What if the AI smells blood and attack those armies? If those armies go, it's more likely to be game over.

Although we can't see the map, we know where things in general are. My suggestion is we use our armies to keep pushing forward. If we can occupy Turkey, that gives us a choke point where Istanbul would be. Then we would have mountain terrain between the Black and Caspian Seas which pikes could fort in. The hardest terrain to manage would be between the southern edge of the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, but then the European AIs have to go a long, long way to reach us.

When we reached those objectives, we could look at our options. That would include cutting the armies loose for the GLib or sending them against Europe, a la the Ottomans. Obviously time is not on our side, but giving up the initiative for four or five turn sets has to be a concern.
 
lurker's comment: I'm with M60 on this, TGL is really nice, but you can manage until knights, and regular expansion will make you meet enough people to have your fun. When knights start pushing forward, you can probably capture and hold TGL for an IA elevator.
 
I think that was what Greebley meant anyway, go for knights, take over whole of Africa, then slowly creep towards Europe (Istanbul and northeast Turkey being nice chokes) and then send out a few armies to grab the TGL while we research cavalry. The time line should fit this scenario
 
Yes I did. And we can do more to guarantee success. For example, if we have ripped up the roads around Karakatorum, we can guarantee that cavarly cannot get there in one turn. So we isolate it and then start attacking with the sword armies. If we think the AI is in danger of having Rifles we may even need to bring Cats (not sure the odds of a healthy sword army vs rifles is good enough).

I am hoping though that the AI is still a ways from rifles. I haven't seen copernicus (wonder with astronomy) yet. I think they got gunpowder fairly quickly.

In any case the Armies are needed to take Africa and should do that first. After that expansion will be difficult when we are behind in tech. I think we need tech parity to expand. Getting past the choke is not going to be trivial and may be impossible if we are behind in tech.

Note that the AI will target armies in cities. If we do take the GLib, and we have ripped up the roads, then we can keep it the one turn we can't be attacked and then decide if we want to abandoned or if we want to let them have it back (probably the former - though if Sun Tzu is in it (I don't think it is) we may want the free barracks later on).

The most dangerous unit is the Ottoman's UU because they seem more willing to attack defense 2 armies (Cav don't seem to attack full health def 2 army from prev games - but Sapahi have). I am unsure if they would attack a stack of armies though. It might even be worthwhile to add a knight army to the stack.
 
Note that if we can push forward without the tech boost then holding off on the GLib does make sense. I am just worried about trying it when so many civs are attacking us. We may lose the ground we gained if they have Cav and we don't even have Muskets - I am unsure if we will have muskets first.
 
We have a real probelm with getting out of the age and to knights. IIRC we have construction going. We need Col/Philo/MM to finish the age. We need Mono and Fued and then Chiv.

We are very much in need of Eng so we can cross rivers with roads with no penalty. If we can get a bead on where the GLB is, we can determine are chances of reaching it. It may be that we have to send out 2 armies to look and pillage on the way.
 
lurker's comment: Ottomans aren't on this world map so no need to worry about the sipahi.

As for the GL grab.. this map is huge so it will take many dozens of turns for sword armies to reach it. Scouting first doesn't make much sense to me as you do know pretty much where Karakorum (or was it Karakorum?) is. It's definately in the Mongol core which of course is north of India and west of China. Just send your units east and then turn north when you reach India. This way you won't probably even meet the rest of the European civs yet (all of them should have cities in Siberia by now). Scouting only wastes time and gets you in war with more civs.

In any case, I would send the armies out asap. You can't probably get to the GL city in less than 30 turns and that's a lot. If you wait until you get knights it might be too late. You have to be risky here in my opinion.
 
Salarakas said:
Scouting first doesn't make much sense to me as you do know pretty much where Karakorum (or was it Karakorum?) is. It's definately in the Mongol core which of course is north of India and west of China. Just send your units east and then turn north when you reach India. This way you won't probably even meet the rest of the European civs yet (all of them should have cities in Siberia by now). Scouting only wastes time and gets you in war with more civs.

In any case, I would send the armies out asap. You can't probably get to the GL city in less than 30 turns and that's a lot. If you wait until you get knights it might be too late. You have to be risky here in my opinion.

In an AW game such as this, scouting a distance that great isn't possible unless you're talking using armies. Go north when we hit India isn't a particularly direct route either. Mongolia would be north of China, so a northeast track is a better approach. And finding a single tile city after traveling 50-100 tiles is hardly an exact science.

What I tried to get across is that pulling the armies now will deprive us of offense, and we should be able to push on ahead a bit more. I do agree we should focus on completing the African campaign, then sort out next steps.
 
Go north when we hit India isn't a particularly direct route either. Mongolia would be north of China, so a northeast track is a better approach. And finding a single tile city after traveling 50-100 tiles is hardly an exact science.

True. Turn northeast when hitting India would have been a better advice :) If you send out e.g. four sword armies you could split them up when you hit the Mongol territory and sweep a wider area without losing much speed in the process. What I was thinking when I said that scouting first didn't make much sense to me was: if you first send out e.g. one army to scout the land and then send the rest only after you've found the city, it could easily take fifty turns before you get a chance of striking the city. Scouting would also make you meet many enemies along the way and they would get a chance of hitting you with (most likely) their cavalry before you manage to capture the GL and get modern defenders to stop them.
 
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