GR13 - AWE on LK's world map

[ThERat]

52 cities with 1-spt and more should provide us with a lot of military.

By the way, Greebley, in case the next player would be up tomorrow, could we swap as I might get very busy on Wed/Thu here.

 

[vmxa]

1 spt towns won't provide anything if they are making a courthouse.

 

[M60A3TTS]

I think he meant 10 spt.

 

[Greebley]

In communism every town can become useful. I would pop off workers for any town at max food as well to hurry the usefulness. Also these large games can generate hundreds of foreign workers - especially if we are razing some cities.

ThERat, no problem on a switch.

Roster:
Greebley - Swapped for after ThERat.
ThERat - On Deck
markh
Northern Pike
vmxa - Just Played
M60A3TTS - Up

 

[M60A3TTS]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/43630/GR13_1605_AD.SAV

I turn off animate battles which does make things go a lot faster.

Pre-turn: Destroy 21 Mongolian rifles

IBT- Sci Method completes- Kahun to ToE. That comes in and take AT and electronics. RP next. Switch Thebes to Hoovers. Another 40+ rifles appear from the north. Russians this time. One cav landing behind our lines.

Turn 1 (1570AD): Open the choke and destroy another 26 Mongol rifles and a MI. Kill the amphib cav

IBT- No landings this time.

Turn 2 (1575AD) Whack 11 cossacks and a Bab cav near Dread Lion and another half dozen Mongolian rifles at Baghdad. 2 More Persian and 6 Indian cav die at Baghdad. Kill 7 German cav at Armenia.

IBT- Zulu drop off a LB near Eastern Shores. Another pile of 44 Mongolian rifles now by Dread Lion. About 30 Chinese cav and a dozen riders come into view by Baghdad.

Turn 3 (1580AD) Kill 11 Persian cav and 8 more Mongolian rifles. Lose an army against a 2hp rifle. Well that was due to happen sooner or later.

IBT- Indians land 4 cav behind the lines

Turn 4 (1585AD) Kill the Indians. 40 Chinese cavalry and riders are crushed at Baghdad.

IBT- Fun with Frigates

Turn 5 (1590AD) 8 Persian and Mongolian cav die along with 2 riders at Baghdad.

IBT- Minor landings on the beach

Turn 6 (1595AD) 2 German cav, 13 Bab rifles and 7 bows killed at Dread Lion. A couple Indian and German cav killed at Baghdad and Armenia. Lose a cav and kill French rifle and a couple LBs. 2 Mongolian LBs, 5 rifles and a pair of muskets dead at Dread Lion.

IBT- The AI throws cav from several civs at Dread Lion that is defended by several armies. We hold on there.

Fast forward to turn 8 as my word doc ran into a problem. Turn 7 was just more killing.

At New El Amarna destroy 61 Mongolian rifles while losing an army, but gained one with an MGL. At Dread Lion is another stack of about 84 Mongolian rifles. There are only 4 sword armies not engaged, and the chokes are open at Armenia and Baghdad. I stop here because we need to decide if we should try and hold Dread Lion. It has the 14 hp rifle army, a cannon, pike and 3 healing cav. The Mongol SoD is sitting on an unimproved tile, so we can get everyone back to Istanbul, but then we sacrifice New El Amarna as well. Armenia has a depleted sword army that has Cossacks at the gates, so that needs attention too.

RP is due in 4. Hoovers is due in 2. That will change things a bit. Some of these towns are getting too big for a 10% lux tax, so we may want to draft a few rifles for MP duty. Seems like kill rates are becoming superfluous. The AI just keeps gaining strength because we aren’t out there pillaging. The next round of turns is going to be pretty critical, and hopefully our production will be able to compensate.

I merged a few workers to boost production. That sacrificed a few scientists, but we can’t stay bottled up forever either.

 

[M60A3TTS]

 

[vmxa]

In communism every town can become useful. I would pop off workers for any town at max food as well to hurry the usefulness. Also these large games can generate hundreds of foreign workers - especially if we are razing some cities.

We can generate those workers, but we have not. We are not razing any cities as far as I can tell, so we are not getting any slaves. Cities are far off an we would need escort armies to return them, if we do get them.

That can be done, but has not been to date. I am not sure what communism has to do with towns becoming useful as they can be without communism. Just let them get to 6 or 12 and be scientist.

The drag that communism tends to put on it IMO is that players want to make courthouse for towns that could otherwise not have any structures. That means x turns of building and them paying for maint of the CH. The size 12 could use a market more as that would elivate some of the need for MP's to pacify the pop. I would not build a market either, but in some cases I would rather see that than a CH.

Since IMO any game that could use communism, will also get to too large of a size to keep using it, those court become little more than a break even proposition. I also am not sure that we can even get the HQ up before then.
The HQ requires another tech that I am not sure we should be researching.

I know we had that talk before and I say again, we will not be stealing form the IA to any extent. They will lag too far behind and we will not have the cash anyway.

I know some feel that they must have the ability to see the troops counts, but it will do little good.

I don't know how many courts we have up now, but they each could have been a cav or 2 MDI's that could do MP duty. Some towns will benefit from a court, but many are not really worth it. The troops would have been very useful now and in the recent past as well as in the future.

 

[ThERat]

got it, will play today, so Greebley has a Sunday to play as well.

I think we still should go for spies as we need to know some stuff. Remember we can't use money for cash rush, might as well use it to spy. Espionage won't take that long either I guess

 

[vmxa]

Well we won't be in Commie forever, so cash will be useful to rush things. What do we need to know?
What are we going to spy on? Investigate a few cities? Steal a map? Never found those to be important. I will see the map eventually anyway.

New Thebes making a harbor. If we irrigate the plains it gets to 12 food and does not need a harbor. This the kind of town I hate to put structures in because it will only yield 1 specialist with a harbor any way. If we irrigate the plains and run pop 5 we get 3 special right now.

New Memphis is right next to it and and if working a coast, but not the fish? I guess a ship disrupted the pop, but it can be put back. It was starving and making a CH.

New Heliopolis is a common situation. It is nearly finished with a CH. It will never be able to feed 6 pop without a) temple to reach the whale b) irrigation of the plains and oasis. That gets you 3 specs, if you can keep the whale worked. Ships will be passing over for some time. Don't know when you can get those tiles irrigated, but then you lost all your shields so the court is not worth much.

New Giza is building a temple, but unless we intend to scrap it once the bordes pop, why do it. Why do it anyway? We are not going for domination.

Baghdad is the 5th town I looked at and it is making a CH, but would not an aqua be better right now? Then a Ch?

Anyway I only looked a those places.

 

[Northern Pike]

Well we won't be in Commie forever

I was lukewarm about the switch from monarchy, so I don't suggest this as a big fan of communism. But now that we've made a huge effort to adjust our civ to communism, why should we take it for granted that we'll change governments again? Since we're going for conquest, we don't need a huge number of cities just to cover the map. Unit support is unlikely ever to be a problem again, and our research capacity, though unspectacular, looks sufficient for us to win. We'll only need more cities for tactical purposes (and these can be abandoned later) and for army support. So I'd suggest that we found just as many extra cities as we need to keep forming armies, and not worry about another revolution until the level of corruption forces us to do so.

 

[Salarakas]

I too don't understand why you want to change back to monarchy. When properly played communism can give you loads of more shields than monarchy. You "just" need courthouses in pretty much ALL your cities to push the overall corruption level down and the third palace is a big help too. Yes, building those courthouses takes away from building troops but it's well worth it imo. If a town has food but not much shields just use the engineer specialist (or whatever it was) to speed it up. Every courthouse you build helps even if it doesn't look that way.

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
MM massively, draft 6 rifles, there is Avaris for example, that is starving at 12, double draft and it is ok now
we are building too many factories in small cities, the factories cost money and will not pay for a long time. Swap to other stuff such as rax, libraries etc.

IT we lose 3 bait drafted rifles, but no city is attacked
However, I don't think we should keep all chokes open

1. 1610AD
defeat units and close the choke by Baghdad using some armies, only the city can be accessed now
defeat 4 riders and close the northern choke, put draft rifle on moutain
close off Istanbul. too many rifles to deal with, hopefully they will turn around

raze New Hamburg
Defeat 2 landings and take out a few dangerous units, I leave the rifle stacks alone as killing them will free up AI unit support and money and achieve nothing for us. We need to raze cities to kill them economically

IT I wish the AI would do something else then bombard our shores
Mongols do attack the western city with 3 cavs and their rifles continue inland
we get Hoover, that should help us
Cossacks attack the northern moutain and take it, guess drafted rifles aren't good enough

2. 1615AD
attack some landings and get what we need, a MGL
close off the 3rd choke effectively except access to the city

my aim is to send out armies to raze western Europe to the ground as a start
send some armies towards Berlin
lower science to 50%, RP still due in 2

IT Lion is attacked by numerous Mongol Cavs and 3 armies barely survive
Baghdad faces the same but the sword army survives as well
just that you get an idea of our production now:
we produce 7 Cav's (all buildings not counted), 4 cannon's, 1 rifle

3. 1620AD
we do have a stack of 45 Mongol rifles between Istanbul and Lion, we need to get them out
bomb them, but can't get them all

raze Berlin after defeating 5 units inside, it had the Great Lighthouse there
this stalls the programm for about 5 minutes, the map seems to be pretty huge
defeat 4 units and raze Orleans,nets us a total of 11 slaves

while clearing units around Lion get a much needed MGL

IT the bombardments are dreadful
we defeat a few Cavs at all fronts
get RP, decide to go for espionage since we can reduce corruption that way even further
while finishing production, see that we do have 2 sources of rubber

4. 1625AD
all those pesky rifles are now wounded and retreating from our land
kill off a stack off 14 of them to be able to move to the front

autoraze Bayonne, move towards Rheims, we can easily get Italy for us and close it off
move into western Europe as well. might as well kick France/Germany off the continent soon

IT defeat 11 Cavs/Cossacks at all chokes
when India attacks, C3C shuts off , especially painful as the IT takes ages
get only 2 Cavs this time round

5. 1630AD
clear the usual landings at Swazi, clear some rifles around Lion

raze Rheims, while I dread the long pause that takes, we can ill afford to keep flip risk cities
capture Lyon, sell the improvements (35gold) and abandon it
move towards Paris

ponder about a new city west of Lion, maybe next turn with more infantry

IT Armenia, defended by 3 infantry holds off 5 Cossacks
we produce 9 Cav's and 5 infantry
Iros start Adam Smith

6. 1635AD
capture and abandon Paris
finally get another army

clear units in the west and found Slowenia on a hill
while clearing more units, get another MGL, this time an inf army
we now have 22 armies and 123 cities

move some armies towards Russia, spot 4 settler pairs that turn into slaves

IT few attacks, but nothing serious, the Mongol Rifle stack moves into our territory as it healed
some of them retreat since they are injured

7. 1640AD
reduce science to 40% and we make 170gpt, espionage still in 2

wound a stack of 18 rifles and leave them alone, they need to retreat again anyway
do the same to another stack of 13 rifles

in the west, capture Tours to gain easier access to Spain, attack Chartres, but 1 LB remains
France has only 2 cities left on the continent as far as I can see
defeat Russian settler pair and attack Rostov, defeat 4 units inside and raze it
raze Nizhy something on the Krim peninsula

IT defend against around 8 Cavs at Armenia, but most of them retreat
defeat 11 cavs/Cossacks at Slowenia, better rush a rax there
get the message that our military plans have been stolen, thought the AI knows anyway where your units are

8.1645AD
the usual clearing of landings at Swazi
there are a lot of units at all 3 fronts, I wonder how the AI can produce this amount of them

raze Chatres in Spain, one city left there

raze Yekaterinburg

IT riders don't want to attack out elite infantry in Armenia, but Cavs do
the Russains do not show up at all now, maybe they are hurting
America also want Smiths
Babylon settles in the voids created, that will be our problem with limited cities

espionage is in, next corporation in 6 (at -62gpt, we have 639gold)

9.1650AD
we would love to have 2 MGLs now for the 2 wonders

raze the new Babs town, clear 2 more settler pairs
3 armies reach Moskow, the city will soon be history

there are a lot of Mongol unit in our land, those pesky rifles now mixed with cavs
clear some of them, now there are 68 of them left, but spread out in different stacks
spot a new Russian city now and kill a settler pair there

IT Raiders decide to attack Armenia and we gain a MGL on defense
we defeat 10 raiders at 2 chokes
Indans attack Baghdad, but the infrantry holds up easily

10. 1655AD
Avignon is razed and some culture pressure is off Morocco
there is just Marseilles left now (thought there would be only 1 city left)

decide that Dread in a Lion needs border expansions and can be an awesome city, rush the SPHQ there

raze Ningpo 2, defeat 4 units in Moscow, capture and abandon it. This MUST simply hurt them
raze Hamburg in Finland

our production is getting really impressive now, after factories, those cities with happy issues are building markets that

give us more cash and more happy faces.
Soon, we should be able to advance in bigger style
The infantry can deal with the enemy, if the city is on a hill with walls/rax and we got 3-4 of them inside

Kahun is building the secret agency in case we do not get a MGL to rush it

some pictures about the situation
Western Europe, pretty much cleared, there is a new Russian city and Marseilles in the southwest
our cities there are pretty safe with a rfile and inf army each. We have started to clear the rifles

the north and east. Both seem stable as well. The infantry has added a lot to our defenses
note that I started to cover moutains with infantry, that should be enough for the time being

 

[ThERat]

I also think we might want to stay in communism, next turn the SPHQ is done and I hope it will lower our corrution further. Our cities are getting better and better in terms of shields. We are churning out a lot of units and this enabled me to play really agrressive. My kill ratio was something of 10:1, but I lost quite a few units, I estimate around 20-30, but the amount of units thrown at us is amazing.

We need to keep on razing cities to get the AI to crumble. Leave their units alone unless they are bothering our territory.

 

[vmxa]

We may end up staying in it. Usual it breaks down your core cities with more corruption than it is worth. Since we had such poor shields core cities, it may not matter.

 

[vmxa]

Yeah we finally have infantry and can do some damage. Nice job ThERat. We must have lost a few armies as we had 24. Leaders were not coming as we had no attackers to speak of, other than armies. Now we are getting cavs to get some elites.

What is amazing to me is how strong Babylon was able to remain after getting pounded early by us and even losing its capitol. Little or no AI on AI action seems to be taking place in the land closest to us.

The civs on contients else where have done a bit of killing, but the civs that took lots of damage from us look to not been attacked by any opportunistic civs.

 

[M60A3TTS]

I think staying commie is the right move. We're not going for domination as was pointed out. I don't see espionage as a big part of this either, but the unit support of communism is a big plus. Next up don't forget to sell off the coal plants now that we have Hoover's. Also, just to make this a bit easier, we may just want to destroy all the roads and rail along a 1-tile line across western Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Then we can throw a handful of explorers or drafted rifles across Europe to simply act as sentinels and keep the AI from building there.

 

[vmxa]

At any point that you would consider going back to Monarchy, you would have so many towns that support would not be an issue. We are not close to that now.

 

[Greebley]

Ok, I got it.

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: Switch a few cities to Artillery. I like the range 2 bombard and we only have 9.
Use an army and a Cav to kill 3 damaged units.
I personally think we have a pretty good work force and most of the land is already improved.
I switch to/ work on Markets and Aquaducts in the upcoming towns. It makes better long term sense to me.

IBT: Some unprotected workers get nabbed. I didn't notice them in the preturn.

1660 AD: I work on the mongol Rifle stack in our territory. I bombard with ALL our artillery type units to get them to 2 and 3 hp. I then use ALL our available armies to attack them and use units on the more injured ones (ones on sentry duty attack and then move back). We lose a Cavalry and get a leader = another army. This kills the larger of the two rifle stacks.

Work on getting squares roaded so we don't waste moves later when getting onto the squares.

Also built a galleon - I am thinking of trying to clear the islands off the african coast that is blocking our cities.

Raze a newly settled Mongol city and gain nearly 500 gold
IBT: Some attacks on our cities. Nothing exciting.

1665 AD: Bombard the Mongol Rifles to 1 hp and kill them.
Raze Marsielles.
Some settlers heading for Europe are nabbed for free workers.
Raise Lux to 20% so towns can grow more and use more shields.
Get a Second Leader for another Army.

IBT: Lose an injured Army that attacked a town and took more damage than it should have.

1670 AD: Capture a Indian new town for 143 gold. Pick up 4 more workers from Settlers.
Continue to keep Europe clean of cities by killing a Russian city.
Capture and abandon Uruk destroying Copernicus.

IBT: Some Infantry are attacked with a few losses.

1675 AD: Grab 6 more workers from Settlers. Get a 3rd Leader for Army 29.
Raze Major Russian town of Khabaravsk.

IBT: Intel Agency built. Memphis production sabataged.

1680 AD: Yaroslavl ( major Russian city) is Razed
Some AI have both Refining and Steel. Turn off tech for a steal instead. I think it will be cheaper. Opening things up to see what the AI has.
I plant spies with China and India. I steal the world map.

1685 AD: Kill the first wave of troops. I have pillaged things so the Cavalry cannot get to me in one turn.
Kill some more towns in Europe. Settle in Spain. Now up to 30 Armies.

IBT: Argentina is Destroyed BTW so is Brazil and the Aztecs own all S America.

1690 AD: Raze Konigsburg - A German city in the North of Europe.
Raze St Petersburg.
Kill a bunch of units. Kill a decent sized stack of Russian Rifles.
Another Army (#31)
Plant several spies.

IBT Landings near Swazi and in Europe.

1695 AD: Build some cities in Europe to form a wall.
Get a Leader for Army 32. Need to build a town to build the army so we now have 128 towns exactly (build one more for 129)

1700 AD: Raze Smolensk.

I was going to stop here playing only 9 to round off the years, but this isn't the best stopping point so I will play all 10.

Decided to build banks in major towns. I pick a bunch where the bank will take 5 or less turns to build - we have decent production so a short pause won't hurt. They have both immediate help with stealing and long term allowing us to run higher
science.

1705 AD: India plants another 2 towns which gives us an additional 800+ gold when autodestroyed.
Raze Munich.
Raze Yakutsk.
Finally Raze the French town off the coast getting in Freetown's way.
Deal with a largish stack of Chinese rifles.

Notes:
The enemy is no longer coming at us in unmanagable numbers. They have had access to us for 6 turns now without numbers we couldn't deal with over 1-3 turns. I think we can start advancing now and capture Asia.

The Additional cash on the last turn allows us to try a steal of a Tech which succeeds. We have Refining We also have 5 Oils.

I think there is one more tech we can steal - Steel, though we may also get a chance of stealing combustion if the AI goes that way. One of the tech leaders was Russia who is now very hurting with most of his core gone. He won't be leading for long. Babylon is also weaker. All advanced civs are in Asia (Mongols, India, Babylon, Russia).

Note that the AI has avoided RP and Sci Method so far. Luck of the tech draw has the AI bee-lining for destroyers. That will be fun if they get those - bombardment is already a major hassle. I am guessing they will get RP soon as well.

Notes on bombardment:
Ships bombard cities with units in them. You can get them to stop by removing the units - or by heavily defending the town. Light defense is worst. Also the AI seems to bombard towns with ships.

Ships will bombard any worker or artillery unit on the coast. Cover those units well or your improvements will be gone.

The fronts:
We own Europe and have a row of cities that make up the front line. If we cover the roads in, the AI cannot reach our towns
with a speed 3 unit in one turn. I kill units as they come.

I have been opening and closing the Southern Choke. It is currently open to deal with the Indian Rifles. I would concentrate on them as the Chinese Rifles cannot yet reach us.

We need more settlers I was poor about building them since I didn't use them until the end. I did not switch enough towns to settlers yet.

As a side note on the "Build wealth because things will take too long to improve" discussion - By the middle of my turn - 25 turns after the discussion all towns were improved to the point that no town needed to use unimproved squares. The number of workers we have now is staggering. Well over 250 foreign and nearly 100 native workers. We will likely complete all improvements in 2-5 turns at which point I would merge the Native workers back in. This is the advantage of popping off Native workers off of max population cities previously (which I did and other players as well to get to nearly 100) - all the towns that have just completed aquaducts can jump in size and instantly use the improved lands. This will further increase our shield and gold output. We don't need the natives and can use the population. We have 2220-250 and will gain 30+ workers for each player turn I suspect (I averaged about 4-5 workers a turn with the settlers and razing).

I feel merging is an even more important reason to build the workers (if you have the unit support) than to make the improvements in these large games because you always have so many foreign workers. I think we approached 1000 workers in AG3 by the end.

Note for new towns, I tend to like to build in this order: Temple, Courthouse, (Harbor), Aquaduct, Market (needed for sizes over 9 in terms of happiness), Factory, Barracks, Troops. With merging towns can do this fairly quickly.

Same picture as above as I can't always see my pictures anymore.

The Save for 1705 AD

 

[ThERat]

Greebley

I agree with saving some cash for steals. Once we have caught up, we can go back to self research.

I hope we can quickly take out India and Mongols as the biggest threat. The earth looks huge and I am honestly surprised that we never hit the 512 city max.

Am I correct that now we are allowed to check any information we need? We might want to rid the Asian Civs of access to oil to prevent destroyers. I would also advocate flight before tanks as bombers can be very useful to take out naval units

Are there any cities worth keeping such as Adam Smith or Sun Tzu? Or are they all overseas located?

Here the roster since we did swap this time

Roster:
Greebley
ThERat
markh - up
Northern Pike - on deck
vmxa
M60A3TTS