GR13 - AWE on LK's world map

[Salarakas]

lurker's comment: Communism was used successfully in LK101 on this very same map on deity and the game ended in domination. Granted, it wasn't always war but it certainly can be done. You just need to plant the towns in a little looser formation once you start rolling and fill the gaps with temples. With railroads you don't need CxxC anymore.

Then again, you want at least courthouses in your better cities to drop the overall corruption rate and that takes away from building the troops you very much need. But as you're religious I would definately change asap as it will give a huge boost to your overall troop pumping.

 

[Northern Pike]

Useful to know--thanks.

 

[Greebley]

I forgot about the religious part. I think we should switch, but may want to wait until after the main towns all have courthouses before we cut their production.

We can always switch back later if we feel it would be better.

I am unsure if we should go for Industrialization, Espionage, or toward RP next.

Industrialization seems best to me. That way we can build factories while we research the techs to get to RP and be ready to produce units faster when we get it. Artillery and Infantry are expensive enough that getting factories first makes sense to me.

 

[ThERat]

we should have coal on such a big continent. I would be surprised if we wouldn't have.
One thing negative about communism is the fact that nothing can be cash rushed any longer. Maybe as suggested, swap to communism now and later back to monarchy once we have grown bigger.
We have to make sure now that we do not fall behind in tech again. But with rails, this shouldn't be an issue. Our big flood plain cities should be able to pump put more workers as well to speed up railing.

 

[vmxa]

I am not a fan of commie as I dislike building ch is so many places. I also do not care for making temples to expand borders unless we are trying to get domination tiles.

Since we are religious we can jump back and forth, but we still have anarchy for 1 turn, twice.

 

[M60A3TTS]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/43630/GR13_1400_AD.SAV

Pre-turn: Umtata and New Elephantine get some comic relief.

IBT- No combat. Some naval bombardment along the coast, but only about half a dozen frigates.

Turn 1 (1355AD) The Siege of Karakorum: 12th Knight Army at strength 18 takes a cannon hit and loses 15 hp in order to kill a vet rifleman. 13th Knight Army fares much better. No cannon strike, and loses only 4hp in killing his vet rifle. So there are two defenders gone. 2 Chinese riders die on a hill by Alexandria. (4-0). Kill a Bab reg musket with 14th Army in the same region. (5-0). New Asyut gets a scientist.

IBT- 20+ Cossacks appear in the Alexandria section.

Turn 2 (1360AD) 15th Knight Army kills a vet rifle at Karakorum, but goes to 1HP. 7th Sword Army kills vet rifle, and is down to 3hp. 13th Army kills unfortified vet rifle, down to 6hp. 9th Army kills drafted rifle, down to 4hp. 13th Knight Army, destined to go down in history, defeats another drafted rifle and Karakorum falls. It is now at 5hp. 2nd Sword Army at 9hp moves in as the strongest member of the stack. Redlined 12th and 15th Knight Armies also move in. Market and courthouse are sold off, and several captured workers are killed off.

14 Cossaks are killed at the loss of a knight. Fire all scientists, make them all taxmen and order our forces defending Karakorum to fight to the death. Hit enter.

IBT- Lose two red sword armies outside the capital. The AI does not attack Karakorum.
Piles of advances all the way up to communism come our way. We are technically advanced for a change!

Turn 3 (1365AD) Do a bunch of upgrades with our cash so we now have 16 cavalry and 7 cannons. Babylon loses 5 muskets, 11 longbows, a knight and a cav by Alexandria. The first two tiles in the core are railed. Karakorum is abandoned and we head for the hills. Lavendar and New Elephantine rioted. Industrialism in 22 turns.

IBT- While it isn’t accurate to say that the AI has bailed out of the Alexandria region, after the last couple beatings it is not so much a target rich environment.

Turn 4 (1370AD) Cavalry goes into action for the first time as we get Bab cav, musket and three LBs. Persia loses 2 muskets to cav after they are redlined. Pull the knight armies back to Alexandria to heal. With the cav in place to pull the offensive load, the armies will be ready to move forward in a couple turns.

IBT- French are building Bachs.

Turn 5 (1375AD) Cav kill 2 Persian cav. Add a cav to 17th knight army, and move it towards Babylon with plenty of cats and a few cannon.

IBT- Quiet

Turn 6 (1380AD) Kill 4 Persian cav. Also an MI and a warrior.

IBT- Aztecs building Newtons. We have Mongolian and Zulu amphib landings at Swazi. This riots.

Turn 7 (1385AD) Zulu horse, Mongol rifle and 3 cav killed at Swazi. OK, there is definitely a profit in razing Mongol towns. Our healing armies destroy a rifle and LB and destroy the fledgling town of New Almarikh and collect 195 gold. Kill 6 Chinese cavalry, and our armies are now adjacent to Babylon.

IBT- More landings at Swazi. Indian cav, 3 Mongol rifles and an MI.

Turn 8 (1390AD) 3 muskets and 2 cav are destroyed at Babylon. No gold and the city is leveled. Temple of Artemis went with it. Our Karakorum group has 30+ Mongolian Cavalry in sight. We head back for the hills. 4 Persian and 3 Chinese cav are killed near Alexandria. France loses a pike, LB and 2 MI. Another Persian cav takes 14 of 18 HPs off a sword army. Chinese pike and cav die next to Babylon’s ruins. Kill the Indian cav at Swazi, but the Mongols get to live. Too weak to attack, but the rail line from Thebes will be in range next turn.

IBT- Indians finish Bach’s in Delhi, Chinese finish Newton’s in Nanking. More landings in the Swazi area by France and India.

Turn 9 (1395AD) Exchange 1 cav for 7-8 Persian ones at Alexandria. Kill assorted Chinese units.

IBT- No AI landings this time.

Turn 10 (1400AD) Cut road links to Hindana to make their cav movements a little more difficult to reach the choke. And done.

Post turn: We have one coal source, and a rail line from Alexandria to Swazi, so we can respond to landings there at any time. Kahun and Thebes are at 20+ spt, and a number of towns up over 10. The Karakorum armies are unmoved. We are still in Monarchy. I haven’t started a prebuild for ToE. No AI has started US yet, unless it’s Australia. We can get to Industrialism and get factories in place in time to start that. Industrialism is due in 14, but we need a little more cash. Maybe razing another Mongol city will do that.

 

[ThERat]

sounds good
razing Mongols cities for more cash sounds like a good idea.

We should (actually MUST) try and get the arabian peninsula for us to settle. We need to start expanding, else we are dead. I hope we can get more Cav armies to speed up this process. We should be able to expand now with rails.
I suggest to go industrialism, sci methods, then electricity/rep parts

 

[ThERat]

I had a lok at the save, MM of the cities is pretty bad.
We are working the wrong tiles in totally corrupt towns, all taxmen (sometimes even clowns) should be replaced with scientists.
I would also switch the banks to unis which we need more than banks at the moment.

Overall I was able to reduce the research to 13 turns at +64gpt or 10turns at -34gpt

 

[M60A3TTS]

Expansion is definitely a vital need. How to expand is the challenge since the AI will attack any stack not under the cover of an army.

We also need banks and universities in the core, and then factories soon, etc. And of course, more cavalry.

 

[vmxa]

Banks are only useful if you have some income being taxed and the cities has a reasonable amount of uncorrupted gold. We do not have enough science havens right now to get much out of banks.

I am not so sure that Uni's are any better as we probably are already the top beaker generator in the game and could better use gold and units.

I will raise some of the same arguements about Espionage as the last game, but not quite as strongly. We do not want to side track now for it, but rather get to RP. This is what will help us expand.
Remember that we do not have embassies and that hurts our spying.

The AI will not be all that useful in the good techs right now and will steady get worse. Any civ on our land mass will be slowing down. We have no money to plant spies, let alone try to steal for the near furture.

We may need to up lux, if we cannot get another one soon. We can stand to get markets more than banks in some of these place to help with happiness.

 

[Salarakas]

lurker's comment: Have you thought about how you're going to win this game? Advancing with artillery, railroads and armies is usually fast once you get going but that's still a huge area to conquer and it's already pretty late in the game. I'm not sure but I don't think that Africa + Europe + Asia would even be enough for a domination victory. You also have to worry about some civ in the Americas (or Australia) launching a space ship before you can stop them. And building the UN is mandatory as well of course.

 

[vmxa]

We only have 2 options: domination or conquests. Both are not that hard. They will not be seeing the UN or a SS as they will be hard pressed to get to the modern age.

EDit:

Those that manage to get to the Modern Age, could build the UN, but it will be easy to beat them to it with just a decent prebuild. No way anyone gets to the late tech for space parts. Maybe the top dog could get to Apollo.

 

[Greebley]

Actually, this is a conquest game. I felt like playing one and put it in the first post.

I got it.

Edit: Uploads seems slow. Need to try to grab the file later.

 

[vmxa]

I missed that, but that sounds good to me. Once we get some cav elites we should start getting more armies and roll.

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: Tons of MM. Why in the world are we building MDI? In towns without barracks? Some towns look like they have been building the MDI for 30 odd turns (assuming they got set to MDI when town was built).

I get it down to 9 turns at -39 gpt.

I also started the Mil Academy.

IBT: Lots of annoying boat bombardment has started.

1405 AD: We kill the nearby units fairly easily. My hope on my turn is to keep the choke mostly open so that the AI will use up excess units and we can start expanding again in the near future.
Switch to 10 turns at +52 gpt

IBT: Iroquios are dropped off near Swazi. There are a LOT of mongol rifles on the move. I am thinking we want to take those out by defending if we could. It will be annoying to kill 50+ rifles on offense.

1410 AD: We get a leader with an elite victory - I fill a Cav army.

IBT: Persians block the way so other civs retreat.

1415 AD: Clear out two nearby Babylonian towns.

IBT: Partial blockage

1420 AD: Expand outward to allow more civs to come at us.

IBT: Universal Sufferage is started and Magellan is not complete.

1425 AD: Rebuild the Iron town.

1430 AD: Destroy a Persian town but our army took a lot of damage. We may lose it. [Edit: It survives]

IBT: New landing spot to the Northwest of Africa. Army survives this turn.

1435 AD: Raze another Babylonian town and build the town of Breakout (outside the choke).
Get 2 more leaders bringing the number of Cavalry armies to 4. I would actually like a Rifle Army, but we don't have Rifles yet. -16 cavalry for armies means we are running short of them.

1440 AD: Kill a bunch of units coming at us.

1445 AD: Build another town outside the choke.

1450 AD: Clear out the last two Babylon cities to the south of the choke. We can now fill it with our cities if we choose to.

Notes:
Convert irrigation to mines in our core! I should have been doing this, but I didn't think of it until now. Our core cities have tons of extra food now that the plains have rails.

We have 4 Cav armies total from 4 leaders gained this turn giving us a total of 19 armies. I believe we can have 4-8 more armies based on city count.

We are expanding outside the choke. I think we now have sufficient armies to handle it, but I am not sure the full extent yet. We can retreat again if absolutely necessary. Note that slow units like Rifles have not shown up. Those aren't the same threat though as Cav - even if there is a lot of them they will tend to go around giving us a number of turns to deal with them.

I switched all large towns to factories. We can switch back to units if it is felt we need more units.

I built Courthouses in many cities (not in capitol yet and a few others though). I feel communism is a good thing:

1) Plains is not as good for science farms and much of Africa is plains.
2) Our core is shield poor so Communism gives us many more shields.
3) We can switch govts quickly.
4) Given the high cost of tech, I think stealing is a very good alternative after we get techs like RP. Communism increases our spy success a good bit, IIRC.

Basically communism will allow us to keep up in tech but give us a lot more shields for unit production. I think this is a win. This is not a game we are going to get far ahead in tech to kill the AI via superior units. I would rather not try to race the AI in tech - I would like to steal techs.

There is a question on when to switch. We will want to quickly self-research RP, Sci Meth, and Espionage. I am unsure if we make the same science if we are communist. I think we are at the right number of cities for communism to do well though. We may also want to abandon some cities if we go Communist.

The Save

 

[Greebley]

Once again I cannot see my picture. Not sure why this suddenly started to happen.

Same picture as above in case you don't see it.

Note that our FP town has almost finished the Mil Acad. I think we should build a Factory and Coal plant in the town next (quickly) and then start a prebuild for TOE so we get it the same time we get Sci Meth (which probably should be our next tech). Magellan's can cascade to US which can cascade to TOE, so we want to get it before the AI gets Sci Meth. Note that Magellan cascaded from something else.

 

[ThERat]

so, do we all agree to swap to communism now? If so, then I will revolt immediately before the IT.

I think we need to put down more cities, but with communism, we there is an issue with science farms. The more cities, the less productive the core. I am not sure whether this will work out. If we go for communism, I would most probably abandon (via settlers/workers) filler towns that aren't necessary.

I hope to push back the AI to the 3 chokes during my turnset. Turkey/Armenia/Iran should provide nice chokes.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Once again I cannot see my picture. Not sure why this suddenly started to happen.

That's what had me confused. I can't see the link to my saves unless I'm in edit mode. Crazy.

I hope to push back the AI to the 3 chokes during my turnset. Turkey/Armenia/Iran should provide nice chokes.

Sounds like a plan. Then maybe we cut a swath through the Persians and into India.

 

[Northern Pike]

If we go for communism, I would most probably abandon (via settlers/workers) filler towns that aren't necessary.

Well, founding the maximum number of towns for army support, unit support, and science farming is absolutely basic to our strategy in these games. I have no fundamental objection to a switch to communism now, but if we have to resort to perverse devices such as this to make communism work, I'd be inclined to abandon the whole idea.

 

[ThERat]

Well, founding the maximum number of towns for army support, unit support, and science farming is absolutely basic to our strategy in these games. I have no fundamental objection to a switch to communism now, but if we have to resort to perverse devices such as this to make communism work, I'd be inclined to abandon the whole idea.

I agree with you here, but honestly, I got no clue what the ideal/best number of cities under communism is on this type of map. Anyone knows that?

By the way, Turkey + former Babylon will be very good cities as they are pretty close to our core. I will settle cities with less dense arrangement. We should only settle dense again in the corrupt outskirts of the empire.