GR2 - Sherman's War (C3C AW).

[Matt_G]

I think your right on the money Greebley. It depends on where you build the FP.

I have read of people building their FP far away from their palace (relatively speaking) and it made the second ring of cities around
their palace 1/1 suckland.
It's my understanding that the closer the FP is to your palace, the better off you are.
I am no alexman when it comes to understanding corruption and/or these damn bugs though.

The main reason I posted that, was I didn't want to see you guys go with a RCP build and get hit with a triple whammy.

The FP and GPT bugs are bad enough as it is, without getting hit with that as well.

BTW Handy900 I sent you a PM.

 

[handy900]

I see your point on the tobacco leaves. Thanks.

 

[handy900]

Originally posted by Matt_G

BTW Handy900 I sent you a PM.

I got it, Thanks. I sent you a reply.

 

[Coffee]

However there is the distance corruption component as well. This IS improved by the building of your FP, since the distances become shorter for cities near the FP. Based on the game I played (where the FP did actually help - my gold went up), I believe this is a true statement. (Matt_G, if you are reading this thread, I would be curious if you think my analysis is correct - Thanks for the pointer BTW).

I would agree with this also. I was able to reduce corruption with the FP at a distance of 8. That number fits with what Matt_G says. I'd also note that the FP is a corrupt free city. Another strategic location would see the FP placed to breakup tied distances, or RCP cities. Good luck with this one. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in C3C

 

[T_McC]

Back to my Civ computer, so here are some more thoughts.

First, my take on a dot-map

I really didn't like the eastern-most yellow dot from Greebley's map, as if it and the northern red dot were both founded, the city on the first yellow dot would have first-ring competition on both sides, and would likely end up useless. One offshoot of the FP bug is that we are only going to get so many productive cities, and having one that would struggle to even reach size 6 is probably not a good use of a settler. What was the advantage (that I'm missing) to founding a city on the eastern yellow dot?

So yellow dots are first-ring cities, red dots would be catapult bases/spots to move the line forward and allow the yellow dots to be productive cities. Since that isn't a lake in the south, we don't lose much by settling off the water. The blue box is a catapult/offensive troop rally point, where we can serve both of the western yellow dots. The southern yellow dot may not see a lot of troops, and could possibly be productive from the time it is founded.

If we wanted to do a river/coastal wonder city, the only candidate is a forested square E of the capital. It would have two hills and three mountains, but is a little short on bonus grasslands.

 

[Greebley]

I think I like your dotmap better TMcC than mine. Moving the red dots does give us more space but still gives us cover on all ways in. The eastern city was trying to be on a river, but you are right that the lake is equally good.

Your comment on a wonder city - Do we want to make this a priority? If so the best wonder city is actually the blue rally point on your map. It is on the river, on a hill, and has 6 BG's withint its workable land. Is there any way we can work that into our plan? (put our wonder city on the blue rally point). FYI, I verified that the square is on the river. It was a little difficult to tell otherwise.

It might even be worth sacrificing the hill locations for such a good wonder building city, especially if our kill zones are the red cities.

I need to go to bed, but TMcC if you have time, see if you can come up with a good dot map with the blue rally point settled.

 

[T_McC]

I'll take a look at it tomorrow morning, but my initial reaction is that I really don't want to sacrifice the high ground for our first two cities. It's like getting free walls, and works even after growth beyond 6. it would also be quite a gamble to commit a city that will be on the front line (at least for the early part of the game) to building wonders.

My second reaction is to look at the eastern yellow dot and wonder ... fresh water, 6 hills, forests, at least two BG (hard to tell without the game being open), not on the front lines, hmmm ...

 

[T_McC]

After looking at the game, this is the best I could come up with if we start with a city on the blue square.

The western yellow dot and the red dot do seal off the rest of our territory, as no units can pass without being adjacent to one of the cities, but ... it's going to take a while to be able to found those cities. The Aztec attack should come down through the northern yellow dot, so the blue square will be a front-line city for a good portion of its early existence. This is not the easiest position to defend, although it is on a hill, because there are so many adjacent hills for attackers to attack from. This arrangement also has no cities within 1 turn of the capital. [Edit: Shift southern yellow dot 1 NE to solve the problem.] With the previous arrangement, the southern city would be within 1 turn, and the northern yellow dot within 1 turn after Engineering.

This arrangement could be done, but we wouldn't be able to start building wonders at blue square for quite a few turns. As an alternative, we could use the first dot-map, and have the southern yellow dot be a wonder city. Not great terrain, only 2 bonus grass, but there are 5 forests to chop (figure 2 more BG). Four BG and 5 hills means good production after a gov't swap, and mined regular grass is just as good as mined BG during our inevitable Despotism GA.

Pros for this dot-map: If blue box is on the river, it is a terrific wonder city. With a little worker labor, 15 shields before corruption at size 6 without a border expansion. After a gov't swap it could generate 22 shields at size 9 before corruption. Unless someone gets a cow/hill capital, this will probably be the most productive city on the continent. This dot-map, especially with the southern dot moved 1 NE, could allow for some fairly big cities. Since we will be limited in the # of cities we can use, having them all able to use 12 land tiles will be very useful.

Cons for this dot-map: Both the western yellow dot and the red dot have to be founded before the blue box can start on wonders. Our workers will have to be closer to the front line to improve tiles around blue box. Red dot is kind of far away from the capital to be productive in Despotism.

After thinking about it, this dot-map is a gambit towards winning the game. If we weren't playing always war, this would be my preferred dot-map. Since it appears that the Aztecs are at war with someone else, this becomes less of a gambit. If we can establish the front away from blue box, that city could go a long way towards winning this game. We can't leader-rush wonders, but neither can anybody else. I think the Aztecs will be sufficiently distracted and spent to give us the 20 light combat turns we need to pull this off, so my vote is for this dot map, with the cities founded (1) Northern yellow dot, (2) Blue box, with a handful of units to jam up the hills, (3) Red dot to help keep our workers safe around blue box. If we get to (3) without having blue box really threatened, it could be downhill from there.

 

[T_McC]

Upon further review ...

I've changed my mind back to the original dot map. I have to agree with something Handy wrote, that we first must prevent losing the game before we can win it. The best way to prevent losing is to build cities on hills early. We won't have time to build wonders for quite a while, so the southern forest site can get some worker attention and be prepared for a G. Lib pre-build when the time comes. Not building on the hills is a tremendous gamble, especially when we don't have a three-defense UU. (If we were the Greeks, I'd want the second dot-map.) So now I want to found cities on the two hills, and play defense for a while.

I also took note of who we're facing: Of the seven civs, 5 have ancient age UU's. We get to face Jags, the Jag-clone scouts (will be an even bigger PITA than Jags, with hills-as-roads ability), two of the three 3-defense UU's (Legions and NuMercs), and Mounted Warriors. We will be playing defense (and slave-poaching) for almost this entire age. This also caused my thinking to lean to the more defensive dot-map. The other two civs are the UU-less (essentially) Americans and the Ottomans. I really want the Ottomans on this continent, so we can deal with them before Mil.Trad.

I'll be frank, I expect to lose this game. Our UU has a long useful life, but isn't particularly useful on offense or defense. It's utility is as a "clean-up" unit. Our civ traits allow our cities to grow a little faster, but the only relevant cheap building we get is an aqueduct. Firaxis/Atari saw fit to kneecap Industrious, making it much less useful. Armies are much more powerful, and especially so in the hands of the human, but not being able to rush Great Wonders with military leaders is a huge price to pay. Look at the successful AW SG's, how many of them include the phrases "rushed Pyramids" or "rushed Sun Tzu's" or "rushed Great Library" ... we may have to try to win this without building any Wonders. (Not so bad, we'll just have to capture them.) The final insult to this type of game are the bugs in Conquests. Not having a working FP is really going to hurt, as it will limit the number of useful cities we can obtain. When you have to self-research every technology, this could make things very sluggish after the late Medieval Age. The gpt bug may be even worse, as it potentially allows all other civs to research at >100% capacity simultaneously. We won't be paying GPT, but we also won't be receiving it. I fear this could lead to an accelerated AI tech pace, since they are allowed to just pull money/beakers out of thin air. One potential benefit of this is that if AI wars start, MA's could go flying around at breakneck pace. Not a worry for us, we'll be at war with everybody all the time.

 

[Greebley]

I think we can win. Getting the GL will really help this as it gives us time to set up our economy before we need to truly compete.

Also if the pillaging strategy is effective then the gpt doubling will help the AI only slightly. You need gpt to trade, which is harder with few roads. The other continent(s) will be the biggest danger there as we won't be able to get over to them easily with our armies.

I will see what I can come up with if we build the "wonder town" in terms of a dot map. It will probably be similar to yours. TMcC, but I would like to do some counting of squares. I would like to cover most squares when we are size 12 to maximize our land usage.

[Edit: How about something like this? The average is pretty close to 12 squares per town]

 

[handy900]

Come on T_McC, think positive As smart as you & Greebley are, we can pull this off.

If this was a PTW game I would feel great about the start. I've won on alot worse, and that was without the benefit of two smart players like you & Greebley. I'm not really sure yet how the FP & other bugs will affect us, you guys are light years ahead of me on understanding those issues.

In about 1/2 of my AW games (the Rome game with Greebley included) we built the GL from scratch, so it can be done. That's the key wonder IMHO. Sun Tzu is #2 on my list for AW.

My main concerns the "FP bug" & "GPT bug", the AI's new inclination to bombard armies mote than in PTW while they are pillaging, and the fear that we may get pillaged ourselves more than in PTW. I'm counting on you two to develop a strategy for the GPT & FP bugs.

This will be fun, I have not lost an AWM PTW in a long time, and I've learned alot from the Rome game and you two already. Heck, we are going to win the Rome game and did not have iron for the longest time. I like our chances....ugh unless we find ourselves with no iron & no horses. Winning without those 2 resources would be a challenge indeed.

 

[barbslinger]

I am half way through a similar game I set up to get my 1st taste of AW. At monarch the other civs research really slow. Once we get about 9 cities set up I think we will be fine. I built the GL and SZ from scratch. It is dicey when you draw a line in the sand but the walls really helped. The FP bug worried me so I kept jumping my palace with leaders, to be better centered, until I could build an the palace far enough away. After I got it to where I wanted it I built an FP 8 squares away back in my core and it works fine now.
The pillaging with 3 armies utterly destroys the opposing civ infrastructure and then you only get trickles.
I think if we can get 4-5 defensive units with pults to the western cities and make a stand there we'll make it. While the front lines holds them in check we can be busily building our infra up behind us, including the GL and SZ. Timing was tough though. I don't think they even researched lit while at war.
The GPT bug never affected me becase I was ahead in research all through the ancient and made only one trade with one civ before declaring. In retrospect I think I should have made a GPT deal and broke it when I met the last civ because you never get on good terms anyway.
I gotta tell you, this AW is a hoot after the initial onslaught.

 

[Greebley]

Barbslinger,
If tomorrow there is still no word from Gingerbread man, and you have free time, then post an "I got it" and start playing (assuming still no word from gingerbread man). Gingerbread man would then play after you.

In other words, if we don't hear from Gingerbread man tonight, then whoever posts the "I got it" first should play first.

Note that "official" AW rules, don't permit any per turn trades (gpt, luxes, etc). So though it is a good idea, I did specifically disallow it when I posted the rules above.

Does anyone have opinions on my dot map? I like it, but that may be because you all haven't yet pointed out all the flaws

If we do go with this dot map, the first town I would settle would be the "wonder" city which is on the incense hill 4 squares SW of the capitol. I guess if I was choosing, I would build the northern city near the fish next, as it is within 3 of both the wonder city and the capitol, and then perhaps the front line cities and back-fill.

 

[handy900]

Greebley,

Your map & T_McC's are both good. I always build a little tighter (dense) in AW (see my first map) but I'm up for a wider build. A very aggressive settle would be blue, red, black, black. Less aggresive would be to build blue, red, green, then back settle. There are lots of options with this start. If we can settle & hold the line created by the black cities (big if), we would have a great start. Holding it will not be easy. May need 3 javelins per city to hold until we get walls since there is no "hill bonus". Alot depends on why we have seen no AI scouts. Do Aztecs hold a choke point to the north?

This wider build may present challenges. If the Aztecs make peace, we could quickly find ourselves at war with aztecs + two or other civs. We may have to face up to 6 archers on a single turn (probably not, but maybe - 3 civs x 2 archers per stack). More likely we face two archers 1 turn, then 2 more the next turn with no time to heal.

OTOH, if the Aztecs hold a choke point up north, it'll be just us & them for a while. 30 turns & no war is record for me. usually I'm at war by turn 10.

 

[T_McC]

Alright, you convinced me. We're going to win.

WTH? ...

Now for another dotmap.

The blue dots are where Greebley and I agree. Where we disagree, the red dots are Greebley's, and the yellow squares are mine. We need only be concerned with the two different placements that are circled. Now I'm going to tell you why my placements are so much better.

In the north, the yellow square is not on a BG, and in conjunction with the western blue dot closes that front. An enemy cannot pass those cities without spending at least one turn adjacent (getting bombarded) to one of them. The yellow square is also within three squares of the westen blue dot, not requiring a third city to form a common defense front. The yellow square also allows all those hills to be behind the front. I would be surprised if the AI could figure out to run beyond the city to get on high ground before attacking. (Any unit that could move onto the hill behind the yellow square has to have an opportunity to first attack the city from flat ground. With the red dot, I fear we would see enemy forces beeline for the hill before attacking.)

In the south, the red dot and the yellow square are both within three squares of the blue Wonder city. However, the yellow square is also within three squares of the capital. From the capital, we can go directly to the blue Wonder in 2 turns, but the yellow square allows a one-turn "shuffle" of a unit to blue Wonder. (i.e. build spear in capital, move to south yellow square; wake existing spear in yellow square, move to blue wonder. Net effect is to move a newly-built spear from the capital to blue wonder.) Yellow square does bugger up some of the southeast cities, but I do think this it has important advantages over the red dot.

So I feel the settling order should be north yellow square, blue Wonder, western blue dot.

 

[Greebley]

hmmm, ya.

I see your points on both the circled choices and you have convinced me, especially on the lower one. The building on the BG is always interesting. If I remember correctly, it is only a difference when under size 6? When you hit size 7 the extra shield re-appears (so bg you have 2 shields, non-bg you have 1 shield in the central square) - or did I just imagine I saw this?

The north red dot does give us an "extra town" farther out, but maybe it sticks out to far.

 

[barbslinger]

I like the yellow square idea but the western most blue should come back 1 SE to be on coast and the SW ble 1 S still on the coast. I also agree with the settling order. Whoever made the jav thrower/settler spreadsheet, nice job. Looks great until 1st city gets set up to make javs. After wonder city gets cooking with barracks/walls it should be straight military supplier to the front until we get within about 5-10 turns of writing, depending on SPT in WonderCity and then prebuild for GL.
What are the rules for declaring. From what I read in the prior posts it is when a visual is made. What if they are on F4 but you haven't seen them yet? I would like to declare when they come calling. Our civ just wants to be left alone to build a war machine for whomever comes calling. Scouting around looking for a fight could be a disaster. They will all find us soon enough. Hopefully, Aztecs will provide a buffer until our General Sherman heads out to pillage and finds the rest. Man I hope the Romans are somewhere else. Legions would be tough this early.

List of names for Towns in honor of William Tecumseh Sherman

Capital - Tecumseh ( Also Indian sounding)
LSU - His college - Wonder City/GL
Sherman
Savannah
Lancaster - Shermans birth city
West point - SZ city
Ft Sumter
Bull Run - The front - N yellow dot. Hopefully history won't repeat.
Shiloh
Chattanooga
Raleigh
Lincoln
Paducah
Missionary Ridge
Resaca
Augusta

Cities/ Camps when we march
Griswoldville
Macon
Briar Creek
Buck Head Creek
Waynesborough
Fort McAllister

Army names -

McDowells 1st Div
Shermans 5th Div
Army of the Cumberland

 

[barbslinger]

I work 1pm-11:30pm and I just woke up here. I'll play it after work tonight. If there is no real arguments against it, I will be going blue wonder city then yellow square. Also, I'll be changing the Capitals name to Tecumseh. Hail General Sherman!

 

[Greebley]

Sounds good Barbslinger (on order of builds, renaming, and that you are playing).

Gingerbread Man,
Check in when you get back, even if Barbslinger hasn't finished so we know you can take the save.

TMcC,
If you want to play tomorrow and we haven't hearf from Gingerbread man, then go ahead [Edit: Do post an "I got it so he knows you are playing]. If we do hear from him, then you will be after him. Otherwise we will just skip him this first round, and we will just re-insert him when he shows up.

 

[barbslinger]

2550 BC inherited turn

Goals – Hopefully get 2 cities down. LSU (Wonder city) and Bull Run (the front)
Workers – to build our fledgling empire.
More javs – No reason, except the impending wars.
Stay out of impending wars until 1st sighting.
Changed capitals name to Tecumseh to honor our games namesake.
Tecumseh is due to grow to 7 next turn so it is not on cycle I saw in a previous post. Will try to make it back. BW in 14. Will try to MM to speed it along.
MM’ed to get BW in 5 with no loss. Sci to 50%, settler in. Worker is standing on an unimproved grass and looking at spreadsheet I’m thinking a mine goes there.

Hit enter –
2510 – turn 1
Adjust slider for pop 7. BW in 4, Settler in 2. -1gpt. Worker road for gold prior to mine. We have plenty of shields. Jav to hill worker to road between hills. Moving scouts home for MP and I don’t really want to run into anyone. Fingers crossed.

IBT – nada

2470 – turn 2
BW in 3, Settler in 1. -1gpt. Roading towards front.

IBT – Settler > Jav

2430 – turn 3
Settler towards LSU founding in 3. Worker starts mine. Reshuffle tiles/ sliders for pop 5. BW in 1, Jav in 4. Growth in 4. Mine in 4. -1gpt. I’m justifying the 4 turn jav because we will be self researching the whole game just about, except for prewar trades. Also the mine will be finised then and I think I can get on the 6 turn settler jav cycle.

2390 – turn 4
Road complete to hook up LSU when founded. Heading to front.

IBT – BW come in. Wheel for horsies next.

2350 – turn 5
Wheel in 25 at +1gpt. Good thing because we were broke after that turn.

2310 – turn 6
LSU, future home of the Great Library is founded. GPT jumps to +7 but I haven’t looked at Mm or sliders yet. Set to barracks in 20. Wheel in 8 at +1

IBT – Tecumseh – Jav > Settler

2270 – turn 7
Tecumseh settler in 3 grow in 4. MM’ing after 2 turns. Food is +3 while using incense hill, +4 on MG. 3+3+4 Slider to 10% for the new dude in town. Need MP to be able to increase science spending. Wheel is 7. 0gpt. Mine is finished, moving worker to chop for barracks. Road to have Bull Run hooked up is complete to edge of yellow square. He goes back to mine BG at LSU on road. Warrior makes it back to LSU.

2230 – turn 8
Started chop due in 3. Renamed 2 scouting warriors Almost saw Aztecs and Atlanta Bound.

2190 – turn 9
Fortified jav where Bull Run will be.

IBT – Tecumseh – Settler > Jav

2150 – turn 10
Settler heads to Bull Run location (Yellow square). He’s idling under the worker chop. I reset Tecumseh for jav in 4 – grow in 4 because I still can’t figure out how to get it to 3-3. Then after looking at speadsheet I printed out it hit me that the sheet says IC irrigated cow is 4f 2s when it is actually 4f 1s.

Hopefully we can get 5-6 cities up before the war starts so our GA will be fruitful. 3:28 here so I’m posting now.
2150 SAVE