GR23 - AWDG vs 30 Civs

[Northern Pike]

That looks good, apart from our continuing lack of armies. Fairly soon we'll be defending one straight front.

Now more than ever, with all that western land to settle, we should take the time to build granaries in Rome and Neapolis at least.

We can probably hold the three enemy cities along our south coast, if we don't auto-raze them. Those three civs crush us culturally, but OTOH the distance-from-capital factor will reduce the flip risk.

Syracuse is building a Legionary without a barracks.

 

[vmxa]

I got it, will get started after lunch.

 

[vmxa]

FYI I managed to grab a 400 degree handle, so I am playing with one hand. Very hard to keep a log. So anyway it will take more time.

 

[Northern Pike]

Sorry to hear that. I hope you aren't in too much pain.

 

[Greebley]

That sounds very painful. Good luck and take the time you need. Log can just note major events.

 

[vmxa]

I came out of it much better than I hoped. It hardly hurts today and did not blister, so far. Typing is still tricky, but not like yesterday. I got two turns in before it happened. Anyway getting started now.

Nothing like being careless to cause yourself pain and grief.

 

[darski]

FYI I managed to grab a 400 degree handle, so I am playing with one hand. Very hard to keep a log. So anyway it will take more time.

Ouch!!!!

I saw that it is better today but you have to be careful with burns as the tissue can be 'very maleable' and could be harmed more by use than the original burn.

 

[vmxa]

Here is the save:

 

[vmxa]

PRE:
I think the idea of a granary is solid, but I have no idea when we can start one or where at this time. Most places do not have water, many of the rest do not have many shields and those that do need to make more units. Will see what can be done.

IBT:
Mongols grab a slave and a number of Ghandi's unit arrive on the mountain by
Brundisium.

310AD (1):
Cumae finished Legion and I go for a quick cat as several boats are next to it and I expect lots of traffic here. May as well try to clip them as we can and any landers.

Veil finished and I elect to go for a granary here.

Hispals starts a worker, most tiles are unimproved and we are very short.
Ghandi has 3 swords and 2 spears in that stack.
I cannot lower the research, due in one.

Tabriz falls with 28 gold. Got a cat from them and I raze it as it is too far out
and I have no idea about Khan's empire at this point (2-0).

We have a lot of units to deal with Ghandi, but I do not want to engage them, until they get off the mountain. I expect they will go for our hill, still better and they may head for the workers and the road.

Army kills Mongol archer that was 1HP and sits on horses for now (3-0).

I could not find any notes about where the settlers are to go, so I pick it.
It looks to me like the only town that we should hold is the Chinese one. The
other two are going to mess up the spacing and we would lose some extra sites.

Given that the coast is involved, I would rather not get away from 3 step
coverage. When I pulled up the game I saw many tiles with boats, so we can expect landing and bombardment later.

I do want to thank the team for the cats at Sele. Took 2 points of each of the 3 archers. We only had 2 legions there and a spear on the ground. Both towns are empty.

5/5 kills an archer and 4/5 kill another. I move the spear to cover cats. the 4/5 I had move to the town of Tarentum so it is there after the kill (5-0).

I switch Sele from a cat to a barracks as the chops will be too great for a cat
and may as well get a rax up. I would prefer a Legion and I may still go that way.

A regular Legion is going to get a chance to become a vet. We see how the chops go first.

Move 2 Legions from Hisp to hill and see a warrior on top in Macao, so I will pay my respects.

IBT:
French curragh attacks Mongol galley and surprise it lost. Most attacking AA ships seem to lose, no matter what attacks what.

The last of the three Mongol archers attacks the 2/5 Legion on the trees and dies (1-0) [6-0].

320AD (2):
I count 15 of Ghandi's boys now and I see two more groups down the line. I think I am going to cut the roads out in the hinder lands as units are trying to use them and we cannot squat on them forever. I can see holding out for the one within a few tiles, but 15 or more tiles out got to go IMO.

Found Hippo, start rax for now.
For laughs I ping the passing stack of swords with the captured cat. I am not going to attack with the army as there are too many and it can heal some now.
Two elites kill Mongol archers (2-0).

I presume we want to head for Monarchy, so I choose CB. Lower research to 40%.
[8-0]

IBT:
More from Ghandi.

330AD (3):
Hum, not a swell start. 4/5 goes 1/5 killing 2HP spear at Teu (1-0).
Vet kills 2/3 spear and goes elite (2-0).
Vet kills sword (3-0). Note all units are regulars and pinged yellow.
Vet kills Vike archer near Hippo (4-0).
Vet kills warrior at Macao and it autorazed for 11 gold (5-0).
5/5 drops to 1/5 killing Mongol spear at Aurellanorum (6-0).
Both cats missed.
Trying to figure out what to do with the cat under the 2nd. I want to get the army moving, but not lose the cat?
Went with pinging the two swords and then killing one (7-0).
Since no loss of HP, attack a spear in next stack (8-0).
I do it that way to A) keep army over cat for now and B) thin the traffic heading to the empire. I now see 8 stacks from Ghandi. One is 10 and another 8, the rest are normal.
1st kills 2 of the 4 Mongol archers (10-0). Two more stack of archers are seen.
[18-0]

IBT:
Zip

340AD (4):
5/5 kills sword (1-0).
2nd kills sword (2-0).
[20-0]

IBT:
Ghandi sent a sword against the wandering Legion pair (1-0).
[21-1]

350AD (5):
5/5 kills spear (1-0).
1st kills Mongol archer (2-0).
1st kills Ghandi sword (3-0).
5/5 now 1/5 on sword (4-0).
5/5 kills another (5-0).
5/5 kills sword (6-0).
I drop research to 20.
2nd struggles to kill Mongol archer (7-0).
Vet kills sword, goes elite (8-0).
Vet kills sword (9-0).
Vet dies on sword (9-1).
5/5 kills sword (10-1).
4/5 kills spear (11-1).
Three damaged units still left at Teuto and the stack of 10 will arrive on the IBt.
[31-1]

IBT:
Two unit go past Tueto, no attacks.
Theo owns the Art Of War now, so pikes will be common before too long.

 

[vmxa]

Roster:
Greebley - on deck
I. Larkin
Northern Pike
M60A3TTS
vxma - just played
ThERat - On vacation
markh - up

pix:

 

[vmxa]

360AD (6):
I start on Mysticism at-5gpt and due in 5.
Cats do well going 8 of 12 at Tueto.
5/5 kills spear (1-0).
1st struggles killing a sword (2-0).
5/5 is now 1/5 killing 2/3 spear (3-0).
5/5 copies that effort (4-0).
4/5 goes red and gets a sword (5-0).
3/5 gets one (6-0).
3/5 copies that (7-0).
Where are those leaders? 21 elites wins.
Oh, there there are. 5/5 kills archer and yup a leader is born (8-0).
Form army, but only have 2 1/5 units, so it is empty.
Spear kills 1hp spears to prevent worker stacks being grabbed (9-0).
It goes elite, so now the choice. Cover wit one spear and see what the 4 remaining archers will do and expose damaged Legions in town with one spear, but many cats?

I look again and see most are actually warriors, do send another spear. I figure they will move now.
[40-1]

IBT:
Yup they move. I see Ghandi sent a settler pair next to the wandering legions.

370AD (7):
Found Londinium and start a spear for now as an MP.
Put 1/4 legion and the *legion in 3rd.
5/5 kills pair and get 2 slaves and sees Mongol settler pair (1-0).
2nd down to 5HP after getting that pair (2-0).
All armies yellow. We now need Pentagon and HE.
[42-1]

IBT:
Ship comes into Indus, I hope it did not bring troops.
Tromso sends out an archer, while we have 3 Legion near it, 2 will attack next
turn. Got to love it.

380AD (8):
Vet kills spear in Tromso (1-0).
Vet kills the last one and we annex the place (2-0).
We will plant a town less than CxxC by it, but we can use it to grab a few tiles, if it does not flip.
Vet kills the archer (3-0).
I don't know why Tromso did not drop to size 1. So it has 2 resistors and flip is .7 to 24% approx.
Fill 3rd.
5/5 kills sword (4-0).
Vet kills spear at Indus and goes elite (5-0).
5/5 kills warrior (6-0).
5/5 gets one too (7-0).
5/5 kills archer (8-0).
5/5 kills sword (9-0).
5/5 kills Mongol spear combo (10-0).
5/5 kills sword (11-0).
5/5 kills spear (12-0).
5/5 kills sword (13-0).
3rd kills archer (14-0).
5/5 kills 5/5 Mongol spear near Aurelia (15-0).
I got excited and squeezed by sore hand into fist, not smart.
10 more elite victories for a total, best count 33.

I started a temple in Rome, with the idea of letting it get bigger. I moved pop of mined hill to mined grass as we still have 11 shields there. Just thinking it
could hand make HE or get a gran and make a settler now and then.
Anyway size 7 is better than 6.
[57-1]

IBT:
Mongols destroy France, so that is why I have not seen many units, now they are free to visit us.
More Nations want peace, I have not listed these events.

390AD (9):
found two towns.
5/5 kills spear at Indus and liberated 6 gold (1-0).
It autorazed.
It had a worker. I send a settler to the spot.
We are now +5gpt.
I long march a legion and a spear towards the old French area as I would expect a probe there from the now free Mongol troops and it is very thin.
I have had to spears show up so far, but the war was still on with France.
3 more elites kill units (4-0).
2 more (6-0).
4/5 kills spear (7-0).
Count is now 40.
1st moves out, but is a long way from the next border, while 2nd is only 5HP.
3rd is healing and should be able to move out next turn or 2.
[64-1]

IBT:
Not much, 4 Mongols show up from ole France.

400AD (10):
Drop research to 40.
5/5 kills sword (1-0).
5/5 kills sword on mountain and I see 6 more (2-0).
Tromso I made taxman, could go with joker to reduce flip. Not scientist as we are overflow now.

Some builds are placeholders for whatever is best. We need settlers and I did not do much about that, so next player may want to switch some.

Only got one granary in, so not much progress there either. The flood from Ghandi is dealt with, so 3rd is moving out. Right now it is sitting on some cats.

I put the Frenceman back to work now as they are gone.
42 elites, 1 leader, so that was not so good. Hope next player gets some to maybe get those small wonders. We probably have enough for more armies though, did not check the city count.
I see actually two settlers are going and 1 heading for old Indus.
[66-1]

 

[Northern Pike]

Nice work expanding to the SW.

We can easily cut the lux rate to 10%--in fact, I think the next player can do it without adjusting any cities at all, though he should do the usual MM scan anyway.

Now that we finally have a granary up, the lucky city--Veii--should build settlers.

 

[vmxa]

One thing not mentioned is we need to get some libs going one of these days to hep research. How about 42 elites and only 1 leader. I think we have a few coming and we many elites.

 

[markh]

I got it. Will start playing tomorrow.

 

[I. Larkin]

One thing not mentioned is we need to get some libs going one of these days to hep research. How about 42 elites and only 1 leader. I think we have a few coming and we many elites.

In general I like idea with Libs, but now I think things are opposite. Now our Army competetive until AIs will have Mil. Traditions. What do you think about an idea to stop research and connect/disconnect Iron?

Looked at save, some remarks/questions
1) Workers stack 7 and 6 will cut forest at the same 2 turns as 4. It is resonable to have 4 slaves stack.
2) Why Temple at Rome? Normally Capital has less corruption and generate more % Lux then others.
3) Why barracks in Veli again? If we have Granary, probably Lib, Galleys, Settlers, Catapults?
4) First of all Granary better to have in Cyties with max fpt, like Neapolis. Even small pop-rush is an option.
5) What our research plan? Is it beline to Monarchy or what?

 

[vmxa]

I know English, especially American saying is not your primary language, so "one of these days" is just saying I wish we had some now, but it is going to be later. IOW I know we are not going to start a crash program to crank out libs right now, but we may squeeze 1 in some time.

 

[vmxa]

I. Larkin

"Now our Army competetive until AIs will have Mil. Traditions. What do you think about an idea to stop research and connect/disconnect Iron?"

No idea why we would want to cut Iron, is it to try to keep it from depletion?
Anyway it sounds like a bit of an exploit.

Research should go on till we get Monarchy at least. We want to get out of despotism. The longer it takes the larger we will be and the longer our anarchy.

"1) Workers stack 7 and 6 will cut forest at the same 2 turns as 4. It is resonable to have 4 slaves stack."

What a relvelation, yeah I shove slaves out of my way a few times. Mostly to get them out of harms way, but other times I just could not count correctly.
We are past the stage were we need to get every drop from a slave.

We will have plenty of things to do and turns are long enough without losing sleep over a misplaced or mis-clicked or mis-anything worker or two.

"2) Why Temple at Rome? Normally Capital has less corruption and generate more % Lux then others."

I am sure I said why I started a temple, reread the log. Actually the capitol has zero corruption. No need to point out the obvious.

"3) Why barracks in Veli again? If we have Granary, probably Lib, Galleys, Settlers, Catapults?"

No need to make galley in this game. They can only do bad things, like find new enemies or sink. A rax is required to make troops, Veli will probably make settlers and troops. No cats, well any coastal town could make a cat for ping purposes. I don't even know if I made the barrack to tell you the truth.

"4) First of all Granary better to have in Cyties with max fpt, like Neapolis. Even small pop-rush is an option."

I would not want more than 2 or 3 granaries and since they are hard to build, put them any place that can do it and make settlers, we do not have any great food bonus towns.

Neapolis is a fine place, but we do not have a granary there and I would wait till the Legion is done to have another gun in case of future landings.

I doubt we will need to pop rush settler, until we get very very late in the game and are trying to fill lots of empty spaces.

Much of the time we will have to be cautious about settling as we cannot afford to be over extended.

"5) What our research plan? Is it beline to Monarchy or what?"

Good question, I saw no place, so that is the way I would go and I had to make the call.

 

[Northern Pike]

Research should go on till we get Monarchy at least.

Quite likely we'll do as much research we can afford for the rest of the game, since the Great Library could be anywhere on an enormous map. Of course we'll research everything up to MilTrad before Education to give ourselves every chance to locate the GLib while we can still use it, but it's hardly a sure thing.

Much of the time we will have to be cautious about settling as we cannot afford to be over extended.

As a general philosophy for AW I agree with this, but I don't think it suits our current situation. We can see that we're on a fat peninsula, and before long we'll be holding just one front ten tiles wide at most. So we can afford to settle everything below the choke aggressively, meaning that we'll want at least another twenty settlers before long, and more granaries so that we can produce them efficiently.

 

[vmxa]

Yes we should have plenty of room right now to expand, this should not have happen, but this map is tweaked. That is why I said much of the time. Normally we are in great need of settlers, but we do not have a great means of making them early in the game, due to lack of food bonus, lack of pottery most of the time and the need to put troops over granaries, once we did get Pottery.

We seem to have gained the upper hand now and that is why I mentioned the next player could look at the current builds to see if A) granary makes sense and B) a switch to a settler works.

 

[Greebley]

Ya we can't stop research. The map is too huge, we will go into the modern age unless we lose. We don't still want to have swords vs modern armor

Note that the Library on the other continent would mean we would not get it without Magnetism or Nav.

Seeing the Japanese might change that, but I suspect we still won't make large progress until we have cavalry.