GR23 - AWDG vs 30 Civs

[vmxa]

I agree the HE is a good thing, but a small fraction of an increase in a potential is not going to be a critical. I am fine with either, but the lower corruption should pay off immediately.

Pottery is good, but we have only small towns making settlers and they will not make a granary in some time. The other places can ill afford to switch off of units for one, can they?

Once Math is done we can do pottery in 4 as you say. The other thing I wonder about is how many towns and how soon can we defend anyway? The pace of settlers as it is now gives us the time we need to get units out to deal with incoming, where ever we build.

If we double the output will we out strip our ability to manage them? In the end I don't know if there is a clear choice.

 

[ThERat]

I went for maths to match the Glib as we would have gotten all other minor techs anyway. We have invested quite a few beakers into maths, I wouldn't swap. After that, I would go for whichever tech is cheapest as we need to get all of them ourselves.

Catapults will be important as usual, thus maths is alwyas a good choice IMHO.

As for the FP, I agree with NP to go for HE and wait with the FP until we get Paris or Karakorum for example. I ususally choose cities that have some ancient wonders for the FP city as they will generate lots of commerce from tourism income.

 

[Northern Pike]

I hadn't realized you'd started Math before we lost the GLib--good play. Of course I wasn't advocating that we should throw away accumulated research.

But Pottery should definitely come next, even if we only build a granary in Rome. Whether we're producing settlers quickly or slowly, getting them out of towns at +2 food without granaries, which will take twenty turns to replace the lost population, is damagingly inefficient.

 

[vmxa]

My last point on the HE. It has no verifiable means of telling if it does anything. We are told it reduce the rate of leaders from some fraction to some other fraction. In reality we have no way to quantify the effect.

IOW samples, games we will play, is to small to tell. So we do not know if we will get a leader sooner or not. My experience is I cannot tell. So I build it, but I do not lose sleep over how fast I get it.

It is a die roll, so it has no memory of what has gone before and hence it applies the odds the same each time an elite wins. I suspect that in the long run, it works out to a small edge, but we are in a single game and the long run is much longer than one game.

This is why I am non pulsed by it, so as I said there does not seem to be a clear best way to go, so whatever you want is not going to bother me. We will not win or lose from this choice.

 

[Greebley]

Well I played last night and we went for the FP. It was a tossup for me which was better. In the long run HE is likely better, but I feel we want to make a big push now before we are inundated in units so less corruption to build units faster and would like to push outward before we meet Pikes and Knights.

I am going to attempt to keep French cities to lessen the need for settlers. We may need to abandon, but I thought it worth a try. Sent the settler north for this reason (to link up the cities with ours). France is the only civ whose culture is low enough to keep cities.

 

[vmxa]

What is the current rooster?

 

[Northern Pike]

After Greebley, M60-Vmxa-Mark, then back to the top with Greebley.

I like the idea of trying to hold French cities.

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: Switch to FP. Send settler N.

10 AD: 1 Army Heals, the other moves its Workers across the river. Some legions advance. Kill a Horse.

30 AD: Attacked Choyr and auto-destroyed Ereen. Several Mongols killed without loss.

50 AD: Destroyed Choyr. Spot Paris with Army
Lost Legion attacking Archer

70 AD: Lose Archer. Army is attacking Paris.

90 AD: Ganges had only a Warrior guarding it and it is razed.
E Legion fails to kill R Archer on Flat.

110 AD: Switch to Attack Chartres as Paris is rushing a Spear every turn.

130 AD: Chartres Captured.

150 AD: Batshireet autodestroyed. Spot Blue border.

Notes:
First Indian forces showing up near Jerusalam this final turn
Looking at the final map, I am hoping I didn't move too many units to the southwest.
We have 4 unplanted Settlers.

 

[Greebley]

I am worried I made an error. The turn was so quiet, I sent the legions out to raze cities. However, if we get hit by a large rush in the north we may have troubles reacting to it. The Armies could be moved in if this is the case.

Note that I spotted an Indian Sword the first attack 3 unit that I saw. It is in the town right next to ours.

Roster:
Greebley - Just Played
I. Larkin
Northern Pike
M60A3TTS - Up
vxma - On Deck
ThERat - On vacation
markh

 

[vmxa]

This game is playing strange, mainly because we had so much open space. We should have been surround by no, even AWE on these maps we are butting up against town in all directions.

 

[Greebley]

I think we were surrounded for the most part, but we have been razing towns and stopping the AI from surrounding us. Usually we are so busy defending we can't go out and clear lands. The ring of razed cities do surround our territory.

We also stopped France which would normally be filling in the lands. They have only 2 cities left. If they had the normal 11 cities along with the Mongols and Indians having their cities and there would be no land left.

I do agree though that the number of near neighbors was less due to the shape of the land so we had more time to set up an empire.

 

[vmxa]

Yeah we had 5 civs as I recall, Celts, Dutch, Babs, Persia, England that I can name. Here we only have 3. Only one for most of the time, so we could hurt them.

We could not hurt anyone in the last two as we could barely stay above water. True we now have a stronger UU, but that has not been the reason we only have just got to 3 civs.

It will be the reason we fare better with those three. We have had virtually no one to deal with on a wide arch until now and still not much from S/SW.

We will soon have cut off land incursions from three sides as there will then be water access only. This is another reason to expand in that are, to stop anyone being there.

BTW I meant to mention one other thing that cats do for us and that is they help us keep units in better shape. They can stand counter attacks better and can attack again sooner.

 

[Northern Pike]

I am worried I made an error. The turn was so quiet, I sent the legions out to raze cities. However, if we get hit by a large rush in the north we may have troubles reacting to it. The Armies could be moved in if this is the case.

We have to damage our neighbours when the opportunity arises. It was the right play even if a rush does occur in the north.

I always appreciate your practice of leaving plenty of settlers for the next player. But now that we have a stock of four, and also expect to keep the last two French towns, it's time to concentrate our production of settlers in high-food towns in anticipation of our imminent discovery of Pottery. So we should switch all three of our settler builds in progress to Legionaries, since the towns in question are low-food first-ring cities which must be allowed to grow, and switch Rome and Neapolis to library pre-builds for granaries. I'd also cancel the worker build in Byzantium for the same reasons, even if it means that we have to waste some worker-turns sending slaves south to compensate.

It's irksome that with at least twelve elites, we're still stuck at two armies. I hope M60 is feeling lucky.

We can see a Viking galley and we have to declare war on them.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Got it. Will play this weekend.

 

[M60A3TTS]

For you lurkers out there that are looking to pick up some hot tips, here's one. Cities without a cultural boundary can be vulnerable.

 

[Ansar]

For you lurkers out there that are looking to pick up some hot tips, here's one. Cities without a cultural boundary can be vulnerable.

lurker's comment: I do not understand.

You're in AW, so everything is vulnerable.
(or am I missing something..? )

 

[M60A3TTS]

If you look carefully, you will see Pune's border extends to the point where the AI does not have to stop outside Jerusalem. It can walk right up and attack, which is what happened here.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Preturn- Antium needs scientist. Vikes up at least 7 techs including construction. I make the thoroughly reasonable request he fork over all known techs. Since he declines, we declare. I agree with NPs point on making the settlers legionaries, so switch those. I’ll leave the worker build though.

IBT- Not off to a promising start, Indian sword kills forted elite legion in Jerusalem.

170AD- Kill French archer at Chartres.

IBT- Our garrison in Jerusalem is destroyed by Indians. Just as well, it was a poor location with no cultural border defending in the north. So Indian swords could attack at will. They lost about 3 units in the attack. Pottery>wheel in 5.

190AD- Kill Mongol horse by Teutoburg.

IBT- AI movement

210AD- Found Seleucia. Kill French pillaging spear. Trade a spear for a legion.

IBT- Mongols lose a horse to an forted legion.

230AD- Roman army sacks Paris. Two legions kill reg spears and burn Baruun-Urt to the ground. Get 5 workers there. Army kills 2 spears at Tabriz. Legion kills Mongol settler pair.

IBT- Mongols kill a legion but lose an archer.

250AD- Meet England. Declare. Artaxata founded. Army kills 2 red horses at Tabriz.

IBT- Movement

260AD- Aurelianorum founded. Kill Mongol horse by Artaxata.

IBT- Wheel in. We have 2 horses. HBR in 5.

270AD- Move army next to Pune.

IBT- Mongol horse kills elite spear clean, then archer kills 3hp legion. Artaxata falls. The Indians have turned back north, and I noticed a slave run under cover of an Indian spear. We may have seen a fortuitous war break out. Also appears Vikes and Korea may be at war, saw a galley fight.

280AD- Get a small bit of revenge for Jerusalem. Kill 2 spears and Pune is wiped off the earth by our army.

IBT- Indians headed north, I think they’re after the remnants of France. Mongols still headed south.

290AD- Lose an elite legion, but kill 2 spears and torch Darhan.

IBT- Indians moving all around so maybe they are not at war with France. The Mongols certainly are, they burn Grenoble. Joan is alive but has no cities to trade.

300AD- Send a worker up the mountain 2NW of Brundisium, 3 Indian swords and 2 spears 1 north of the mountain. 2 more swords a tile north of them. Fall back. Kill 3 Mongol horses by first redlining them with our growing # of cats. HBR in 2 and done.

Post turn- Two words- Chop trees! They have been valuable in getting our cat count up to 14. I’ve had slaves in the west create the Trans-Mongolian Highway that will allow us to scoot settlers safely along the west coast and build up our town count. The Mongols are only sending archers now. Indians still a threat and we need more troops to the front in the east. I moved both armies by Tabriz, but one is 9/14. No luck with leaders this round.

 

[M60A3TTS]

A few pics of the progress

 

[Greebley]

Jerusalem was unfortunate timing. After nearly an entire turns of no enemy units, the Indians showed up immediately after its founding. My initial plan was to take out the Indian city with the 3-4 legions I had, but the turn I moved up, the swords killed 1-2 of them.

So bad timing made the position really bad.

I think things are going to really start heating up now.

Roster:
Greebley
I. Larkin
Northern Pike
M60A3TTS - Just Played
vxma - Up
ThERat - On vacation
markh - On Deck.