GR23 - AWDG vs 30 Civs

[markh]

Coventry flipped to China a turn ago. The Incas won't be dead in 5 turns I guess. They still have some cities and keep sending units each turn.
IMO The cav armies should start taking care of the Japanese. They are getting very annoying. Our knight armies should be ok against the Chinese. They seem to lack saltpeter as I have not seen any muskets. They have pikes defending their cities. Maybe we should send armies deeper into Japanese and Incan territory to cut off their horse or saltpeter supplies. Any turn they could get cavs and then it will be much more difficult to protect our front and wounded armies won't be safe anymore.

 

[vmxa]

Wait, we can have a town with all natives and it can flip, can it not, yes it can. So any town could flip. Having Chinese makes it easier, but it could flip regardless as long as it is under culture pressure from someone.

 

[markh]

Wait, we can have a town with all natives and it can flip, can it not, yes it can. So any town could flip. Having Chinese makes it easier, but it could flip regardless as long as it is under culture pressure from someone.

Coventry was well within our cultural borders. It did not have any direct connection with Chinese borders. However I do not remember whether Coventry had any resisting Chinese citizens.

 

[Greebley]

I played a bit and went after the Vikings simply because they don't have Rifles yet and I wanted to take their cities while they were still easy.

I did abandon the Incan town and replaced it with two towns on the nearby rivers.

Question: Espionage and stealing world maps would be a huge help to know who to attack and I think it is only one tech to get. When do we want to go for it? Unless it is very fast (5 turns or less), I am going for RP first. Our prebuild is only 28 turns from completing the palace so Sci Method may also have to be before it. I think I would put Espionage as next after that however.
So to RP, to Sci Method, then Espionage?

 

[markh]

Sounds good to me. If we would have to start an overseas campaign soonish I would consider espionage a more urgent task.

 

[Greebley]

Where Espionage would be useful now would be to answer questions like whether it is worthwhile keeping a civs cities. If they have a city far away, we won't be able to eliminate them anytime soon and I would probably replace all the cities. If they are compact then I would keep the cities. For example, where are the viking cities? I am keeping them for now as they are not large, but they have more cities than I can see and I will have to starve them. If I knew their location I wouldn't have to guess on whether to starve, abandon/raze, or leave them big because I would know how long it will take to eliminate the Vikings.

However, RP is even more useful with artillery, infantry, civil engineers, and faster workers.

 

[vmxa]

RP, Sci Meth then spies sounds right to me. We want to get that prebuild to work. If you can see that we can squeeze in Espionage after RP and not mess up the ToE, then that is fine.

I have not check to see where the AI is on Sci Meth so not sure if we can know. The danger is that there could be a number of US builds that could flop to ToE.

 

[vmxa]

How many ships do we have built or under construction at this point? How many armies able to go overseas?

We could start simply by going after Sumeria or whoever it is that is next to us on that smallish island. They will be a lot easier to attack right now. By the time we are in position to attack overseas hopefully we will have Espionage.

We won't need it real soon though as we are far short being able to go. We are going to need to gather quite a few frigates to protect any convoy going very far. It will be like a magnet.

 

[Greebley]

We have some ships in production, but they will probably get switched to factories next turn - I think it is better to build the factories now before we need the boats. It also gives us the most shields to build the shield producers first. Once they have factories and we have hoover we will build boats twice as fast.

 

[vmxa]

So we are not real close to doing any invasions, so Espionage can wait a bit. My thinking on the island near us is that we could go with some new cav armies 3x as will should not need massive numbers to make progress.

Just a bunch of infantry and cavs and some armies. We may even want to have an inf army as anyone stuck on an island will have build up a lot of units. Not only that, but will be able to deliver them fairly quick as the distance will small.

 

[Greebley]

Ok our prebuild is going to finish way too early. Electricity is 14 turns, we also need Med (10) and Sci Method (19) - assuming we skip RP completely we still have to slow down our build massively as it completes in 28 - we will have too many shields as well since that is 1000 shields for a 600 shield wonder.

Instead, I would like to go for Espionage now and get the Intell agency and see our own continent now. I can do this by aprox the end of my turn and the shields are not far off (we will be a bit over). The Agency will be very nice in telling us the shape of our land mass -and we will get it in time to do that. We can then go for RP, and Sci Method building factories first (perhaps rushing depending on timing - and possibly coal) and probably end up with TOE and Hoover aligning up right, getting both quickly since we will be at double shields from what we have now.

I think with maps we can plan our attacks to keep big cities for a science boost and catch back up so we are getting techs the same time despite the detour for Esp.

Note that only one civ has Ind and it hasn't started US - with factory and Coal plant we should easily beat it to TOE. That civ (Iroquois) don't have medicine, or Electricity. If they start US then I would rush a factory/coal and start a new prebuild to keep ahead of them. It would take a while for US to get built.

Any objections to this plan?

 

[M60A3TTS]

Sounds fine with me.

 

[vmxa]

We have no concerns as long as only one nation is making US. It is when several are that we have to sweat the cascade.

 

[Greebley]

I am getting a turn done a day, but hope to have more time on the weekend to finish up sometime on Sunday.

 

[Greebley]

With each turn taking 2-2 1/2 hours, it is taking a day per turn. I have played 4 so far. Pillaging squares to limit AI access to us takes about 2 minutes each square.

We captured the Viking cities that were reachable in the west. There are more but we have to go through the Byzantines. We are getting no units from the Byzantines or Vikings as they are involved in a massive war. Byz is really getting pillaged near our border. I kept the cities and are starving them. We don't have settlers for replacement and I like keeping the Aquaducts. Being suppressed using lesser units.

I also took out the last Korean City and destroyed the Koreans.

I then turned toward the Chines to the far east as they only had Pikes. For the first time I was able to use all the Cavalry we have to eliminate them in one turn. We kept all the cities and now have 7 or so new cities of size 5-7 with no chance of flip. It actually turned out that we didn't extend our line very much as they were on a sort of peninsula

I now have the option of attacking the Byzantines and Vikings to the west, Incans to the east, or Japan in the middle. Byz and Japan at least are army only unless we send in artillery units. I need to see what Incan cities are currently guarded with. If it is not Rifles I may go for them first. Actually I should also look to see if any have cash.

Iroquois remain very strong this game. They got Electricity sooner than I had hoped (when we get espionage we could consider a steal - it is a long 14 turns for us to get Electricity). No one else had Indust or Elect, so they are the only one building US. As vmxa pointed out we don't need to worry about that yet.

With the cash we got from China, we can finish Espionage in 1565 - about the time the next player will be up assuming I can play all 10 turns.

 

[vmxa]

2 minute per tile is what I reported for pillaging, lots of fun and why I stopped doing it. I just did the GLB area to prevent a fast counter. 15 to 20 tiles can add a lot of anxiety as you scream for it to go faster.

 

[I. Larkin]

I think our target City is St Peterburg. As i said, I prefer to have Arties as much as we have.

 

[M60A3TTS]

I sent a PM to Thunderfall about the saves and that I am not getting any notice of thread posts.

Did we ever get an answer on receiving notices of thread posts from Thunderfall?

 

[vmxa]

No and notices are still not working for me. I posted in the site news about.

BTW I see spices are soon to be added to our bounty,

 

[vmxa]

I think our target City is St Peterburg. As i said, I prefer to have Arties as much as we have.

St Pete, why is that our target? We do not know where it is and it should not having anything important. At least not in the 1515AD save.

Arties, yes we would love to have them. Normally I argue against Ind or anything ahead of RP. I lose that one all the time, so get use to it. Second I am not a huge fan making factories all over the place and I want those fast workers and arties and infantry.

If this was a std map, for sure RP. If this was even the same rules and on a pangaea, RP for me. However it is not, it has at least 1 island and one other large landmass.

So we need factories to build all the ships we need. As to arties, I love them for hitting ships and units that stop out of range of cannons. The thing is we will not be using them for any offense or very little, so we can live without them for now.

If you try to bring along artillery with all the stacks, you will run out of time. The armies will have to go out without them. We can, at times, rail up to the armies and bring in arties to defend.

Even that will not be easy as you have to defend the workers.