GR28 - AWM vs 30 civs, Pangea

On the first IBT after a city is captured it will not flip; that is part of the game. After that, it could. The number of units stationed in a city is part of the flip equation, along with population of hte city, the relative culture of the two civs and distances to capital cities.

MapStat and CivAssisst II both have flip calculators in them. According to MapStat (and my memory) the flip risk on Ellipi is around 2% (two chances out of one hundred). MapStat gives a range of flip values and also a range of unit values needed to counterbalance the flip risk. I forget the low side on each of these, but the high side on the flip risk was a bit over 2% and needed 16 units to negate that risk.

If we can grow the city we can reduce the flip risk also. If it flips, we should be able to recapture it rather easily. It will have one Spear to defend and we have two Archers to take it back. But at size 1 I don't really expect it to flip.
 
Agree on keeping Ellipi. More unit support will help and the flip risk will go down when there are fewer Babylon squares within the 20 workable tiles. This means continuing against the babylons is good if we can do it.

As you noticed with Speed 2 units out there we have to be extra careful with our workers. Cover anyones near the border.

Daeron, You are up.

Roster:
Greebley
Commando Bob - Just Played
ThERat - Swap
Daeron - UP
Northern Pike - On Deck
 
Special Restriction: Cannot keep a captured city for a full turn. It must be abandoned before hitting enter for next turn.

The problem with keeping Ellipi is that we were supposedly playing with this special rule. Since nothing was said about it after the initial post, and even Greebley forgot about it ;), that's not a criticism of CB. But we do have to decide what we're going to do now. We could just abandon Ellipi before hitting Enter, although a lot of what CB did in his last four turns only makes sense on the assumption that we'd keep it. Or, since this game looks a whole lot harder than it did when Greebley added the special restriction, we could just quietly forget about it. :mischief: Having to produce a settler for every city we can ever have would certainly be an extra burden in this low-food, low-water position.
 
I'll play my turns tomorrow evening, so if we need to discuss whether or not to keep to that rule, there's time. As for keeping to that rule or not. Despite the abyssmal position, this is still monarch. But we sure could use the unit support it offers in the early game. Especially, since at some point we have extra costs such as building aqueducts in all the productive cities. Which at this mapsize will be quite a few cities I imagine.
 
Doh!

My feeling is that this will be difficult enough that we can drop the rule.

Anyone want to keep it?
Your rule; your call. :D

Perhaps tie it to another in-game condition? Number of cities, number of cities captured (razed or not) or number of civs killed.
 
I'd be fine with just dropping the special rule. There should be enough interest and challenge in seeing whether a start this bad can be won. Greebley can edit the rule out of his initial post Soviet-style, and future generations will never know. :lol:
 
:lol:

Despite the abyssmal position, this is still monarch
Yes, but don't forget we will have to fight 30 enemies on a pangaea. Even on monarch that's quite a challenge
 
I'd be fine with just dropping the special rule. There should be enough interest and challenge in seeing whether a start this bad can be won. Greebley can edit the rule out of his initial post Soviet-style, and future generations will never know. :lol:


Excellent!!! :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
 
I am afraid I don't know what you are talking about. I see no special rule in the first post.

:D

I must be delusional then. :crazyeye:

Well, onwards for Comrade Greebley and Soviet-Style posting!
 
Ugh--I've just realized that for Daeron, it's probably evening already, and I may have waited too long to post some thoughts. But I was going to say that the idea of pre-pre-building the GLib with a granary in Almarikh isn't looking good, principally because it's a blunder to get the pre-build started in a city subject to attack before getting walls up (which we can't do until we get Masonry, of course). So we should switch Almarikh's granary build to a swordsman, which we can do without loss of shields, and plan on pre-building in Ta-Tu instead (meaning walls and then the palace as soon as we discover Masonry).

Ta-Tu will need more worker service if we're going to do it this way, so (also addressing CB's point that Karakorum is about to produce a settler at size five) Karakorum should switch to a swordsman before we hit Enter, then produce a worker strictly for use at Ta-Tu, and only after that return to settler production.

Our attack at Nineveh shouldn't go in until our force has crossed the river, of course.
 
You're in luck then Northern Pike. I ended up having to work late on something else, something a lot less fun I might add, so I postponed my turns until tomorrow. I need sleep desperately! :) Will look at what you said when my mind works again.
 
Yes, sorry for that. I probably should have passed my turns when I realized I lost a memory stick with work related stuff. :sad:

Turn log:

Spoiler :
Pre-flight (750 BC):

Science: 70 % (Masonry in 6)
Tax: 30 % (+1gpt)
5 gold in the treasury

Switch Karakorum to swordsman
Switch Almarikh to swordsman

Ta-tu can finish its swordsmen well before masonry

unitcount:
1 settler (but no escort right now)
4 workers (we're really low on workers)
21 archers
12 spearmen
1 swordsman

Curious where the impi's will be going.

Hit enter.

IBT

The Impi's head into the fog to the west in the direction of Ellipi. They probably like those archers on the hills there. Or they're after the worker stack.

Zulu warrior heads into the forest tile of Almarikh

Karakorum swordsman -> worker
Alamarikh swordsman -> swordsman

Income goes down to -1gpt

Turn 1, 730 BC

Move the stack of units NE of Nineveh
Archer takes out zulu warrior at Alamarikh (1 of 1)

I'm switching Tabriz to a spearmen, should have done before the IBT, but we could really use the extra spearman right now.

Also, need to wait with moving the settler before I can make sure the Impi's don't get him.

IBT

The zulu warriors move straight towards Kazan, another Impi appears to the north.
The other two Impi's rush out of the fog and dive right into the forests with dyes, next to Hovd.

Kazan swordsman -> swordsman
Tabriz spearman -> Spearman

Turn 2, 710 BC:

The siege of Nineveh
Archer redlines against spearman but wins (2 of 2)
A second archer redlines but wins again and promotes to elite (3 of 3)

And we take Nineveh and keep it for the unit support -> barracks.

There's one Baby reg bowman right outside our new borders

A swordsman retreats one of the Impi's near Hovd, I can now move out the settler.

IBT.

Zulu's move in our turf near Kazan

Karakorum worker -> settler

Resistance in Nineveh ends

Turn 3, 690 BC:
Vet, archer loses to reg. warrior in the open. (3 of 4)
two swordsman take out two warriors and both promote to elite (5 of 6)
swordsman take out one of the Impi's near Hovd (6 of 7)

I'm guessing Babylon is SW of Nineveh. But the terrain is very hilly and those Bab bowmen have 2/2 stats. Not good odds. There is no flip risk to speak off right now, so we can wait a bit longer.

IBT
The Zulu change their target to almarikh, I guess the AI didn't like the sudden appearance of those swords.

Ta-tu swordsman -> swordsman, will switch to walls when masonry finishes

Turn 4, 670 BC
Settle the town Dalandzagdad at CB's light blue spot -> barracks

Elite swordsman kills reg. impi (7 of 8)
Elite swordsman kills reg. warrior (8 of 9)
vet. archer loses to reg. archer (8 of 10) That was me being careless.
Vet. swordsman retreats impi
vet. archer defeats impi and promotes (9 of 11)

IBT
Last zulu unit (archer) retreats. The flow seems to have stopped.

Ülaan spearman -> spearman

Turn 5, 650 BC
elite swordsman kills reg. archer (10 of 12)

IBT
We learn Masonry, Ta-tu -> walls
Research of alphabet

Ta-tu walls -> palace (in 34 turns)
Almarikh swordsman -> walls

Again no zulu's

Turn 6, 630 BC
Put science at 90 % -> alpha in 10 turns at -5gpt
I switch Nineveh, Tabriz and Dalandzadgad to walls

IBT
Karakorum settler -> swordsman
Kazan swordsman -> swordsman
Tabriz walls -> swordsman

Turn 7, 610 BC
Workers finish roading towards ellipi. Start roading toward Nineveh.

Working on a group of swords to send west

IBT
Almarikh walls -> swordsman
Hovd barracks -> spearman

Turn 8, 590 BC
Putting a worker at Almarikh, with a spearman guarding

IBT
One bab bowman moves towards nineveh. They're probably down to one city if this is all they can send. But we still don't have enough units there to finish them off.

Turn 9, 570 BC
Nothing much.

IBT
An impi immediately appears out of the fog, right next to our woker and spear. I can see how CB lost them like that.
Bab bowman, two, move next to nineveh

Ellipi barracks -> swordsman
Ulaan spearman -> walls

Turn 10, 550 BC
Unit support is again starting to kill us.

vet sword chases off impi
elite archer defeats bab bowman (11 of 13)
vet archer dies to bab bowman (11 of 14). One way to solve our unit support overflow
vet archer kills bab bowman (12 of 15)

At Hovd there are a settler and spear with movement left, so the next player can decide whether or not we want to settle south or north


Our palace build at Ta-tu is done in 28 turns
We're currently running science at 70 %, +1gpt. Alpha done in 8 turns. We could go negative, but I'm not sure whether or not we better save up those coins for running writing into red numbers.

We now have two elite swordsman and two elite archers. The flow of units from Zulu completely dried up. After the bunch of troups were destroyed, only a single impi showed up. Not good for leader chances.

Near Dalandzagad are four swordsman and an archer, of which three elites to send towards Babylon.

Andi n Hovd a settler and spearman still have their turns left.

I think I kind of missed the chance to solve our worker problems. The newer smaller towns should all probably pop at least one worker before walls and barracks from this point. Nineveh and Dalandzagad come to mind.

Our settler could go either to the river, or the red spot of CB that he mentioned earlier. I don´t think it would be a problem if it draws zulu´s. You have to fight them somewhere. Better there than at almarikh.
Spoiler :
end1ou.jpg


Situation near the Babylonian border.
Spoiler :
end2q.jpg
 

Attachments

Good work switching the pre-build to Ta-Tu. :goodjob:

I've got it.

Towards the end of my round we'll discover Alphabet and face the choice between Writing and Mathematics, so we have to decide now how highly we value the Statue relative the the GLib. If we choose Writing we'll be committed to Literature next and a belated attempt to get Math/SoZ only after that. If we choose Mathematics and use the current pre-build for the Statue we'll probably get it, but we'll be pushing our drive for the GLib a long way into the future.

I favour a drive straight for the GLib and a late try for the Statue, because on a map of this size one AC every five turns is just a nice bonus, not a game-changer. But if there's general confidence that at this difficulty level we can further delay building the GLib and still get it, we could try the Math/Statue path.
 
With Math we get Catapults, which are helpful on defense. I know that is stating the obvious, but sometimes I need that. :D

If we are not under a lot of pressure when we learn Alphabet, I favor Writing to get the Great Library. If the pressure is enough, the Math for the cats and Statue of Zeus would be the way to go.

I would consider us under "a lot of pressure" if we met three or more civs before we learned Alphabet.
 
Yes, sorry for that. I probably should have passed my turns when I realized I lost a memory stick with work related stuff. :sad:

You do have a week so you did finish in time. :)

GLib first sounds fine to me. We can start Zeus prebuild when we get Lit and switch to the GLib instead of Palace.
 
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