Gr5 - Persian AW Demigod, Standard Continents

[Greebley]

On riots: I moved the defenders out after I checked for happiness. Monarchy still gets me now and then with this even after all this time. I am not sure what to do about it other than buying a replacement brain.

I wasn't playing well last night either. I see I failed to mention the all important fact that we got education before gunpowder which is a bummer. That is why we are researching.

The cities are so badly placed near us - I think I would rather go with the dedicated settler factory than trying to keep cities.

I have my suspicions about culture. I have a hypothesis that the maximum culture you should enter into tech-calc is 4 to 1/4 the same as distance. Flips just do not seem to happen at the rate tech-calc claims they should. I have been thinking about trying to find the time to prove or disprove this theory.

If the above theory is true, then you can let your culture go to pot if you are less than 1/4 the other civs and not likely to be able to catch up.

Not sure what our current culture is. We do need libraries badly though for the border expansions and for research. We are also short on Markets and need those badly too.

I think the FP will help things. Corruption is bad right now.

 

[LKendter]

I took a look at the game. We are going to have to push infrastructure hard or we will lose this game. 20% science greatly increases the odds of a loss. I don't want to wind up fighting tanks with riflemen.

The good news is the troop density is way down.

The next big challenge is to expand the empire. We really need to find another luxury. I would also like to locate one of the iron sources for the AI. We have see metal units from Zululand, the Celts, and the Ottomans. That is to many strong AIs to fight.

 

[handy900]

I took a look at the game. We are going to have to push infrastructure hard or we will lose this game. 20% science greatly increases the odds of a loss. I don't want to wind up fighting tanks with riflemen.

The good news is the troop density is way down.

The next big challenge is to expand the empire. We really need to find another luxury. I would also like to locate one of the iron sources for the AI. We have see metal units from Zululand, the Celts, and the Ottomans. That is to many strong AIs to fight.

Agree on all points. We also need to be diligent about settleing new towns. Each town provides for free unit support and we can irrigate corrupt cities and hire scientists.

 

[Greebley]

We have one settler that we can use. I was only able to settle one town and started with two. We will need more settlers to advance.

Markets are very high priority so we can raise science as mentioned. Additional towns also reduce unit cost as well as getting towns over size 6. Unit cost is currently high. We needed them for the influx.

Basically, I am also 100% in agreement with what has been mentioned.

 

[LKendter]

Each town provides for free unit support and we can irrigate corrupt cities and hire scientists.

If there is one thing I know if the power of science specialist cities. One of the LK series AW games could research an IA tech in less than 15 turns at 0% science. You can't get those specialist cities soon enough. It takes time to growth them to size 6.

 

[Northern Pike]

I agree with the ideas which have emerged here. Once the knight army is filled up we have to get it out and exploring--for luxuries, iron sources, whatever--even if we're strongly tempted to use it for defense.

 

[handy900]

It's getting hard now

Pre Turn
We go 7-0 on defense. Pentagon message pops up.
Persepolis – knight – market
Sidon – walls – settler
Sardis – treb – treb
Samaria – rax – treb
Ghulaman - walls – treb
Dutch build Art of War
Dutch, Celts and Otto all have gunpowder. We have 48 turns to go.
Seven Dutch Knights approach Ergili.

Turn 1 70
Kill a spear looking to pillage (8-0)
Bomb some units and pull all the cats and the settler from Ergili. If the knights take it we will need cats to get it back. There are two pikes and a spear in the walled city to make a stand.
A line of Pikes on the mountains between Ghulaman and Samaria would funnel the Ai away from the Mountains

IBT
No attacks, the Knights avoid Ergili and may have their sites on River Hills

Turn 2 90
Elite immortal barely wins on mountains against a sword.
Kill impi and Acav
Expose the settler to bait the AI Knight stack
[11-0]

IBT
Pikes in Samaria go 4-0 and a spear in Ghulaman also wins
[16-0]
River Hills – FP – market
Gordium – library – Knight
The naked settler attracts 3 knights, the others race to Samaria. The AI really wants Samaria for some reason. (Saltpeter?)

Turn 3 110
River hills grows into unhappiness in 10 turns. The market will take 7, and we may want to get a settler out after the market.
Arbela has to hire a specialist (Shiraz has one also).
Ghulaman is not connected, so I’m building regular warriors for MP there.
Kill 2 Dutch near the ivory.
Kill 5 of the 7 Dutch Knights.
[23-0]

IBT
Kill 2 and lose 1 [25-1]


Turn 4 130
Kill the last of the seven Dutch knights.
[26-1]
A small stack of 2 Zulu swords and 1 impi will attack Samaria on the IBT. Other than that it is mostly single AI units. Maybe we can catch a breather here somewhere.


IBT

Turn 5 150
Kill 2 impi
Raze Leiden killing 2 Dutch
The galleys got bombed by Zulu cats. I will try not to park them next to cities anymore since they are weak. Too bad Galleys cannot heal in neutral sea territory.
Empty some cities on the east side to try and pull the Ai back toward our killing fields between Samaria and Ergili.
Declare on Hiawatha when he pops up
We are going to be in trouble soon. Celts and Dutch are now sending Knights.
Arbela – library – pike
Shiraz – knight – Library
Bactra – Library – Treb
[30-1]

Turn 6 170
Dutch must have gunpowder since the galleys can see Muskets
Kill Acav, impi, spear, and spear.
This is frustrating. There is no good place to put the settler except for a throw away city on the back lines.
[34-1]

IBT
No attacks, but now we have Dutch, Celt and Zulu Knights to deal with. Currently there are 12 knights in view scattered all over the place. I am trying to draw them toward Hamadan, which makes them pass the Immortal, and knight army near Ergili where I can bomb them. This is a long-term loser since we are not adding any real estate and not damaging the AI. Oh how I miss pillaging at times like this.

I can bomb some but they will recycle into a larger stack, which is no bargain.

Turn 7 190
A first for me. The Zulu have galleys positioned to block the advance of our galleys. A rare brilliant tactical move by the AI. I think we may get sunk on the IBT.
Kill 2 knight
[36-1]

IBT
Galleys get sunk by a Zulu galley stack.

Turn 8 210
Good News: The bait toward Hamadan is working.
Bad news: There are more units taking the bait than we can kill.
I might hold them off, but the next player will not be able to because of the number of Recycled units that is building.
Kill 2 knights.
Getting a little dicey here. I have the capital and FP building markets which complete in the next 2 turns. Then we can get dome knights to deal with the threat. We may hang on by the skin of our teeth.
[38-1]

IBT
Lose Pike and Immortal to Knight attacks.
[38-3]

Turn 9 220
The libraries and markets are not helping our research much as GP remains 40 turns away.
Where are all these Celt Knights coming from?
Kill 2 more Knights
With luck we will regain control of the mountains next turn and force the AI (I hope) to the flat lands.
[40-3]

IBT
Mi attacks and defeats a spear in the Mountains. So much for the idea of regaining control.
River Hills – market – Library
Celt’s build Leo
Iroquois are building Copernicus Get ready for Caravels in our lightly guarded rear cities.
Babylon joins the party they also have Astronomy.
[40-4]

Turn 10
Brave Immortal dies attacking a Knight.
Kill 3 knights.
Isfahan (Ivory) cannot reinforce Hamadan because of the road situation.
We popped a leader from Ghulaman. I lost an immortal trying to clear a path for the leader, so I pulled a spear from Ghulaman leaving it empty to protect the leader from a nearby wounded spear. Next turn spear can return to Ghulaman.
[43-6] (Lots of red-lined winners in these stats.)

Notes:
This was a holding pattern set while we built some libraries and markets.
Next player up has their hands full while we build some Knights.
Recommend we build the Pentagon with the leader. Perhaps in Samaria or Ergili to push the borders. We can build the HE in 15 turns by hand or with next leader.
Kill ratio is a little misleading. Units we bombed but did not kill are not reflected in the kill ratio.
We are 1 turn away from both of our major cities having a library and a market. They can both pull 14 spt for 5 turn knights.
If we need to can place some fishing villages behind the lines. This may be a good idea.
Ghulaman is on reg. warriors for MP. Abandon if you need to.
The settler is still waiting for a safe spot to go to.
Arbela has a specialist since I used the Immortal garrisoned there to kill a spear. Place the Immortal back in Arbela and fire the specialist.
Celts have 5 MI on the mountain near Ergili. There are lots of cats in Ergili so you should be okay.
Once we get a few knights from the captital maybe we can get a push going again.

 

[handy900]

picture of 250ad. All of the exposed Knights belong to the AI.
There really is no good path for expansion here.
The best path seems to be straight up the valley with all new towns on a hill.
We need the hill cities for the bouus since we are vastly outnumbered, and Babylon and Iroquois will soon show up (probably by boat in our pathetically guarded rear).

 

[LKendter]

Signed up:
Greebley
Handy900
ThERat (currently playing)
Bead_head7 (on deck)
Northern Pike
LKendter

 

[handy900]

I agree with the ideas which have emerged here. Once the knight army is filled up we have to get it out and exploring--for luxuries, iron sources, whatever--even if we're strongly tempted to use it for defense.

I kept it at home while we built markets and libraries since we had so few cities on military production. It should be free to go forth after we get a few more knights produced. Remember though, since we are under a pillaging restriction, exploration does not really do us that much good.

Signed up:
Greebley
Handy900
ThERat (currently playing)
Bead_head7 (on deck)
Northern Pike
LKendter

IIRC Rat is on holiday and can comment but not play, so Bed Head may be the one who is up.

 

[LKendter]

Signed up:
Greebley
Handy900
ThERat (skip May 5th to May 22nd)
Bead_head7 (currently playing)
Northern Pike (on deck)
LKendter

 

[Greebley]

If we do lose this game, I would say one primary reason for the loss is meeting too many civs too quickly after the initial period of quiet.

Unless I messed up, this should be continents. Some of the newest civs will show up in boats rather than en-mass.

 

[Northern Pike]

Great defensive stand.

Remember though, since we are under a pillaging restriction, exploration does not really do us that much good.

I'd still like to know where the resources and luxuries are, but it was your call. Perhaps we should pin our hopes now on getting two four-unit knight armies out to raze some enemy cities.

 

[handy900]

If we do lose this game, I would say one primary reason for the loss is meeting too many civs too quickly after the initial period of quiet.

Unless I messed up, this should be continents. Some of the newest civs will show up in boats rather than en-mass.

I don't quite have that hopeless feeling yet, but it definitly is getting crowded. DG just send so many units at you, and the land is not favorable for any sort of a push. Fewer mountains would help some.

I almost settled between Ergili and Samaria to create an ICS typw CxCxC sitiation to make things easier to defend. This is worth considering as we could bomb kinghts passing along on both sides. I hate to settle on the sugar, but that's the best place to go ICS. Perhaps a slow ICS march to the north is the best (only) feasible plan. We need roads to shuffle cats and units, and there is no way to build roads if we go CxxC. Too many knights around.

 

[Greebley]

We haven't lost yet - I agree. We are stalling a bit which may not be a good sign either. I am primarily worried about our horrible research rate.

I am guessing if we can't make some military progress and raze some cities, its going to get worse and worse though.

 

[bed_head7]

Got it, and I'll probably finish up towards the end of my 48hrs.

 

[ThERat]

Bead_head7 (currently playing)

how come in this game bedhead became a beadhead?

I think we have to try and push forward. settling in the hills 1 tile SW of delft looks promising to expand into that direction. are we allowed to send an army into enemy teritory for a recon mission?

 

[handy900]

how come in this game bedhead became a beadhead? ?

Bed_Head, Bead_head? Maybe it's a 70's retro thing.

IIRC we are allowed to explore all we want, byt it's the pillgaing that is restricted. Greebley can correct me if this is not the case.

I am guessing if we can't make some military progress and raze some cities, its going to get worse and worse though.

Exactly. We need to hurt the AI. Killing 40 units isn't really hurting them because they are building infra and researching faster than we are.

Perhaps the big initial stacks (like 7 knights) were AI horse upgrades, but even after that the number of knights to deal with is pretty large. You can bait the AI for a while, but eventually there is no safe place to bait from when the numbers get too big.

settling in the hills 1 tile SW of delft looks promising to expand into that direction. are we allowed to send an army into enemy teritory for a recon mission. I think we have to try and push forward.

We do have to push forward, and once we build a few 5-turn knights perhaps we can. I though about settleing the hill you mentioned, but we were short on units. An ICS creep along the hills toward Delft is a good idea.

Ergili is a great kill zone to pick off units as they pass by toward Hamadan, but we can't stay there forever.

 

[Greebley]

There is also the restriction of going past the first row of cities without razing.

 

[Northern Pike]

There is also the restriction of going past the first row of cities without razing.

I'm not suggesting that we should change the rules now, but I don't really see the point of this one. Don't the restrictions on pillaging sufficiently limit abusive use of armies? There can be perfectly legitimate tactical reasons for attacking city A instead of city B which is in front of it.