GR8 - Phoenix Rising

[Obormot]

pre-flight
- We have 11 enkidus and 5 archers, that seems more or less safe. Change Ur to settler, going to build a city on a hill next to a river.

Early
- Moving units around, triing to hold the AI waves. They come in massive numbers, but with crappy units, mostly warriors and just a few archers. Most action is taking place near Lagash as it is attacked by the Vikings and teh Aztecs.

Middle
- Discover Alphabet, start the Wheel. I don't know why did we learn Alphabet, cause the GL is not allowed anyway. Let's see if we have any horses. Unit costs slow us down a bit, we need more towns. I ordered anothe settler in Sumer. Our first settler is beaten by one turn by the koreans and will go to another spot. Our GA ends and our research slows to a snail pace.

Late
- Get 2 roads pillaged due to lack of archers. We actually lost some to reg warriors. Several spanish swordsmen are moving towards Kish. Finally settle Umma. There is a settler and 3 workers in Sumer that haven't moved yet. There are 9 AI warriors of different colors in our territory.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/GR8_1250BC.SAV

 

[Greebley]

Roster:
Greebley - Up
ThERat - On Deck
Heroes
Northern Pike
MeteorPunch
Obormot - Just Played

I got it. Looks like we got a difficult time ahead of us. We need to survive for 58 turns.

 

[Heroes]

Kish is in danger. It has only 1 archer and 1 EW defending. If the Spain warrior occupies a road tile, we will be unable to reinforce it in 1 turn. So we have to reinforce it when we can. For the future, we need a road in the black circle tile, otherwise this cxxc city is not really cxxc.

 

[Heroes]

For the next city, it would be nice to be in the red circle tile. If it works out, Spain units will attack this hill town cross river.

Other 2 places are the blue and green circles.

 

[Heroes]

A thought about military. Which one should be built most now, archer or EW? If we can guard the key road tiles by EWs, would the roaming enemies more prone to attack our cities? If this can work, EW is more efficient in killing them.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Middle
- Discover Alphabet, start the Wheel. I don't know why did we learn Alphabet, cause the GL is not allowed anyway.

I started that for catapults. Maybe the Wheel is better?

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: Tried to read through the previous comments to catch up on things. I have been busy of late.

On archer vs Enkidu army, since we are playing defensively, an Archer army is not a bad thing. The Problem with an Enkidu army is that it makes a single square immune to enemy attack, but thats it. The enemies will just march around it so it is useless in actually killing enemies. Normal AW, I would probably go for a Enkidu Army as that does have longer use. This variant I think I would go for an Archer army - it does lessen our number of attacks by 1 (army of 3 units attacks twice) but the archers survive so no losses.

Figuring out when an AI will attack a random Enkidu is difficult. If you send them into their lands they will attack them with archers. At home, an archer would attack an Enkidu on the flat, but otherwise go around. Swords will attack them on hills and probably mountains.

We need both Cats and Horses - hard to say which is more important to go for first. Knowing where horses is can help expansion, but we really want Cats for those swordsmen.

I too would like to place a town on the red circle. The only problem is that they will ignore the town if it is well defended and it would be at risk if lightly defended.

For movement, I try to defend our fragile roads - at least for now.

We really need to build mines. In our entire territory, we have only 2. One big problem with pillaging AI.


I think in this situation, BTW, the granary was not the best choice (from the debate from before). Problem is that we didn't have contact at the time to know that (so I am not saying it was the wrong decision, rather that it didn't end up working as well in this game).

Early: I end up building "the great wall" out of Enkidu.

Mid: It is really dicey. We have some close calls. We lose Archers. On the Math vs Wheel debate - we really need Catapults, in this particular choice Math would have been better I think. I wonder if there is a corollary: If you don't have Iron, then go for math first unless you are the Iroquois. The archers need the support.

Late: Our wall still holds, but we are really short on units. The AI keeps endrunning us and immediately advances if I open any hole.

Oh and I was wrong about Lagash. The AI is going around to target it even though it has more units in it. Of course putting it on the hill might have toughened the defense enough that they would target somewhere else so maybe it was a no-win situation.

Notes:
Good Luck to the next player. We are going to need it & may not survive.

 

[Greebley]

One thing I forgot to mention. I settled a town behind the back lines to up unit support. It is not a very useful town (though it does get that wasted fish with expansion.

 

[Heroes]

Oh and I was wrong about Lagash. The AI is going around to target it even though it has more units in it. Of course putting it on the hill might have toughened the defense enough that they would target somewhere else so maybe it was a no-win situation.

Excuse me, but what do you mean here?

 

[Heroes]

Emm ... we are in a funny shape: no iron nor horse, math due in 27 turns. In fact We are paying 30% only for Ur, where is only 1 archer. We should put 1 more unit into it to decrease lux, or hire a scientist. When we are doing AW, people should not be too luxurious ...

I like the Enkidu great wall. It should be our basic tatics to send out settler and guard the key tiles. A town is profitable so long as it costs <= 4 units. The red circle river hill is a cxc to Kish, so it's good to put 3 units into it and 1 guarding the road.

I guess archers should be only used to kill redlined units and spears on flat, not roaming warriors. We should persuade them to attack cities as much as possible.

I think we need to continue expanding, preferably to hills. "There is nothing to gain at status quo", -- Hannibal.

Good that Aztecs and Viking are willing to pay for peace. If we kill enough units of them, we will enjoy peace.

Resources: Aztecs 1 horse, Spain 2 irons (great she didn't sell it), Viking nothing, Korea 1 horse, Carthage nothing but they have wines. It seems very likely there are only 2 irons on this landmass, and luckily they are not very far from us. So it would be nice to highway rob it from Spain, allying some buddy using wines, -- after we have partial peace.

 

[Greebley]

There is only one unit in our capitol because we needed the second one for some vital project. This was the norm for my turn. I think I changed taxes up and down 6 times in 10 turns since we really need to keep up the 10 shields (so we cannot hire a scientist).

Oh, before I played I rolled randomly to adjust for the 2 turns to land on 10 AD. I got a 2 and a 6 so

Roster:
Greebley - Just played
ThERat - (play to 775 BC) Up
Heroes - (play to 570 BC) On Deck
Northern Pike (play to 370 BC)
MeteorPunch (play to 170 BC)
Obormot (play to 10 AD)

If we don't follow this exactly it is no biggie.

Question: Do we want to research Mathematics? It might be better to have a large surplus of cash in 10 AD to buy peace. My worry is that if we build more troops Mathematics will take too long to research to really be worthwhile, combined with worry that we get to 10AD and cannot afford peace.

In any case I propose we turn off science after Mathematics.

 

[Heroes]

Question: Do we want to research Mathematics? It might be better to have a large surplus of cash in 10 AD to buy peace. My worry is that if we build more troops Mathematics will take too long to research to really be worthwhile, combined with worry that we get to 10AD and cannot afford peace.

In any case I propose we turn off science after Mathematics.

Math is not really that expensive. With some care we can get it in 20 turns, then it becomes really useful. We don't need to BUY peace, some one will pay us for peace. Then we can focus our (and hopefully ally's) military to Spain for their irons. Certainly it is sensible to turn off sci after math, but how about writing? Without it we can't build embassy and can't reseach literature (for trade), ok, that can wait ...

 

[MeteorPunch]

One thing about math - it is for catapults. With that same 20 shields we could build another archer to serve the same effect defensively (not nearly as effective, though), and also for attacking.

 

[ThERat]

ok got it, will try and get maths and switch off science

It looks pretty tough, if we really can hang on, we have done a great job

 

[Greebley]

Math is not really that expensive. With some care we can get it in 20 turns, then it becomes really useful. We don't need to BUY peace, some one will pay us for peace. Then we can focus our (and hopefully ally's) military to Spain for their irons. Certainly it is sensible to turn off sci after math, but how about writing? Without it we can't build embassy and can't reseach literature (for trade), ok, that can wait ...

Well we have a problem with that. Unit costs are high. 27 turns is optimistic unless we want to have too few troops for a wall of units. It is likely it will take over 30 turns.

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
ouch, our research capability is really bad even for maths
change 2 tiles assignments and research drops to 23 turns

IT we go 5:0 on defense and get 2 promotions

1. 975BC
stay passive, drop lux by 10% and maths in 19
send EW out of kish north to divert the AI attack

IT we go 4:1 on defense this time at Umma, it is heavily battered

2. 950BC
shift units around, trying to get good defense

IT 3:0 for us this time, but JW now pester us
massive uprising near Lagash tell us that the AI has entered the MA

3. 925BC
kill a 2hp warrior with archer

IT 2:0 on defense as our ring of EW holds, but no leaders
our northern EW continues to draw away the crowd

4. 875BC
shuffle units to make spots safe and pull out another EW in the north

ITa bad round as we retreat some units but go 4:2 on defense with Lagash heavily under attack

5. 850BC
pull back the EW since there will be lots of units near Kish, defeat 3 wounded units

IT go 3:0 on defense an units cost becomes an issue

6. 825BC
shuffling and moving, large stack next to Kish

IT we go 9:2 on defense including 2 barb attacks

7. 800BC
defeat wounded horse

IT 5:1 on defense but we simply won't get a MGL

8. 775BC
last turn this round, shifting units, maths still 14 turns away
total unit tally 41:6 I think

our ring of defense with units attacking Kish, Lagash and Umma
pulling out the EW has resulted in Spain going for Kish rather than the area in between which is very good

 

[MeteorPunch]

A thought about the variant. I say we battle on no matter what the situation looks like - even down to one city if things turn bad. At which point we could call a truce with the AI if they will let us. To come back from one city at say, 300BC, would be just as remarkable and even more difficult than the beginning variant. All assuming it comes to that.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Nice turns, Rat. Your killrate always amazes.


Now, could someone elaborate on this Endiku-wall thing? What is it's purpose?

 

[ThERat]

Now, could someone elaborate on this Endiku-wall thing? What is it's purpose?

without this wall, the enemy unis such as carthagian mercs would simply enter our territory and pillage us to death.
We must at all times prevent this from happening. Our aim for high kill ratio is to get the AI to attack cities and not units in the open. At the moment, this works pretty well.

Once we open the wall of defense, spears, mercs etc will pillage us to death and we are goners

 

[MeteorPunch]

Are they attacking the wall or just the cities? It seems like they would attack the wall first.