GR8 - Phoenix Rising

[Heroes]

The No. 1 concern now is getting iron. Without it we are toast in both offense and defense, and will have bigger and bigger trouble with turns go by. So we should sign peace with most AIs, except Spain or Aztecs. But it's hard to find where is Aztec's single iron, and probably it's very far away, so it's better to go to Spain.

About government, I don't like republic. We are paying 36 gpt as despot, how much would we pay as republic? That huge maintainece will more than offset its commerce bonus. Disband EW? That will make us look weaker and bullys will be likely to declare to us. I only agree to disband regular units. When we own 1% land and 3% pop, there is no way to catch up peacefully. So we have to make a larger and larger military and go for attack.

Government issue is not as immediate as iron. It's basically impossible to extort a government tech unless we have beaten AI to near death, so we have to get an advanced gov via research. Republic, pitifully, is not proper for us. So there are monarchy and feudalism. They have exactly the same amount of corruption. Besides that, each one has pros and cons.

Monarchy: Nice unit support, but still not enough (2 per town, 4 per city). It's not too bad, because each surplus unit just costs 1 gpt. No WW is great, we can fight as long as we wish. Cash rushing could be handy, the only problem is we won't have much cash!

Feudalism: Incredible unit support (5 per town, 2 per city). Build some new towns, then upkeep drops to 0. Well, 1 unit more than that limit will cost 3 gpt, but that will be rare and solved quickly by a new town. WW is headache, so when it's founded, we must be at peace with every one. But it would be ok to do oscillating wars, like what to do under republic. From my experience, the typical situation is that the number of units will cost ~ 30% income if under monarchy, 0% under feudalism. So as long as WW costs <30% lux, feudalism is more profitable than monarchy, which should be not too hard to achieve. Pop rush could also be handy, since we are agr and poor. Last but not least, by picking feudalism we can skip an expensive optional tech, which is quite important for catching up.

 

[Northern Pike]

I think the idea of staying at war with the Spanish or the Aztecs to get iron, when their units completely outclass ours and we have no idea where the iron is, isn't a good one. In situations like this I prefer to focus not on what we want most, but on what war we can actually win; and that means that the Koreans, who can only defend against our archers with spearmen, should be our target. Sariwon is in an excellent location for us, and we should be able to take it with an archer/catapult SoD covered by an Enk army in about five turns. After that, everything will depend on what we see (which is the problem with making strategy at the moment; we have to do it, but we're doing it blind). If Sariwon turns out to be an isolated Korean city, we'll just make peace. But if there are other outlying Korean cities around it, we'll have a good chance of taking them too, and we'll be on our way to creating a second core, perhaps with the FP in Sariwon. I much prefer this realistic chance of doing some valuable territorial expansion immediately to a gamble that the Aztec or the Spanish iron will be in a convenient location.

We can, of course, get Sariwon for peace right now, and if we aren't going to stay at war with Korea it might be worth doing, despite the sacrifice of techs. But I'd far rather take it by force, retain the option of pushing on, and get the techs too eventually.

As for the iron, that can wait until we know where the sources are and have longbowmen. Lack of iron is something that good players can work around until railroads.

BTW, there are four Spanish workers fortified in Sumer which we may have forgotten.

Since we won't be playing AW again, the towns we've got building walls can switch to more useful builds.

Heroes, that's a fascinating idea about feudalism. But I'd rather make only one change of government in the game, so I think we should struggle on in despotism until a switch to republic is practical.

 

[Obormot]

Our biggest concern now is creating a strong economy capable of doing research and producing units fast enough. So my plan would be:

1. Expand to claim as much territory as we can by producing settlers or by conquest of Korea (i didn't think about this opportunity, but i agree with NP that if they are somewhere close we should try to conquer them)
2. Improve our tiles by building workers. I think that we can use irrigated wines to setup a settler and a worker factory. We can start building settlers in the capital (MM to 5 fpt) and workers from our other wine city (need a granary, maybe pop-rushing it make sense)
3. Disband some of our units so that we can do research. I would leave some enks for MP, and the armies to cover our cat/archer stack. Maybe disband some cats too.
4. Try to get into MA by peace deals and research the upper branch because AIs went along the lower one judging from their wonders.

I agree with NP that we can live without iron untill RR, so unless it is somewhere close i would not go for it.

 

[Heroes]

Pike, I think it's not hard to beat Spain. We have 2 EW armies. One can be used to cover cats and archers, the other goes to explore (to be not so blind) and pillage. Their maces will not attack our army, so we are always in the offensive side, full HP archer vs. 1 HP pike or mace.

Beating Korea, of course, is easier. But the advantage of doing this is much less. The best resource we can gain from Korea is only 1 horse. OTOH, Spain has 2 irons. Furthermore, Spain is on the north of us, their cities are naturally connected to ours. It's a natural expansion to conquer Spain. Korea is on the northeast. If we get their cities, we will be in a thin shape, every city will be still in front.

Yet another reason to go for Spain is that we should beat it when we can. Maybe they will get musket after a while, then our offensive power with archers will be obosolete. Wait for longbow? It needs so many techs. Why not grab iron, which only needs iron working (we already know) and feudalism (1/3 chance to get as freebie) to be useful?

Even if we fail to get iron from Spain, we can found some cities at nice positions for sure, which is still better than going for Korea. If Korea stays at its weak position, we can always ally it and use it as "meat shield" (as Sirian's analysis).

I think the general principle to select target is to pick the strongest one we can currently handle and take advantage, and to ally the weak one(s). By doing this, we prevent a single AI to become too strong, and plant feud among AIs.

 

[Heroes]

About our miserable economy. It's actually not too bad, because it's that we have too many units, not that we are weak in every aspect. Since we have too many units, we should fight constantly to make new towns, not sit back and disband our precious units (excpet maybe some regular EWs). Once we stop military expansion, we lose hope to catch up.

Here comes the problem with republc. For what reason do we want to be a republic? Its commerce bonus is certainly huge, but it does have several drawbacks.

1. Republic is an optional tech (comparing with feudalism). Don't we want to get the free tech sooner?

2. The unit upkeep of republic is massive. Since we will be in oscillating wars for very long time, can the commerce bonus offset unit upkeep?

3. This one is relatively minor, but still a problem. Republic has no MP, but we will still have to guard most cities by several units. That's a waste comparing to monarchy and feudalism.

I agree that we should have only 1 revolution (before the super government communism). So it seems to me that there are basically 2 options: switch to feudalism ASAP, or stay at despot longer for founding enough cities then go to republic. From my experience and feeling, switching to feudalism is better.

 

[Northern Pike]

Greebley, I'll be out of touch until late Sunday. It probably won't matter, but if it does, any swap you want to arrange will be fine with me.

Heroes, thanks for your response. I don't have time to respond in detail, but in a nutshell, I don't think a continued Spanish war would go very well. If we sent our armies, our archers, and our catapults into Spain, how would we hold our own cities against their powerful MDI force? The Koreans, on the other hand, are weak enough that we should be able to deal with whatever they can send against our homeland even with most of our strength elsewhere.

 

[Heroes]

Greebley, I'll be out of touch until late Sunday. It probably won't matter, but if it does, any swap you want to arrange will be fine with me.

Heroes, thanks for your response. I don't have time to respond in detail, but in a nutshell, I don't think a continued Spanish war would go very well. If we sent our armies, our archers, and our catapults into Spain, how would we hold our own cities against their powerful MDI force? The Koreans, on the other hand, are weak enough that we should be able to deal with whatever they can send against our homeland even with most of our strength elsewhere.

We will have only 1 front vs. Spain on the north. So I guess all their maces will go to rescue their cities, not march to our cities. Even if some of them do so, with our defensive cats, they will retreat out of our border frequently and thus do little real damage. Maybe that's too optimistic? But I think that's what I can draw from Sirian's analysis.

 

[Heroes]

And if we can buy in Korea, they will be a great meat shield. All the enemy units will go to hit weaker Korea. That's according to Sirian.

 

[Obormot]

We will have only 1 front vs. Spain on the north. So I guess all their maces will go to rescue their cities, not march to our cities. Even if some of them do so, with our defensive cats, they will retreat out of our border frequently and thus do little real damage. Maybe that's too optimistic? But I think that's what I can draw from Sirian's analysis.

You are not right here. Any units covered by an army are not a target for the AI, so they will pick another one, which is our cities. I really doubt that we can protect ourselves from their maces (they had 13 of them near our city last turn! and will propably send more).

And if we can buy in Korea, they will be a great meat shield. All the enemy units will go to hit weaker Korea. That's according to Sirian.

I don't think we can rely on that, koreans have spears, which are the same powerfull as enks and they might have muskets soon.

And anyway even if everything goes right what will we gain by a spanish war compared to settling and a korean war? A better shaped front and iron - at the cost of having weaker economy and more WW points which would delay our switch to republic (whioch is alwats better in the long run).

As for communism, we have to play it out untill then and see if switching to it makes sense. It is not always the best goverment - it does have most shields, but republic if managed correctly has more beakers. So it would depend on the size of our empire at that time, on how much work is left to do, etc.

 

[Heroes]

You are not right here. Any units covered by an army are not a target for the AI, so they will pick another one, which is our cities. I really doubt that we can protect ourselves from their maces (they had 13 of them near our city last turn! and will propably send more).


I don't think we can rely on that, koreans have spears, which are the same powerfull as enks and they might have muskets soon.

And anyway even if everything goes right what will we gain by a spanish war compared to settling and a korean war? A better shaped front and iron - at the cost of having weaker economy and more WW points which would delay our switch to republic (whioch is alwats better in the long run).

As for communism, we have to play it out untill then and see if switching to it makes sense. It is not always the best goverment - it does have most shields, but republic if managed correctly has more beakers. So it would depend on the size of our empire at that time, on how much work is left to do, etc.

Well, we are doing very detailed analysis, -- I like it ...

If we go for Spain cities, what will their maces do? Go to our cities, or reinforce their cities being threatened? I don't exactly know, although I guess it's the latter according to Sirian. But maybe I misunderstand him. But anyway, even if they go to our cities, don't we have some tricks to play? E.g., empty a backward city to lure, then hit them using cats, so they will retreat soon. I guess Greebley will have some ideas about this.

All the other questions (economy, WWP, government, etc.) have to do with how well can we perform a war. So we indeed need to make a clear plan of war.

I just have a general idea that if we can't win war, then we can't win peace. Being so backwards in land, pop, tech, everything, we must gain a lot from war before staying in peace, -- I would say total peace with every one is only possible when we control the whole continent. Republic is surely better in the long run, but I'm afraid it's too long. When we have too little land, republic is not profitable. When we hopefully get enough land, communism will become better (at least in terms of shields). But for now, who knows.

BTW: Spain has 2 irons. If we manage to gain both of them, that will be huge. Selling iron by 20 turns will net us ~ 1500 gold or military alliance against any one. That's my experience: AI will heartfully do almost anything for you to buy iron. Iron is a great puppet string. Much less is horse and saltpeter. It will be extremely nice to control as many irons as possible ... Of course, if we can.

 

[Greebley]

Our only hope to get republic was to get into the next era and trade for it. This is not going to be possible with peace deals. Even if we make peace with everybody we will be a tech or two short of the middle ages (we also don't know if anyone is missing a middle age tech that we can trade). This means we will not have Republic right away.

 

[Heroes]

Our only hope to get republic was to get into the next era and trade for it. This is not going to be possible with peace deals. Even if we make peace with everybody we will be a tech or two short of the middle ages (we also don't know if anyone is missing a middle age tech that we can trade). This means we will not have Republic right away.

Yes. I think the fastest chance to have an advance government is getting feudalism as free tech.

 

[Obormot]

Anyway we can start researching it now and if we disband some enks and concentrate on peacefull buildup it will take reasonable time to research. It would come exactly at the right time as we will have more cities and more tiles improved by that time.

Feudalism may be best for us now when we have a huge army of crappy units and underdeveloped cities, but is a terrible goverment in the long term. I don't agree that war is needed to catch up: our territory now + what we can get by settling and korean war is about the size of a core on a large map. Sure corrupted areas also give some research potential with science farms, but it only starts playing a major role in the industrial age. I think we will be able to catch up in tech by that time and with strong economy and artillery we will be able to capture the continent.

 

[Heroes]

Anyway we can start researching it now and if we disband some enks and concentrate on peacefull buildup it will take reasonable time to research. It would come exactly at the right time as we will have more cities and more tiles improved by that time.

Feudalism may be best for us now when we have a huge army of crappy units and underdeveloped cities, but is a terrible goverment in the long term. I don't agree that war is needed to catch up: our territory now + what we can get by settling and korean war is about the size of a core on a large map. Sure corrupted areas also give some research potential with science farms, but it only starts playing a major role in the industrial age. I think we will be able to catch up in tech by that time and with strong economy and artillery we will be able to capture the continent.

First of all, I hate disbanding units. That feels like a sign that we will not be expanding. Maybe it's just my wrong feeling ...

The most important point I want to address is that we should expand whenever we can expand. Oscillating war and buying alliance is the most efficient way to extort tech and slow AIs down. I don't want to stay in peace before conquering the whole continent. To wage a successful war, we don't need strong economy, just need armies, artilleries (we already have them) and maybe alliances (we can try). After winning more and more wars, our economy will get better and better, by founding new cities, extorting, and selling resources.

I guess I have demonstrated feudalism is better (at least not worse) than monarchy. If people can accept monarchy, why not give feudalism a chance? It has no commerce bonus, that's bad. But at least we can irrigate grasslands and make scientist farms (not possible under despot), which I guess is also a common method under republic.

 

[Heroes]

It's quite often to war when we are backwards in tech at highest difficult levels. War is actually the fastest and safest way to catch up, because human has the greatest advantage in this field than in any other field (production, trade, research, etc.). The key issues to guarantee military victory are: artilleries, armies, diplomacy. And of course, techhole cannot be too huge, there is no way to fight tank using spear (sure some tanks will be defeated ). The basic requirements for techs, from my experience and thoughts, are:

math + bronze working + warrior code can deal with AI up to feudalism;
math + iron working (and iron resource) -> gunpowder;
feudalism (+engineering) -> nationalism;
military tradition + nationalism -> replacebale parts.

Things could break down when AI gets tank. I guess that fighting tank without tank would be too tough, -- but who knows?

The important thing is to war when you can win, then get necessary resources and techs to deal with the techwisely upgraded enemies. Once you stop war, you will be more and more backward quickly.

 

[Obormot]

Sure you can fight with crappy units, but why do you want to do it when you can catch up easily?

 

[Heroes]

Sure you can fight with crappy units, but why do you want to do it when you can catch up easily?

Because I think war is easier and has more possibility to get us victory ... In another word, I doubt whether catching up peacefully is easy. Our military will be quickly obsolete if we don't get iron (longbow is fine, but which unit can replace pike?), then we will be under the fear that somebody will declare to us for a long time. Maybe it's just my personal prejudice. But I really suspect how much we can gain peacefully when we are backward by > half an age and have the least land and pop. This situation is not desperate in military, but indeed desperate (to me) in any other aspect.

 

[ThERat]

Obormot, I think you are a little too optimistic that we can catch up easily. We lack resources to trade to do so. I agree that fighting wars and extorting techs from the enemy is the way. Let's beat Spain or Korea, I am sure Greebley will make the right decision if he is actually playing

 

[Obormot]

Extortion doesn't work so well in the MA. Pointy stick research works very good in the AA, but as the tech prices rise it gets ncreasingly difficult to beat techs out of the AI. One monopoly tech gives you more techs then reducing a civ to OCC and making peace after that. IIRC nobody ios even building Sistine Chapel which requires only a second tier tech in the MA. If we choose the upper branch of the tech tree we'll soon get some monopoly techs for trading. And i'm not saying that we should stop wars completely, let's do what NP said - beat Korea and then have a look at the map, etc. and decide what to do then. I only think that getting iron at the cost of fighting a much tougher enemy by and ruining our economy crappy goverments and a huge army of obsolete units is not wise.

BTW, Heroes, feudalism has WW and we collected a lot of WWP from the war with korea.

 

[Greebley]

[Edit: I accidentally left the game in the case of getting construction in 12. We want to be at 10% or 20% science instead. Whatever we can most afford (we will gain more gold and can get construction in better than min). ]

Preturn:
Aztecs have a lot of gold. Using this they will take 640 gold for peace, I calculate the costs (by switching out gold) for each tech from the aztecs.

Tech costs:
Myst - about 165
Phil - about 230
CoL - about 365
Lit - about 260
Map - about 440
HBR - about 205
Cur - about 565
Con - greater than 640, less than 770

Carthage will give us 160 gold I do this trade first - we cannot get a tech from them

I then trade the Aztecs peace for 640 gold (note that what we can get for peace didn't change when we made peace with Carthage).

I get an embassy with the Aztecs. All 752 remaining gold will not buy us an alliance vs Spain or Korea. So while we could defend our towns and workers and deflect Spanish troops to the Aztecs (this really does work - requiring 3-4 Enkidu - but we wouldn't be attacked), we can't afford any alliances - they cost too much.

Peace with the Hittites only costs us 20 gold. A bargain. I do this.

I check the price of Lit (chosen at random) now that we have peace - interestingly the price is about 33% higher than in the peace deal. This means we want to buy techs while declaring peace.

So peace with Spain and 429 gold gets us Currency and Lit (Vikings don't have Lit so this is nearly free as we can trade it).
Peace with the Vikings (who offer us the most for peace) + 171 gold gets us Map Making, Philosophy, and Code Of Laws.

I check Korea and now that we are their only enemy they will give us more for peace than they did before. If I throw in Lit and all our money, then we are "close" to buying republic!

I decide to stay at war with Korea. The idea here is to take out their cities to get them to give us more=republic for peace

Raising the Lux rate to 20% allows me to lower our gold loss from -5 to -1. While this sounds like a contradiction (raising lux = more gold), it is not. Now that we are at peace we can put our specialists to work (our squares no longer contain enemies) and working the terrain gets us more cash than the specialists plus we can work better squares. We could have been at 0 gold, but I decide to start Min Research on Construction.

All builds are switched. I use our leader to rush a Market in the Capitol

IBT: All Civs leave except Korea (expected) and Spain - who sends their troops deeper into our territory (not attacking).

30-110 AD: Kill Korean units flowing at us. Plant another town.
Aztecs and Hittites go to war

130 AD: We can now trade Peace, Lit and 1 Gold for Mysticism and Republic. Revolt. Sadly we made no progress on advancing on Korea even with all our units. They were just sending so many at us (though I could have just let them attack cities and defended while advancing).

190 AD: Vikings ally with the Aztecs vs the Hittites.

230 AD: We become republic. Unit cost is prohibitive so I do disband. This seemed to be the majority option, so is the path I followed.

250 AD: Disband a few more units. Make deals for our wines. This probably locks us into peaceful mode for 20 more turns, but we get HBR and Polytheism in trade.
We give Spain Wines and 13 gpt + gold for Polytheism
We trade Korea Wines for Worker and gold.
We trade Cash and Wines for Incense from Vikings
We traded the Aztecs wines for gold.

One reason I traded them all is because I figured demands would be made anyway.

On the last turn Agade Riots. Not sure why.

Notes:
We are a Republic.
We are one tech (construction) from the Middle ages.
Unit cost is still 54 gpt which is most of it. This will be reduced by 4 for every city we get over size 7. To discuss: Do we want to disband more?
We have some flip risk cities. Future efforts may want to take this into account. I am reluctant to give up the cities as the support is useful. Erech is the one I would abandon if we do want to lower flip risks.
We need to improve our lands. Too many cities are using unroaded tiles. This means 2 less gold.
We are building some markets and have some as well.

In 4 turns our Harbor finishes. Lets upgrade the Curragh and try for the other continent. This could be a big boon to reach there first

Cities: We have 11 of them all size 6 or less (11 unit support).

Military:
9 Workers
4 Archers
2 Armies
22 Enkidu (many Elite)
1 Curragh
38 Total - Unit costs are therefore 38-11 = 27 * 2 = 54 gpt. Towns will grow to size 7 in 1, 4, and 6 to 7 turns for +6 unit support in the next 10 turns.

Construction is 40 turns at min right now. We could get it in 12 if we had no unit costs. Since we will be roading and getting cities above size 7, I think we can reduce the number of turns (we can also disband more units) so I don't think we should stay at minimum research but try to get Construction in 20 turns or so.

Final conclusions:
If we had been able to make an alliance vs one of the AI's I think we could have gone for the military option and done well. Without an alliance though(which the AI wisely wouldn't commit to for all our resources), we have all of a superior civs (even those without iron) units coming at us and can only defend and barely keep from being pillaged. I feel we are forced onto the peaceful path. We are just to weak at the moment to do much of anything.

I think we should try to get Construction in 20 turns or so when the current deals expire and then consider whether war makes sense. If we can get Feudalism as our free tech, we will be in a much better position. If we don't I think we should research it at full.

I also suggest we disband a few more Vet Enkidu - mostly though I think we need to road all worked tiles and get cities over size 7. If we do disband, I would keep Elite units, armies and workers (fairly obvious).

This game is going to be a challenge to win, I think. We are still the underdog and not in a position to do much about it.