HNDY01 Babylonian Rampage (AWE C3C)

[Greebley]

I checked the scientists. It would only take 2 to get Lit down to 11 turns. Perhaps, Eulbar, Samarra, and/or Ellipi

[Edit: I would put all tundra towns permanantly on scientists until we get map making. If we had 5 towns on scientists would double our current rate of learning techs!]

 

[barbslinger]

I love the scientists too. Especially in the early era's when techs are cheaper. They work well later too if you have a load of corrupt overpopulated / food rich cities. I've taken 3 turns off a tech run before.

 

[handy900]

Originally posted by barbslinger
... I may even consider leaving a vacant city site for the AI to land on to farm some workers out of dead settlers. Unless it is prohibited.

"Baiting the AI" with an empty city is an allowed strategy, and something of an AW tradition dating back at least to betazed's Always War Diety Victory

 

[TedJackson]

Playing now...


Ted

 

[TedJackson]

HNDY01-710BC

Pre-flight checks... OK
Looking at the possibilities I'll concentrate on trying to get the Great Lib so:
Hire Scientists in Samarra, Eridu & Uruk
Lit in 10 turns @ -1gpt (12gp in the bank)
This has the drawback of sacrificing growth in those towns but makes a serious dent in the tech pace. I'll need to join a worker to Nineveh ASAP, this will bring the Great Lib build time down to 21/22 turns (Palace 12 turns). I can always slow the build later on if need be.

I'll pop workers from the size 6 towns to compensate for the lack of growth in the South.

Press button...
Babylon Spear - Worker

1 - 690BC
Spear (Babylon) to Ashur (heading S or SE depending on Spanish boat)
Worker (NE Nineveh) to Nineveh (join next turn)
Curragh continues anticlockwise (we need another to expose the Green border civ)

IBT
Spanish boat sails on
Babylon Worker - Bowman

2 - 670BC
Join Worker to Nineveh
Still only lose 1 shield from 12. Pyramids due in 18 turns, Palace in 9, Literature in 8
Spear (Ashur) 1S & fort
Curragh continues
Worker (Babylon) heads South
Eridu reaches whip point but I couldn't get a Worker there in time.
Eridu switches to Curragh

IBT
Spanish boat sails on North
Ashur Settler - Bowman
Ellipi Spear - Bowman
Treasury 8gp @ -3gpt (forgot the income loss due to popping Settler from Ashur)

3 - 650BC
Settler (Ashur) to Eridu
Worker to Eridu
Worker (N Eulbar) road - road to Furs
Curragh continues

IBT
Spanish boat sails on North
Babylon Bowman - Worker

4 - 630BC
Bowman (Babylon) to Ellipi
Settler & escort (Eridu) S
Worker (Eridu) S
Curragh continues
Babylon switches to Wealth & Hires taxman - This boosts income to +1gpt and is only until Settler founds in the South

IBT
Hittites want to talk - suing for peace already?

5 - 610BC
Bowman (Ellipi) to Mountain stronghold
The hill road (NE Nineveh) is finished pushing our income to +3gpt
Workers head South
Settler & escort S
Curragh continues
Babylon has reached 10spt with a taxman so switches to Bowman
Science to 60% (Lit in 5 @ 0gpt, 7gp in the Bank) - Palace build is down to 6 turns

IBT
Spanish boat sails on North

6 - 590BC
Bowman fort on Mountain
Settler & escort SW
Workers start roads around Ashur and South from Eridu
Curragh sails on

IBT
Babylon Bowman - Bowman
Ashur Bowman - Bowman
Eridu Curragh - Temple

7 - 570BC
Bowman (Ashur) heads for Samarra (nucleus of Southern Rapid Reaction Force)
Bowman (Babylon) to Ellipi
Morning Cloud (original Curragh) sails on
Storm Cloud (Curragh, Eridu) sets off clockwise around the coast
Nippur founded - Temple
Workers road to Nippur
Sanity check: Pyramids 13 turns, Palace 4 turns, Literature 3 turns. Neither Spain nor Hittites have Lit.

IBT
Get the Forbidden Palace Message

8 - 550BC
Bowman (Ellipi) to Mountain stronghold
Boats sail on - Morning Cloud spets Greeen border to the West

IBT
Babylon Bowman - Worker
Northern Gap Spear - Spear
Spain starts Temple of Artemis

9 - 530BC
Bowman (Babylon) to Ellipi
Bowman fort Samarra
Worker to Eridu (join next turn)
Spear fort Northern Gap
Boats sail on - Morning Cloud contacts Zulu (polite)
Zulu are up Map Making & Horseback Riding, have 18gp in their treasury, have both Iron & Horses hooked up, Silks and have 9 cities (including capital)
Declare war on Zulu

IBT
Discover Map Making - Code of Laws
Babylon Worker - Bowman (brainfart here, I was expecting growth )
Ellipi Bowman - Lib (pre-build for Harbour?)

10 - 510BC
2 Bowmen (Ellipi) to Maountain stronghold
Boats sail on
Nineveh switches to Great Lib (10 turns)
We have monopoly on Lit

Notes
We're looking quite good. I think we've got a good shot at the Great Lib and we've the start of Bowman stack on the mountain.

All our towns are connected by road and I've positioned workers at Eridu & Samarra for forest chops next turn. After roading, it would be feasible to join a worker to each town and get them productive & growing.

We should get Map Making at the end of turn so Uruk, Eulbar & Nippur could switch to Harbours and then benefit from a joined Worker.

Apologies for the Worker cockup at Babylon - I had a brainfart and thought we'd get the Worker then growth but of course it's the other way around

The next player will need to MM Babylon to get us back to 10spt + a scientist/taxman.

The save is > here <


Ted

 

[barbslinger]

I thought we were delaying contact for two reasons.

1. Delaying the inevitable war.
2. Get an embassy with one of our continental foes.

Thats why I parked him up north.

Did you do this to decrease our research costs?

COME ON GREAT LIBRARY!!!

 

[Greebley]

Ya, we had, but it probably got buried back in other discussions. I am kicking myself for not explicitly mentioning it (I was planning to but then forgot).

Well it will mean more troop to slog through to get the horses and iron, but I don't think it will be fatal - just harder. There was also a good chance they would have sent a boat near us nullifying our no contact gambit anyway. This way we at least get to explore the whole coast.

Excellent work toward the Great Library, Ted. Getting it will be a huge boon for us. If we manage to get it, I feel like we will be in very good shape. The path to the iron and horses is narrow enough that I am not too worried about that part happening - there is always longbows if necessary (I would like to get there earlier).

 

[TedJackson]

Sorry guys,

I simply forgot about the delaying contact discussion

At least those Impi will make nice Leader fodder

Oh, and you can ignore my comment about getting MM next turn. That won't happen until we complete the GL... just counting my chickens a little too early


Ted

 

[barbslinger]

Contact is inevitable like you state, I was more scared knowing there will be Impis coming to pillage now. Oh well, bring it on. Is that IBT between 9 and 10 "discover map-making" a typo? It's lit isn't it. Why are we going for CoL? Don't we want a path to monarchy or head to math?

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by barbslinger
Is that IBT between 9 and 10 "discover map-making" a typo? It's lit isn't it. Why are we going for CoL? Don't we want a path to monarchy or head to math?

Yep, Literature not Map Making. You can probably tell I've had a hard day

I went for CoL to use as trade goods with our next contact, hoping that we could encourage the AI to go for Republic while we go the Monarchy route. Might be but I thought it a good idea at the time. The next player can veto of course as there has been no spend on CoL.

Maths, Map Making & HBR should come from the Great Lib as Spain & the Hittites both have those three.


Ted

 

[T_McC]

Have a few points after looking at the save:

Yeah, I wondered why we are researching CoL? We will get Map Making and Math at least from the GLib, so I guess I can understand not going there. However, my preference is Map Making, because we need Harbors sooner rather than later for almost all of our cities. Plus, we want to send out suicide Galleys to find the other continent to make best use of the GLib. We only have 1 turn research into CoL, so if we can get Maps in < 10 turns, we should go there. Otherwise I would be comfortable with turning research off until we either get the GLib or don't.

Checking the save, we can't research anything before 10 turns other than the useless HBR, so maybe we should turn research off until we know whether we need to build Libraries or not. This also allows the scientists to be put back to work in the tundra cities.

Second point is that while it is nice we are building a stack of Bowmen, we really don't want them on the Mountain. We are in a position to control the start of our GA, and allowing them to be on defense on the Mountain relinquishes that control. So Handy should probably move them off, and maybe build a few more spears to take their place. We have a chance to have a Monarchy GA where we can build Harbors, Markets, and Aqueducts. If we can get Math and build a few Cats, we can ensure this. Bombardment of most things will allow us to attack redlined units with Warriors and avoid our GA until we are in Monarchy.

Anyone else have a thought about Samarra as the FP site? If we're going to be holed up down here, might as well have very low corruption at all cities. With the C3C definition of the FP, I don't think we will get much benefit from building it in the Jungle/Marsh area, and we would have to wait quite a few turns to do that, barring a leader rush.

@11 spt, maybe Nineveh should go immediately back on the Palace after the GLib completes. The Great Lighthouse would be very useful.

Still room for a couple of more cities in our south. The jutting forest south of Eridu, and the plain tundra square SE-E of Samarra. First ring overlap won't matter for these villages, as they can only work two land tiles anyway.

We're starting to get close to our unit support limit, so new units built should probably be replacing our non-vets.

 

[TedJackson]

The Bowmen are on the Mountain supporting the Spears. With their defensive bombard we stand a good chance off knocking 1hp off any attacker before they start their attack. So I think they should stay. I agree that it wouldn't hurt to have a couple more Spears though.

As far as the FP goes, I see no great choices. The best I see is Ashur with a rushed Palace on the river North of Harran later in the game. This will give us the largest possible land area around the Palace (as far as we can see at the moment).

Nineveh might as well try for another wonder as there is little else it can do that can't be done elsewhere.


Ted

 

[barbslinger]

Leaving an open spot for AI settlement sounds good for gathering some free slaves. Will they land? Who knows? We do need more unit support though. We could place some cities any where that there is 2 unworked tiles and work a specialist keeping the pop at 1 and then abandoning later.

 

[T_McC]

Originally posted by TedJackson
The Bowmen are on the Mountain supporting the Spears. With their defensive bombard we stand a good chance off knocking 1hp off any attacker before they start their attack.

Heh, forgot they have defensive bombard. I'm just not confident that the program will always have a Spear defend before a Bow. If we leave a couple in place, but don't fortify them, I am confident they will go after all the fortified Spears in the defensive order. However, once we get Math, they get replaced with Catapults.

Originally posted by TedJackson
As far as the FP goes, I see no great choices. The best I see is Ashur with a rushed Palace on the river North of Harran later in the game. This will give us the largest possible land area around the Palace (as far as we can see at the moment).

This is why I think we will end up using Communism in this game. We are going to rather fully develop our current Palace core, and then have to essentially abandon it in order to build a new core somewhere North of the Mountain. I agree with this plan, that we must have our capital someplace we can build (almost) 2 full rings of cities. We may get a little bit of a break as our rank corruption won't be too bad until we actually build out to the second ring of the new Palace site. Just going to make for a lag in the game at some point. Of course, one advantage of a big cultural push now is that we can more confidently capture enemy cities. We should get some non-cultural buildings intact, and can buy all the cultural buildings on the cheap. So Babylon will probably turn out to be the best possible choice for this peculiar situation.

 

[handy900]

Got it, playing tonight

 

[Greebley]

I think I would prefer holding off on the FP. Our empire is small enough for now that I don't see that we need it right away

The town I would build it in is our future Iron town. The FP town itself has little corruption which seems a waste in Samarra. Samarra also has no shields to speak of and isn't really corrupt. The iron is near hills and grasslands - a good spot for low corruption. Also there is a small chance we get a huge win if coal showed up near the iron in that we get the ironworks in a non-corrupt town.

In other words, I think we don't need the FP until we start to expand past the mountain. Since we know we are going all the way to the iron, lets build it there. We are likely to get a leader in the big push so we can spare one to rush it.

 

[handy900]

We throw a war, and nobody comes

Pre-turn
I’ll play 8 since I played 12 last time

Move research slider to zero since we get the GL in 10 and the best we could do on MM was 13 turns @ zero GPT. Put all scientist to work.
Un-fortify the bowmen on the mountain hoping this will make spears defend first. Adjust mountain mix to 5 spears & 3 bowmen.

I’ll put Nineveh back to palace after we get the GL. (thinking positive).
Note that out next 2 cities need to go to the jutting forest south of Eridu, and the plain tundra square SE-E of Samarra.

Put Ellipi to working forest to cut the Library build from 14 to 10.

IBT
Ashur – bowman – bowman
Zulu complete the Pyramids for us. How kind of them

Turn 1 490 BC
Move the bowman from Ashur to Uruk and chain Uruk’s vet spear towards the mountain.
I’ll to probe the sea squares (move in, move back) with Storm Cloud looking for a spot a suicide galley may want to try in the future.
Workers begin chops.
I put Ashur on a library, then switched back to bowman after I noticed we only have 3 cities building units. What a strange AW game.
Swap some BG in Babylon to forest so Ashur can get a BG and build bowmen in 3 turns not 4.
Switch Babylon to spear.
GL due in 9; 23 in the bank; +16 per turn sliders @ zero / zero
The spears on the mountain are fortified, and the bowmen are not. No units in sight.
Sounds strange, but do you suppose the AI is trying to build culture to keep up and thus building fewer units? Perhaps we are in a culture war Either that or they are afraid of the mountain stack.

IBT
Babylon – spear – settler.
Spanish switch from Pyramids to Temple of Artemis.

Turn 2 – 470 BC
Zzzzz
39 in bank, +16 GPT, GL in 8
Babylon can pull 13 shields working 2 forest squares. This frees up BG for Ashur, which in turn frees up BG for Uruk. Until Babylon gets an aqueduct it can work forest @ size 6 & still have 12 food.

IBT
z

Turn 3 – 450 BC
We now have 7 spears & three bowmen on the mountain
Chops finish, start some mines
55 Gold; +16 GPT; GL in 7
Ashur – bowman - bowman

IBT
zz


Turn 4 – 430 BC
Chain the bowman towards the mountain

IBT
Babylon – settler - bowman

Turn 5 410 BC
MM tiles so Babylon will grow quicker.
Send a worker to begin a road & fortress on the mountain. We’ll need roads for our cats.
Settler starts off to the Samarra site. I’d like to chop the forest near Eridu for the shields if we can before we settle there.
Hit F4 to make sure we are still at war. Have not seen a single AI unit.

IBT
Samarra – temple – barracks

Turn 6 – 390 BC
Babylon can work a forest & still grow next turn, so it lends a BG to Ashur allowing for a bowman to complete in 1 instead of 2 turns.
Eulbar sacrifices 2 gold on the foxes to work a forest and cut the temple from 10 to 5 turns. Less cash more shields.
We have +105 in bank +15 GPT and GL in 4. Nobody else is building the GL

IBT
Ashur – bowman – bowman

Turn 7 – 370 BC
Worker stuff.
Babylon gets it’s food tile back from Ashur. Newly completed mines allow Ashur to complete Bowmen in 3 without having to borrow a BG from Babylon. I’m mining the Plains N of Babylon since I thought we should save the forest near Babylon for an aqueduct or library chop. Seemed a waste to chop a bowman since the AI won’t attack us.

IBT
Our dinky boat saw a Zulu swordsman.
Babylon – Bowman – Bowman
Uruk – temple – barracks
Eridu – temple – barracks

Turn 8 350 BC
Spot Zulu Iron along the coast
8 turns and not a single attack from any of three AI.
Settler arrives SE E of Samarra. He was unescorted, but the spear from Samarra joins him next turn.
GL due in 2 and nobody else is building it. Nobody of the 3 we know has lit yet. Thank you Greebley for starting a wonder on your prior turns.
137 gold and earning +15 per turn.
There is a worker roading the mountain.
We have 7 fortified spears on the mountain and 5 unfortified bowmen.
Lots of mines due soon should help the shield count in the southern cities.
We are now @ turn 110 so we are back on a 10 turn track.

AI are a bunch of scaredy cats

>> 350 BC zipped Save <<

I'll check back later to make sure you have no trouble with my zipped file.

 

[handy900]

A picture of the intense action @ 350 BC

350 BC

 

[barbslinger]

In my experience the chop won't produce any shields if it is not in a cities 21 tile radius. I'm pretty sure I've chopped in my cultural borders but not in 21 tile radius and not gotten the shields. Have any of you guys had the same results.

Well now that GL is nearly a lock it's time to build a huge bowman stack.

 

[T_McC]

The situation here is the opposite: The forest tile is not in our cultural borders (though it may be if a temple was built in Eridu), but is in the cities 21 workable tiles.

I'm nearly certain the way you initially said it is correct, if the forest tile cannot be worked by any city (not in anyone's 21), you don't get the shields.

If you let the workers be automated, they will gladly chop forest and clear jungle none of your cities can use.