jar01: spain, emporer

CKS · Apr 5, 2019

Things are going smoothly - Arabia is kicked off BAM island and our golden age started. We are at nearly 1200 cpt.

We have a lot of catapults and trebuchets. Does anyone object to disbanding some of them for shields? Until we get railroads, they won't be much good for defense, as they aren't speedy. They are mostly currently clustered together rather near Babylon. I'd like to turn them into settlers. Thoughts?

Judminder · Apr 6, 2019

No objections from me. Good idea!

Elephantium · Apr 6, 2019

I say go for it. It's not like we have anything better to do with them :rolleyes:

CKS · Apr 8, 2019

Here is the save. This should be over before my turn comes again. We are at 64063 culture points, and 1385 cpt. In towns where we have temple, cathedral, and library, we should build wealth while we wait for the town to grow, putting a single shield in before pop-rushing. Unless it grows quickly, we should consider hiring taxmen, as cash is in short supply - maintenance costs are 835 gpt. There are still a few barracks that I didn't sell, but we probably should, and we might go through and search for other buildings we can sell. I rushed this turn, but didn't MM all 300 towns, because I am ready to pass this along, but if someone likes to MM, there is plenty of it to do.

Spoiler Extremely useless turn log :

tjs282 · Apr 9, 2019

CKS said:
I rushed this turn, but didn't MM all 300 towns, because I am ready to pass this along, but if someone likes to MM, there is plenty of it to do.

I look forward to it...

I will have time to DL and play this evening, but probably not more than a couple of turns, with so many new towns to (re)familiarise myself with :thumbsup:

(At least now that the wars are over, there should be much less unit-shuffling to do, right? Right...?)

We're off on vacation on Saturday (for 1 week), so I'll try and get at least 5T done over the next couple of days, and post my save+log by Friday evening at the latest.

CKS · Apr 9, 2019

We are still at war with Arabia, though there isn't any unit shuffling to do, and we could make peace if we like.

I've been shipping workers to BAM island to irrigate; I've done basically nothing in terms of forestry operations, since CAII doesn't work for me, but I expect one could do a lot of planting and chopping, too, if one were so inclined.

Judminder · Apr 9, 2019

@CKS
Nice.
Home and hosed (almost).

tjs282 · Apr 10, 2019

I'm 2.5 turns in, our eKnights have taken Fez (took 2 turns, because there were 3 units in there), and the Arabs are dead :woohoo:

But since I'm not counting on the Viking towns on Plains-Island flipping to us (and there are already at least 2 ACavs stationed on that island), I'm also shipping some Cavs over there, to allow us to defend/retaliate instantly against any Viking surprise-attack. (I was sending them anyway, just in case Fez proved more resilient than it turned out to be.)

MM and selling Dyes to Willy has put our cash-flow back into the black, for now: about +30 GPT net. But there is more MM to do, everywhere. (Even if we needed them) without handing over all our sell-able Luxes/Resources, our WMap, large chunks of gold/ per-turn, and/or putting 1-2 techs into the mix, we can't buy Silks (from Ghandi) or Ivory (from Ragnar) — so I guess we'll just have to try and make do without them

No-one else can afford per-turn payments at present, so I am tempted to try gifting a Lux each to the Indians and Vikings (and maybe also the English), to allow them to put any Clowns back to work in their larger towns (which likely have Markets already), in the hope that we can then harvest any freed-up per-turn income by selling them additional Luxes. Gifting stuff might also make the AI-Civs more friendly/ less inclined to DoW us, though this is of course never guaranteed.

On which subject, leaving so many coastal towns almost completely unguarded makes me a little nervous. Chiv and Astro are known to all the remaining Civs except Hittites (not even close to finishing the Ancient age!) and India (no Medieval techs yet), and although many of the others lack Horses, the Vikings don't -- and they know MilTrad (and are likely researching Magnetism). With so many CxC towns totally exposed, even a single Caravel (or Galleon-)full of AI fast-units, if we were unable to kill all of them immediately upon landing, could cause a lot of damage before they were contained*.

*If this was a solo-game, I'd be building/whipping a Musket for every coastal town, and maybe every other town directly inland, to ensure that I could reinforce/wall-off any landing point for long enough to get my attack-units into position! And probably also thinking that some Frigates on patrol to bombard/sink incoming ships and/or landed units might be nice to have...

So, since we're not even going to be able to start railing for another 30+ turns, what do you folks think about starting to upgrade our remaining stock of (r+v)** Knights to Cavs (30g per head)? While this won't make any difference to our unit-support (we have >1400 potential free-unit slots, and only about 300[?] units!), it would provide us with stronger, more mobile strike-forces to guard against possible landings. I'm thinking a stack of 4-6 Cavs (or perhaps only 2-3 Cavs if the stack also included a [Knight-]Army), placed in the rough centre of an 18 x 18 block of tiles, so that they could reach and attack any (roaded) tile within that radius, within a single turn. Just in terms of area, we'd probably need at least 3 such stacks per continent (homeland, exEgypt, BAM), i.e. 9 stacks in total.

**I'd leave the eKnights alone for now: in the event of a landing, they can always trample an LBM and maybe get us an MGL — for another Army, or to rush an expensive Culture-building, or an SWonder, e.g. MilAcad or Pentagon

Most of our fast attack-units are also currently on BAM-island: I'd therefore like to ship a few Knights (or preferably Cavs!) back over to exEgypt, at least. (Cav-stacks for our homeland could be built relatively quickly from our core — once all the Unis are done there!) Once the Cav-stacks were mostly in place, we could also dump our remaining Maces and LBMs into Culture-builds...

tjs282 said:
(At least now that the wars are over, there should be much less unit-shuffling to do, right? Right...?)

Mwahahahahahahahaha! :rotfl:

WRONG!

Our 160+ Workers (will) still need sorting into efficient roading/ irrigating/ chopping gangs, and dozens of Settlers (will) still need direction to their town-sites...

CKS · Apr 10, 2019

First, somehow I missed that Madrid has no temple! Fix that, please.

My concern with upgrading is the money it will cost - roughly 1300 g. Our cash-flow problems are going to get really bad as soon as our golden age ends. I'd rather build cavs in towns that have already built their cheap culture buildings (temple, cathedral, library) on the home island (since they have barracks). As new cavalry are built, we can disband slow movers and then knights in towns that need a shield boost. I set some core towns to build universities, but they could build cavs instead (or after the university), and we have a bunch of towns that have built the cheap culture buildings that could rush some cavalry.

In ex-Egypt, there are towns that still have barracks that have the cheap culture buildings already. They are currently building colosseums or marketplaces, but these could be swapped to cavalry to provide some mobile units for that island.

I'm not hugely worried about being attacked right now. We are vastly more powerful than the AI, and we aren't that close to the end, when suicidal AI usually attack me in a belated attempt to keep me from winning. We can reduce the number of needed units by having them shadow AI boats if we think they might be contemplating an attack - in fact, we can use a bunch of the knights we already have to be a mobile blocking force to keep the AI from landing. Only the Vikings can attack amphibiously, and they can build cavalry now, so they won't build more berserks.

The Dutch can build rifles, but nobody else can, so any invaders will not be hard to kill, especially if we make them land on plains and grassland. If the Dutch declare, we should ally the Indians, and then we won't see much of an invading force, since they share a landmass.

(In a solo game, I would have zero defenders in towns, except on plains island or where I needed an MP. I'd space out some attackers, and watch for landings IBT. If I saw a landing, I'd scroll ahead to switch some builds to military ones and rush some units if needed. Then I'd cross my fingers. Once war was declared, I'd send units follow along and block the coast in hopes of keeping the AI from landing. This doesn't always work out for me, and sometimes I lose a town or two, but I just can't bring myself to build a massive military, so I'm always trying to skimp by. I don't think this is optimum behavior, nor am I suggesting it for this game, though.)

jarred! · Apr 11, 2019

Don't worry CKS, my solo games are usually diplo/space so I never really have a military at all

I don't think we have much to worry about in the way of AI attacks, we should be scary to the AI! But, suring up defenses is always a good idea.

Elephantium · Apr 11, 2019

I agree that we should build Cavalry in our core cities rather than upgrade Knights. A cash cushion at the end of the GA will make it easier to manage the economy.

We should make sure that all the culture buildings are done in the core before building more military, of course.

tjs282 · Apr 12, 2019

Aaaaand... here's another mostly useless turnlog...

Spoiler :

As you can see, I've been very whip-happy on this set! We're now close to 80,000 total Culture, and making 1600 CTP; CAII predicts a win in 1630 AD at current rates.

The next player will have several Caths, Libs and Settlers finished on BAM-island over the coming interturn. If those towns will then have a Temple, Cath + Lib in place, I would suggest moving straight on to building Wealth, i.e. unless a town can exceed Pop6, and/or gain >=2 unwasted SPT, don't bother starting a Col- or Uni-build because it's highly unlikely that it will be finished before the end of the game.

Additional ICS-towns will become whippable over the next couple of turns as well (i.e. those currently with 21-22 turns to a Temple-build at Pop2+, or 61-62 turns to Cath-/Lib-builds at Pop4+). I found it easiest to spot prospective whip-rushes using the F1 screen, clicking the 'Production' header to group the Caths, Libs, Temples, etc. together, and then just running my eye quickly down the list, looking for the magic numbers.

(Please don't shoot me but) early on in my set -- and before everyone said "Don't!" -- I went ahead and upgraded about a dozen of our v+r Knights; these Cavs are now fortified in several stacks around BAM and Egypt. I've only disbanded a couple of Maces/LBMs so far, because our core has only recently switched over from building Culture to building (more) Cavs instead. Our Galley-fleets are currently moored in Nuevo Pompeii and Punto de Pantano, but we might also want to consider disbanding (or upgrading!) some of those, too.

As partial mitigation/penance for spending our gold unnecessarily (IYHOs!

), careful MM, Taxmen-assignments, trading and Wealth-building have brought our income from around +25 gpt (at the start of my set) up to around +160 gpt, and our Treasury is already (back) up to nearly 1000 gold. Income will likely drop once our GA ends in a couple of turns, but we should be able to stay in the black, especially as our whipped towns regrow and excess citizens get assigned as Taxmen.

We are gifting Dyes to Lizzie and Ragnar, but it doesn't seem to have helped them (and hence us!) very much economically -- although it did make them friendlier! Willy is still our best Lux-customer: we should keep bleeding his gold as long as we can.

We had so many Workers and Slaves in Rome and Sumeria, that I didn't really need to ship all of them over to BAM (the stacks north of Dalandzagad were getting so tall that some of the Workers weren't getting anything useful to do). So I mostly just shipped the Slaves, and kept native Workers back on our home-island, stack-fortified here and there (I figured, they're costing us no unit-maintenance, so why not?). We could add them to towns where whips are still needed, or -- if we're going to play virtuously -- wait until all the whipping is done before we add them. Alternatively, once Steam comes in (in about 20 turns' time) they could be used for building a rail-network across our homeland, to aid in moving our Cav-stacks around.

I have not done much in the way of Forest-planting, but Workers have just reached Tabriz and started lumberjacking the Tundra to help along the Culture-builds up there. Most of Arabia and southern Mongolia are now nearly fully irrigated (apart from the last couple of Forest, Jungle and Marsh tiles, which will be cleared shortly), and a large chunk of Babylon also.

I found it simplest to MM towns as their final (Lib-)builds completed. I tried to assign tiles to towns directly adjacent, to keep things simple: dry towns got 2-3 irrigated Grass (or food-bonus tiles) where available, with Taxmen eating some/all of the excess food. Wet towns near Hills/Mountains could often get another uncorrupted shield if they were given enough food to reach Pop6-7, but whipping those citizens away is still quicker for building stuff!

Towns without any high-food tiles can just run Taxmen at Pop1-2; there's little point letting such trash-towns grow further, once they've finished their Culture-builds (we're already at 66% pop).

There are several Settlers heading north from Choybalsan(ish) to colonise the tiles I've left available in northern Arabia/southern Babylon (near Baghdad), a couple of which are auto-moving (sorry!) towards their assigned spots. As a rough guide, where there are crowds of Workers apparently ignoring (partly) unimproved tiles, it's because those tiles can be future ICS-sites. There are also at least 2 ICS-sites available near the (still-choppable!) Forest between Damascus, Kufah and Almarikh: Damascus is currently building a Settler(s) to fill these.

As I said earlier, I'm off on vacation tomorrow, and don't expect to be online again for the coming week. And like @CKS, I don't expect to be playing another set before we win. So I'll say now: thanks for the game, folks, and have a very happy Chocolate-Fest!

Save is below...

Nathiri · Apr 13, 2019

Heh always comes to me on a Friday it seems (or Saturday).

CKS · Apr 13, 2019

Sounds great, tjs282.

We can buy steam power from the Dutch now. It doesn't take quite all our gold, but pretty close. It would give us much faster growth and keep us from worrying about invasions, but our economy is precarious. I suspect we can hire enough new taxmen with our extra food to stay afloat, but maybe not. Thoughts?

Elephantium · Apr 13, 2019

I'd say hold off.

Our GA is about to end (in 4 turns). We shouldn't make the deal until we know our post-GA GPT.

Elephantium · Apr 13, 2019

tjs282 said:
I found it easiest to spot prospective whip-rushes using the F1 screen

Same here! It's really handy.

tjs282 said:
(Please don't shoot me but) early on in my set -- and before everyone said "Don't!" -- I went ahead and upgraded about a dozen of our v+r Knights

Oops. Still, you've recovered nicely from that:

tjs282 said:
our income from around +25 gpt (at the start of my set) up to around +160 gpt

Good work on this point!

tjs282 said:
wait until all the whipping is done before we add them. Alternatively, once Steam comes in (in about 20 turns' time) they could be used for building a rail-network across our homeland,

IIRC we're playing virtuously; I favor saving the Workers for rail duties.

CKS · Apr 13, 2019

Elephantium said:
IIRC we're playing virtuously; I favor saving the Workers for rail duties.

If we don't buy steam power, we won't need any workers to railroad. Steam is due in 23 turns, we win in less than 30. I'm not sure we can afford to buy steam power, though (and it looks like Elephantium isn't, either), and the price isn't going to come down since we've been doing a minimum run. We should be prepared to add the workers into towns that are done whipping and have the food to support them as taxmen. Maybe we should move them towards towns where they could be added now. Then when our golden age ends, we can add them if needed. If we don't need to add them as taxmen and we get to rails, they can rail from wherever they are, or we can move them around as desired between the golden age ending and learning steam power.

Judminder · Apr 15, 2019

If we take into consideration how many worker turns it will take to railroad a tile vs our total number of workers is it really going to be worth starting the railroads now that we win in less than 30 turns? I vote for adding the workers to towns ASAP and raising taxes at this stage. We are going to get minimum benefit from whatever rail network we manage to put together in the remaining time, aren't we (unless we can afford to buy steam power, of course).

Elephantium · Apr 15, 2019

It depends. If we can afford Steam after our GA ends, I'd say it's worth it. We get our Worker gangs railing irrigated grassland tiles on BAM island (focusing on the newest cities), and they'll grow quickly to be able to rush their Libs and Cathedrals.

In fairness, it might only shave off a few turns from the victory date (say, 20 turns out instead of 25). @Nathiri, how much time do you want to spend crunching numbers for whip targets? :lol:

Nathiri · Apr 16, 2019

Elephantium said:
It depends. If we can afford Steam after our GA ends, I'd say it's worth it. We get our Worker gangs railing irrigated grassland tiles on BAM island (focusing on the newest cities), and they'll grow quickly to be able to rush their Libs and Cathedrals.

In fairness, it might only shave off a few turns from the victory date (say, 20 turns out instead of 25). @Nathiri, how much time do you want to spend crunching numbers for whip targets?

These minor details dont mean too much to me

. I just want to get the game over with simply. I'll try to get my set done on Tuesday.

jar01: spain, emporer

Deity

Warlord

Malcolm was a very good cat.

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Stone \ Cold / Fish

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Warlord

Stone \ Cold / Fish

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King

Malcolm was a very good cat.

Stone \ Cold / Fish

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Deity

Malcolm was a very good cat.

Malcolm was a very good cat.

Deity

Warlord

Malcolm was a very good cat.

Commander

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