Talamane said:
/begin rant of old man
Like, whatever. You like, just sound like my dad, man.
Talamane said:
We either need a combo (cats would do nicely) or we need swords or both. Our production sucks due to all the whipping, and we will not be able to replace the losses.
Our production should be fine. At size 4, Brass Lions can work it's gold, plains hill, pigs, and the copper. That's 12 hammers/turn, or an axer every 4 turns. That's plenty of axemen for our needs I thnk.
I don't think swordsmen are really necessary. They're more expensive than axemen and not a huge deal better, and worse than axers against melee units. Axers can also be used to fog bust against enemy axemen, while swords can not. I'm addicted to catapults, but they're not really necessary until longbowmen start appearing, or you have a creative/religious neighbor. I just don't think Mao will last long enough for them to be needed.
Talamane said:
Just for laughs, i played the posted file and tried to attack a barb archer in Angle with the best ax @ 59% odds. I got my ass handed to me. Now that's a plain barb archer with no promotions and no cultural defense. Yes, it's on a hill, but Mao's archers will have cultural defense and at least one probably will be CG1.
Sure, we'll lose 1-2 (maybe get lucky and lose none, maybe get unlucky and lose 3) for every city we take. But at an axer every 4 turns, that's a city every 6-8 rounds. Qin can't settle cities that quickly, and once we take out a couple of his developed cities his research is basically stopped. As long as we strike soon (not necessarily to finish him off, just Beijing and 1-2 more cities, so we have room to expand) by the time he gets Longbowmen, we'll have Samurai.
Being on a hill is a big deal - it's +50% defense, which is better than a CDI archer in a 20% culture town, which is probably most of Mao's "developed" cities right now. Since we're razing cities, if one looks too hard (hill, lots of culture, lots of CDII archers, etc) we can just skip it for now, raze Mao's other cities, and come back later when we have cats or Samurai.
Talamane said:
I think the tech path is all wrong. Confucianism has been founded and we have four cities. Since we have to raze any captured cities, why are we researching CoL? We dont know where our iron is.
We discussed the tech path quite a bit. Given that I'll be picking the next technology, we should probably discuss it again to make sure everyone is on the same page
The reasoning behind CoL was that it seems our biggest problem is not going to be military (once Mao is gone, we're probably going to be alone for quite some time) but rather our economy - since we're cut out of the tech trading game, we're going to have to research all the techs ourselves. Code of Laws will help both with eventual courthouses (admittedly not a problem now) but more importantly it's a pre-req for both Philosphy and Civil Service. When our great scientist in Silk Bend comes in, he can research Philosphy for us, giving us a religion and much needed happiness, along with a very expensive tech and one of the best builder civics (Pacifism, which will let us then get a quick academy in Lake Placid.)
Civil Service is a key tech, as it will let us run Bureaucracy. With that in place, Lake Placid will become the best research center on the face of the earth. And, it's a prereq for Samurai.
That being said, where to go after CoL is interesting. I think Math might be good - it lets us get Calendar (for our silks), Currency (good for the economy), Construction (sufficient military until Gunpowder). Another option is Alphabet -> Drama as a happiness solution, or Monarchy for happiness, or straight to Civil Service.
Right now I'm leaning towards Monarchy followed by Civil Service. Once we kill Mao, we can send our stack of axemen back and grow our cities to large sizes
Talamane said:
Single unit-type combos are bad news in Civ4. I have never had any luck in any SPs i have played or the SGs in which i was a participant with this tactic. In the early phase of the games, we beelined straight to iron working, built swords and axes and let slip the dogs of war. Later we added cats.
Well, I can only share my experience as well. For me, I almost never build a swordsman the entire game, and always find axer wars to be the most profitable. I'm sure both routes work, this is just the one I tend to take.
Oh, consider this a got it
I'll have a look at the save tomorrow. If I don't get a chance to play tomorrow, I'll play sometime Sunday afternoon.
Also, unless I see something in the save, or some other comments from y'all, I'm going to declare on Mao and raze some of his cities - ideally, Beijing if it's not heavily guarded.
