Jumpmasters 1B: Power is Knowledge (Vanilla, GOTM mod - Emperor - No research)

[Grunthex]

Ok, I'm trapped at work, so won't be gotting-it until tonight some time.

I want lots of thoughts before I play -- this is where I like to mess up a perfectly good game, the early war I fail to plan sufficiently for. I'll try to organize my thoughts a bit.

1) WAR.

We should have about 15 chariots online in 2 turns. Is this enough to start smacking on the Han? Considering once we upgrade them, we'll have to build reinforcements at horseman cost, I'm not sure how fast they'll come in. For Goals, I think the Nanking-Canton-Beijing route is good, but we must get Tsingtao before we end the war, if we do. Unless we wipe him out, we can't leave the Han iron for their next war. I think I recall they are already up Math on us, so a is a war for 4 cities+ spoils what we want?

2) Naval supremacy

Do we want to just send galleys off willy-nilly into the fog, or does it make more sense to follow the Korean peninsula around in both directions to see if other islands show up? I know we'll want to do some of both, but I get the first few to choose from. My gut instinct is to preserve the galleys.

3) Palace/FP

We've already been building the FP in Almerikh for a bunch-o-turns, that's pretty firm on a location, correct? How do we want to get the Palace to Beijing? I've never used the free-palace-jump -- I didn't know about it for a long time, and once I did it felt cheap to me. My preference would be to build it honestly, no matter what that takes (a leader, really).

4) Future war.

Assuming we don't destroy the Han, are they our next target? Or will they be so weak as to be irrelevant, allowing us to go after Korea/Baekje? What are we planning to use for troops? If we get Tsingtao's iron, we might consider building a pile of warriors for a swordsman upgrade.

5) Government.

Assuming these guys ever get around to researching any, which do we want? I used to be a "Republic-always" guy. But we have ONE luxury to work with, and plans on pointy-sticking a lot of people. Does it have ANY value for us at all?

6) Future Rings.

Ring 1 around Beijing = 5. Does ring 2 at 7 or 8 change much, in terms of the disc-placement around Almerikh? I think Karasu's (1, 3, 4) suggested placements would all fit within a 7, but can't see much of the rest of the empire at the moment.

Ok, so I talked a lot here. I tried to put in my thoughts on each idea.

 

[Mistfit]

1) WAR.

We should have about 15 chariots online in 2 turns. Is this enough to start smacking on the Han? Considering once we upgrade them, we'll have to build reinforcements at horseman cost, I'm not sure how fast they'll come in. For Goals, I think the Nanking-Canton-Beijing route is good, but we must get Tsingtao before we end the war, if we do. Unless we wipe him out, we can't leave the Han iron for their next war. I think I recall they are already up Math on us, so a is a war for 4 cities+ spoils what we want?

I think we need to see where your are at after ten turns and we can decide as a team.

2) Naval supremacy

Do we want to just send galleys off willy-nilly into the fog, or does it make more sense to follow the Korean peninsula around in both directions to see if other islands show up? I know we'll want to do some of both, but I get the first few to choose from. My gut instinct is to preserve the galleys.

I like willy-nilly...

3) Palace/FP

We've already been building the FP in Almerikh for a bunch-o-turns, that's pretty firm on a location, correct? How do we want to get the Palace to Beijing? I've never used the free-palace-jump -- I didn't know about it for a long time, and once I did it felt cheap to me. My preference would be to build it honestly, no matter what that takes (a leader, really).

I agree but we are low men on the totem.

4) Future war.

Assuming we don't destroy the Han, are they our next target? Or will they be so weak as to be irrelevant, allowing us to go after Korea/Baekje? What are we planning to use for troops? If we get Tsingtao's iron, we might consider building a pile of warriors for a swordsman upgrade.

To early to tell IMO. We'll know more when your turn set is done. I wouldn't plan on starting any other wars in your turns, if you can help it.

5) Government.

Assuming these guys ever get around to researching any, which do we want? I used to be a "Republic-always" guy. But we have ONE luxury to work with, and plans on pointy-sticking a lot of people. Does it have ANY value for us at all?

Monarchy I believe is the choice of war mongerers.

6) Future Rings.

I'd have to pull up the save to check on this. but I think you are correct

 

[AlanH]

I want lots of thoughts before I play

All good questions. Here are my 2¢

We should have about 15 chariots online in 2 turns. Is this enough to start smacking on the Han? Considering once we upgrade them, we'll have to build reinforcements at horseman cost, I'm not sure how fast they'll come in. For Goals, I think the Nanking-Canton-Beijing route is good, but we must get Tsingtao before we end the war, if we do. Unless we wipe him out, we can't leave the Han iron for their next war. I think I recall they are already up Math on us, so a is a war for 4 cities+ spoils what we want?

If there's a road from Nanking to Beijing I'd be tempted to hit Beijing directly. We'll be at our strongest at the start, with all our troops concentrated and few healing. It really screws them up if you can split the territory up, and you then have their radial road network at your disposal to clean up the other cities. If we leave Beijing alone while we go after the others they are also likely to pop rush it down to pop 1, making more spears fo rus to kill, and leaving us with an uhappiness legacy.

I agree we should consider depriving them of iron as top priority, both asap during the war and for afterwards. We should aim to be at tech parity as a result of the peace negotiations, perhaps grab a free pop 1 town or two so that we dont have to raze them, and preferably leave them in a small hovel on the tundra edge of the continent.

Do we want to just send galleys off willy-nilly into the fog, or does it make more sense to follow the Korean peninsula around in both directions to see if other islands show up? I know we'll want to do some of both, but I get the first few to choose from. My gut instinct is to preserve the galleys.

We should certainly look for local contacts first. We don't know that suicide is even necessary yet.

We've already been building the FP in Almerikh for a bunch-o-turns, that's pretty firm on a location, correct?

I think so. If we get a 5 ring around a Beijing palace our zero corruption cluster around Almerikh will be about 11 cities I think. And the tight spacing means they'll limit at a reasonable population, reducing happiness problems.

How do we want to get the Palace to Beijing? I've never used the free-palace-jump -- I didn't know about it for a long time, and once I did it felt cheap to me. My preference would be to build it honestly, no matter what that takes (a leader, really).

I've never tried a free palace jump, and all my instincts rebel against it. If we work at elite generation and use them carefully we should be able to get a leader to build it for us?

Assuming we don't destroy the Han, are they our next target? Or will they be so weak as to be irrelevant, allowing us to go after Korea/Baekje? What are we planning to use for troops? If we get Tsingtao's iron, we might consider building a pile of warriors for a swordsman upgrade.

I'd still favour horses myself, but it depends on when pikes arrive. Swords will upgrade to a fairly defensive unit at feudalism I think. We won't need a lot of them.

Assuming these guys ever get around to researching any, which do we want? I used to be a "Republic-always" guy. But we have ONE luxury to work with, and plans on pointy-sticking a lot of people. Does it have ANY value for us at all?

I'd say we should focus on revolting only once, to Monarchy. Republic's only value for us is if we get into a tech middle man role, when it can be quite valuable on the negotiating table. But I don't think we should bother actually using it.

Ring 1 around Beijing = 5. Does ring 2 at 7 or 8 change much, in terms of the disc-placement around Almerikh?

Not really. We just need to create two tidy rings, using as many existing developed sites as possible to reduce the number of settelrs we need.

 

[Karasu]

Yuk, good points indeed.
I'll put my 2 cents in the hat too, hopefully they'll become good money with all our contributions...

1) WAR.

Estimating how many units are enough for a war is hard. 15 horsemen won't probably be enough to finish the Han.
The reason to start sooner rather than later is of course that the earlier we hit, the weaker they (supposedly) are.
In this regard, capturing their core cities and hopefully one/two more in peace negotiations should achieve the goal. Leaving a few Han cities behind shouldn't be a problem at that point.

One thing I failed to note in my report: our army was weak compared to theirs until my last turn, when it turned average. This seems to suggest that they haven't built any Swordsman yet.
The risk that they start building more than a few Swordsmen is certainly pushing towards a quick attack -but we should not hurry things.

In fact, it is debatable whether waiting for 10-15 more turns and attacking with 20-25 horsemen wouldn't give us better results. I do not know this -we may want to discuss the whole point a bit more in depth. (Having said this, I must confess that I am in favour of the carnage, and someone who played SGs with me in the past may not be surprised to see that ).

If we look into the 'early-war' scenario, my feeling is that two stacks of 7 Horses (roughly) should take Nanking and Canton without too many problems ( :crossfingers: ). They can then be joined on their way to Beijing and Tsingtao (btw, do they export Tsingtao beer worldwide, or is it only to be found in Chinese restaurants in Italy?).
At that point, we should reassess the situation.

Incidentally, disconnecting Tsingtao as soon as the war begins is probably worth a horseman (or a chariot).
They have another Iron source, incidentally, close to their southwesternmost city (can't recall the name). It is not connected yet, and it shouldn't be a problem to us if we hit them hard enough in the first war.

We can leave the two Archers and three-four horses in our border cities in case they counter -I would expect them to do that from Anyang, if at all.

2) Naval supremacy

I was thinking of a coupe of galleys for our western coast, to follow it both nortwhards and southwards. Personally, I would take the plunge as soon as I saw a cape or a peninsula deep enough into the oceans.
Another galley is (relatively) close to completion on our eastern coast. That one can explore our neighbours' lands a bit more, before attempting any adventure.

The movement points of the Korean Junk point to differential movement being on. This means that we will have increased movement for our ships, but coast tiles will cost 3 of them, sea 2 and ocean 1.
If this is confirmed, it is certainly a reason to try ocean crossings.

3) Palace/FP

Yes.
Hopefully we'll get a leader. Otherwise, and subject to collective agreement, we may want to try the big jump; I am not too keen on it either, but if the leader doesn't come I see little choice.

4) Future war.

It is probably a bit early to decide. If we do decide to start the war in your turns, we will need to see what's their state when it is over.
We will also want to consider whether or not it is the case to break the peace treaty -which also depends on how many contacts we have by that time and how easily Korea and Baekje could spread the word about our misdeeds...

Actually, it would be good to be able to start a couple of raids on the other two, but it is really hard to see it now.

Regarding Swordsmen, we already have 11 warriors IIRC, which look nearly as many as we need for a short-range war, wherever it is.

5) Government.

As you say. I'd go Monarchy in this game.

6) Future Rings.

The second ring around Beijing won't change what happens around Almarikh.
As Mistfit pointed out, we need to move a couple of cities so that the first ring is at distance 5; let's pay some attention to the second ring (distance 7 looks ok), then I wouldn't care too much.

 

[Mistfit]

I was looking at he second ring around Bejing and I believe that we can fit an eight ring around it. If we did that we would have room for 13-15 good quality cities and another 2-4 in the northern tundra area (our probable oil source). If we do indeed decide on using the 8 ring Karasu's #1 and #4 city would work and the #2 city would have to be built one tile to the SW and they would all fall in the ring. The #3 city is a "tweener" as it will fall betewwn the 8 ring of Bejing and the outer ring of our FP.

do they export Tsingtao beer worldwide, or is it only to be found in Chinese restaurants in Italy?

I knew I reconized that name from somewhere. I should have know it was from beer. Yes, That is one I have seen in speciality beer shops before.

 

[Mistfit]

Double Post Alert.

I see in another thread that Gator is back. So we can wait for his thoughts on this stuff as well. He is the "King of the Rings".


Edit: This may be secondary but if we have an extra settler we could place a city on the little southern island to appy more pressure on Prusan

 

[DJMGator13]

1) WAR.

Two prewar items:
a) either rush the barrcks in Erdenet or mm from iFP to mHill and let it complete in 3 (vrs 6 turns). Then upgrade our 14 chariots to horsemen at a cost of 280 gold (20 each). We can but HBR from the BAE for only 126 gold (plus I never like giving money to someone I'm about to go to war with).

b) War Path - do the Hans even have either of their irons hooked up? They do not have their horses hooked up yet because it shows on our side of the the F4 trading screen. I agree with Karasu that a split assualt on Nanking & Canton then reassemble main force to take out Beijing. Sue for peace for techs and/or cities.

2) Naval supremacy

I like to explore the coastline with my first ship unitl I find a nice point to attempt a crossing. If I have anothe rship close by I'll either try a suicide run with the first galley or wait for the second galley and let the first one keep mapping out new coastline.

3) Palace/FP

We are only 17 turns from completing FP brick by brick. I would definitely use the first GL to rush the palace in Beijing. By the time we capture 3-4 Han cities they will be severely crippled and no need to use our 1st GL on creating an army. (Depending on the number of elite we have in combat after the first GL appears we may want to look at rushing a Wonder depending on what is avaiable.)

4) Future war.

Kill them all


5) Government.

Monarchy is probably our best bet. The unit support will help keep our gpt up and it is gooing to be expensive to buy either government tech. We will probably need some pointy stick research to acquire either of these.

6) Future Rings.

I need to look at this later, but Alan seems to have a good plan already.

 

[Grunthex]

Got it. Not sure how much I'll get played tonight, probably expect a post tomorrow evening.

 

[AlanH]

Good luck Grunthex.

 

[Karasu]

You know, sometimes living in Europe is really hard: imagine, now I'll have to wait at least 14-15 hours before I know what happened during Grunthex's turns.

Of course, this doesn't apply to Alan, who is known to loom over the forum about any time...

 

[Mistfit]

What do you think of the idea of placing a city on the little land mass to our south to put more cultural pressure on Prusan?

I agree I have seen AlanH here at all hours of the day and night. (I guess that means I'm here too...hmmm)

 

[AlanH]

My computer may be lurking even as I sleep

I think now we can sail we should grab any land we can. Specially if it fits on one of our rings. Until we move the palace we still need the current rings to remain tidy.

 

[Mistfit]

This shouldn't hurt our southern rings at all

A temple would prolly need to be rushed but if we gain a city from flip, it's be worth it IMO.

 

[Grunthex]

What about going 1 square SE of that big red dot. It would give even more 'surround' on Pusan, especially once the temple was whipped. Not sure if the distance from KK matters at this point.

Devil's advocate: What if that is NOT an island, it's a peninsula connected to the main Korean landmass -- would having two cities leaning on Pusan piss Korea off enough to declare war? Heck, if it is an island, it's still something to consider.

 

[DJMGator13]

Should we raze Nanking? It's at RCP6 from a relocated Palace in Beijing, while the other cities are at RCP5. Same with Chengdu RCP4. If we do not raze them we will have 1 RCP4, 3 RCP5 and 1 RCP6 cities around Beijing.

@Grunthex - I was thinking 1 tile S of the red dot.

 

[AlanH]

What about going 1 square SE of that big red dot. It would give even more 'surround' on Pusan, especially once the temple was whipped. Not sure if the distance from KK matters at this point.

Devil's advocate: What if that is NOT an island, it's a peninsula connected to the main Korean landmass -- would having two cities leaning on Pusan piss Korea off enough to declare war? Heck, if it is an island, it's still something to consider.

I believe the AI consider Firaxis distance less than 3 to be aggressive settling - I know that's how I'd feel . If we want to provoke Korea then red dot or 1 SE would be great ways to do so. Remember they are mobile by sea, so unless we are ready to (a) defend any settlement we put over there and (b) deal with incoming, albeit pathetic, invasions from Korea on our mainland, I suggest we avoid upsetting them right now. I recommend we process one enemy at a time until we have a major military lead on the rest of the world. Of course, if you feel we should be going after Korea rather than Han first, feel free to propose that option.

 

[AlanH]

Should we raze Nanking? It's at RCP6 from a relocated Palace in Beijing, while the other cities are at RCP5. Same with Chengdu RCP4. If we do not raze them we will have 1 RCP4, 3 RCP5 and 1 RCP6 cities around Beijing.

That was my thinking. I'd drawn a map showing their two non-RCP 5 cities razed and moved one tile onto the 5 circle, but Mistfit had already produced the same proposal before I posted. An RCP 5 circle on a Beijing palace puts 11 cities round Almerikh all at rank 1.

 

[DJMGator13]

That was my thinking...<snip>...An RCP 5 circle on a Beijing palace puts 11 cities round Almerikh all at rank 1.

Cool, just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

 

[Grunthex]

If there turns out to be land 1S of Big Red, I'll consider that the goal -- all the screenies I see are inconclusive though, that could be water.

Bit of a beginnerish question here. I've been seeing threads where people seem to be abandoning cities that are NOT small -- how do you do this? I only know of razing the enemy cities. Can I just have a military unit burn a whole city like Alpha Centauri does?

 

[AlanH]

When you capture a city, if it's pop 1 and has no cultural value (capitals don't count because of the palace) then you get no choice. It's destroyed. Otherwise you are given the choice of "Install a new governor" or "Raze it, we don't want it". Choose the first option if the city is where we want it to be, the second if we want to move it.