KK-01 – Fear of Flying

[GreyFox]

I would suggest red-dot ... blue seems okay, getting the fish and lots of coastl tile ... destined to be a commerce city with horses to provide the necessary hamers. But red dot is more strategic. Combined with a city in between the cows, dye, and marble, you blocked off JC's expansion towards Madrid. If going this route, settle this two cities first before yellow.

If you really want blue dot, then I will still settle red dot first, but moving it 1SE (this means you get the horse much later, after 2 expansions), and together with a city, say 1N of marble to again block JC off.

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[Talamane]

If that open spot is still available, i would very much like to join. The preamble part of the thread start sounds like my dilemma in civ--always falling back on an SS launch.

 

[GreyFox]

I would gladly relinquish my slot to Talamane ... and resume lurker/alternate role.

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[Kikinit]

@Talamane: You are welcome to have the 5th spot. Want to have a look at the save and give us your thoughts?

@GreyFox: I guess that relegates you to the alternate status that you volunteered for and suits you as we are playing patched anyway.

Do you guys think Red dot will have enough food. I too think that it's strategic value is just too good to miss. If we go for it (as it seems we will), then we need a missionary as soon as possible to get it's borders to pop and get those horses.

My sense is that alot of succession games end up with space victories because it's difficult for 5 different players to coordinate a war plan effectively. Let's start thinking now about how many chariots we'll need, and how to promote them.

Sounds good. We may want to keep those sentries around JC's territory to watch what he does. And as you so rightly point out, we are trying to stay away from a space win.


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[Ralph_Jackson]

From my (non-expert!) perspective if we are going after JC the the top priority has to be horses and boxing JC in. This to me feels like Orginal Red-Dot so we don't have to wait for excessive Border Expansions before hooking up Chariots.

Yellow and Pink Dots are later in the game fill-ins at our leisure. The next priority for me would then be a City claiming the Cows / Dye / Marble. We have then tied JC down and build chariots adn swamp him. I am not sure if whether building them without a Barracks for max speed or await a Barracks is better. I would lean towards not waiting for Barrracks and rsuhing him.

Are we all agreed that taking JC out is top priority as we ought to "settle" this before We "settle" a city!!

Ralph

 

[Kikinit]

Excellent, we have a full roster, welcome on board Talamane. Have you patched with the new patch yet? If so, you are on deck and up after scorpion.

Roster:
-- Kikinit
-- Ralph_Jackson -- also Just Played
-- mike_p -- Just Played
-- the_scorpion645 (10 turns from here on out) -- up
-- Talamane -- on deck

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[GreyFox]

Back as Lurker/Alternate

@GreyFox: I guess that relegates you to the alternate status that you volunteered for and suits you as we are playing patched anyway.

No problem ... but technically I am playing patched as well (just .09 smaller )

 

[mike p]

There are two reasons I'd like barracks before chariots. One is that it'll take a while at red dot to expand and have the pasture built and warriors are our only other offensive build option until then.

Second, I'd love to see a first wave of at least three chariots with withdrawal 1 & 2 which means barracks and picking off barbs for another XP while we finish building out the second group of chariots. Two levels of withdrawal more for immunity to first strike, though 50% withdrawal will come in handy too. Our first attackers don't have to win, or even survive, but they have to damage the fortified archers, whose first strike put us in the hole out the gate. I figure total number of chariots needed would be something more than double the number of archers in Rome.

Are we all agreed that taking JC out is top priority as we ought to "settle" this before We "settle" a city!!

We don't need to totally eliminate him, there might be some benefit in letting a Roman remnant occupy some map space until our economy is good enough to easily absorb them - as long as we can do that without exposing ourselves to Revenge by Praetorians!

 

[the_scorpion645]

Got it. I think i will go for the red spot because it has more forest to chop-rush

 

[Talamane]

Yes, i am patched. I was one of those unfortunate ones that had to re-install because of customization via civscale and possibly the Turkish civ mod. In my other SGs, there was a harmless (but annoying) change in game years transitioning from 1.52 to 1.61

 

[the_scorpion645]

sorry guys. You have to skip me this round because i messed up my pc where i play civ4 and it needs a format->install windows, etc

 

[Talamane]

OK, will study the save and thread. Play this afternoon.

 

[Kikinit]

Thanks for telling us scorpion. Hope you get your system all fixed soon. We'll skip you until you are ready.

Talamane, you're up already. I too was one of the unfortunate ones who had to reinstall. And I had civ-scale, so that was probably the reason I had trouble. It seemed to patch fine, but when the game played I had no control panel at the bottom and was giving me some errors on startup. So I took the easy way and just copied important files and reinstalled.

Onto the game. It seems we are going red dot and get some chariots to go hound JC's capital. Seems like a good plan to me... We will just have to watch that he doesn't get ironworking and comes at us with swordsmen.

EDIT: Scorpion, will you be ready if we just swap you? Or shall we just skip you this round?

 

[the_scorpion645]

You will have to skip me this time but i whink i will be ready next time when it comes my turn. Until then i just have to watch from a friend's PC

 

[Talamane]

[0] 2000 BC
There is not much for the worker to do. Press ENTER.

[1] 1960 BC
Move the settler towards red dot.

[2] 1920 BC
A barb will try to pillage our pig pasture. Move Madrid's warrior to counter. HC has a Qman right on the tile we want to settle! Why are we researching writing? NM.


[3] 1880 BC
Typical terra map--the human player gets the a$$ end of nowhere as a start. Toku and JC have excellent sites for cities--flood plains abound along the river. Barcelona is founded and starts a rax.


[4] 1840 BC
The forests around Barcelona are a tactical nightmare--they need chopping so i have been moving the worker towards it.


[5] 1800 BC
Monastery completes in Madrid, start a warrior to protect our pigs.

[6] 1760 BC
Lose the scout to a barb warrior. Warrior completes in Madrid. Writing comes in and start on archery.


[7] 1720 BC
Worker starts chop on hill for Barcelona's rax. Barb threatens him. Move Barc's warrior to counter and pray to the RNG god.



[8] 1680 BC
We win! Heal and promo hopefully.

[9] 1640 BC
Move worker to next chop. No promotion.

[10] 1600 BC
Archery completes and we start on wheel.

I suggest we need to settle the wet wheat city site next. Food = pop = power.

 

[Kikinit]

Good stuff Talamane. Now that the barracks are ready, we can start putting together some chariots and another settler.

Roster:
-- Kikinit -- Up
-- Ralph_Jackson -- On Deck
-- mike_p
-- the_scorpion645 -- skipped until further notice
-- Talamane -- Just Played

And That means I'm up. I should be able to play today.

 

[Kikinit]

(0) -- 1600BC
Ok.. look around at our 2 cities and find all is ok... just need more cities. I will make that a priority of my turns to get a settler out.

IBT:
Roosevelt comes asking for open borders. At this point, I seriously contemplate it to see if we can get buddhism to spread, but I say no until we have settled our lands a bit more. To be honest, there's not much to protect. Most of our ssttling will be in areas they can already get to.

And why is he wearing a suit in the year 1560BC?

(1) -- 1560BC
Madrid finishes the Buddhist missionary and I set it to building a barracks. And at this point, I realised that I didn't really read Talamanes report very well as he said we started rax, not finished them . Rax due in (5).

(2) -- 1520BC
Time to start cracking the . We need to get granaries and something like Hereditary Rule so we can whip the cities without too much concern about unhappiness. Just make sure you've got enough soldiers and . I whip the barracks in Madrid.

(3) -- 1480BC
The barracks completes and the overflow will finish an archer in 1 turn. . I spotted another unwelcome visitor the East of Barcelona here but didn't take a screenshot and in the end it didn't matter as he just disapeared anyway.

IBT:
Another of our friendly neighbours comes visiting and asking for OB.

And the forest chop in Barcelona finishes the rax there. I wouldn't normally clear cut all the forests like this, but we are going to have a go at JC soon and we don't want to have them to provide him defensive positions to attack us from.

(4) -- 1440BC
Madrid finishes the archer and starts on a settler. We need another city.
Barcelona finishes the barracks and starts on another worker. We need more of those too.

The crazy barbarian that has been to the East of Madrid since I started my turns is still there. He is not moving. I will move the warrior into the forest adjacent to him to see if it will bait him off the forested hill he's sitting on.

One thing I noticed at this stage was that JC has budhism. I didn't think it normally spread without OB! But that's good as he will be more friendly to us.. right until we stick the knife in anyway.

Here's a picture of his capital. Nice city location. He must have some GNP (and research). We won't want to wait too long to go for him, but at least now we have intel on his city whenever we want.

(5) -- 1400BC
Budhism finally spreads (by missionary) in Barcelona.

IBT:
Wheel is finally in.

(6) -- 1360BC
I didn't really think ahead here of what to research. I contemplated going for priesthood and trying for the Oracle but I think we have left it way too late so I go for pottery for the cottages and granary. Due in 8.

IBT:
Judaism has been FIADL.
And the barbarian warrior takes the bait and attacks our warrior in the forest. Our warrior prevails. . He will get a promotion now!

(7) -- 1320BC
I can't wait for the worker in barcelona, so I whip it. May have been a bit overzealous with it here, it takes barcelona to 1 and almost no food left. But workers are worth a lot so hard to say. I am sure someone will tell me I was .

(8) -- 1280BC
Barcelona finishes it's worker and starts an archer.

-- More to follow --
.

 

[Kikinit]

-- Continued --

(9) -- 1240BC


(10) -- 1200BC
And oh F*** . And i've already whipped Barcelona. There's no way to get protection there in time so we are going to have to prey that the RNGod is on our side.

Not the best news I've ever had to finish on, but what can I say?

Post turn comments:
We may be up the creek without a paddle if our fortified warrior in Barcelona doesn't win. Don't know what we will do if that happens. Sorry to leave the next person with this.

5 (or so) shots and we can have those horses in a border and start connecting them up. We should get the road ready with one of our workers in the mean-time.

There is a settler on his way to the new city site. I may have left him on a goto but he can't really get in any trouble as it's mostly within our territory and the warrior is fortified on the hill next to the city site.

Upon thinking about it more, would we stand any chance if we tried to chop in the Oracle now? It would be 7 or so shots of research + chopping time and the years 1200BC.
.

 

[Kikinit]

Roster:
-- Kikinit -- Just Played and left us in a predicament
-- Ralph_Jackson -- Up
-- mike_p -- On Deck
-- the_scorpion645 -- skipped until further notice
-- Talamane -- Praying

Ok Ralph, I hope you're feeling lucky.
.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Will play and post tonight RL permitting. First a check on Strategy

1. Cross all available appendages and pray to RNG we win in Barcelona.

2. When the settler is finished (Kikinit you said he might have been on GoTo Orders but as far as I can tell he is still being built ). Where do we want to settle?
Pink or Yellow Dot posted previously or to grab Marble / Cows in Brown Dot?

3. Connect Barcelona and Madrid for chariot Production

4. Hook up horses when Border Pops.

Research?

As Pottery is nearly in what direction do we want to take

1. Priesthood for Oracle purposes?
2. Agriculture (doesnt seem desperately high priority
3. Iron Working (needed if we want to settle Brown Dot) + tells us where JC is as far as Praetorians go
4. Sailing (if we go for Phink / Yellow Dot we are workign a lot of water tiles fairly soon and lighthouses could help
5. Alphabet and beeline to Great Library?

That should cover 10 turns.

I would like broad agreement on the new city before I play if possible as it is a key decision. Sprry if it seems indecisive but it feels like we are at a crossroads and would like agreement on direction we are going to take before I effectively decide it for everyone else!!

Ralph