KK-01 – Fear of Flying

[Ralph_Jackson]

Got it, will play and post within 24 hours to maintain our shockingly good pace.

Plan

Take out Monty
Build 2 Boats for Mike P to upgrade whenn Astronomy comes in.
Line up Japan for the
Spread Buddhism
Manage WW as much as possible

Which could be summarised as just keep doing what we have been doing!!

Ralph

p.s We are going for a diplomacy win aren't we

p.p.s Time to sign up for SGOTM when Kikinit has picked a name!!

 

[mike p]

Looks like we also have the Hindu and Confucian shrine so it might make sense to spread those to cities with happiness problems for a bit of temple building.

I seldom use vassalage because I prefer Bureaucracy. Does it make sense to switch back to Bureaucracy once we have Theocracy running? Having either of them (Vass. or Theo.) gets you an extra promotion out of the gate with or without barracks, but running both gives a much smaller impact - no immediate promotion, just more progress to your next promotion, at least until the Pentagon gets built. Or are we better off with Vassalage & Organized Religion? MM Civics is probably an area I could do better with.

 

[sooooo]

Yes, I think Bureaucracy + Theocracy is the way to go. Two medium-upkeep civics vs two high-upkeep ones. WW is crippling us! According to the graph, we have a lower GNP than even monty! He needs to be wiped out ASAP to let us research again. I would definitely wipe him out, as some of his former cities have +4 unhappiness for wanting to join the motherland.

 

[Kikinit]

Monty's only got 2 cities left I think. Unless he's spammed a new one so we should be able to clean him up pretty fast and get our economy back on track. Those gnp figures are always so misleading. I can't believe that we are only producing 41 gold? We do have a number of conquered cities coming online which will cost us a lot of money.

We will want to look at running state property some time. Especially if we start to settle the new world. Get rid of the distance from palace costs completely. Nothing better for a large economy than that civic. Have we built both the forbidden palace and the world wonder that reduce costs? If we have one of them available then we could position that in one of Monty's cities over near the Japanese to help for now.

I am wondering if Bureaucracy is worth it for us now at this stage of the game. Our capital is not that great anyway. We can reduce costs by relocating the capital to a better location and it may make bureaucracy a better choice too. How about building the palace in Rome? Perfect location for our incorporation of Japan . Just make sure to build a courthouse in Madrid to finish about the same time.

 

[mike p]

Palace in Rome is not a bad idea, but our Forbidden Palace has already been built (in Neapolis IIRC, but I just got home from a fairly extended night of drinking - probably for the best that Ralph hasn't finished yet!). We could build Versailles in the new world, but the game will probably be over before we finish it. Rome is also pretty close to our forbidden palace, so making that the capital now might actually hurt us. I'd have saved the FP for the new world myself, but where it is is helping us right now.

State property is probably still the dominant civic for its category, thought I think they tweaked the costs some in the latest patch (though if I remember correctly they made Free Market more expensive and that was only competive civic choice most of the time, so I could just be drunk.)

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

So start off looking at our Unhappiness, Economy, and Military

We have a lot of unhappy people caused by war weariness and a large Military and Monty only has two cities left.

So best cure for the unhappiness is to Monty into Oblivion, we have more than enough Military to do this. SO switch production into

1. Infrastructure
2. Missionaries for Hinduism and Buddhism as we have built the shrines and could use the income.
   Switch Civics to Beauracracy and Organized Religion as those are better in a non-military build up phase.

Send two stacks south towards Monty’s cities and re-arrange balance of the Military on Toku’s borders for the next phase.

1510

New World discovered with sizable cities containing longbowmen – could be a tough nut to crack but with a conquest victory we could just ignore the New World

1520

Monty falls – I raze both hist last cities as they looked unproductive and we need a healthy economy to push to Grenadiers which we will need by the time we get round to FDR

Unfortunately he didn't have any techs to give us, almost feel guilty not getting a freebie from him
1525

Pop a Great Prohet, decide to use him for the Jewish Shrine as Judaism is slightly spread and Shrine Income is not to be sniffed at.

1540

Learn Astronomy immediately start two Galleons for Mike P but he may decide to switch?

1550

End of Turn report.

Buddhism and Hinudism now well spread contributing to a healthier economy.

War weariness has disappeared and SOD are lined up on Toku’s Border + troops ready to take out Nara in our Backlines so we don’t have a war on two fronts.

Economy is healthy enough now to take down Toku whilst we push towards Grenadiers.

Have fun

Things to be done

1. Now war weariness has gone we can afford some specialists . Leave this to Mike P to decide.
2. We may have spread religion enough but Judaism could still do with a bit.

re Forbidden Palace, our upkeep would be horrific if we hadn't built it in the middle of the continent!!! I may edit the save just (by giving the city away) to see how bad out of interest!

 

[mike p]

1550 AD: I switch Madrid to an observatory and decide that the barbs in the new world look pretty nasty.

1555 AD: I go to war with Tokugawu and raze Nara, which was his city on our eastern flank. There's not enough room for Roosevelt to put a new city there, otherwise I'd have kept it so we wouldn't have to reconquer the spot again after Roosevelt rebuilt it.

I also capture Satsuma.

1560 AD: Capture Nagoya. We have more workers than work so I send a couple to map out America and the Incan lands while we still have rights of passage.

1575 AD: We have things that go BOOM. Gunpowder is finished so I queue up Philosophy to head towards the free tech at Liberalism. It's scheduled to come in in only 2 turns. Francis Beacon is born in Madrid - another scientist, which gives us two.


Cats are done reducing Kyoto, so we swarm in and take the Pyramids. Meanwhile Toku keeps sending a bunch of oddly named catapults at our stacks besieging Osaka, but we soldier on.

1585 AD Philosophy is finished so I burn a Great Scientist to get us 2 turns away from Chemistry.

1595 AD Chemistry is finished, so I burn a Great Scientist to immediately discover paper and get started on Education. Osaka is captured, and Tokyo is captured, which gives us another holy city.


1600 AD I start to move troops into position to take Japan's last two cities. War Weariness is starting to become a problem again.

I didn't mess around with the Civics at all, but we might want to think about going to Police State & Theocracy. We no longer need the worker bonus from serfdom, but we also don't need to whip and don't have any great need for Caste System either, so I just left them alone. Looks like we're going to get a conquest victory in short order either way.

There are a bunch of catapults and a few Conquistadors ready to go against the Incas. Their military is nothing to worry about, so start up that war anytime. Upgrade city raider macemen to grenardiers as circumstances permit.

I spread Buddhism everywhere within our empire I could as well as spread Judaism and Hinduism where I could too. All for the money. I also chopped most of the forests that were within our borders but outside our fat crosses.

My only (small) quibble with our empire as I found it was the large number of shock promoted Conquistadors. They are already start with an effective strength of 15 against melee which means they punch through all melee units but pikemen, where they still start off at an advantage. IMO it would have been more useful getting them another level of Combat for an additional +10% against longbowmen.

Take it away:

View attachment 125144

 

[Kikinit]

Good stuff again Ralph & Mike. Looks like we are really going to get conquest soon. With the new world so protected by the barbarians it's unlikely that the AI will have shifted there. I have found in the past that they aren't so good at dealing with the new world barbarians.

We are doing very well in this game. I never normally get such a decisive advantage so early in the game. We have really thrashed the AI in this one. If we do another, we will have to step up the difficulty.

Roster:
-- Kikinit
-- Ralph_Jackson
-- mike_p -- Just finished
-- sooooo -- Up
-- Talamane -- On deck

 

[Kikinit]

p.p.s Time to sign up for SGOTM when Kikinit has picked a name!!

I'm really not much good at creative things like making names.

One that came into my head was the Temple Knights Team... sort of a play on Knights Templar... I don't know.. I will keep on thinking of things that sort of fit the game and are not boring like Kikinit's team...

If you guys have any that you'd like to throw in, fire away.

 

[sooooo]

OK, got it. Hopefully I'll be able to finish my (last?) set of turns tonight.

The plan: Wipe out Toku and HC. Build/upgrade some grenadiers. Spread religion and build temples to ease WW.

 

[sooooo]

In my inherited turn I revolt to Police State and Theocracy. Increase science to deficit research at 60%. I reconfigure our cities to work our cottages instead of farms or watermills. Our WW problems have disappeared with the civics change. We no longer need military police, so I move some troops towards HC.

FDR asks for Astronomy . Edo has 100% culture, so I wait for cats.

We Raze Kagoshima.



Since we have no WW problems, I declare on HC too. He is the tech leader and already has education so I don't want him to steal Liberalism from us. We raze Corihuayrachina, mainly because I didn't want to type out that city name in future turns. Lost that screenshot.

We capture Edo. Byebye Tokugawa!



Education comes in; we start liberalism for the steel slingshot. HC's iron is pillaged and more cities with huge names are captured. I capture the ones in good locations. We don't need them, but they mean more points . The rubbish ones are razed. We now control all seven holy cities.









Liberalism comes in and we take Steel. Ah the steel slingshot, oh how I love thee. Cannons are ordered up around our empire. CR cannons are better than grenadiers vs longbowmen. And they do collateral!



We have all the military tech we need now. We should beeline to Communism. First up: Printing Press.

On my last turn we take Cuzco. HC is extinct.



Right. We have plenty of troops but they are in no position to declare on FDR. They need to heal and get all the way across our (rather large) empire. We also don't have enough cannons. Our finnances aren't great, but as our cottages mature and when we get communism we'll be OK. FDR doesn't have astronomy yet.

Just one thing: Promotions. As Mike P said, some of our troops have, erm, interesting promotions. My preference is to leave troops unpromoted until they attack. Need to attack a maceman? You can promote to Shock. Need to attack a city? You can promote to CR. Sure, give the defensive troops promotions in-case the stack gets attacked. And for catapults, nearly all of them had barrage promotions. Assuming they are made with 6 xp, I prefer to give about half of them barrage+accuracy, and the other half CR1+CR2. But not until they are actually next to a city or stack.

Take it away boys. This game, my first SG, has been really fun. You guys have been great with your speed of play, and I have learnt a lot.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

We raze Corihuayrachina, mainly because I didn't want to type out that city name in future turns. Lost that screenshot..

the first succession game quote that has made me laugh. love it

can I suggest we let Talaman play more than ten turns so he doesn't just get to heal and move troops over to FDR but gets to enjoy all the fun by applying a little ?

 

[Kikinit]

Jeezuz sooooo. You didn't waste any time there did you? Finished of Tokugawa and HC in one swoop. HC wouldn't have known what hit him.

If Talamane wants to play a few turns in anger then by all means he can set it up and then declare and take a town or two. I'll leave it to his judgement.

Roster:
-- Kikinit -- On deck
-- Ralph_Jackson
-- mike_p
-- sooooo -- Just finished
-- Talamane -- Up

 

[Talamane]

Got it. Will play/post tomorrow. Just a question: is it possible we will have to go settle the new world to get to 66% area, or will pop do it for us?

 

[Kikinit]

If we kill FDR then we will win by conquest. He's the only one left after sooooo went on the rampage.

 

[sooooo]

For the lurkers.

Our empire:



One who has forged our empire:



Our future empire, plus undoubtable proof that Isabella is correct and the world is not round. It's just a neverending series of parallel universes.

 

[Talamane]

@sooo. Nice pix.

I played ten turns, purely a setup (i have some honey-do jobs to perform today). I think we have enough units. Some of the more hammer poor, gold rich cities i started on infrastructure. Banking made a world of difference GNP wise in and of itself. Our workers now have little to do but fog bust in the south.

FDR started a golden age via the Taj Mahal.

For the most part, the stacks are ready. Keep in mind that FDR will try to attack our capital and its sister city. With that in mind, i built a few frigates. I built some longbows as city fillers to free up some conqs.

Someone is going to have fun but it wont be me. I am curious to see how many turns it will take.

The Save.

 

[sooooo]

Ignore this, I gave some advice then realised it was

 

[Kikinit]

Ok.. then I'm up. I will see how much damage I can do to FDR. Should be fun.

 

[Kikinit]

Turn 0 -- 1700AD - Hmm. Are we ready to declare I pondered looking around? Hmm not really, we need a bit more setup I think.. Oh.. there's the stack.. and it's a beauty. I guess we are ready to declare!

I ask politely FDR for his last 190g and he gives it to us. I then pay him 70 of it back to get his map and check that he hasn't gone and founded any more cities whilst we were distracted. He hasn't.

I move the workers back from the fog in anticipation of war with FDR so he can't steal them. Not that he'd have them for very long.

I head our stacks straight for LA, Portland & St Louis.

Turn 1 -- 1705AD - As anything completes in any city I will build military next. Not much use for anything else now is there?

I take St.Louis and Raze it.
I take Portland and Raze it.

Turn 2 -- 1710AD - I take LA and Raze it.
Turn 3 -- 1715AD - I take Miami and it's Auto-Razed.
Turn 4 -- 1720AD - I take Phily and Raze it.
Turn 5 -- 1725AD - Research set to Steam Power. No cities this turn .
Turn 6 -- 1730AD - I take Boston and Keep it. We need somewhere to stage for the next push.
Turn 7 -- 1735AD - I take Seattle and Raze it. Calixtahuaca is taken and kept. Need somwhere to R&R for the Southern forces too.
Turn 8 -- 1740AD - No action... Just moving troops over the large cultural areas. The conq's can't do the job without some cannon support so they have to move forward one square at a time.
Turn 9 -- 1745AD - Some action takes place but no cities are captured.
Turn 10 -- 1750AD - And the last city I will take in this game, Atlanta is taken and I kept it for an outpost up on the Northern islands near our capital.

At this point, FDR has 5 cities left. New York can be sieged and probably taken on the next turn. Washington has a small force outside it's walls which can start bombarding on the next turn. A force at San Francisco will be there in the next turn and should be enough to deal with it pretty quick.

The SF force can then move on to help at Washington and the combined forces can move onto Chicago. I would raze SF and keep Washington. The NY forces can combine and move onto Houston.

I expect it will only take 6 - 8 turns.

FDR's taken a fair hit already.

Ralph's up to finish the game.

The save.