KK-01 – Fear of Flying

[Kikinit]

Very uneventful set of turns. I set about building a few things that we are lacking and by the end was starting to lean towards military builds. There are now a few macemen and war elephants around and we will have Conquistadors within the next turnset. We will also be ready with a few more barracks so we can start to build a fearsome army .

Turn 160 (0) (1000 AD)
Just do a quick whip around our growing empire. I see we'll pop a scientist in Madrid in 7 turns. Barcelona is wokring too many undeveloped tiles. I change it to a lighthouse so at least it can work some food neutral sea tiles and when the colossus comes in a few turns they will be 2F/3C. Our cities are looking really good in health & happiness.

Barcelona begins: Lighthouse

Really nice of HC to build this city for us. It should be ours soon enough. The nearby cities will have to build a few culture buildings but he can hold onto it until we are ready.

I notice that Monty's power has been shooting up lately. We had better watch him. I will build something to keep us safe against this threat. He has a number of horse archers in one of his cities I can see into so I will build something that can deal with mounted units. We have loads of units that can deal with melee but not much for mounted units.

IBT:
Madrid grows: 10
Madrid finishes: Catapult
Rome finishes: Forge
Cumae finishes: Barracks
Neapolis grows: 5
Medina grows: 6

Turn 161 (1) (1010 AD)
Madrid begins: War Elephant <-- Defense against mounted units.
Rome begins: Worker <-- Not enough workers. Actually we have 8 but another cannot hurt as we have a lot of improvements to do.
Cumae begins: War Elephant <-- more defense.
Buddhism has spread: Medina <-- That should help the borders pop.

I noticed a couple of things here. Where are we going to put the national epic and heroic epic. The national epic should go in our GP farm which I cannot work out where to put. I'd like to hear others ideas on this. The heroic epic should go in a production rich city. Maybe it should go in Madrid but I'm not sure that some other city won't be a better long term option.

IBT:
Research finished: Machinery

Turn 162 (2) (1020 AD)
I queued up Feudalism and Guilds as our next techs to get our UU. Look out world.
Research begun: Feudalism
Research begun: Guilds
Buddhism has spread: Neapolis

IBT:
Madrid finishes: War Elephant
Seville finishes: The Colossus
Baghdad grows: 6

Turn 163 (3) (1030 AD)
Madrid begins: Buddhist Missionary
Seville begins: Galley
Buddhism has spread: Baghdad

I MM'd our cities to get us to 60% research and cut down the research time on Feudalism by a few turns. With the last missionary in baghdad, we now have only 1 city left to spread buddhism to. We still need a prophet. Rome has two priests working but that's the most it can have and it will take ages to get a prophet. I couldn't see a way to speed it up just yet and it reinforces my idea that we need to designate a GP farm.

IBT:
Madrid finishes: Buddhist Missionary
Barcelona finishes: Lighthouse
Seville grows: 10
Rome finishes: Worker
Damascus grows: 4

Turn 164 (4) (1040 AD)
Madrid begins: Aqueduct (for Hanging Gardens build)
Rome begins: Library for research
Barcelona begins: Forge

IBT:
Roosevelt starts a Golden Age.
Cumae finishes: War Elephant
Medina grows: 7
Baghdad's borders expand

Turn 165 (5) (1050 AD)
Cumae begins: Maceman

IBT:
Rome grows: 11
Medina finishes: Courthouse

Turn 166 (6) (1060 AD)
Medina begins: Library <-- For culture + science
MM a bit more to get Feudalism in 1.

IBT:
Research finished: Feudalism
Madrid finishes: Aqueduct
Zu Chongzhi (Great Scientist) born in Madrid
Seville grows: 11
Seville finishes: Galley
Cumae grows: 7
Baghdad finishes: Hindu Monastery

Turn 167 (7) (1070 AD)
The Great Scientist will still give us Philosphy. I decide not to do anything at this stage and put him to sleep in our capital.
Madrid begins: The Hanging Gardens
Seville begins: Market
Baghdad begins: Courthouse
Buddhism has spread: Damascus

IBT:
Madrid grows: 11

Turn 168 (8) (1080 AD)

IBT:
Barcelona finishes: Forge
Rome finishes: Library
Neapolis grows: 6
Medina grows: 6
Baghdad grows: 7

Turn 169 (9) (1090 AD)
Barcelona begins: War Elephant
Rome begins: Barracks

IBT:
Barcelona grows: 8
Seville grows: 12
Seville's borders expand
Cumae finishes: Maceman
Neapolis finishes: Forbidden Palace
Baghdad finishes: Courthouse

Turn 170 (10) (1100 AD)
Cumae begins: Maceman
Neapolis begins: Forge
Baghdad begins: Barracks

I did a bit of whipping here and there. We have loads of excess happiness and should whip buildings in cities that have forges. Buddhism is spread to all our cities now so we get at least 45 hammers per pop point IIRC.

Our power rating has increased a bit while Monty is sliding. With our cities now coming into a stage of being ready to produce an army quite fast, we should be able to get the line even steeper.

We are doing well here. Washington is in a Golden Age and I think he may be no. 1 in GNP (I didn't check properly). The rest are looking ok. I built quite a few farms to let our cities grow a bit faster. We have ample capacity in health and happiness resources and should get our cities to grow. A bit contradictory to my statement above about whipping but I think whipping in buildings that get the bonus hammers is ok.

Roster:
-- Kikinit -- Just finished (swapped with Ralph)
-- Ralph_Jackson
-- mike_p -- Up
-- sooooo -- On deck
-- Talamane

And the save.

 

[mike p]

Got it. My office computer is down, so I'm at home this morning. May as well play these now. As far as priests go, we need to pick a food rich city and build either Ankor Wat or a couple of Cathedrals, and possibly the National Epic. We've got a lot of wonders in Madrid, so we'll need quite a lot of specialists to generate enough GPP to matter. Seville might be a good location. Rome should probably be cottaged over and made into a commerce powerhouse rather than running specialists.

 

[mike p]

I made a couple of very questionable moves this turn set. After deciding Rome should be a commerce city, I pop rushed a Taoist missionary to build another temple in Rome for another specialist, and chop rushed the National Epic there. It's a crappy longterm move probably, but it will give us an 80% for a Great Prophet in three more turns. (Otherwise Rome's GPP generation wouldn't surpass Madrid or Seville with all the wonders we've been building.)

IMPORTANT: Make sure Rome is running 3 priests for the next three turns. If the AI governor starts messing around with our specialists, we will be less likely to get the desired Great Prophet and build a shrine.

I also decided to eliminate Caesar before he started sharing Philosophy with the rest of the world. As my catapults were reducing his defenses, he picked up feudalism, so instead of 5 archers, he now has 5 longbowmen. As it stands now, his last city has 0% defense, but I haven't attacked it yet. Our first Conquistador is two turns away from attacking. After a few more Conquistadors arrive, the city should still fall. So instead of easy experience for our elephants, we might get bogged down here. At least he can't counter attack effectively.

I also built the heroic epic in Cumae while waiting to finish up Guilds. Cumae should be units only from here on out!

After Guilds, I saw that the great artist from Music was still available, so I finished up Music. Beeline to astronomy is my next research suggestion. Let's go conquer the new world!

Turn by turn:

1100AD switched most of our specialists to priests.
Switched Cumae to work all of its mines. Cottages there are probably a waste compared to farms & workshops, but I left the cottages intact.
Switched Baghdad to a temple build - we need culture on the borders.

1110 AD Medina expands. Finish War Elephant in Barc, send it to Rome to garrison for happiness, start settler.

1120 AD Start National Epic in Rome

1140 AD Since I don't need the whip for a while I switch to Serfdom to make the workers go faster. If we need to whip, we can just switch back - they cost the same upkeep.

1150 AD Move into Roman territory to try to wipe out JC.

1160 AD Guilds is up! 5 Turns to Music and a Great Artist.

1170 AD The last Roman city's borders expand and take over our horse pasture, so I send an axeman to cut the road off. Cats start the bombardment.

1180 AD 1st Conquistador is completed.

1190 Rome builds National Epic and overflow will finish Taoist Temple next turn.

1200 AD Music comes in ahead of schedule. I check out our current trades and make some changes.

Cancel our Corn for Nothing with Montezuma. Cancel our Clams and Gems for Corn and Spices from Roosevelt. Get 4 gpt for clams instead. So net effect is that Monty now has less health, Roosevelt has less happy, and we have more money.

Discover that the great scientist Kikinit was talking about was fortified in Rome. Didn't even remember we had him. Make sure that I left both him and the artist active for next player.

Here's the save:
View attachment 124785

My suggestion for the Great Artist would be to move him to the city west of Mecca and MERGE him as a superspecialist - not as a culture bomb! Mecca should be putting out 5 culture a turn for Monty so the culture from the merged artist will be enough to keep the border steady. And we'll get some gold too. YMMV.

 

[sooooo]

OK, looks like I'm up. I happen to be free tonight too, so "I've got it". I'll follow the specialist plans suggested.

 

[sooooo]

Aims for the turns: eliminate Caesar, build an army, build the buddhist shrine.

Looking at the diplomacy screen, Monty is not too pleased with us. We are his Worst Enemy, and when that happens, it is only a matter of time before he attacks. So let's attack him first! For this to happen, we need a proper army. Since most of the cities in my turnset will be building units, I switch research from Compass to Engineering to get them to the front line quicker. I consider a civics switch to Vassalage, but I was worried that if we didn't get a prophet from Rome then our economy would be in tatters. Looking back on this decision, I think it was a mistake.

First things first though, Caesar's last city is defended by 6 longbowmen and a spearman. I suicide 2 cats (1 withdraws) and raze Antium over 2 turns with the loss of 1 maceman and 1 conquistador. We could not have kept the city because it would have been swamped by Capac and Toku's culture.



The next turn (turn 3), Zoraster is born in Rome! He goes over to Madrid and builds the Mahabodi, which dramatically improves out economy. I still forget to switch to Vassalage - sorry about this guys



The rest of the turns were spent building military and roads. Most cities have enough improved tiles for now. Seville is not working its seafood because it will become unhappy if it grows. Great call on the site of the Heroic Epic Mike - that city made a catapult every turn! After engineering came in, we reduced science to 0 % to upgrade our best swordsmen to macemen. The next tech is Drama (to offset war weariness we will be racking up soon), which is due in one turn. We are ready to attack Monty on the next turn too. Monte does not have open borders with Toku, so we don't have to be too worried about a sneak attack. He does have them with HC, but that is a long way around for him. Nevertheless, the cities near HC's borders are building units. Our forces:



There will also be quite a few units built next turn for reinforcements. The two stacks on the right are for Mecca (soon to be our 5th holy city!), the large one on the left to head south into Monty's main lands. Roosevelt is our only friend and he is willing to declare on Monty for 2 techs. However, once a player declares war their friends sometimes want less to join in, possibly just 1 tech. Your call Talamane on whether you bring him into the war. We still have a scientist fortified in Madrid. I couldn't decide whether to discover Philosophy or save him for a golden age. Since we don't need Philosophy urgently, I decided to wait and see what the team thinks. Our artist did not become a specialist in Baghdad, because once we take Monty's nearest two cities it will have no cultural pressure. Instead he is in our attacking stack, hopefully to bring a newly captured city out of revolt immediately. We have taken the lead in power:



Have fun Talamane!

The save:

 

[mike p]

No fair!

By the time it gets back to me, Monty will be crushed and the rest of the game will be just mop up.

Glad to see that you recovered from little misadventure in Antium. But since we got the Great Prophet we were looking for, and a great artist to boot, I'd say my turns weren't a total waste.

I suppose we could just keep the great scientist hanging around and see what other ideas we have once we research philosophy - is it better to use the great person to partly discover a more advanced tech later, or completely discover a simpler one sooner? More total beakers in the first case since overflow is lost, but what about the time value of beakers? What comes after philosophy for Great Scientists anyway?

 

[Kikinit]

I tried to set us up for building an army but I didn't expect it to get that big so fast. I love the slope of our power line and the look of all those SoD's. Great turns guys! Don't worry about making mistakes. No way in hell we can go through the game without making lots of them along the way but as long as we write about them and say what we did wrong we can all learn by it and improve. I have used the smily for some of my decisions all too much.

Talamane's up and it looks like he gets to test out his skills at being a general again. . Let's hope that Mecca will have the holy shrine built as that religion is in loads of cities and will give us a great boost to gnp. I don't expect it will make us the favorite of those whose religion it is though!

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

EDIT: In 12 hours we played 3 turnsets! Anyone who hasn't been on for that long will have a lot of catching up to do.

 

[Talamane]

OK! I've been having fun in my SP games with Monty, looks like a reprise. Got it.

 

[Talamane]

I have completed my turnset and will post pix and summary tomorrow. BTW, ruff_hi has a completed a very nice update to the autologger. Wish i had used it because i did not click the file name properly with the version i am currently using. Details here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168751

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

I must admit every time RL lets me come back to the thread to check on progress we have leaped ahead again. Excellent stuff and its nice to see the turns working out so evrybody gets a chance to apply the .

I am sure we have all made wee mistakes (e.g I didn't develop food in Cumae to keep pace with mines ) but then again if we didn't make mistakes we would all be playing emperor level SG's. I must admit people pointing out my mistakes helps me to improve my game so don't be shy team!!

Ralph

 

[Talamane]

Start moving workers to Damascus after building a couple of tactical roads. Change civics to vassalage. Damascus cranks out a couple of longbows for border defenses and future acquistions. Cumae is set to forever conqs.

1320 AD Declare and move in with 2 SoDs one for Medina, and the other for WineTown (Teo). Wont bring FDR into the war until both of these cities go down. Optional afterwards. FDR has a huge stack in NYC, and he could take out one of those prime spots in no time. We get a great prophet and i screwed this up. I should have waited after taking Mecca. Instead i built a shrine in Cumae for Confucianism. It was a coin flip at that point, since we have two cities with all of the other religions. At any rate, the immediate effect of taking cities with large pops of foreign nationals is WW, and lots of it, as well as the big increase in maintenance. Mecca does have its shrine, so no big deal.

Those folks in Huamanga are smart. They join the Spanish empire. It shares only one tile with Barcelona, so i let them join.

Lose a conq to a horse archer in one of those fluke 9x% chance of winning things. Other than sacked cats, no losses to speak of. Mecca falls in 1370.

Teo falls in 1380 at no cost (the cat withdrew), and Homer does his magic. Had to turn up culture a notch, and turn sci down a notch. Beelining for astronomy, optics comes in, and caravels have been started in Medina and Madrid for the circumnav bonus.

Stacks are healing. One is in Teo. It has two longbows for defense when the next player moves on Tex.

Monty, you are going DOWN!

 

[Talamane]

In an AW SG i am in, we have this war elephant named "Beast". Check this out:

 

[Kikinit]

Great stuff Talamane. That elephant sure is a beast. I've never managed to get anything promoted that far. I'll always lose a 80-90% battle along the way somewhere. How did you manage to keep him alive for so long?

I will play my turns in this tonight. Should be fun as we have all those SoD's and are pumping out loads more Conquistadors.

 

[Talamane]

@kik. To be honest, i dont think anybody in our SG knows. Once you get a unit to C3, there is a tendency to be more careful with them, and pick battles with good odds.

 

[sooooo]

Nice turns Talamane. You seemed to incur very few losses in taking those cities.

To the team: Why astronomy? All the civs we need to are on this continent. How about theology (for theocracy) - gunpowder - chemistry (for grendadiers) first? We need chemistry for frigates anyway.

 

[Kikinit]

Got it. Playing shortly.

You're right sooooo.. We can hammer away on this continent and catch those who escape later.

 

[mike p]

I was thinking Astronomy just because attacking the New World seems to be in the spirit of our civ and UU. But at this point we could probably just spam Conquistadors and end up with a conquest victory in the Old World. May not get to domination first because of the map type. I'll continue on whatever path Kikinit & Ralph leads us down techwise.

 

[Kikinit]

Conquistadors and Catapults are fun .

Turn 0 - 1400AD -- I set research to Theology to give another +2 boost to all our military units. You know we need it. The rest of our empire looks good. Not a hell of a lot of point in MM'ing rediculously when we are this far ahead.

Turn 1 - 1410AD -- Some moron comes along and tells us that we are the most powerful Civ around. DOH! as if we didn't know that already. We have huge WW all over our empire so I queue up Notre Dame and then burn the engineer in waiting to finish it. It will give us +1 happy faces in all our cities on this continent so is quite useful to us at the moment.
We need to spread buddhism to all our cities to get the +25% building boost. I will start a few of them during my turns.

Turn 2 - 1420AD -- There is a spanish revolt in Corihuayrachina. I hope it will flip to us soon. The more people in our empire the better and this way we get to keep all the structures.

I built an explorer to go with the caravel's that are ready to go exploring. Make sure that you put him ashore when you find an island and pick him up on the other side. He's promoted quite well so has double movement on hills and in forests and should cruise around. I expect that we might encounter a few barbs though so won't be terribly dissapointed if he's lost.

IBT: Theology comes in and research goes back to Astronomy. I leave it at this as we do need to get some ships better than caravels on the oceans for our next conquests.

Turn 3 - 1430AD -- I immediately revolt to Theocracy to get the +2 XP bonus. I start bombarding the defenses in Tlatelolco and Texcoco. Should be able to take them in a couple of turns.

I make Monty an offer I would have thought he couldn't refuse but he did... Some people!

Turn 4 - 1440AD -- Mecca is out of revolt. I start a granary. Mecca shouild build all the financial buildings before doing anything else other than the granary as it's going to generate quite a lot of gold for us.

Turn 5 - 1450AD -- I suicide a cat onto Texcoco and take it with no other losses. I razed it as it's in a poor location with 10 useless desert and mountain tiles.

I then suicide 2 cats into Tlatelolco and take it also with no losses. This one though I will keep as it's not a bad city and will serve as a staging ground to take out the rest of Monty's cities.

War weariness is really starting to hurt now. +11 in Madrid!

Turns 6 & 7 - 1460 - 1470AD -- Spend these turns just moving towards the next of Monty's towns.

Turn 8 - 1480AD -- I look around a few towns and realise (after 8 turns!) that all I need to do to quiet down the WW is to have MP's! We are under Hereditary Rule... . Although some places would take most of our army to get rid of their problems we can at least quell the worst of it. I started just fortifying the military units that were being completed in the towns with the worst WW.

Turn 9 - 1490AD -- I haven't bought enough cats to take Monty's capital in a hurry. I will have to siege him for a few turns first. I have however got enough to take out Tlaxcola.

Turn 10 - 1500AD -- I sacrifice 2 cats + another withdrawal at Tlaxcola and then take it with no more losses. We liberate 3 workers and keep the city.

I decide that I will risk losing a few units and have a go at Monty's capital. I send in 3 cats and 2 withdrawal. I then lose only 1 conquistador more and take the city. We liberate 3 more workers here! I'll keep this too as it's a capital and they always seem to be solid cities.

End of turn comments:
Monty is broken. We should press on and take his last cities. WW will get quite bad but we can handle it. He hasn't got any techs to sue for so not much point in making peace with him.

I didn't get many missionaries built. We still need a few more to get buddhism in all our cities. It's worth it to get the +25% bonus for buildings as well as the gold it will give us through our shrine.

Two caravels are on Magellan's voyage, one heading East and another West. One has an explorer on board for exploring the new lands that we come across.

Here's the info screen at the end of my turns. I can only guess that our GNP is taking a big hit from WW. We have quite a few cottages coming online and as they develop I expect that we will start to rake in a heap of money, especially once we are finished with Monty and all our citizens get back to work.

One last thing. Sorry about all the wierd names of all the units. I installed some of ruff_hi's mods and one of them gives all the units really wierd names so you will see a lot of funny names for our conquistadors and catapults as well as the AI's.

The save:

 

[sooooo]

Ha! Buhbye Monty. We won't miss you.

 

[mike p]

If we're about 9 turns from Astronomy, it would be fun if I my turn set started with a couple of galleys already built for upgrade as well a settler and a couple of boat loads of Conquistadors to go after the barbs - no War Weariness fighting the barbs, and Theocracy should ensure that the cities in the New World we take over will become Buddhist.

I nominate Japan for our next conquest. From what it looks like, we don't have a very compact border with them - we ought to tidy things up.