KoS2 - There can be only war

[Meerk]

Nice job holding off Saladin and dealing with BBB stack 1. Also, great report!

I can't look at the save now, hopefully will have a chance later.

 

[Stochastic]

Nice!

Bribe demands have a 5% chance to decay every turn, if I remember correctly. The 'agreed' best time to wait in-between demands is about 30 turns, more with each refusal. I'll try to dig the post by bestsss, I read it about 2 weeks ago.

EDIT: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8729629&postcount=336... the next few following posts also discuss the issue.

Ok, thanks for the link! Clearly I've begged a bit too much then, I think I have accumulated ~3 refusals from SB and ~2 from WK. Sorry team

No more archers... we want to build an offensive stack that will at the same time act as city garrison. When BBB sacs a stack is a sign for us to move in usually and take a city. Heal, rinse and repeat. Catapults and Eles mainly. Throw in some Vultures/Swords/Spears sometimes.

I agree, I don't think I've ever seen an archer defend from one of Sal's stacks Though We should probably have one or two come along with any offensive stack to help defend the city once it is taken, I think we've got enough for that now.

Cities
Uruk - Settler then Aqueduct for certain. I'd run an extra Merchant. 50/50 merchant/scientist at this point is good. Consider changing plains hill for coast, it gains 2 turns on growth.
[snip]
Nibru-whip granary right away. You whip the granary as soon as it's available unless whipped citizens are working food tiles.... which they aren't here.
Ulundi - queue some Culture next. It'd be nice to steal the Dye from WK but I'm not sure how feasible that is. We may want to move the palace here later.

• Re Uruk, I think I set it up so that it had the most specialists possible while still finishing the settler in 4 turns, but when the settler is done I agree about 50/50.
• Sorry about Nibru, I had rationalised that the extra ~8 hammers from the forest I got from not whipping until the forest was chopped was worth not whipping, I thought that there wasn't so much food that it would grow back fast, and it is also low on hammers.
• I think Ulundi should go for Library next, it will provide culture for the dye as well as a research boost. In that vein maybe a monastery would be a good investment in the longer run as well.

Techs
Bulb Edu? Then finish researching it? I think we're in good shape and don't need military right away. WE will perform as well as Pikes against Knights.

We can always close borders with WK if he keeps shipping settlers. It won't be much commerce(4) once we have our second island city up.

I think bulbing Edu is probably the right idea, though settling might be another option. Ulundi won't have all that much commerce for a while, so an academy is not the best option. I only float settling because I'm not sure we have the spare hammers to invest in universities right now. Then again, the longer we wait, the more powerful the AIs will get, so on second thought I think bulbing is the right way to go.

Nice job holding off Saladin and dealing with BBB stack 1. Also, great report!

I can't look at the save now, hopefully will have a chance later.

Thanks

 

[cripp7]

Great game so far, making a lot of progress. I'm going to have to withdraw from here due to no pc time I'll follow along when I do have time.

 

[kossin]

Fair enough, take care!

1. kossin
2. Stochastic - Just played
3. mjg5591 - UP!
4. Meerk - On deck
5. The Simple Mind
6. cripp7

 

[Stochastic]

ok cripp, no worries.

 

[mjg5591]

Need to skip my turn here. Friend got hit by car and will be away few days.

Sorry to see you go Cripp.

 

[kossin]

Quick healing to him.

1. kossin
2. Stochastic - Just played
3. mjg5591 - skip
4. Meerk - UP!
5. The Simple Mind - On deck

Meerk, you're also up in the other thread, Do you want to play both rounds or would you like to swap with the next person for one of the games?

 

[Meerk]

I had hoped they would be further out of sync. I don't know if I will be able to get to them both tonight. We shall see.

 

[Meerk]

It looks like I will not be able to play a complete set this evening. I am going to take some initial actions and then wait to wrap it up tomorrow night.

 

[Stochastic]

OK, sounds fine, if you have any questions about what moves I was doing, just drop a line!

PS: I don't know if you played the turn out, but how did BBB#1 and #2 do?

 

[Meerk]

OK, on second thought... I played a round, but I really should have gone to bed. Not my best play, sadly. Nor my best report.

IBT:
Whip wall in UR
Nibru: whip granary
Eridu: switch to colosseum
GS: bulbed for edu

Uruk: queued aqueduct after settler

1150
BBB bombs UR, but does not attack

1160
Eridu: Colliseum -> cat
Ulundi: forge -> lib

1170
More bombing, but no action from BBB.
Someone destroyed our copper mine.

1180
The attack came, leaving us seriously hurt. Afterward her turn, a few more units of ours arrived and we counterattacked. Although these didn't go well (losing a couple of >70% attacks), we nearly destroyed her stack.

We also got a GG, and I would like to make a medic. Unfortunately, we don't appear to have any 2-speed units. Unsure what to do, I make no immediate decision.

1190
The forces in Ur wipe out the remainder of BBB with no further casualties.


1200
Ulundi: lib -> zigg

Here comes another stack: bbb3. This one is much smaller, and I don't anticipate a problem.

1210
I mostly handled the stack by doing inscrutible/foolish things with units, splitting my stack, but also splitting hers. She is down to one axe and one chariot. My losses were one WE... and this mess of units standing around like fools!

Also, founded town

1220
Well, his chariot did enough damage to my vulture that the axe was able to polish it off. Now the lonely axe is standing on a hill next to UR.

1230
Consolodated armies on Boudica side, have poor balance. Too many cats, not enough regular units. I feel like I should have been whipping more units. Too late now, alas.

Actually, this is often how my warmongering goes. As I think I mentioned, I really need help in this area, so advice is much appreciated.

On a related note, saladin has another group coming after us. We are a little weak on the defensive side, but I think it will be OK. I have moved a couple of units intended for the eastern front back west.

Sorry for the lack of end-of-turn shots. Its way past my normal bedtime, work starts early, etc etc.

 

[kossin]

Hmmm, my left-click button seems to have just died. I'll try to review the save but it looks as if I won't be able to do as much as I'd like.

Ok sorry, I just can't do it. It took me 5 mins to alt-tab back and write this line.

Edit: Opened it and cleaned a few things. It works about 50% of the time now :s so I'll try to look at things.

Uruk: Need some happy here.
Eridu: BBB has a Trireme east and will pillage with those so let's get a few ourselves
Kish: Spy->Engineer
Lagash: Don't let it starve. Work farms as they become available obviously.
Ulundi: queue some more culture so we can steal Dyes

I'd rather leave our units near our cities for now. We're nowhere strong enough to go off running into BBB's land.

Trades: I think we can get Feudalism+Machinery from WK and SB for CS. It might get some WE penalty but those fade away. WK has Engineering which would be good for taking cities. Although we can always wait at Steel to do that, turtle up in the meantime.

Techs: As things go along, it looks like we'll be first to Liberalism. What do we want to take from it? Steel would be perfect but I don't like the odds of that happening without another GS for bulbing (and even then...).

Anyway, good work for a late round!

 

[Meerk]

In the cold light of day, it was clearly a mistake to play my set. Sorry all for being over-eager. I was seriously :smoking:

In addition to a fairly large number of minor/medium mistakes (which I will leave to you all to point out ), I think the biggest :smoking: was my handling of BBB's second mini-stack. Somewhere along the way Kossin suggested that after BBB suicides a stack we should try to take a city. As I am no great warmonger, I decided to follow that general approach, and started marching out too early after the previous SOD.

Here's my question about the AI in these situations. If they have a SOD coming, do you need to worry about having too much defense in a border town? For example, while BBB's first stack of my turn was bombing, I got to worrying that she was not going to attack, and so did not move aggressively to get as many defenders as possible there. This turned out to be a mistake as the catapults did enough collateral damage that we lost several defenders. If I had rushed several WEs there in advance, I think we would have lost fewer. Would that have caused BBB to give up on Ur and go somewhere else like Ulundi? Is there a ratio of #our units to #theirs that's optimal (we were approximately 1-1)?

Uruk: Need some happy here.
Eridu: BBB has a Trireme east and will pillage with those so let's get a few ourselves
Kish: Spy->Engineer
Lagash: Don't let it starve. Work farms as they become available obviously.
Ulundi: queue some more culture so we can steal Dyes

All fine suggestions. In Lagash, I just noticed Saladin's stack and was trying to do a short term plan fix. The idea was to 1-food starve for the one turn to finish a WE and then return to normal growth.

I'd rather leave our units near our cities for now. We're nowhere strong enough to go off running into BBB's land.

I strongly agree, but obviously I am not much of a warmonger.

Anyway, good work for a late round!

You are too kind. Next time, I will make you all wait (or get a skip/swap if both come up on the same day).

 

[Stochastic]

I wouldn’t worry about a few moves, I think everyone (except Kossin of course!) has made a few. This is all about learning after all. Over the course of this SG I’ve moved up from just starting prince to confidently winning at Monarch in my solo games!

What happened to WK’s galley? Was it looking like it was going to build a city and then turn around? Or was it a red herring all along?

I think we should get some more defense in Ulundi, Boudica will be able to run a stack through The neutral land very quickly and one archer isn’t going to cut it.

Techs:
I agree on the trades with CS, it will let us build Longbows, and Machinery will be needed soon anyways. I think we should try to hold off on liberaism for a bit, no one else is close, maybe gunpowder? It could be traded to WK for engineering+gold and SB will probably have techs to trade to us by the time we get it as well (philosophy+other if it all goes swimmingly).

Proposed General strategy:
Short term (ie next 1-2 sets):
Like Kossin suggested, I think we should stay turtle for now, we need more defensive units and our offense is at or below par with the enemies. Steel (even trebs) are a ways away, probably at the end of the next set we will have enough defense to start a build up of maces. Ulundi, Bad-Tibria and Ur could all do with some defense. Probably an archer or two then a spear each.

Medium term (end of next set-3 sets):
I really want to get a spy into Saladin’s land so that we can decide if we want to quickly take him out first or slowly chew up Boudica.
We should probably settle the iron crab city, we have a couple of cities that need the health and that way we won’t have to trade with SB for crab. It will also provide some heavy production capacity. Maybe site the Maoi there?

Long term (victory conditions):
We should probably start thinking about these, it will change how much killy we need to achieve, obviously we won’t be able to win via conquest, and domination will be a tough nut as well to say the least.
Cultural: We have 2 religions and easy access to 2 more (via annexation ) so that could be done.
Diplomatic: Is it even available under the current settings? If it is, it will probably be either SB or us (assuming we build UN), so we’ll have to smack down Boudica, then assuming that WK votes for us, we will probably be ok.
Space: I think we are probably too hammer poor at the moment to even contemplate space.

Cities/Units:
I think Ulundi needs some mines now, its got plenty of food surplus short term. Buddhist Monestary and then temple will help fight WK’s culture as well as providing needed happy and a research bonus that should come in handy when we get the dye and some cottages. The temple could probably be avoided if it looks like we are still increasing in %control of the dye as units will give happy.

In Uruk, working the plains hill finishes the catapult in one turn, then probably keep the cat there until a happy building is finished. Then another Trireme/work boat?

Eridu: I’d switch from the catapult (I think we have enough of those for now) to a defensive unit, maybe trireme to deal with BBB’s boat? Then land units.

In Ur I’d build units (archer/spear to start?) after the forge, they will deal with the happy problem.

I’d get the worker by Nirbu to mine the hill then cottage the island, cottageing first uses up 3 more worker turns as we wait to load/unload. Then improuve Bad-Tibria.

Grab the spices by Ulundi for the happy. The other spice is currently traded to SB for 2gpt

To help with Saladin, the spear in Kish can have another promo given to it. Not sure what it would be other than combat III.

Re the great general we just got, I’d agree on Medic III, I’d wait a bit for the horses to come on line though.

 

[The Simple Mind]

It looks like I'll not be able to play my set until Sunday. So if anyone can to grab it / swap with me to keep the game flowing then please go ahead.

TSM

 

[kossin]

Ok, I'll swap with you. I'll play either later today or soon tomorrow.

1. kossin - UP!
2. The Simple Mind - On deck
3. Stochastic
4. mjg5591
5. Meerk - Just played

 

[Meerk]

I wouldn’t worry about a few moves, I think everyone (except Kossin of course!) has made a few. This is all about learning after all. Over the course of this SG I’ve moved up from just starting prince to confidently winning at Monarch in my solo games!

Thanks. My game has certainly improved as well... At least when I am not falling asleep.

What happened to WK’s galley? Was it looking like it was going to build a city and then turn around? Or was it a red herring all along?

It was a red herring -- never went over that way.

I think we should get some more defense in Ulundi, Boudica will be able to run a stack through The neutral land very quickly and one archer isn’t going to cut it.

Agreed. This goes with the turtling. Get all those troops back to Ulundi.

Proposed General strategy:
Short term (ie next 1-2 sets):
Like Kossin suggested, I think we should stay turtle for now, we need more defensive units and our offense is at or below par with the enemies. Steel (even trebs) are a ways away, probably at the end of the next set we will have enough defense to start a build up of maces. Ulundi, Bad-Tibria and Ur could all do with some defense. Probably an archer or two then a spear each.

Yea, not getting defense in Bad-Tibria was clearly :smoking:. I was in a panic to get there before WK, but it seemed unnecessary.

Medium term (end of next set-3 sets):
I really want to get a spy into Saladin’s land so that we can decide if we want to quickly take him out first or slowly chew up Boudica.

I strongly agree with this.

Long term (victory conditions):
We should probably start thinking about these, it will change how much killy we need to achieve, obviously we won’t be able to win via conquest, and domination will be a tough nut as well to say the least.
Cultural: We have 2 religions and easy access to 2 more (via annexation ) so that could be done.
Diplomatic: Is it even available under the current settings? If it is, it will probably be either SB or us (assuming we build UN), so we’ll have to smack down Boudica, then assuming that WK votes for us, we will probably be ok.
Space: I think we are probably too hammer poor at the moment to even contemplate space.

I would rather avoid cultural victory -- feels like we would be dodging the essential fight-fight-fight theme of the game.
That said, I have no objection to going for it after we have our enemies.

Re the great general we just got, I’d agree on Medic III, I’d wait a bit for the horses to come on line though.

That's what I was thinking also. Dealing with BBB was tough without the ability to heal quickly.

 

[kossin]

Good points. I'll post my thoughts in the morrow and play in the afternoon.

 

[kossin]

Plan:

Trade for Machinery and Feudalism with WK and SB.
Some micro as I suggested.
Fix happiness issues in cities. :whip:
Move back units to Ulundi and Ur.
GG makes medic III unit on a 2-movement based unit
Improve spices
Send a worker over to hook up horses

Eridu->Trireme to deal with Boudi's
Ulundi->Culture buildings queued

Spy to Saladin land: I'll send the one sitting in Hyangsan. We can't steal anything anyway. Another option is to buy WK's map (20 gold).

I'll build some units and store them in the three target cities in general

 

[Stochastic]

Sounds good, I think regarding the map we should just explore for now, we aren't exactly rolling in cash