KoS3 - Warmongers

[Meerk]

IBT

Rostov starts a theater.
Send the missionary to Moscow, converting Moscow successfully.
Sheepish starts working on a Theater, until Monotheism.

Revolt to Taoism.

760
Wish I got a screenshot... A great mediator made peace between the English and

French. So two messages popped up in quick sucession. Something like:
"You have made peace with Napoleon. You are at war with Napoleon."
I notice that gold is low and set the slider to 20% research. Any less and Monotheism

would take > 1 turn.

I send some workers up to start chopping near Sheepish.

780
Monotheism in

Join Churchill in researching MC, which is due in 3 turns.

St Pete. Theater -> LB

Revolt to OR.

800
Marble has an event, but we don't yet have the money to do anything but the cheapest option.

Still, the 89 research is better than nothing.

Now that we have OR, I start Missionaries in Sheepish and Moscow.

820
Machiavelli likes us.

A couple of chops complete near sheepish. First missionary is done.
Can't queue another yet, so working on the theater.

840

2 million and counting.

MC in. I queue Col, which would be due in 3 turns. However, I decide this is probably a good time to stop. I play most of this turn, but end before hitting next so we can come to consensus about what to tech.

There is an impressive stack by York. I think it makes sense to move the three units on the hill nearby down to defend. The only other potential reinforcement to is a longbow in St Pete, but it won't get there in one turn.

By contrast, Nottingham has plenty of defense, and the only stacks nearby don't look too threatening to me. I presume the AIs changed their target and Churchill has not adapted too well. For that matter, neither have I.

On the religious front, we will have 2 new missionaries next turn, so should be able to spread to most of our cities shortly.

 

[mlinneak]

Looks good Meerk

Haven't looked at the save yet but I agree we may want to move those units to help defend. How likely would it be for the AI to change tacks and head up to Novgorod if we did so?

 

[bestsss]

Taking peace in an always war game has the following effect and implications:

* you sign peace - obviously; he units are kicked off the borders (not obvious), so if you are on attack you shant do that ever. also it allows heals for the attacker and salvation of the wounded.
* you declare war on the party: suffering -3 and usually -1 to the rest. It's not obvious when diplo attitude can help but: nukes happen only at furious. There are some other exploits like same/religion/civic to tip the votes for AP.

So generally, it's a bad idea to take peace. Nothing unusual the events are totally separate from the game.

 

[kossin]

1. kossin - On deck
2. mlinneak
3. shurdus
5. Meerk - Just Played
6. Softnum - UP
4. mjg5591 - auto-skip

Looks good!

Agree about moving the units on that hill. We can gift the archer to Churchill and hope he'll upgrade it to a LB. Don't forget to give Combat I to the unpromoted Axe.

Religion spread: target Rostov and St-Pete. I think Marblopolis might get the whip sometime in the future.

Next techs: CoL->CS for sure. Time to get some more farms.

City builds: Finish the 3 missing theatres (Moscow hasn't gotten hers), then get Forges up or Temples/Colosseums to raise the happy cap if necessary (don't want to stagnate growth when we have the opportunity to grow). Add Monasteries on the bottom of the list. Take off specialists and put them on hammer tiles if necessary to build things. We may need to get some more units for the front...

Funnily, Churchill is finally building a Wall in Nottingham...

Heroic Epic is now unlocked... where do we want it? I think St-Pete looks like the best production candidate with workshops/watermills.

On the bad side of things, it looks like Knights may be the next thing showing up at our doors. 4 AIs can research Guilds atm.

May the next players press enter and get a good message... maybe we can move an additional Longbow into range. Not sure how good/bad our odds of surviving are atm but we may be in some trouble if York falls [no immediate means to recapture and it exposes our inside land].

 

[Duckweed]

Something outdated, but this might be the biggest weakness for your future -- Most of the GGPs have been absorbed by Churchill. Without elite and super units yourself, it's very hard to move your troops outside your cities. Because you failed/didn't want to settle one of the border hill cities and did not try to produce a super strong LB in the beginning by sending more units to one of the border cities.

 

[kossin]

Yea, that's a bummer for sure.

Softnum hasn't given any life sign for over 48 hours so a skip is in order. I'll play the round today and keep my fingers crossed...

 

[bestsss]

Baring some uber lucky peace random event I see no way to save York.

 

[kossin]

York held... Thanks to some heavy whipping and emergency troop movement. Oh, and AI stupidity.

There were just a few units left after I hit enter but the reinforcements got the job done. Still managed to get screwed by the RNG gods.

Spoiler :

Here's what's left of the enemy stack:

Spoiler :

Our meager reinforcements:

Spoiler :

IBT...

Spoiler :

Nappy moves away! What an idiot.

It looks like Churchill is trying to tell us something here...

Spoiler :

Stupid worker.

Another successful battle.

Spoiler :

At one point, I notice Churchill building Chariots. Chariots!!! Enough stupidity!

Spoiler :

After Monty suicides his units, Napoleon shows up with a whole lot of Catapults and a Trebuchet...

Spoiler :

But then our world crumbles... Nothingham falls 2 turns later (there was basically just 1 Longbow left in the city and I couldn't get reinforcements in quickly enough - even then Shaka was knocking at the door with his stack).

Spoiler :

I don't see how we can pull it off now. The AI will start targeting multiple cities and there's no way we can hold off the incoming stacks everywhere. Unless they're dumb enough to focus only on York, it's a quick game over.

Save is attached in case anyone wants to play it out to the bitter end.

So what went wrong: Duckweed nailed it when he pointed out we didn't manage to get GG points. We couldn't get a super defender to kill everything in sight and Churchill being an AI, was sidetracked from only building defensive units. To achieve this, we'd have had to settle York ourselves and spend more resources on defending it rather than let Churchill handle it. Oh well.

 

[mlinneak]

I can try ten turns tonight and see what happens unless someone else wants to.

 

[kossin]

Go ahead I'd say. I don't think we have the means to retake the city, much less survive the incoming stacks on flatland without super defenders but it was fun!

Anyway, I tip my hat to everyone that participated in this one, you did a great job in a tough one!

 

[mlinneak]

York fell in 1050 AD in the interturn. The enemy troops are converging on our thinly defended Novgorod and Rostov. I couldn't watch their destruction so here is the save at 1060 AD, units unmoved. Five turns of watching them destroy us. I have not tried this set up on any SP games, but I just don't see how we would have ever managed to defeat three teams of AI's that get to work together and share mutual military struggle bonuses. Perhaps if the AI teams were also at war with each other, so it would have been an all out war instead of six against two it would have been manageable.

The save, if anyone feels up to playing more turns ~

 

[kossin]

I've personally done it in SP. It does require some luck, but I was counting on getting a super defender which we couldn't achieve
A free-for-all AW is pretty easy OTOH.

 

[Meerk]

In retrospect, we also got too confident prior to my last set. If I had kept hard at the longbows, we may have been better positioned to keep things afloat a little longer? I spent way too much attention/resources on spreading religion.

 

[bestsss]

Nay, you should have settled the hilly city, yourself.
Indeed, Churchill would have not defending it but he got the great generals and the AIs don't even have a clue how to defend in an all-out-always-war game. You definitely need one or 2 settled general and one attached (and some luck) to defend. Provided you had the great wall, it should have not been hard to keep collecting the generals. Once you can build CG3 units and you are not falling behind horribly in tech, it's all good.
Due to team nature of the game the great spies are not so great.

AW where the AIs can fight in-between is a joke.
--
You have to try again. Good luck!

 

[Shurdus]

Ow well, ginven the fact that the Ai kept pounding up with formidable stacks I think we did reasonably well considering the circumstances. Keeping up with defenders against 6 AIs who think nothing of pounding stack after stack into our defenses is no simple task and often I felt we were doomed to fail.

It was a lot of fun though.