KoS4 - Something more casual (?)

[timmy827]

Hmm, I think we wanted a full view of that western area before deciding where to use our current settler and we don't have it (also, whether to keep or raze/resettle Chinook). For this reason, I'm tempted to split my turnset up or play a short one (not soon, I will post another plan first after more comments); I think I can pull one Zara chariot off choke duty to explore and leave the other 2 + the axe in his lands for now.

Other prelim plans: Agree with the triple-lib whip soon, will be good to have culture
Micro Carthage to get sword in 2, use that + Hadru's axe to take Zhou, send survivors and other new recruits towards Chinook. Workers will likely be doing a lot of roading; our existing cities mostly have enough tiles improved for now but we are spread out and will soon be even more so.

I think Kerkouane should work its gold; sucks to have it starve down but it's going to be hard to have it grow much due to unhealth until we link it to our trade network. That, and we are stalled on gold stockpiling right now...

Tempted to revolt to Judaism, will help at Carthage which will soon be at happy cap again, and only get us (mild) - with Joao.

GS in 10 turns - assume academy in Carthage, and continuing to bank $ at least that far?

 

[Mutineer]

Please, note, many of our units a sleep. I would suggest to move chariot /axe pair in direction of our GG, in hope to help intersept settler and pillage stuff along the way. many of our other units are asleep too.

 

[babybluepants]

Seconded. Should we get the GG out of the line of fire? Would suck to lose it in some 15% BS battle.

Our slider sucks so much, I'd almost settle the GS, but that's not a good option long-term. The AI tech pace is slow, so we can get a lot of mileage our of something like a Philo bulb later. So, academy, I think. Definitely bank gold until then. BTW, we're cash-strapped enough to do something like work marble over copper, IMHO.

 

[mlinneak]

I meant to do more exploring but most of the time the units I had available were either trying to maintain the choke, healing, or protecting our lands

I wasn't sure about leaving the Great General Axeman on that iron or not - I was concerned that if I moved him away Napoleon would move archers onto the hill with a worker to mine it over again and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. You could maybe send backup troops to help hold the spot, or just let it go I guess. I did lose the Woodsman II Warrior to an archer

I considered doing the triple whip of the Library in Hippo but had not mentioned it in the plan and wasn't sure so I left that up for discussion.

 

[Mutineer]

I did not mean to leave GG on irom, I mean move it arounf keeping eye on settler in city.

 

[mlinneak]

If you take that unit off of the iron, Napoleon will start mining it again immediately. I am not saying we must leave him on there, move the unit if it seems best. But be prepared to face more than just one Swordsman from him if you do so.

 

[babybluepants]

Metal resource units should be fortified in place, for the reason mlinneak pointed out. AI's get scrambled by it for a long time... I just meant we could maybe work in a replacement axe at some point, and free up the GG. Not a big.

 

[Mutineer]

No, you do not need to fortify on resource. Fortify on forest next to resource and AI would not improve it.
But GG is not the best unit to be on century duty, it real task is to go around kill stuff.
we need to fortify axe next to all metal and horse resources. Why we have axe fortified on our resource i am at loss.

IN addition, iron reveal near gold/gem cite made in more argent to settle and block it, or AI will settle on iron, as it give it sea food access.

 

[kossin]

Some micro suggestions:

Carthage: corn or wheat -> cottaged wine. Growth happens next turn anyway but it gives us good gold.
Utica: Get a Cottage going on the forest tile shared with Carthage (assign Utica to work it). It can later be given to Carthage when it has grown a bit.
Hadrumetum: agree Marble>Copper, 3 commerce for 1 hammer is the superior
Hippo: we should whip the library before Hammy gets his own, this way we can maybe beat him to the 150 culture and pump extra culture in our tiles. We'll probably lose the iron at one point however
Kerkouane: abort the cottage and put up a road network, possibly toward other barb cities or to the NW city sites. Let's allow it to grow to size 2 before working the gold. Also, it needs a workboat more than a granary, queue it now.

Units: you can put units to sleep during your set, but please wake them up when handing it over!
There are several things to do:
-keep pillaging roads. This reduces troop movement and makes it easier to capture settler parties/workers
-pillage improvements! don't leave mines there, we want them to have the worst possible production possible

GS: Academy for sure. With captured barb cities gold, we'll be able to keep the slider up for a while, at least until Currency I think.

Religion: I'd stay in NSR for now. We can possibly get Pacal and Hammy to Friendly with Religion+civic and if we grow strong enough, peaceful vassals.

Resources: Joao has 1 gpt for trade. It's not much but I'd take it 1gpt<->cows. Keep looking for better offers.

That should improve the economic situation a bit and allow us to pursue chokes, city captures+expansion and research.

 

[timmy827]

OK, here's a detailed plan. I don't quite have the time to draw on a bunch of screenshots but will try to ID all the units precisely.

City-by-city builds:
Hippo: whip library as discussed for max overflow in a few turns. However, not sure what should come next - no barracks and longterm I think this is more of a commerce city...maybe another worker (?) IE put overflow in, grow back some, then finish worker?

Hadrumentum - stays on military. I think the lake is kind of weak, I think it makes sense to work both the marble and copper, and solve the -1 food balance by occasionally borroing Hippo's corn.

Carthage - eh, I may like the plains hill over the wine. after sword, since we will be stuck at happy cap, maybe a worker? Keep scientists and build academy.

Utica - running out of good tiles to work, so after this sword, probably sword->sword double whip.

Kerkouane - OK, follow kossin, swap to WB, grow to 2 on the floodplain then work gold.

Military units:
France: axe/chariot pair head west pillaging as they go, with goal of getting to Lyons and guarding iron freeing up GG axe to go elsewhere (it will pillage the road, then move to a forest for now). Axe south of Paris pillages the nearby tiles, stays in vicinity to guard copper.

Ethiopia:
Axe 2N1W of gondar goes towards hill on copper, freeing the chariot pair S of Aksum to go west to the horses, freeing that chariot to explore the SW.

BIG QUESTION: does zara have any chariots left from before? If so this needs rethinking, lone axe will be easy target...

Our northeast -
Carthage's sword and new axe in Hadru go to Zhou, that plus the 3 units already there will capture, then head west to Chinook.

Note: no reason to keep axe in Hadrumentum, has plenty of happy. We could use him against Zhou, however our culture does not spawnbust the two fogged tiles so I'm tempted to move him 2N1W of the city to accomplish that.

Workers:

@Kerkouane - agree cottage is abandoned. I think roading to the NW makes more sense than towards the barb cities.

@Hippo/Hadrumentum: I think 2 to road to Zhou and improve after we capture it (definitely not bothering with the desert hill), 1 to go west to assist with roading.

@Carthage - goes west to assist with roading. I value advancing our troops through the barb cities over getting the shared cottage tile going right now.


Western plan: barring the discovery of more seafood on the west coast, my preference is to keep Chinook (already size 5!), settle 1NE of the wheat, and (as a lower priority backfill city) settle on the dyes to get clam/gold.

Diplomacy - 1gpt is peanuts, I think it's better to wait a few turns and hope for more.

@kossin's NSR recommendation: I don't get it - yes, Pacal + Hammy as friends is good, shouldn't that entail converting to their religion now to start building the bonus? I am going to convert unless someone can offer a better argument against it.

@mutineer - thanks for the reminder, I have made another 380BC save that I will start on tomorrow where all units except city garrisons are awake.

 

[kossin]

NSR to keep Joao/MM cautious.rather than annoyed.

Personally I think we need commerce more than prod ATM but I'll go with the team.

 

[Mutineer]

barb do not spawn in 2 ties from cultural borders or any military units. So, you do not need to fogbust, it does not matter can you see tie or not.

 

[kossin]

True that barbs don't spawn within 2 tiles of any units.

However, any fogged tile not within 2 tiles of a unit can spawn barbs.

That means culture only blocks what it reveals - no spawnbust.

And barb cities can go up anywhere with fog, regardless of units close by.

 

[babybluepants]

The plan looks good to me.

I'd also stay NSR for now. There's no rush. Probably only adopt religion once we can benefit from a religious civic.

Also prefer some commerce. We'll be getting some cash from city captures soonish, but that's hardly enough. We need all that we can get, IMHO.

Don't like a 1gpt trade. That's really nothing. Let's wait for a better deal. Also, if we're trading resources, I'd try to get trades in with our "friendly" targets for the eventual diplo bonus.

I believe I killed Zara's last chariot a few TS's ago, but now I forget if that's true or not.

 

[timmy827]

Played 10t.

Zara got another city out near Zhou, ivory, and iron, but I have axes in the area so it should stay under control. Our GG went hog-wild exploiting the AI woodsman bug, I captured 1 settler and 3 (!) workers from Napoleon. So the other cities mostly built military this turn as our worker needs are set. Also, I believe ATM Nappy has zero workers and every tile save a few roads pillaged. Zhou was captured, Chinook got 4 archers which was a bit too much but the forces are now in place to attack in a couple turns.

After a few turns waiting, I gave up on more GPT and traded cow to Joao for 2. Pacal also has Currency but no selloff presented itself (rice is the logical one if it comes up since we have enough health and will soon have a 2nd at Zhou).

Academy founded, we can make to Aesthetics now before running out of gold; since we will get $ from Chinook I think we have enough to part-trade alphabet. (All the relevant AI's have it, but it will still be useful to build research & lower price of Currency). We will probably want to go through the religion line so we can trade for Monarchy too, I don't remember these AI's WFYABTA levels but it may be worth brokering Math for some cheap things like Sailing and Meditation (?).

Carthage - fired the scientists since we want max food now (slavery clock almost up), maybe they should be rehired once it grows, or we could get some plains river cottages going.

Hippo - really not sure what best build here is, we have plenty of workers and military.
Hadru - keep on military I guess
Utica - I've whipped the stuffing out of it to get enough troops to take Zhou, next player gets the honor. Maybe library + regrowth next? The shared forest chop should probably go here.
Kerkouane - on WB, then keep granary.

The tile marked "mostly cottaged" - well, I was optimistic about taking Zhou quickly and started roading, then wound up with nothing else useful for them to do for a few turns

Recap of my settling plan, group should discuss:

Keep Chinook, settle red with the current settler (1SE of chinook now, sorry with Nappy's attack I couldn't spare the escort), yellow as later filler city. Sorry, I didn't explore any further of that SW peninsula.

Also, Mansa took Numidian, but on the plus side we nabbed a barb worker in the exodus...Ainu only has 2 archers now, possibly rotate more chariots down there? No more seafood and a move 1E looks nice in an ideal world, but probably we would need to whip another settler in Carthage pronto and still might not make it.

 

[Stochastic]

Very nice set

We now have 11 workers for 6 cities I never realised the choke could be a worker farm
The road going past Zara is a bit risky I think, he can use it too and has units in the feild... Maye those workers should road to Mansa to open up trade routes.

Looking at the tech Mansa is grabbing Feudalism already, so hopefully we can get that off of him (Philo bulb? Spy?) In terms of trades I'd prefer to get Math over Alpha right now as it has brokerage capability. The only advantage of Alpha right now is getting spies (building research right now would be silly, too many units/settlers to get).

After Aesthetics I assume we trade for math and broker it for Poly+other and continue towards GLib. Maybe throw in a turn or two of currency to trade for that using Aesthetics before lit.

Other than that we seem to be ticking along nicely, I'm a bit concerned that we still don't have a dedicated production city, but I think red dot comes first for blocking and happy.

 

[kossin]

Very nice indeed!

It seems Mansa was able to capture the Flood plain city sadly however
Not that it matters much however as we're already towering over him in soldiers and with land borders he might agree to become a vassal of ours at some point.
->Probably not now as it'd drag him into 2 wars which he probably doesn't want. If at one point it looks as if he might want to peacefully capitulate, we can take a cease-fire with Zara/Nappy for 1 turn, accept his capitulation and then redeclare war.

Trades:
1. Alphabet <->Aesthetics
2. Mathematics<->Aesthetics
3. Currency? <->Aesthetics+Mathematics? (not sure this one will be available)
4. Monarchy <-> ??

We'll need Polytheism regardless for TGL+Parth so Polytheism+Priesthood can be queued before Literature maybe.

Things are going along nicely, we'll get possibly around 12 cities peacefully which should allow us to get capitulations started.

 

[huerfanista]

we'll get possibly around 12 cities peacefully

Funniest line I've read in a while! Keep up the good work!

 

[kossin]

Funniest line I've read in a while! Keep up the good work!

Peacefully = not captured cities

 

[mlinneak]

Noob question - if a rival civ voluntarily capitulates, can't they revoke that vassal status on their own after 10 turns? How will we make sure they remain as vassals?