LK102, Deity, RaR, just win.

[T_McC]

Beats a holding action.



Yeah, just about the entirety of Abe's armed forces were behind our lines at the start of my turn. And don't tell LK, but the war was going to start on my round anyway. Abe just beat me to it by a couple of turns. Two more turns of railing and I was going to jump his offensive forces in the south. Oh well, this was more exciting.

How much do we want to prolong this and who's next? The Aztecs are closer if we go from the SW, and have a terribly awkward front to defend against any allies we may choose. The Iro would be more of a challenge if we wanted to go from ex-America.

 

[Greebley]

India is pulling ahead in tech and if only one AI has tech we don't get it. I think the next war should be with them. I do think we want to work on the city defenses Lee mentions before starting it.

[Edit: I won't be starting any wars, so we can discuss. We are still at war with Greece. They won't talk]

 

[Greebley]

Final turns were quiet.

I built infra mostly, but also worked on Riflemen for guarding towns.

Doc, why can't I load artillery onto a clipper?

I attempt a steal (would go for Espionage) but it fails.

Load some units onto boats for Romeo to do stuff with if he so chooses.

Notes:
Capitol is building TOE. This can be switched to whatever we want it to be. It might have been a Crystal Palace prebuild if the steal had worked.

I made a healthy stack of units to send over. I sent over 3 armies and kept one for defense.

I am not currently build a boat. We may want some more. We have 4 full clippers involved in the attack (32 units). No artillery since it won't go on the boat.

I am guessing I will not see this game again. Depending on how agressive we are, it might even be over quick.

I keep forgetting we cannot attack India (our deals), so we have a choice between:

1) getting an ROP with the Aztecs and attacking the Iroquois.
2) Attacking the Aztecs.
3) Waiting 10 turns for India.

I think I like the Aztec attack best. We can make a coastal town and send boats back and forth without stopping enroute. The units will have the remainder of their movement when they get to the far shores.

Important: India has no oil (iron or coal). If we attack the Aztecs, Do NOT allow the oil to go in their land. I suggest a town on the red dot of the map I am including to prevent the India from claiming it. We give them oil and we may be fighting tanks. Not sure if they have them yet, but they might.

 

[LKendter]

Doc, why can't I load artillery onto a clipper?

What in the world? Trying to invade another landmass is crazy without artillery.

Load some units onto boats for Romeo to do stuff with if he so chooses.

I don't even know if my opinion counts any more in my SGs. However, without artillery I don't want *ANY* wars going overseas.

Signed up:
LKendter
T_McC
Greebley
Romeothemonk (currently playing)
Doc Tsiolkovski (on deck)

Remember 10 turns per round - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 hours to complete.

 

[T_McC]

We're currently at 48% land and 51% population, with maybe 3-4% more land that can be claimed through border expansions on our home continent.

Apparently we broke a deal with the Aztecs. Must have happened on my turns during the Abe's sneak attack, but I can't say what it was.

Can we put the Trebs and Cannons on boats? ... Yes for Trebs, yes for Cannons. So we can get around any problem with transporting Artillery by building a city with Barracks on the other continent. Expensive, but a work-around that doesn't require Flight.

If we wanted to self-research it would be in our best interests to wipe out Greece. The Indians can't do it because the Iro build a city on a 1-tile choke between Ghandi and the Greek city. Can't do it anyway since we appear to have just ended our war.

 

[LKendter]

Apparently we broke a deal with the Aztecs. Must have happened on my turns during the Abe's sneak attack, but I can't say what it was.

While it is late in the game, this is still depressing to here. If there is feature I want improvements on in Civ4, this it it.

 

[LKendter]

Well I think I see what screwed us. We were shipping elephants to the Aztecs, and both sources were right next to America. I suspect some of the lost towns were the elephants...

This was one of those cases where it was out of our control.

 

[Greebley]

Stealing seems cheaper than research. A careful steal every 3 turns with 7 turns to research. We could probably change that by building lots of research buildings, but I don't know that this would be worthwhile.

For attacking oversees we do have nearly instant access to the other side. A clipper makes it across in 1 turn and carries 8 units. These units have full movement when they get there. With our current fleet of Clippers, we can get 16 units a turn across. Not only that but attacks are much higher than defense right now so we have better than average odds on our attacks.

I think we can be at war and still take very few losses. It is not like normal civ where the defenses are high and it takes forever to get across. Clippers move 12 squares a turn.

I guess I am unclear on the reason against foreign war. I don't see how we could lose. If nothing else we hide under the army until the boats come to take us home.

If need be we could also make an Alliance.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Doc, why can't I load artillery onto a clipper?

Because a Clipper or Galley would sink with a such a piece of metal aboard?

By design. All mechanized units cannot board wooden ships (technically, they're no Foot Unit, and everything before Transports carries only those).

Can't imagine we're far away from Transports. And we'll need them for Tanks anyway.

 

[LKendter]

I think we can be at war and still take very few losses. It is not like normal civ where the defenses are high and it takes forever to get across. Clippers move 12 squares a turn.

I guess I am unclear on the reason against foreign war. I don't see how we could lose.

Because I don't feel we would take few losses. At this point I feel artillery is the key to a war.

 

[Greebley]

And here I was thinking that with an attack force of double what I would consider minimum that there was finally a landing that would meet everyones approval. Ah well.

Our armies are pretty strong. TMcC can correct me if I am wrong, but the attack strength of our army with 3 units is either 8+4 = 12 or 8+6 = 14 attack depending on if we have the Mil Acad building.

A cavalry army attacking a town with a defense of 4 and 5 is therefore similar to a regular cavalry attacking towns defended by spear (or a knight army attacking spear defended towns). Not only that, our armies wiill have more hit points than 4 unit army in civ. An all vet cav armies has 21 hp going to 27 when all elite.

We have 3 of these armies.

We can wait for Artillery if we really want to, but that will make it complete slaughter. You saw how trivial it was to take out America. Right now without artillery support, I suspect we can take out the Aztecs without difficulty. They are behind us in tech. India we can wait for the Artillery to get over as they may have machine guns and tanks.

 

[LKendter]

And here I was thinking that with an attack force of double what I would consider minimum that there was finally a landing that would meet everyones approval. Ah well.

It isn't the size of the force. It is the lack of bombard units. Once I have good bombard units I never fight a war without them. That is one of the big human advatages - artillery.

Of course, I am not the one landing, so we shall see what happens with Romeo who we are waiting from for a got it.

 

[LKendter]

I agree this game doesn't have much time left. At this point we need border expansions to end this. We won't have enough time to get those former American cities useful. Please swap all cities such as Bafilo from Counselor to Monument. Any city that can claim additional tiles should be building culture. I think a lot of the need tiles are just waiting for culture to claim them.

 

[romeothemonk]

I got it. I will listen to LK, and set up the next guy.
Massive Infra push and unit optimization coming up.
Expect turns on Saturday, Friday is the date night with the wife, so no real civ time tonight.

 

[LKendter]

The number one goal is some transports. I don't know how close we are to the needed tech. Once we get them IMO it is invasion time.

 

[T_McC]

While it is late in the game, this is still depressing to here. If there is feature I want improvements on in Civ4, this it it.

The current system worked correctly in this case. If we can't defend the goods we're trading, we deserve the rep hit. Now those cases where we break a deal with the Aztecs because the Americans started a war with the Iroquois ....

@Greebley - Stealing tech is even cheaper when you're trying to get out of a 641-gpt obligation to the civ you're stealing from.

I don't think we need transports. We can have about 6-8 Artillery once we have city in which to upgrade the Trebs/Cannons. On the other hand, all the Artillery on our homeland isn't going to do us a whole lot of good until we can move it overseas. Getting Transports means an almost casualty-free war. Might not kill us to have a defensive army in the mix as the Aztecs (or whomever we attack) should have a bunch of 6-attack fast units.

I wouldn't swap off the no-upkeep courthouse Counselors. If we're going to wait on an invasion, the game certainly won't end in 10 turns, and the 2nd cultural building in a city may finish faster with the Counselor than without. And we get extra gold/beakers to boot. We'll need multiple cultural buildings to get two border expansions, and have plenty of time to build a Monument if we only want one border expansion.

 

[romeothemonk]

Following the advice of the folks posting here I will develop the following action list.
1) Prepare troops, at least 2 quality defenders in every seaside town, village and city.
2) Expand our borders peacefully via cultural expansion.
3) Build up our infrastructure, especially upkeep free gold generating buildings.
4) Beg, borrow, buy or steal our way to Transports.
5) Keep paying India to watch Greebley sweat a bit. (This one is all mine )
6) Respect the house rules.
7) Win.
I will start at the top and work my way down. Seeing as the first 5 points don't violate the sixth, and the 6th preceeds the 7th, we should be good to roll.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Should be interesting to watch romeo peacefully preparing ruthless warmongering for me and possibly Lee .

 

[Greebley]

@Greebley - Stealing tech is even cheaper when you're trying to get out of a 641-gpt obligation to the civ you're stealing from.

India will not declare war if we steal and get caught. It has happened twice already. Our forces are strong enough they have no desire to fight us. It is actually to our advantage in that we can try again and agan to steal with no war.

One final idea: If we ally with the Iroquois vs the Aztecs and defend our cities better than the Iroquois ones, we probably wouldn't get attacked - the Iroquois cities act as bait cities similar to AW. Doing this I am guessing we could destroy the Aztecs without losing more than a handful of units. Artillery is very powerful, but it is not the only technique.

On the other hand, I am not really in a hurry. No problem if we want to wait either. My main reason to want to war now is to test the above statements and test my understanding of our current position which I feel is very strong. India not attacking us and the war with America both indicate this as well.

Aside: An interesting side (out of game) challenge would be to try destroy the Aztecs without losing any units - If we don't go to war I may try this later. I think it is very doable, but it wouldn't be bad to have confirmation of that fact.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

If we don't go to war I may try this later. I think it is very doable, but it wouldn't be bad to have confirmation of that fact.

With Artillery, this is out of question (unless you get a really bad dice roll).
In LK98, I destroyed the entire Incan empire without any loss except 2 sacrificial Cavs I deliberately used to kill redlined Armors and left exposed after to draw more attackers out of cities. And the Incans were about our size, and on tech parity regarding weapons...