LK147 - world map, China

[ToddMarshall]

I see that I am up, but am too tired to play tonite. I should be able to play tomorrow.

I need to give notice that I THINK I will be unavailable to play next week from Thursday through Sunday, as I THINK we're going to be in Chicago doing some required training for the Russian adoption my wife and I are trying to make happen. I'm waiting for my agency to confirm this, so if that changes, I will let you know.

 

[ToddMarshall]

IT - Looks goood, I don't change anything

1) 800 - Nothing exciting happens

IT - Cathy comes demanding our 10 gold. I and cave. The Greeks evict our warrior for the bajillionth time. Boarders expand at Canton.
Beijing: Spear -> Spear

2) 775

IT - X-man demands our 3 gold. I and cave.

Xinjian: Curragh -> Curragh

3) 750

IT: India and Persia evict us

Beijing: Spear -> Horse
Canton: Spear -> spear
Nanking: Spear -> Horse

4) 730

IT - Shanghai: Settler -> Settler

Russia/Germany is building the Great Wall... not good.

5) 710 Several people (Babylon, India, Russia) have reached the Medevial Era. Even less good.

It - Philadelphia completes the Lighthouse, Babylon founds an Embasy with us, yay.

6) 690 - Babylon is at war with no one that we know. He does not know Germany,

IT - India wants our 10 gold. I sigh and cave. X-Man evicts us

Beijing: Horse -> Worker
Canton: Spear => Spear

7) 670

IT - India and Persia evict us

Beijing: Worker -> Horseman
Tsingtao: Temple -> Spearman
Xinjan: Curragh -> Spearman

8) 650 -

IT - Nanking: Horse -> Spear

Babylon completes Temple of Artemis, St. Petersburgh completes the Great Wall.

9) 630

IT - Shanghai: Settler -> Settler
Canton: Spear -> Spear

10) 610

IT - India evicts us

Beijing: Horse -> Horse

11) 570 - Tientsin founded on the Silk spot, jacking our income from -5 to +3 at 0%, which is good because we had ZERO gold at the start of the turn. Otherwise, I have moved nothing.

Our financial situation is bad. Then again, we've been demanded 3 times, and lost virtually nothing so...

We have an annoying number of cities making 7 shields after corruption, which is great for spears, and lousy for horses.

We might want to change some of the in production spears to archers, I dono.

I have no idea where we'd want to plant a city with the settler we've just made, let alone the in production one. Maybe up where there's some gold hills, or maybe we want to try to grab the iron northeast of the silks city? There's also a horses spot near Batshreit, a Mongolian city in the Siberian wastes. The Greeks and French appear to lack horses (for now at least) so we could possibly make a trade with those. Honestly, we need cities for unit support if nothing else.

I'm being lazy, and attached pictures of the resources I'm talking about. Got work tomorrow and it's late, so I'm saving myself some sleep time.

 

[LKendter]

Summary:
We are getting challenged for worthwhile city sites. We really could use map making.

I noticed our exploring now shows a tile with wines. We can't get that, but it confirms three happy resources on our continent.

There is only one ship heading toward Africa (south of Pune). Can Tsingtao make another to that way? No idea why two more are heading east.

Our first ship made the Americas! That is the edge of Alaska. Heading the way of the line should hopefully let us make contact soon. Finding another backwards civ would do us wonders.



I see we have two workers by Chengdu road building.

Greebley gets to contact Australia. If they haven't made much contact, we hopefully have a tech trading partner.



Greebley and have played this map plenty. For the new players to my world maps, the below is the general layout.



Team discussion time:
Are we done settling for now? The city to control a path to silks is worth it. I don't want to risk getting blocked.

Most of the other cities are junk until mapmaking. With galleys in play there are some nice sites in Japan. There is a horse island post harbors. We want those islands. The wont' be strong in production, but the will rock for commerce.


ROSTER:
Around ten turns is fine. If key points are a turn or two before / after, feel free to adjust that count.

LKendter
Todd Marshall (just played)
Greebley (up)
CKS (on deck)

@Todd - SG tradition is to end the turn with nothing to move. The exception is one or two units if in a situation you don't know what to do with.

 

[Greebley]

You mean nothing to move

I got it.

 

[LKendter]

You mean nothing to move

DUH - fixed it....


Good hunting. Hopefully some fresh civ contacts your turn.

 

[ToddMarshall]

Lee, I only played that last partial turn to found the city because that was my big accomplishment for the turn . I made no contacts, and was unable to even try to trade anything since we never had any money or anything to trade. I KNEW we were founding that silks city no matter what happened on the interturn, but when I thought about what else to do after that, I got thinking that I had no idea where we were going to put more cities, or IF we were, and where or when we were planning to strike first, etc. and decided it was best to just leave things since I'd gone one interturn over anyhow.

I still think getting that iron city is worth it, but beyond that, I doubt anywhere else is. I'd love to get that horse city too, but Mongolia is liable to go hard for it once war starts, and defending it would be a royal pain.

BTW, it's also SG tradition not to leave units on "go to" but I inherited a warrior and a spear on go to I'm not complaining, I know it wasn't done on purpose

Regarding the pnly one ship headed to Africa, I thought it was two, but one of them strayed too far south, and is probably going to Australia now. I didn't even realize there would be safe passage to Australia, so I'm glad you provided that minimap. Sorry about that.

Now there are too many ships headed to America, probably, but your comment about the difficulty of getting a ship all the way there made me think we'd need spares if case of mishap.

 

[Greebley]

I have only played a turn and a half. However, I have a question for the team before I play more.

If we grab Tabriz, then we have the iron and they do not. They have a second iron, but I verified that it's NOT connected. I would like to declare war by capturing Tabriz. Then we can build swords and hold off the Mongol hordes. Its not likely they have a lot of swords yet and with swords on our side we can often attack with a 3 to 2 advantage. After that we can go after more of their cities - probably we would be able to take them out eventually if they are slow at connecting the iron.

This would be a near term war once I had some more Horsemen - likely during my turn.

Note that I switched over to Walls for towns without so even vs Swords we have better than 50% chance of winning (spear + wall + fortified).

In any case I think now is the time to strike, before the second iron is connected and before they build up more swords. I don't any issues with holding them off - at worst I would lose a population getting a sword or spear out. Only town really at risk is the Silks one and if they go for that (unlikely) their units will all be too far way to defend and we will tear through them. We would meet their Armies with plenty of Sword when they finally came at the other towns.

So I am asking permission to attack if/when I feel we have sufficient forces for the job. I can play the initial rush.

 

[LKendter]

Is Mongolia in any wars? I can't recall. I really don't want to face there initial unit rush.

Do we have a settler to raze and replace the Tabriz? There is no way I will risk a critical resource to a flip.

What is the tech situation with Mongolia? If they have a tech to bribe with it would be catastrophic for us.

It has been so long since I played Civ3 I can't recall how fast could Mongolia be willing to talk if it gets ugly. Do you recall those rules.

 

[CKS]

The one thing that I am really bad at is deciding when to go to war. I usually wait too long, but occasionally declare too early. I'll defer to someone else's judgement on this.

We do appear to have a settler available.

I don't think Mongolia has caught up in techs, but they do have horses they could sell.

I don't know the rule for when people will talk. I've seen discussion that it depends how the war is going, but I've not really seen evidence for this myself, and I'm too lazy to test it. I think we are looking at more than 10 turns before they'll talk, though.

 

[ToddMarshall]

As far as I could tell, Mongolia was not at war with anyone. Impossible to say FOR SURE w/o an embassy, and we can't afford one of those for something like 10 turns, but I could find no evidence of them being at war. I did see a large stack of units headed somewhere at one point, but I got kicked out trying to follow them, so that's not proof.

Yes, we have a settler to replace the city. It was made like 3 turns ago, so he can't have gotten far.

Last we were able to tell, Mongolia was behind the leaders, and I think last or next to last among the folks we knew. They are NOT the leaders, as several people (India, Russia, and Babylon at least) are in the next era, and they are not (or were not when I handed off).

You got me on the last question. iirc there is a lot of variability there.

EDIt: I'm inclined to say go for it for a few reasons. One is we're really really far behind and I'm worried we're getting too far behind. I know we have silks to trade soon, but still. Also, it's early enough that if they wipe us out, we can try again with another civ, right? Of course, the last game in this series I played was the first loss in the LK series history, so listen to me at your peril

 

[ThERat]

As a lurker I'd say, go for it. Don't wait too long or you will have a hard time digging yourself out of a deep hole.

 

[Greebley]

By the way Australia was a complete bust. They know all the techs we can research. There is no 2-fer anywhere.

 

[LKendter]

As a lurker I'd say, go for it. Don't wait too long or you will have a hard time digging yourself out of a deep hole.

We have an open slot if you want to get past "lurker".

 

[ToddMarshall]

By the way Australia was a complete bust. They know all the techs we can research. There is no 2-fer anywhere.

That makes me even MORE inclined to go for it. If we already had an iron we could trade (iron being worth a LOT), or we had a patch of 7 silks, or better land even, we could dig our way out, but the land we have is fair to poor, and 2-3 lux aren't going to cut it with our land.

This game might already be lost, but I think the pointy sticks are our last hope. If Australia isn't behind, what are the odds someone in America will be? And by the time we reach Zululand, the won't be behind us either. If we're going to die, lets die trying.

 

[LKendter]

We've played this map before and have dug out of really tough holes before.

The Americas only have 6 civs. That alone keeps them a lot weaker tech wise.

Go find the game as Russia and how long we will small...

 

[ToddMarshall]

I realize that it's possible to come back from way behind. IIRC one of Sirian's games involved being more than an entire age behind (Getting a notice that someone had completed Newtons while he was still in the ancient era). Sid was beaten on the first attempt by some really good players, too. A big reason why those things were possible was them having stuff to trade, which we're in short supply of.

If we're not going to attack Mongolia soon, then we'd best grab the horses and iron sites. I'm more worried by the fact that we have virtually nothing to trade than anything else.

EDIT: And I can confirm that I will be unavailable to play from Friday morning until Monday night at the earliest. Sorry for the inconvenience. If I come up durring that period, feel free to skip or wait, whichever suits. Maybe Rat would play a guest turn if he doesn't have time to join full time?

 

[Greebley]

590 BC: Moved the units.

570 BC: Contact Australia. They have all the techs.
I prep for war by building walls and start some horses.

550 BC: I think i see America. We may meet them next turn.

530 BC: Build Tatung along the silk road. America contacted. No deals but a two-fer might be possible if we could get polytheism before they do. This will be hard as we are 'doubtful' even with full cash.

510 BC: Also meet Aztecs who are similar.

490 BC: Well I am going for it. I declare war and capture Tabriz.losing a horse. Switch over the towns over to Swords right away. We will get 2 next turn. BTW, Lux is up to 20% to keep our size six cities happy.

470 BC: Babylong and Egypt are going for Songhai. The Mongols moved in a strange direction. It may be the entire Army is going after a Warrior in the mountains.

450 BC: No conflict yet, but the first enemy enters our territory and could attack at a disadvantage.

IBT: First 2 Horsemen attack. One is killed and the other retreats and flees.

430 BC: It appears a Swordsman, Horseman, Warrior stack, a 2nd Horse and Sword Stack, a 3 2 Archer, Horse, and Warrior stack, and a lone archer are going after the now surrounded warrior - for a total of 10 units chasing the hapless Warrior.

IBT: The Warrior on defense holds off the Archer attack (Mountain). The chase continues.

410 BC: We can afford Mathematics and I want it for the Catapults to drive back the enemy forces and injure units before attack. I go with India, because they are the worst to declare war on use being close. So if they do enter the fight we get back our gpt. We are still playing a defensive game and not putting units at risk. Shanghai can be attacked by Horses, but we have Spear behind walls. I do kill one Horseman.

IBT: In the exciting chase scene the 2 hp Warrior holds off an attack horse on the flat. Shanghai holds off 2 Horses, one which retreats. Sun Tzu's being built A few Archers attack and lose. Same with a Horseman.

390 BC: The Warrior is being chased by 18 units. He is completely surrounded. There is is only one thing to do. Attack!

We win against the 1 hp Horseman!

The city has units next to it, but its on a hill and not worth the attack. I will defend.

IBT: A lowly regular Warrior finally ends the chase. What could be next? Why another chase. Got to get those Pesky Warriors all cost. Some units do attack the city and we kill them including a sword.

370 BC: We attack this turn. We ping a Spear with a Catapult and then kill it, We kill 3 Archer, and 2 Horse as well, unfortunately we lost 2 Horsemen.

IBT: A Spear holds off a Horseman attack.

350 BC: In a daring elitist raid, our charge on Voltor Hill give us a Leader from a Horse! This is now a Sword army with 3 Sword. It is a bit injured because the sword were injured.

Notes:
Well I decided to go for the war. The discussion was mixed, so I used my own judgement. Given the ridiculous choices by the AI, the war was nearly stalled making it even easier. We lost a total of 4 units - 3 Horsemen, and 1 Warrior, and got Iron and an Army for it. Getting the Army was lucky, but I was also maximizing our elite victories.

With the Army I think we should continue the war. Lets take the Mongol towns that are too close to ours. You may want to let it heal next turn. I like to keep the HP 7 or above.
The Mongols will talk to us and straight up peace is 'close' to a deal. Take some towns and we may even be able to get a tech. If things get grim we can make peace, but with decent play, we can continue and advance.

Because we had less units than them, I played it safe to keep losses down. It was a very defensive turn. There are still a decent number of Mongols out there so taking towns with the army and other units defended by said army soon would make sense I would go for Ta-tu after the army heals. Mandalgovi is also giving us overlap but its out of the way, so I wouldn't go for it yet.

The 18 units chasing the Warrior are about 5 turns from our border.

Our trip to Africa got blocked by other civ's boats. Still trying to get there.

Our exploring Warriors to the west can't do much now. They get booted.

A final picture:

 

[Greebley]

It would help if I attached the save...

 

[darski]

Wow! way to go guys... sometimes the pRNG gods can be kind.

 

[LKendter]

Summary:
WOW - good start to the war. I am glad you started it. I am so rusty; I doubt I would have gotten that good of a start. What is tough is we are still weak vs. them. I suspect at the next set is a defensive war.
Once we can move forward vs. Mongol I would like to keep Mandalgovi, and then raze Darhan (move 1 NE). While the pyramids would rock, at this point I am more worried about a defendable line. I want to move Darhan to get it out of range of Indian culture.

Of course, India doesn't need silks. This early in the game long distance trades are too risky.

Our next tech goal should be map making. One of the big advantages of China is grabbing Japan (iron!), and those islands including the one with horses. They won't be high production, but the will rock for income.

Did we lose some ships? I can't figure out what happened to the one by Australia. I still only see one limping to Africa.

ROSTER:
Around ten turns is fine. If key points are a turn or two before / after, feel free to adjust that count.

LKendter (on deck)
Todd Marshall (just played) (skip 11/2 to 11/5)
Greebley
CKS (up)