Sirian
Designer, Mohawk Games
Inherited 1200AD: Well, there is no prebuild. We can forget self-building Hoover. I'll do all I can to pull a leader.
I wake a cav and send him toward the German wastelands. Hmm, the rails stop at our farthest city. If I still had my 30+ workers on hand, I would have this problem corrected THIS TURN and maximize our chances for leaders. If I had even half of them, I'd only lose one turn getting this done. As it is, all sixteen of our slaves are sitting in the mountains, off building roads? Only five needed per mountain, guess the extra six are sightseeing. Our three native workers look like they just cleaned up some pollution last round. There are ZERO workers available for me to do anything, and next turn ten of the slaves will have to build roads so the other six will be able to get out to help. I'll have the equivalent of six workers available, that should let me build rails across... two hills. Well, it's a start.
I draft a round of infantry off the top of every city with maxed out population. I send three out of these out across the roads past the end of the rail line to do some scouting. No sign of Persian forces, but there have to be some in the region. Our ONLY chance for leaders will be to hunt down these vile dogs and give them the beating they deserve. I scout a little farther with one of the cavs. Ah, there's a wounded Persian infantry. Target acquired. Now if only I had had workers in place to build rails to ship some artillery to the front, this unit would be under attack right now on the inherited turn. Well, that's not going to happen. We have all of one elite and can't afford to waste it in a low-odds attack vs a 3hp fortified infantry on a hill.
Now where the deuce am I going to get some !@#$%! workers? Going to have to start with the big cities. Ooh, the capital will only waste some 80ish shields on each round I'm pulling a worker out of there. Well, these are desperate times. I would have started battlefield medicine instead, but the five shields in the box from a disbanded military unit prevent me from selecting any wonders to build here. Heck, if I DID pull a leader I couldn't rush Hoover here anyway until something else is built to clear out those disbanded shields. I could rush it in another river city, though, we have a couple of others. Still, if I was coming in with 700 shields sitting in a palace prebuild in Sabratha, we might have a chance. Oh well.
The Great Heist of ripping off poor Xman to the tune of 360gpt (unintentionally) actually doesn't hurt our rep any worse than the messed up deal with the Germans. Well, sort of. We had been on the road to recovery from that penalty, now we're back in the muck and this time we'll probably stay there. At least we got our money's worth out of this one. Since we're up to our necks in Persian Rage (TM) we might as well make the most of it.
I sign all four other AI's to military alliances vs Persia. This costs in the teens in gpt for the first three, and just pennies for the Mongols. The Persian Army: "First we're going to cut it off. Then we're going to kill it."
I then top off the tank on all our corrupt colonies building their temples at 1spt. For its own sake, this is a good thing to do if we're going to go for Domination. It's not bad if aiming for conquest, either, as anything that increases your power rating intimidates and/or provokes the AI's. Of course, the main reason is to clear the deck so I can start rushing some workers out of these chump change sites and not have to spend 80 and 90 shields apiece pulling them out of our core cities all round long.
I swap Russadir from aqueduct to courthouse. Courthouse will complete next turn, then I can change to granary, rush that, and THEN pull three or four workers out of this city by the end of the round. Reagan will be happy to know, I'll bring one of the last two warrior units home and DISBAND HIM in this city, to save one turn on the granary rush.
Speaking of which, many of the core cities are now in the middle of projects, so not all can pop workers next turn. And speaking of THAT, Reagan is right about one thing for sure: with this income rate, and no research rivals for Persia, tech steals are the way to go. We have the reserves in the bank right now to make an attempt, so I do it. We succeed! I take Electronics. If only we had a prebuild...
On the presumption that my leader effort is a longshot, I check and find most of our cities already have coal plants? Losing Hoover won't be as painful as it may look, more so in boosting Xman up than in what we will lose out on. I swap the river cities to hydro plants, even ones with coal plants already done. ... Wait. No, check that. Workers first. In fact, Utica is so high in pop, I'm going to pull a settler out of there and try to grab the open hole in the jungle with those two extra gems.
Hmm. I set a taxman to scientist and start min sci on Radio. We may not be able to wait, but Persia IS in communism, as are most of the AI's. (All of them? Didn't check). So who knows.
Remaining cities without power plants shifted to hydro or coal as applicable. Wait. Check that again, no police stations in highly corrupt locations? Sheesh. OK, police stations first. In fact, I'm going to be going into battle, I check for police stations all over our Republic and find none to speak of. Is my entire round going to be spent pulling workers, power plants and police stations out of the core? And no colesseums either, that's not good if we get into weariness situations. At least we have enough troops on hand to get the immediate task of leader fishing accomplished.
Speaking of that, I check our units. Lots of unpromoted rifles while we have 6billion in petty cash around? I mass-upgrade rifles, then discover we don't have barracks in quite a few locations, even some core cities? Hrrmph. I wake up and move most of the rifles. The ones in the ship on the island weren't unloaded? If Persia brought an attack with marines this turn, they'd sink in the harbor while the warriors did the fighting. I wake them. Unfortified, but that beats shipbound.
I could upgrade the muskets, but I hold off. Hrrm, still a Korean national in Paegam. That makes disbanding the weak units even more questionable. You don't take flip risks on deity lightly. Too easy to get burned. Even low probabilities have a way of turning up over enough time. Best to keep the risk to zero whenever possible. I wake a nume out of Hippo and move it down there.
Well, this is going to be a painful round for me. I sure hope there are some Persians around. I feel a real urge to beat up on anything handy.
1210AD: One carrier's worth of Persian bombers strafe our lands at Minsk, destroying two rail improvements.
As predicted, I make two tiles worth of progress on the rails (toward Germany, ignoring the Minsk problem for now). Persia has produced a settler out of its captured German city and is going to beat us to the gems site! (If I had workers, this would not have happened). I try anyway, sending our settler out along the road, but it doesn't look good.
With all our temples done, I start workers. Not QUITE urgent enough to rush them from scratch, but almost. I'll wait until they have one shield, then rush.
Several core cities complete projects this turn (units, buildings) and are put on worker production detail.
Haha, Persia lacks coal! They don't have a native source, and have been buying from somebody. No longer, with no trade partners left. I check potential buyers for electronics, there are none. Everybody's broke except us.
The Persian infantry has healed and now moved into range of Berlin. So notices our foreward cav scout.
1220AD: Wounded Mongol cav army attacks the Persian unit! NOOOOO! Don't kill it! Oh, whew. Only knocked two hp's off it before the Mongols were down to 1hp themselves and had to retreat.
With two hp's left on the enemy, I don't risk our elite. The vet I use succeeds and promotes.
Oops, maybe that WOULD have been a leader if I had used the elite. Maybe. Too late now. I made the right call, mathematically, but if only I would have had workers, to lay the rails to bring up some artillery, I WOULD have used our elite vs the enemy with 1hp left, and might have popped the leader we needed. Oh well.
Now with all our slaves available, plus some workers peeled off our core cities, I manage to get the rails almost to the northeast shore. I find a barbarian camp? Ha! A chance to promote some of our conscripts. One does in fact get promoted.
Yes, this area has seen some combat. All from the AI's, though, to this point.
I rush workers (sitting at 1 shield in the box) in half a dozen small corrupt cities, starting with Minsk. Also have much of the core set to peel workers this round, though some cities now actually past their turn at it and on to power plants or police stations.
And yes, the Mongols founded where they stood in the jungle, snagging the gems location. I take a runner up position on the hill where the barb camp was, and found our city there, with a coal in range. I wake a bunch of infantry and bring them forward, then upgrade all our muskets to fill in the vaccum in the back lines. I set another settler to production out of a city with a taxman that is about to grow.
1230AD: Persia now attacking Minsk with two carriers full. I must devote some workers or we'll lose the roads and really fall behind. The only good news is that they're also attacking Mongol tiles, so we're not catching the whole brunt.
Oh, and there was a massive pollution breakout, including a mountain tile at the capital. It would have taken almost the entire workforce I started with, to clean up that one tile. Seriously now, Reagan, what were you thinking??? "Rails are done, we don't need workers any more?"
Ignoring the pollution for now, I continue on the rails across Germany project, desperate to find more Persian targets.
AHA! A whole transport's full has just landed on a hill tile. Ooh, marines. Guess they have Amphibious Assault after all, we better be careful about our coastal cities.
Well, I have just enough workers on hand, after ignoring everything else, even Minsk, to stretch the supply line to within two tiles of artillery firing range. JUST ENOUGH. Just barely.
Haha! OK, X-man, time to GET SOME.
TAKE THAT! Eat it, you !@#$$@! sons of !@#$!
:rocket:
Yes! LOOK at all those leader opportunities!
As our cavs ride in, guns firing, swords swinging, I'm screaming at the monitor in glee that I get to KILL SOMETHING, thus venting my frustrations I inherited on this round.
Die. Die. DIE!
(continued...)
I wake a cav and send him toward the German wastelands. Hmm, the rails stop at our farthest city. If I still had my 30+ workers on hand, I would have this problem corrected THIS TURN and maximize our chances for leaders. If I had even half of them, I'd only lose one turn getting this done. As it is, all sixteen of our slaves are sitting in the mountains, off building roads? Only five needed per mountain, guess the extra six are sightseeing. Our three native workers look like they just cleaned up some pollution last round. There are ZERO workers available for me to do anything, and next turn ten of the slaves will have to build roads so the other six will be able to get out to help. I'll have the equivalent of six workers available, that should let me build rails across... two hills. Well, it's a start.
I draft a round of infantry off the top of every city with maxed out population. I send three out of these out across the roads past the end of the rail line to do some scouting. No sign of Persian forces, but there have to be some in the region. Our ONLY chance for leaders will be to hunt down these vile dogs and give them the beating they deserve. I scout a little farther with one of the cavs. Ah, there's a wounded Persian infantry. Target acquired. Now if only I had had workers in place to build rails to ship some artillery to the front, this unit would be under attack right now on the inherited turn. Well, that's not going to happen. We have all of one elite and can't afford to waste it in a low-odds attack vs a 3hp fortified infantry on a hill.
Now where the deuce am I going to get some !@#$%! workers? Going to have to start with the big cities. Ooh, the capital will only waste some 80ish shields on each round I'm pulling a worker out of there. Well, these are desperate times. I would have started battlefield medicine instead, but the five shields in the box from a disbanded military unit prevent me from selecting any wonders to build here. Heck, if I DID pull a leader I couldn't rush Hoover here anyway until something else is built to clear out those disbanded shields. I could rush it in another river city, though, we have a couple of others. Still, if I was coming in with 700 shields sitting in a palace prebuild in Sabratha, we might have a chance. Oh well.
The Great Heist of ripping off poor Xman to the tune of 360gpt (unintentionally) actually doesn't hurt our rep any worse than the messed up deal with the Germans. Well, sort of. We had been on the road to recovery from that penalty, now we're back in the muck and this time we'll probably stay there. At least we got our money's worth out of this one. Since we're up to our necks in Persian Rage (TM) we might as well make the most of it.
I sign all four other AI's to military alliances vs Persia. This costs in the teens in gpt for the first three, and just pennies for the Mongols. The Persian Army: "First we're going to cut it off. Then we're going to kill it."
I then top off the tank on all our corrupt colonies building their temples at 1spt. For its own sake, this is a good thing to do if we're going to go for Domination. It's not bad if aiming for conquest, either, as anything that increases your power rating intimidates and/or provokes the AI's. Of course, the main reason is to clear the deck so I can start rushing some workers out of these chump change sites and not have to spend 80 and 90 shields apiece pulling them out of our core cities all round long.
I swap Russadir from aqueduct to courthouse. Courthouse will complete next turn, then I can change to granary, rush that, and THEN pull three or four workers out of this city by the end of the round. Reagan will be happy to know, I'll bring one of the last two warrior units home and DISBAND HIM in this city, to save one turn on the granary rush.
Speaking of which, many of the core cities are now in the middle of projects, so not all can pop workers next turn. And speaking of THAT, Reagan is right about one thing for sure: with this income rate, and no research rivals for Persia, tech steals are the way to go. We have the reserves in the bank right now to make an attempt, so I do it. We succeed! I take Electronics. If only we had a prebuild...
On the presumption that my leader effort is a longshot, I check and find most of our cities already have coal plants? Losing Hoover won't be as painful as it may look, more so in boosting Xman up than in what we will lose out on. I swap the river cities to hydro plants, even ones with coal plants already done. ... Wait. No, check that. Workers first. In fact, Utica is so high in pop, I'm going to pull a settler out of there and try to grab the open hole in the jungle with those two extra gems.
Hmm. I set a taxman to scientist and start min sci on Radio. We may not be able to wait, but Persia IS in communism, as are most of the AI's. (All of them? Didn't check). So who knows.
Remaining cities without power plants shifted to hydro or coal as applicable. Wait. Check that again, no police stations in highly corrupt locations? Sheesh. OK, police stations first. In fact, I'm going to be going into battle, I check for police stations all over our Republic and find none to speak of. Is my entire round going to be spent pulling workers, power plants and police stations out of the core? And no colesseums either, that's not good if we get into weariness situations. At least we have enough troops on hand to get the immediate task of leader fishing accomplished.
Speaking of that, I check our units. Lots of unpromoted rifles while we have 6billion in petty cash around? I mass-upgrade rifles, then discover we don't have barracks in quite a few locations, even some core cities? Hrrmph. I wake up and move most of the rifles. The ones in the ship on the island weren't unloaded? If Persia brought an attack with marines this turn, they'd sink in the harbor while the warriors did the fighting. I wake them. Unfortified, but that beats shipbound.
I could upgrade the muskets, but I hold off. Hrrm, still a Korean national in Paegam. That makes disbanding the weak units even more questionable. You don't take flip risks on deity lightly. Too easy to get burned. Even low probabilities have a way of turning up over enough time. Best to keep the risk to zero whenever possible. I wake a nume out of Hippo and move it down there.
Well, this is going to be a painful round for me. I sure hope there are some Persians around. I feel a real urge to beat up on anything handy.
1210AD: One carrier's worth of Persian bombers strafe our lands at Minsk, destroying two rail improvements.
As predicted, I make two tiles worth of progress on the rails (toward Germany, ignoring the Minsk problem for now). Persia has produced a settler out of its captured German city and is going to beat us to the gems site! (If I had workers, this would not have happened). I try anyway, sending our settler out along the road, but it doesn't look good.
With all our temples done, I start workers. Not QUITE urgent enough to rush them from scratch, but almost. I'll wait until they have one shield, then rush.
Several core cities complete projects this turn (units, buildings) and are put on worker production detail.
Haha, Persia lacks coal! They don't have a native source, and have been buying from somebody. No longer, with no trade partners left. I check potential buyers for electronics, there are none. Everybody's broke except us.
The Persian infantry has healed and now moved into range of Berlin. So notices our foreward cav scout.
1220AD: Wounded Mongol cav army attacks the Persian unit! NOOOOO! Don't kill it! Oh, whew. Only knocked two hp's off it before the Mongols were down to 1hp themselves and had to retreat.
With two hp's left on the enemy, I don't risk our elite. The vet I use succeeds and promotes.
Oops, maybe that WOULD have been a leader if I had used the elite. Maybe. Too late now. I made the right call, mathematically, but if only I would have had workers, to lay the rails to bring up some artillery, I WOULD have used our elite vs the enemy with 1hp left, and might have popped the leader we needed. Oh well.
Now with all our slaves available, plus some workers peeled off our core cities, I manage to get the rails almost to the northeast shore. I find a barbarian camp? Ha! A chance to promote some of our conscripts. One does in fact get promoted.
Yes, this area has seen some combat.
All from the AI's, though, to this point.I rush workers (sitting at 1 shield in the box) in half a dozen small corrupt cities, starting with Minsk. Also have much of the core set to peel workers this round, though some cities now actually past their turn at it and on to power plants or police stations.
And yes, the Mongols founded where they stood in the jungle, snagging the gems location. I take a runner up position on the hill where the barb camp was, and found our city there, with a coal in range. I wake a bunch of infantry and bring them forward, then upgrade all our muskets to fill in the vaccum in the back lines. I set another settler to production out of a city with a taxman that is about to grow.
1230AD: Persia now attacking Minsk with two carriers full. I must devote some workers or we'll lose the roads and really fall behind. The only good news is that they're also attacking Mongol tiles, so we're not catching the whole brunt.
Oh, and there was a massive pollution breakout, including a mountain tile at the capital. It would have taken almost the entire workforce I started with, to clean up that one tile. Seriously now, Reagan, what were you thinking??? "Rails are done, we don't need workers any more?"
Ignoring the pollution for now, I continue on the rails across Germany project, desperate to find more Persian targets.
AHA! A whole transport's full has just landed on a hill tile. Ooh, marines. Guess they have Amphibious Assault after all, we better be careful about our coastal cities.
Well, I have just enough workers on hand, after ignoring everything else, even Minsk, to stretch the supply line to within two tiles of artillery firing range. JUST ENOUGH. Just barely.
Haha! OK, X-man, time to GET SOME.
TAKE THAT! Eat it, you !@#$$@! sons of !@#$!
:rocket:
Yes! LOOK at all those leader opportunities!
As our cavs ride in, guns firing, swords swinging, I'm screaming at the monitor in glee that I get to KILL SOMETHING, thus venting my frustrations I inherited on this round.
Die. Die. DIE!
(continued...)
This deserved one of these - I had no idea we were that low. I fortified the workers as you never now when the need will arrive and I saw no clear tiles to develop. The only time I ever shrunk the number of workers was in a 5cc conquest game with 5 cities and 100+ slaves from all the razing.
(Right??)
me, nor is the content of my message intended to disparage anyone referenced therein.
That includes glory for achievements as well as teasing or criticism for goofs.
Or get mideival on these AI's who have been pushing us around for far too long now? 
