LK76 - AWE - Pangea, No armies, Random Civ

1525 AD (0)
Redo the scientist to shave a turn off of RP but we are losing money and don't have enough to carry us through. We are at -6gpt and only have 44g. We will have to improve enough tiles to get us to even. Most of our bombard units are in the north and they can't ride the rails. I will have to move some workers up there to rails under the mountain sentries. I swap some tiles around to get two of our starving cities back from the edge. Our gpt will improve when Den Helder isn't rioting. I shift some defensive units around so that we have more than one defender in cities that can be hit by Cav without notice.
(I) They lose a couple of Cav, we lose nothing. We build 2 Cav and 2 Mercs.

1530 AD (1)
I kill off 3 Cav but lose a Cav trying to kill a 1HP rifle. I then ding each unit I can reach and the rest of the bombment goes into the stack of 12 Sumerian rifles. I have to readjust to keep the RP at 14.
(I)We retreat a Cav and a Knight is killed. We lose nothing.

1535 AD (2)
I bomb what I can and then kill off 2 Cav and a knight. Playing it safe.
(I) We retreat a Cav and kill a longbow.

1540 AD (3)
Kill of 3 Cav but lose a Cav trying to kill a 1hp rifle again. I kill a longbow that had been landed behind the lines.
(I) They lose 5 rifles, but the city of Roosendaal is razed. Including the 2 mercs in Roosendaal, we lose 5 Mercs and they lose a CAv and rifle (other than the 5 at the razed city).

1545 AD (4)
This time I manage to kill off 5 Cav and a Knight without losing any units. I have to merge in some native workers to keep our science level up and afford the troops.
(I) I missed Harlington and it riots. We aren't attacked.

1550 AD(5)
Kill off 2 Cav and 4 rifles without loss. We are hanging in there. 10 turns to RP and Inf. It is interesting that we haven't seen infantry from anyone else.
 
(I) They lose 5 rifles, but the city of Roosendaal is razed.
It was a remote town, but I still hate hearing any town loss.

I see it for tonight. Sound like we still can't start the badly needed offensive.

======================

Signed up:
LKendter (currently playing)
Greebley (on deck)
Zwingli
hotrod0823
Meldor

Our general game plan:
1) Science research must be very aggressive with deficit spending if we can afford it.
2) Try to build the roads before the city to take maximum advantage of the 3 tile city plans.
3) For the most part raze all cities unless they have a useful wonder

Remember 5 to 10 turns per round - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.
Additional restriction: No armies
 
Another topic of discussion. What about using cash to upgrade Swiss Mercs to Infantry? I am [Edit: not] in favor of spending a bit of money to do this. The AI is by no means running away in research (no rifles; haven't seen TOE message).

Lets see:
Pro:
Gets Infantry faster which means a lot less chance of losing cities and units. Things are getting dicey and I don't think we can produce Infantry fast enough.

Con:
Slows industrialization and factories (however factory building may be dependent on leader production).

We might miss the TOE.

I was thinking a few rushes might be worthwhile (2-3?), but am not sure. 180 gold is a lot. If ROP is coming in at the end of my turn, I would probably start prebuilds so we get as many as possible as soon as possible. This might be sufficient.

Hmmm... the more I think on it the less I think a single infantry is worth 180 gold. So now I have changed my mind. and would vote no.

Lee, I am guessing you would rather concentrate on science? Do we want to do the prebuilds instead?

I am interested in others opinions on this topic.
 
The AI is by no means running away in research
Please read my report below. Look at the ship report, and I think you will find the AI *IS* running away. When you consider the AI already had enough time to build that ship...

================================

Lee, I am guessing you would rather concentrate on science?
The Merc to Infantry path is just a killer @180 / turn. If we spent NOTHING on science we probably would upgrade 2 infantry in a turn. The cities are holding - the problem is getting rid of the rifle stacks!

================================

Our problems can be summed up real easily. In 1250 we had 10 cavalry. In 1550 we have 10 cavalry. We are 100% stalemated for military growth. Our growth in area and population during that time is just 3% each.


1550 AD
I cancel our fringe cities that are building workers. This makes it to difficult to keep the cities and maximum growth and specialist.

I fire all the taxmen. The scientists give us more value.

I wake up a cavalry and kill and AI cavalry not even losing a HP.
(IT) Sumeria doesn't have Replacement parts yet, however I just saw a modern day ship. :eek:
They are up to at least Combustion.

The IT takes forever to show all the AI units moving, but the only damage is a tiles being bombed.

A propaganda campaign in Leerdam as upset its citizens. We stop a Sumerian spy.


1555 AD
I kill 1 Keshik, 2 knights and 3 cavalry. (6-0)
I ping a whole bunch of rifles. I expect to do this every turn.

I missed to cavalry healing in a non-barracks city last turn. I move them into a barracks.

I send our explorer on a suicide mission to get a better map of the Sumerian city. We really can't afford the upkeep anyhow.

Our time to Replaceable Parts just dropped big time. Sumeria and Babylon now have that tech. :(
(IT) Two tiles are pillaged. We have a landing behind our lines.
We lost 1 merc, and they lost 1 rifle. (7-1)
Two tiles by Samara where pillaged.


1560 AD
I kill 5 Keshiks, 1 longbow, 1 cavalry, 1 MDI, 2 spearmen and 1 rifleman. (18-1)
I promoted 1 cavalry. Our troops are rather tired.
(IT) I lost 1 merc, and they lost 2 Keshiks and 1 cavalry. (21-2)
More tiles are pillaged near Samara.
I confirm a combustion or higher ship was sighted.


1565 AD
I kill 3 cavalry, 1 knight, 2 longbows and 1 rifleman. I lost 1 healthy cavalry vs. a 1 hp cavalry. (28-3)
(IT) I killed 1 cavalry. (29-3)


1570 AD
I killed 2 Keshiks, 6 riflemen, 1 spearman, 1 cavalry and 1 MDI. I lost a 2 healthy cavalry vs. a 2 hp rifleman. (40-5)

The first time I don't wait for redlined units and I get screwed. The trouble is 40+ cannons aren't enough even with rails.

I get enough of a breather that I can connect the missing rail segment near Breda. That town is finally on the rail-net.
(IT) I killed 1 rifleman. (41-5)
2 more tiles near Samara are pillaged. Sumerian troops are now losing interest and start leaving that city.


1575 AD
I killed 1 Keshik, 3 riflemen, 1 knight and 2 cavalry. (48-5)

I spot a Sumerian Guerilla. That means the probably don't have Rubber. [dance]

Summary:
The cavalry count is up 4 from the start of my turn. I have achieved the needed kill ratio for AW.



Signed up:
LKendter
Greebley (currently playing)
Zwingli (on deck)
hotrod0823
Meldor

Our general game plan:
1) Science research must be very aggressive with deficit spending if we can afford it. Please - NO taxmen.
2) Try to build the roads before the city to take maximum advantage of the 3 tile city plans.
3) For the most part raze all cities unless they have a useful wonder

Remember 5 to 10 turns per round - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.
Additional restriction: No armies


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/LK76-1575AD.zip
 
I don't want to lose a town due to carelessness.
Now there is a comment I can understand. I was shifting the Mercs around every turn based on counting the number of threat vs. each town.

FYI - Please keep the unit on the coal so that the AI doesn't decide to bomb our rail building capacities. Every piece of railroad helps.
 
Preturn: Look over the situation. Ugh!
Why in the world are we making regular units? We have two towns without barracks making Swiss Mercs. Even worse, the two towns next to them have barracks and are building Cannon. I switch the two cities building Cannon to Vet Swiss Mercs and the two towns building Regular Swiss Mercs to Cannon. Lower science and still get Rep in 2 turns.

IBT: Lose 2 Swiss Mercs.

1580 AD: Kill some units but only 1 rifle. There are just so many of them.

IBT: We are hit fairly heavily by Aztec Cavalry. We lose about 5 Swiss Mercs. Breda is attacked and falls, there are just so many spots that we can be attacked it is very difficult to manage them all. We get Rep Parts and start Industrialization.

1585 AD: Take back Breda. It still has its barracks. We don't currently have rubber. However, there is one just outside our borders next to Gordium. I assault Gordium and capture it. We get 5 Persian workers.
Babylon has Infantry I spot two near Gordium.

IBT: We lose more mercs than we can afford to but all cities hold. We build our first Infantry.

1590 AD: Set up for a town in the Marsh. My goal is to remove all places the enemy can heal behind our lines. Attack some units; we kill our first infantry.

IBT: Some attacks which we survive

1595 AD: We build Enshede which removes the enemy healing ground.

IBT: Some more attacks. A swiss Merc is lost.

1600 AD: Kill the rifles mentioned below and some Cavalry. Spy on the babylon city.

Notes:
I have been working on a "trap" for sumerian units. I was unsure if it would work but it did. Basically I damaged a bunch of units. They retreated to the one square not in our territory. However that square will be in our territory next turn (rushed a temple for 12 gold). Additionally the square is surrounded by units. In this way 27 Sumerian rifles have been trapped for us to kill. We can bombard them each round until at 1 hp and then kill them off.

I also red-line 6 Sumerian rifles not in the trap and kill them. This in addition to above will be 33 less rifles to bother the world.

My main goal of shrinking our front line was successful. The unit no longer can sit near our silks and heal up, but will retreat all the way back. We can red-line them and kill them as they go.

It was very close at times. A bit worse RNG luck and I would have had to report more city losses. It should get better though. I reduced the number of towns that the AI can get to in one turn and we now have an infantry in those towns. I am using 2 infantry for the "trap", but those should be freeing up shortly.

Be careful about units stepping on new squares and causing cities to riot. The two current riots are due to this. Den Helder actually needs extra happiness as a frigate comes in and steps on a fish causing a riot if the town is balanced.

I feel we need to never attack rifles geurillas, or infantry with more than one hit point (unless there is a very strong reason to do so). Cavalry and knights should also be hit for damage when they can be reached (i.e. next to a town). 2 hp rifles will retreat and "get away", but it is not worth losing a Cavalry for. The same thing goes with attacking cavalry. One hp cavalry are tempting to go after, but it is better to let them go if it puts our cavalry at risk. We need to continue to build up units.

I think we need to make some forward progress rather than just trying to kill rifles. I am a big believer in pinging most of the rifles and killing a few. Also existing damaged rifles have to go a long way to heal giving us some leeway. Finally we have a limited window of opportunity where we have infantry for defense, and the AI doesn't have tanks. We must make progress during this time or we are in trouble.

Next two goals
I would start working on taking out the Babylon City to the north. It is guarded by Infantry, so we need artillery support. My recommendations to the next player are to build the road to the mountain (under an Infantry when road building). We can hit the town with Artillery from the Mountain, but the cannon have to advance and so need an infantry to guard them. Once we destroy that city we will have a desperately needed additional Luxury and finalize our front line.

I would go ahead and capture Sidon. It looks fairly defensable and moves our front line forward. I would wait until you have infantry that can move into the city after it is taken. It will be the last "easy" city (probably guarded by spears like Gordium was).

After that, I would consider the northmost Sumerian city (or a mongol one?)

Our current army:
15 Cavalry - I think this was an increase.
4 Infantry - Yay!
50 Cannon - A small increases
42 Swiss Mercs - I am pretty sure this is a decrease as we definitely lost some.
A Trebuchet

Sorry for the verbose report, but this was really hard to play and took a long while to do. It should be easier though for the next player with the shorter front line and infantry to protect us.
 
Good idea on that rifle trap. At this point I think AI bombers would be much worse than tanks as they could wreck our rail network. It will be a long time before we can properly counter an air attack.

Got it.
 
I would start working on taking out the Babylon City to the north.
I couldn't agree more. Not only will the 4th luxury help us, but that is probably most of the worlds fur supply. That should cut the number of luxuries for the AI civs.


I think we need to make some forward progress rather than just trying to kill rifles.
To me killing rifles IS forward progress. Our getting rid of all of those annoying units behind our lines makes life a lot easier for us.


We need to continue to build up units.
This is the understatement of the day. I can't wait until we have a few artilleries to help out.


I would go ahead and capture Sidon. It looks fairly defensable and moves our front line forward.
I agree with a caveat. I want a rail-net at lease partially in place, or the city will be a nightmare to defense. I hope that is the last Persia city. Killing Persia will reduce the risk of a UN loss.
 
Yes, that is the last city. I just checked.

We can attack from Gordium and when it falls we will be able to RR to get Infantry into the town and to cover. We need enough infantry to cover both the square of RR and the town.

One nice thing is that Sidon and Gordium will be the only two towns that can be attacked by units that we can't already see (Assuming we have also taken the fur town to protect Samaria). This is also true for Breda and Gordium but that is a much more awkward line of defense (or at least I found it so).

Note that we are finally able to build aquaducts in all our corrupt towns since we have civil engineers. Getting all those cities to size 7 will lower unit costs.

I just noticed I forgot to switch Dordecht to an aquaduct. We should do so.
 
I noticed the unit is Leiden is gone. The reason I had troops there is to stop the AI from bombarding our tiles. The AI preference is to ping units in cities. That is better for us then having to repair damage.

I sense some ugly fights coming up to keep that rubber on-line.

I agree with Greebley and the aqueducts. They cost us $1, but gain $2 in unit support. There is no real difference from size 7 to size 12 so once size 7 hits please hire the scientist back.

It is hard to believe is it 1600AD. We are still so paper-thin for defense with cities still empty. We have another problem coming up called marines. Once they are close to play all of our core cities need two quality defenders. We have 7 useful coastal cities with just 3 mercs at the moment.

For a game of massive fighting I have just one question. What is going on with the leader drought?
 
Well we will never own the Heroic Epic of course. Otherwise, I would say on my turn it was simply bad luck. I definitely won more than 16 elite victories on attack not to mention the defensive ones.

Agree on putting the unit back. The fact that it is missing is an oversight on my part. One turn I was desperate enough to suffer the tile bombardment, but erred by not putting it back.

We should connect up our inland Coal now that it is in our interior. We don't need to rely on the coastal one if we do.

My thought on defenders is that as we get Infantry into the front line cities, the Swiss Mercs can head back for defense. The attrition rate on the Infantry will be much lower than for the Mercs and we won't need so many. In one turn, I had six Swiss Mercs in a town and really thought I was going to lose the town during the IBT.

Also Swiss Mercs will free up as we kill the units in our lands and don't need the rifle trap for example (I was possibly overly cautious about the rifles attacking out. Not sure if they will when they can't heal or move.

Oh, I also think that in the far north we should make a mini-wall so that no unit can go North of Bactra. Units on 4 Mountains and a hill will close of the 'Samarian gap'. The enemy units near Samaria get defensive terrain and thus are harder to kill. Let them attack at bad odds or go around. Actually for the hill, we could put a town. Then with walls it would be as good as a mountain for defense.
 
1600 AD (0)
Everything looks as good as can be expected.

IBT- Defeat 4 riflemen, 1 longbow, and 1 keish in defense

1605 AD (1)
Kill 6 riflemen, 1 keish, 1 cav losing 2 cav (to redlined rifles).

IBT- 1 rifle, 2 infantry, and 2 cav lose to our defenses, we lose 1 merc.

1610 AD (2)
Kill 2 cav, 4 rifle, 1 keish, 1 guerilla without loss. Begin fencing off the trapped riflemen

IBT- lose 1 merc, fending off 1 cav and 1 keish. The trapped rifle stack approaches Dordrecht.

1615 AD (3)
Pack as many mercs as possible into Dordrecht and fortify infantry at all other exits. 3 rifles destroyed without cost.

IBT- A portion of the trapped stack attacks, and we destroy 10 riflemen losing 1 merc, in other areas we destroy 1 cav.

1620 AD (4)
We destroy 6 riflemen and 1 cav, but lose a horrible 5 cavalry (3 to redlined rifles and 2 to injured cavalry).
Road is completed to Shuruppak.

IBT- We lose a 4hp fortified infantry to a keish, kill 1 rifle in defense.

1625 AD (5)
In our first attack, we lose an elite cav to a redlined rifle leaving us only 9 cavalry :mad:. At this point I decide to go the full 10 turns in order to not leave a mess like last time.

We do have plenty of bombardment, and kill 2 cavalry and 5 riflemen with our remaining cavalry/infantry, destroying the trapped stack.

IBT- no attacks, but Babylonian forces move into Shuruppak.

1630 AD (6)
Destroy 7 riflemen and 1 cav at a cost of 1 cavalry. Artillery destroy the walls of Shuruppak.

IBT- A big round of defense, and we repel 3 rifles, 1 mdi, 2 keish, 2 cav, and 1 knight for a cost of 1 merc.
A babylonian ship departs from Shuruppak, probably taking some defenders with it.

1635 AD (7)
We have sufficient artillery to redline the defenders of Shuruppak, and I decide to take a shot at the city. The first vet cav dies after taking an artillery hit promoting the infantry defender to elite, and we can't afford to commit further forces (even redlined, fortified infantry are too tough).
We destroy 3 riflemen, 1 cav, 1 knight, and 1 guerilla without further losses.

IBT- 3 kiesh, 1 mdi, and 2 cav are destroy for no loss, and we get a defensive leader.
We learn Industrialization.

1640 AD (8)
Kill 3 riflemen, 1 mdi, and 1 cavalry for 1 loss (cavalry to red rifle)
Start railing toward Sidon in order to set up for a capture.

IBT- We defeat 1 keish and 2 rifles, but lose an infantry.

1645 AD (9)
Capture Sidon without losses and Persia is destroyed (forgot to take a screenshot)
Our new borders allow us to weed out some Aztec cavalry behind the lines, and we destroy 3 cav, 2 rifles, and 1 guerrilla in all.

Factory leader rushed in Amsterdam.

IBT- We lose an infantry, cavalry and merc in defense defeating only 1 guerilla. Enemy units can still use the roads northwest of Sidon.

1650 AD (10)
Destroy 4 cavalry, 2 keish, and 4 rifles, but lose 1 cavalry to a redlined guerilla who is still around. Also bombard and damage a stack of Sumerian destroyers protecting a transport.

Post-turn
There are sufficient artillery/cannon around to redline a number of riflemen per turn, but we are limited by our low cavalry count. For that reason, most military cities are building cavalry rather than artillery at the moment. With the shiny new factory, Amsterdam can make an infantry every other turn.

We may want to discuss the research path, as we are currently locked into Corporation. The draft ability with Nationalism would be very helpful as we have several population maxed cities, and Communism would really help our large number of corrupt cities (potential 8 turn anarchy probably rules it out though).

Edit- I wouldn't even bother trying to destroy redlined infantry until we get a much larger cavalry count, the odds of losing are too high. An exception would be destroying Shuruppak to get the furs.
 
Communism would really help our large number of corrupt cities (potential 8 turn anarchy probably rules it out though).
With pure science push and little cash the pop rush feature doesn't bother me. However, I agree that we couldn't survive the anarchy!

Our next big challenge is to get a couple more factories.

=============================

Signed up:
LKendter
Greebley
Zwingli
hotrod0823 (currently playing)
Meldor (on deck)

Our general game plan:
1) Science research must be very aggressive with deficit spending if we can afford it.
2) Try to build the roads before the city to take maximum advantage of the 3 tile city plans.
3) For the most part raze all cities unless they have a useful wonder

Remember 5 to 10 turns per round - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.
Additional restriction: No armies
 
I got a chance to figure out the loss ratio. It was ~5-1 with 108 kills to 20 losses and that doesn't include the death in Sidon. Persia is dead, so anything thing above 4-1 is good.

Our next city target is still the fur city. That is probably most of the world's furs. We need to hurt the AIs happy level. That is the best thing to slow them down, and to speed us up.

-----------------------

I would like to hear from the team the opinions for the push after the furs cities. My gut feeling says to start pushing against the Mongols as there lack of cavalry makes them weaker. I think our best chance to take out another AI before the UN is the Mongols. We still have a clear risk of UN vote, and killing the Mongols would help reduce the risk.
 
Our next big challenge is to get a couple more factories.

Lets hope for a few leaders! I think that if we can secure the furs we will benefit from the lux greatly. The already long front will be extended that much further.

Pushing back on the Mongols is not a bad Idea. My last round they were more of an annoyance than a problem. Taking a stack of Artillery, Cavs and Infantry for cover may not be a bad idea to see what they can throw at us. IF they lack cavs we can survive and use artillery/cavs to put a hurting on their towns. A few explorers in the stack may be a nice addition to pillage them a bit. Will have to figure out how long it would take to get a sizeable force to push out a bit more aggressively as opposed to the pot shots against the rifle stacks that has been going on over the last 20+ turns.

I think we need to make a move before AI tanks come rolling off the lines.
 
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