LotR10: Scouting Sid

[Bam-Bam]

Got it. Spears/swords/horses vs. rifles. Yay. Prepare for the "charge of the not-so-able brigade". At least there are only two rifles to kill.

Let's see if I can get us up to banking. We sure need a boost to the economy.


Since there hasn't been a roster in a while....

Arathorn (just played)
Bam-Bam (UP)
Speaker (ON DECK)
Skyfish
Reagan
Gothmog

 

[Bam-Bam]

:saiyan: Lost my report as I was trying to save it, so that I could reboot the PC and get online (my DSL modem software is more fickle than Scarlett O'Hara).

Early: Take Aztec city to the north at great loss, no leaders, but the Aztecs had moved a rifle OUT of the city on to the mountain and then decided to attack--for this result

This happened in the 2nd interturn.

After sighting a nice 15 longbow Aztec SoD (with rifle and musket support), I pay Monte 140g for peace. I then make peace with the Hittites for a 326g discount on education (40gpt and 326g), then buy banking from the Hittites (they were at war with 5 civs at the time) for 105gpt and 399g, This opens up trades with the Mongols and Portugal for astronomy and invention--with us paying gpt each time. Income was as low as 21gpt for a turn or two.

The great bank building started, and several should complete in the first few turns for Speaker. The Hittites are taking advantage of the gpt bug, and have bought all but us and Spain against Portugal. There are 2fers available, but we cannot buy any of the optional techs to trade to the Mongols for gunpowder.

We are now up to about 65gpt net, with 189gpt going to other civs.

Sid's Vicious

Arathorn
Bam-Bam (just played)
Speaker (UP)
Skyfish (ON DECK)
Reagan
Gothmog

Good luck, Speaker! Sorry that I lost the details of the report, but I think I got most of the important points. I have a few taxmen in cities until banks and/or happiness builds complete. Several cities just shook off the effects of the whip.

 

[Speaker]

Got it.

 

[Gothmog]

I'll be out of action between Dec 7th and the 14th. It is possible I can play on the night of the 14th, though I doubt it. I'll check in first thing on the 15th, for sure. This is my last trip until Feb.

 

[Arathorn]

Thanks for the reminder, Gothmog. We'll skip you until the 15th -- probably one round. Hopefully, we'll still be around by the 15th, but I wouldn't be TOO terribly surprised to see the AI's launch in less than those 80 turns. Hopefully, Communism/Fascism and wars can slow even the Sid AIs down.

Good luck, Speaker. Looks like a definite time to crank markets/banks/courthouses/aqueducts. Don't be afraid to disband some old regular troops. With upkeep costs 2 gpt in Republic, we really don't want to be over our allowance unless we have to be for a current/pending war. And upgrading costs more now. I disbanded some regular warriors on my turn. Pretty much any reg troops might well be disbanded, so we have a chance of getting our income as high as possible....

Arathorn

 

[Speaker]

IT- I hope report losing isn't a trend. I would like to starve Tepexpan to remove any chance of flipping, so we can disband some military there.

Trade Horses, 65gpt, and 145 gold to the Aztecs for Gunpowder. We have no saltpeter. Banks finishing in the next few turns will improve our income again. All the AI have chemistry.

Mongols and Russia sign MA against the Aztecs. Spain builds Smith's in Murcia.

560AD (1): Disband one warrior and replace him with a horseman.

570AD (2): Portugal is walking a few units around our territory and I am feeling a bit antsy about it. The Portugese city on our continent has been razed. Leiden switches to a Settler and I rush it for 60 gold to fill in the space before someone else does. several cities have hit their happiness limit without another luxury or a cathedral. Renew Wines-Ivory deal with Ottomans, getting them to throw in 1gpt.

580AD (3): Disband a warrior. Settler moves toward open spot in the north. Ottoman city of Istanbul is size 16, meaning the AI is well into the IA. Actually no, this is the new Shakespeare's theater in effect. I see no other cities over size 12. Wow, what a great wonder this is now!

IT- Mongols sign peace with Portugal, even though Portugal has only a few cities left.

590AD (4): Nothing much happens here.

600AD (5): Hittites are moving several units near our territory. I think they are chasing the Portuguese, but I'm not sure. I hope they're not after us because um, we have no military. I'm tempted to make them leave or declare war to recover 145gpt, but we would likely lose a couple cities with nothing able to destroy Knights up there. We have an extra wines to trade, but nothing to get for it at the moment.

IT- Hittites and Aztecs sign MA against the Mongols. Ottomans declare war on the Hittites.

610AD (6): Wow, Caravel's get 5 movement for us Seafaring folk. There's an unclaimed iron in the south that we could grab.

620AD (7): Amsterdam could build Spearmen to replace warriors and horsemen as mp, but really, what's the point? They would get trounced by any unit out there anyways, so Amsterdam goes on wealth.

IT- Hittites kill Portuguese units. Aztecs offer MA against Russia and RoP.

630AD (8): Rush settler in Haarlem to put on the waiting Caravel. Disband a warrior.

Iron/Horses deal with Portugal expires and I can use them to get a discount on Chemistry, but our GA will expire soon. I think it's worth the risk. We have a bunch of deals expiring in 6 turns and some banks finishing before then, so I expect we'll be ok. The deal is Iron, Horses, 74gpt, and 80 gold for Chemistry. Jackpot! Neither the Portuguese nor the Mongols have Physics or Metallurgy. We have no money at the moment, but hopefully can pull a two-fer soon.

640AD (9): Finally found Zwolle in a spot I don't love. I would have preferred one tile north, but the Hittites wouldn't move their worker from the spot and I did not want to wait any longer. Mongols and Portuguese now have Physics.

650AD (10): Some minor troop shuffling.

Conclusion- I'm not sure exactly what I got done here. I got us a couple techs, although I paid full price for them. It looks like there may be some future two-fer opportunities. I would avoid spending any money until our GA runs out. A trade deal with Spain has expired, feel free to renew if you want. Our core is mostly done with banks and moving on to cathedrals so they can grow, although a luxury would work better. Any project that finished this turn was left to my successor to choose. Good luck Sky!

Sid

 

[Arathorn]

We're digging out of the hole, slowly but slowly. (not a typo) GA production was great. Using the iron and horses for trades ASAP is instrumental in trading them as many times as possible. We have little choice with techs at this point...pay full last-civ price or try to steal. Neither is particularly appealing. We just have to keep on pushing and hope eventually we get some good luck and/or something turns our way. At least the game isn't over yet.

Skyfish -- UP NOW

Arathorn

 

[Skyfish]

Got it !

 

[Skyfish]

OK we shell out 328gpt to other civs, make 4gpt and are in Golden Age with 0% lux or science
That "coming out of GA" is gonna be great...
Ottomans have 47499gold, this is just sick

Hittites have Dyes but wont part with it.
Aztecs have 2 available luxes, we need to dish out all our cash (230) and a free wine but it s worth it.
Spain refuses to renew the deal we had of 2 luxes against one of course. We will see next turn
we have specialist in all our core cities, it s an even greater waste in GA.
At this high a cost I wonder if doing our own research is not going to be recommended very soon, after Cath and
Banks we might want to go for Libs..

MMing with the new lux we get up to 9 gpt. We get 172gpt back in 4 turns.

press enter

Russia and Hittites sign vs the Mongols. Hittites request we leave their territory.
Spanish cancel our lux deal, I can only salvage one lux (for wines) and get 82g on top. Re-arrange all cities
to take into account the lux loss, we still made 9gpt this turn, all the small bits are worse grabbing, we now have
money to run a deficit until the big money comes back.

660AD : Increase lux to get more production, it s our last GA turn I suspect

Aztec and Spain sign peace.
Russia and Spain sign peace
GA ends
We run a 137gpt with 10g in the bank. We lose our barracks in Rotterdam and Groningen riots. Thats all

670AD : Arnhem Bank-> wealth (temporarily)
Maastricht Bank-> wealth (temporarily)
We are now at 113gpt deficit and -68gpt at 0% lux.
I re-arrange all the tiles to gof for commerce losing production but we can only get down to -59gpt.
We'll have to see which building we lose, we are not purposely exploiting this bug (it would have been nice
to fix it in C3C though)

Spain signs peace again with Hittites this time, they must have Steam Power or Nationalism and thus get out of the
dog pile they were in...
We lose the Temple in Maastricht.A worker got disbanded.

680A: Nothing much to do, our caravel is heading Ironbound south.

Hittite and Portugal sign Peace.
Ottoman starts Universal Suffrage.

We lose the granary in Rotterdam and a worker, of course it had to be the one that was in our caravel
The deals end we make 68gpt with 10% lux and after reworking all the tiles again !

690AD : There is indeed a 2fer available but I cant buy it.

Hittites want our Territory Map, they have units inside our territory so I agree, they also want to renew our Peace deal
but refuse to give us anything for it of course.

700AD : Even at 110gpt now I can t afford either Physics or Mettalurgy for a 2fer Our settler and elite spear land on Hittite land
in teh south next to the Iron, we can t settle on the Iron as it is on mountain and might lose it to a flip but no matter.

Ottomans and Russia sign peace, Aztecs and Portugal sign peace everybody smoking here and they getting all peaceful now

710AD : Gouda is founded next to Iron.

720AD : Portugal and Mongol still do not have Metallurgy ! But we are only close to get Metallurgy from Spain
Everybody has physics...so we can afford it for all our economy 346g and 125gpt

Mongol and Russia sign peace.

730AD : still no deal...

740AD : 2 Cath complete and Libs are started.

Hittites and Aztecs sign vs Russia : way to go guys !
Ottoman frigates bombard Hittie Knights in our territor, Watch out guys !

750AD : Our caravel is just busting fog in the SOuth. We now have enough money for a 2fer deal !
But I'll let that honour to my follower

Good luck !

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/William_of_the_Dutch,_750_AD.zip

 

[Arathorn]

346 gold + 125 gpt is 2846 gold, which should be roughly double the cost to steal the tech. If we can indeed twofer it (and I'm not convinced we'll have anywhere near enough cash to do the back-end of the twofer. It appears that in C3C the AIs value techs as its cost to the purchaser, not as its cost to the human, which makes 2fers from behind much harder to do), it's worth paying the extra total cost, but at some point, we may need to be stealing the first tech in a twofer effort.

Specialists in our core? Well, that might not be too bad. If the citizen were working the land, he might be providing 2 food, 1 shield, and 2 commerce. If the pop is maxed, and the shield doesn't help, plus markets/banks aren't finished, we're losing next-to-nothing from the specialist.

Roster:
Reagan -- UP NOW
Gothmog -- skipped until 15th
Arathorn -- ON DECK
Bam-Bam
Speaker
Skyfish

I think my next effort on Sid will wait until after a patch.

Arathorn

 

[Skyfish]

I think my next effort on Sid will wait until after a patch.

You bet !

About the specialists, oh they werent that bad of course, we only have one city maxed on pop but a another lux was even better

 

[Kirbsta]

I'm very sorry to disturb u on this game but i have a few questions, i wud be happy if you would answer (some of) em

1.) On the 1st page, i saw some screenshots and I wondered
- How to see the powergraph in the same screen ur playing in (in mid-game)
-Your textures of the tiles differ from mine, where to download these?

And last 1 (for now )

-In a screenshot of the 7th page, cities were called by their name, and behind it was the nation the city belongs to (e.g. Tenochtitlan(Aztecs), I only get the names of the city (Tenochtitlan). How do I get the nationname behind it?

thnx in advance,

Kirbz (a noob who's playing on warlord )

 

[Skyfish]

How do I get the nationname behind it?

In the Main Menu, go to Preferences tick Colourblind Help

The powergraph I think that was a Photoshop or in your game
try F8 and then at the bottom choose "Power"...

 

[Speaker]

Originally posted by Kirbsta
1.) On the 1st page, i saw some screenshots and I wondered
- How to see the powergraph in the same screen ur playing in (in mid-game)
-Your textures of the tiles differ from mine, where to download these?

I actually used Paint Shop Pro and pasted the power graph into the picture of our map.

Tile graphics can be found in the Creation & Customization forum here.

 

[Reagan]

I see it but won't get to play until Thursday night or Friday.

 

[Reagan]

I've played three turns so far. We can trade our last horses for 33gpt from the Aztecs. Is there some reason we haven't capitalized on that deal? A potential 2-fer is out there now due to the Mongols' acquisition of Magnetism. Any cash we can get will put us that much closer to tech catch-up. The only downside I can see is that the Aztecs have saltpeter and would be able to build cavs. With their Sid-enhanced production capabilities, though, they could still spit out enough iron-based units to put us in a world of hurt if they came after us, so the downside risk seems minimal.

 

[Speaker]

I say definitely go for it. We won't be using the horses any time soon (we can't afford the unit upkeep!), and we have to use every possible advantage we can. With the appalling state of our military, we could hardly repel any real invasion, Cavalry, Knight or otherwise. I mean, I was frightened to death by the appearance of 4 Hittite Knights just 15 turns ago....

 

[Skyfish]

The reason the deal was left open was precisely to leave it for help with a 2fer ! Go for it

 

[Reagan]

We don't have the income to support a 2-fer quite yet, but we should when some deals expire in a few turns. In the meantime, I'll make the horses deal to stash some cash away for future trades.

 

[Reagan]

(0) 750 – Eindhoven’s spare horse awakes and begins a trek to defend undefended Enschede. We might want to think about not chumming the water and attracting the AI sharks. Some of Tepexpan’s horsies awake and start a journey towards the middle of our core in case those Hittite soldiers decide to play naughty. Fire Groningen’s taxman for a gain of two food and no lost income. Haarlem gets a taxman to stave off a riot. Various MM techniques speed some growth, shave some turns, and make our civ a bit more efficient. 154gpt+WM+12gp gets us Metallurgy from Spain. Metallurgy+234gp+WM gets us Physics from Portugal. Metallurgy to the Mongols gets us all their gold (204gp) and Economics. There are no 2-fer opportunities, obviously.

(1) 760 – Arnhem: temple->granary. WM trading nets us 18gp (75% boost to our net income).

(2) 770 – Mongols and Aztecs make peace. Enschede: temple->harbor. Tepexpan: harbor->market. Our palace gets a yard. Wines+5gp get us Ivory+11gpt from the Ottomans.

(3) 780 – Lauwersoog: temple->market. Harlingen: market->duct. Gouda: worker->harbor. Trade horses to Aztecs for 33gpt.

(4) 790 – Amsterdam: library->university.

(5) 800 – Utrecht: cathedral->granary.

(6) 810 – Hague: library->university. Enschede: harbor->courthouse. Novo: temple->harbor.

(7) 820 – Hittites and Ottomans make peace. Middelburg: courthouse->duct.

(8) 830 – Russia and Portugal make peace. Groningen: temple->granary. Arnhem: granary->library. Bolu: temple->duct. Our 2-fer opportunity has dried up for the moment, unfortunately. We need Portugal to acquire a required tech so we can trade for the other one. In the meantime, we renew our iron deal with Portugal in exchange for 493gp (he has no gpt and is the highest bidder).

(9) 840 – Russia and Aztecs make peace. Maastricht: library->university.

(10) 850 – Rotterdam: library->university. Eindhoven: library->courthouse. Wines+5gp get us Silks+5gpt from Spain. Wines+145gp get us Spices from Monty.

Keep an eye on Portugal and jump on the next 2-fer chance we get. Have fun!