LotR14 -- RAW (and uncut?)

[Greebley]

Reagan,
The way to get the pictures in the post rather than as links is to have only 1 link per post. I usually put the save in the main log and post each picture seperately afterwards with some kind of short description above it and any features I want to point out in the picture. It does mean more posts, but works well enough. Not sure why we have that limitation...

 

[Kylearan]

I won't describe every single move I made during my turns - I think we know how to play AW by now. Highlights of my turns:

* Captured Edrine and destroyed the Ottomans in 1200BC.

* Teotihuacan founded in 1100BC, not on the spot Reagan suggested but one tile NW to have all neighbouring cities in 3-tile-reach.

* Second lux connected.

* Swordman army created. First enemy hoplite and first enemy legionary sighted, both dispatched using the army.

There's a sword advancing on Edrine who will be on a hill and across a river next turn - sorry that I didn't manage to get some units on the hill myself in time, but the last turns saw a lot of units to defend against elsewhere.

If we manage to get another leader, I suggest to rush the Heroic Epic in Istanbul with it.

Roster:
Kylerean
Arathorn <-- UP NOW
T-hawk <-- on deck
Reagan
Speaker -- on indefinite skip


-Kylearan

 

[Arathorn]

Should be able to get it and play tonight. Looks like we have quite the conglomoration of different forces around us. We'll see how many forces are brought -- maybe/hopefully I can go a-conquering with the sword army, but I'll have to see.

Arathorn

 

[Greebley]

I think you all have this game won. Regent civs with one or two cities will research slowly and you should be able to pick them off one by one fairly quickly. At least that is my guess.

 

[Kylearan]

I agree that we won't have the usual AW research problem and that we will soon have a tech lead in fact. Upkeep alone will kill the AI research this time. But it won't be easy until we can turn a potential tech lead into a military advantage, say by getting pikes/MDI or knights first. Essentially we face 29 cities without corruption producing units, and I was surprised about the amount of units I had to face during my turns.

I only hope no AI will be so stupid as to set its only city on building a wonder. Or even worse, *all* AIs decide at one point or another to try to go for a wonder...

-Kylearan

 

[Arathorn]

Well, at least one AI was building a wonder. A second is under construction close to us. The Carthaginians (whoever/wherever they are!) completed the Colossus very early in my turns. That's a big boon to them. The Greeks keep starting the Statue of Zeus, but they never seem to make any progress on it (I was getting the start message every couple turns).

I slipped a temple into Teno's build queue right away and got us a little bit of culture going. I expect to capture a lot more than raze in this game and some cultural superiority will be very helpful. Even a single temple NOW will be very beneficial. It also let me dial down the lux tax a bit.

Teno is also running a scientist. We can get 10 spt even with the scientist and can't reach 15 spt without starvation, so I thought it valuable. I could turn down science, too, so we didn't go broke and still get Monarchy in reasonable time. I'm questioning a little whether Monarchy is worth it, but then I look at all our freshwater access and I believe it is.

I decided the sword army needs to go after capitals. Border cities (like Sumer of the Sumerians due south of where the sword army started) will have no culture and will whip away any size they may have. It's now approaching Cuzco and I think it should be able to siege the city over the next 2-4 turns and capture it for the greater good of the Aztec people.

The only real downer of my turn was losing a vet horse to a 2 hp archer, with me attacking onto flat ground doing no damage. That necessitated some interesting force adjustments, but I think we're OK right now. Catapults in the south are positioned to reach as many locations as possible in 2/3 MP so that they can move and fire the same turn.

I killed a whole bunch of units, but probably no more than 3 from any one civilization. The problem is lack of stacks makes attacking with slow units kind of dangerous. And once you kill one civ's attacker(s), another civ steps up to take their place. There are serious units flowing our way...I probably averaged 3-4 kills/turn and it's only 750 BC.

All the fronts were fine, though, and I never risked a pillage. A regular archer won't attack an elite spear with catapult support fortified in a city, if you're curious. At least, I never had that happen, despite numerous opportunities for the AI.

Pretty standard AW stuff, but our unit support costs are starting to get to us. And the flow of troops is neverending. No corruption and LOTS of trading opportunities has the start to this game, at least, pretty exciting. Many some of the 10+ civs we've not contacted yet are also growing into monsters. One can hope we survive to find serious competition later in the game, too, although it's probably unlikely.

Suggestions:
- Use the sword army to take and then defend Cuzco (maybe whip a spear or two, too, if/when the opportunity presents itself)
- Keep Teno on 10 spt until it grows to size 11 and then maybe try for 15 spt
- Wait until the spear to the east of Teno moves onto an actual good square for us before killing it. You should be able to ping it with 'pults and use the newly-produced horsie to attack NOT across the river (probably moving S, SE across the river and then N to attack or something).
- Have fun!

Roster:
T-hawk -- UP NOW
Reagan -- ON DECK
Kylerean
Arathorn
Speaker -- on indefinite skip

Arathorn

 

[T-hawk]

I see it. Again, not sure when I can get to it but will eventually.

 

[Reagan]

No rush, T-hawk. I'll be quite happy with one turn per week or so. With only four of us, the rotation will turn over pretty quickly.

 

[Arathorn]

Let's try to stick to the 72 hours. The game is still pretty small at this point, so it shouldn't take long. If we start going much more slowly than that, I think it'll be really hard to keep up our interest in the game.

If there's concern about too fast turn-over, I will try to find a fifth (and then run with six when Speaker returns). But I don't want to start letting turn-over times get lax. That leads to nothing but a mess. Or a SUL5B situation.

Arathorn

 

[Reagan]

I wasn't advocating a change to the seventy-two hour rule. I was simply saying, as the player following T-hawk in the rotation, that I'm not in any rush to receive the game. Speaking solely for myself, I am much more likely to get burned out by having to play a lot of turns in a short time period, especially in a more intense game like always war, than I am if the game goes at a more leisurely pace. With that said, I don't think any of us are likely to drag this game into a SUL5B fate. That would both suck and blow!

 

[T-hawk]

OK, here we go.

Preturn: everything looks good except that I'd rather have a sword than a horse at Tenoch. We don't need mobile units; we need durable units. The army will be an uber city-capturing engine.

Also tweak Edrine for growth in 2 and change its build to a granary. We've got plenty enough military to hold our own in the short run, and we'll need some serious economic producers in the medium (Monarchy) term.


730 AD: Bombard the spear who's now next to Tenoch, and hit him at 2/3 with our new 4/4 sword, but we lose.

710 AD: I lose a 4/4 horse in the south attacking a 2/3 archer.

But our All-Powerful Army (tm) captures Cuzco this turn. Incans aren't eliminated.

Also this turn, our elite archer at Tenoch pops another Great Leader! Since we can't support another army, the Heroic Epic is the obvious choice. I'll do it in Istanbul to get that city a free cultural expansion.


Between turns, our elite spear on a hill beats two attacking Mongol swords.

690 AD: Got a situation in the south - a pair of veteran Roman Legionarys showed up. Our catapults get busy but it'll take some time.

Whip a spear in Cuzco - it's going to starve due to unhappiness as the army stops policing the city anyway, may as well get some use out of the population.

670 AD: My crappy combat luck continues as a 4/4 sword fails to beat a 2/3 sword at Istanbul.

650 BC: I had two slaves NE of Tenoch that could only be covered by an elite sword, and a Mongol horse came out of nowhere and killed the stack.

630 BC: Catapults finally get enough advantage to let a sword attack the Roman legionary pair, and kill one.

Hey - why don't we have any walls in our cities?? Teo and Istanbul both swap to and will build them this turn - but not before a Babylonian sword gets to attack Teo and kill a spear.


Next few turns, more units get killed on both sides, nothing important. We lose the elite spear that was defending our iron hill to a Persian horseman that knocked it down to 1HP before retreating and then an American archer kills it.


550 BC: Our army attacks Athens twice, killing its two hoplites leaving a 1HP archer showing. We'll have this city next turn!

Also this turn, we have a road complete to Cuzco and its Wines.

Also this turn, we retake our iron hill (it didn't get pillaged) and park our remaining elite spear there.

Also this turn, Monarchy is due. If we revolt - and I think we should - I *highly* recommend whipping 30-shield units (swords or horses, your choice) in each of the three southern cities. Each whip will get almost exactly 20 shields, and we'll need the units during anarchy.

Pay attention to the three workers NE of Tenoch (they're under the archer right now). They're on Ctrl-R so they can finish the road a turn sooner, but if they get threatened you'll need to wake them *before* the game cycles around to them so you can move them to safety.

Also note the Babylonian units by Teotihuacan. They're no threat to the walled city with spears and catapults, but make sure to leave 2+ spears in the city.

Picture attached.

 

[Reagan]

I see it but it may be Sunday before I get a chance to play/post.

T-hawk, in my games when I have workers on Ctrl-R they wake up when an AI military unit (friendly or otherwise) moves adjacent to them. Did the Hoplite next to our archer not wake the Teno workers? If not, is there a trick to keeping them from waking up automatically?

 

[Kylearan]

Reagan, you might try to switch off the "wake up on friendly unit" / "wake up on enemy unit" options in the preference menu...

 

[T-hawk]

That's it, Kylearan. It's a good option in theory (interrupt a unit if it's threatened), but the computer can't determine whether an enemy unit is actually a threat or not. (I do hope that hoplite won't attack our damaged archer - I don't think it will.) So I always leave those preferences off so that my Ctrl-R workers never wake up when I don't want them to.

 

[Speaker]

After an amazing two week vacation, I'm finally back. Would love to fit in a turn this weekend because I may have to go on the road for a few days next week. Thanks for putting up with my respite, guys.

 

[Reagan]

I have time to play a few turns tonight and should be able to finish tomorrow, Speaker. Welcome back!

Thanks for the tip, Ky and T-hawk. I thought that option was a warning that you were about to attack a civ with whom you were at peace. I am constantly learning new things about this game even though I've been playing it for years.

 

[Kylearan]

Welcome back, Speaker, and good luck on your job hunt!

 

[Arathorn]

Roster:

Reagan -- PLAYING NOW
Speaker -- ON DECK (WELCOME BACK!)
Kylerean -- bumped back
Arathorn
T-hawk

If Reagan can finish tonight, that should dovetail nicely into Speaker playing this weekend. Glad you had a good vacation, Speaker, and I hope it keeps you refreshed for a long time.

Arathorn

 

[Reagan]

I played about seven turns last night in a somewhat disjointed fashion (I was interrupted a lot). I should be able to finish tonight. As a preview, I can tell you we have one less opponent and two more cities, we're now a Monarchy and are about to finish Map Making research (it was almost fully passed around to the AIs, which made it an easy choice, plus it'll let us sneak out a galley or two and try to contact the remaining civs), and we've only lost two or three troops. It's getting hairy, though, in the south and at Cuzco in the west. We need more units. We now have ivory and Teno can swap to Zeus, due in fourteen turns. I'll need to check to see if anyone else has started it. Trading the production of five swords for a dominant wonder like Zeus seems like a pretty easy choice unless we think someone will beat us to it. I do know there's a pretty healthy cascade possibility because the Pyramids, Oracle, etc., have not yet been completed. Playing on Regent creates a whole new mindset (self-researching for a tech lead, having a shot at ancient wonders, etc.).

 

[Arathorn]

On SoZ, I saw Greece start it about 4 times on my turns, but noone else to my knowledge. Carthage did complete Colossus, so there are some civs out somewhere working on wonders. We might get beat, and we might lose all cascade options, but I tend to think the risk is probably worth it. Heck, just having another lux hooked up (what is that now, 4?) is pretty valuable.

There's no doubt SoZ has the greater long-term payoff. The question is, will we survive to see it? If we really are desperate for units NOW, investing in long-term SoZ isn't necessarily the best option. I'd rather have four swords NOW to keep Cuzco than 20 ACav later.

I'm happy to see military pressures and some different technology concerns. That was the hope. I doubt it can last a whole lot longer than another 50 turns or so, but that's a pretty good run for a single game -- from the beginning through the whole BC period.

Arathorn