LotR28 - Random Rollicking for Returning Refugees

I agree to take out Arabia and India, starting with Arabia once all deals are up.

We can then found more cities since we now have the FP. We need more science and hence more cities.
 
Hrmpf, these were definitely not my best turns, and a bit unsatisfactory. In RB2, I had just declared war on 2 AIs in a single turnset, killed over a dozen units and captured 4 cities on Emperor. This game is only on King, so I got a bit overconfident. Gandhi only has 2(!) cities, and I thought upgrading 2 units to longswordmen and buying a trebuchet would be enough for his backward self. Waiting for reinforcements would have taken way too long, as the rest of our units were all in the northeast. Well, I forgot that his Indian War Elephants are ranged units, and so progress was slooow with only two meatshields. I killed 2 archers, a warrior and 2 war elephants, and now the next player should be able to take Delhi next turn:



...but our units are wounded and need some time to heal, especially the northern longswordman.

Regarding Arabia, after some turns I was about to declare war on them as well...just when I saw him running around with a longswordman of his own, a catapult plus lots of other units. Since we have a very long front with Arabia and our western cities aren't protected until our Indian strike force comes back, I think we need a couple of more turns before we can attack. I've started to build 2 musketmen and a knight to help, ready in a couple of turns.



Apart from that, we completed Acoustics and Navigation, and are now researching Scientific Theory. We also spawned another great scientist, which I think we should save for something expensive and important to bulb.

We met more city states (1 maritime and 2 militaristic), saw 2 barb encampments on islands and met Darius. I sold him excess furs and open borders for some money. Alex has entered the Renaissance era, and I agreed with a pact of cooperation (why not), but refused to gift him wines.

I've moved a worker over to Marseilles, which was completely unimproved at size 4, and we should start a road over to Delhi, now that it will fall next turn.

Sorry for the lack of real progress, but sometimes this happens. I'm sure Arathorn will do better. :)
 

Attachments

  • lotr28_1250ad_1.jpg
    lotr28_1250ad_1.jpg
    170.4 KB · Views: 675
  • lotr28_1250ad_2.jpg
    lotr28_1250ad_2.jpg
    187.1 KB · Views: 628
  • LotR28-1250ad.Civ5Save
    631.4 KB · Views: 150
Me? I have to fight a battle?!? Maybe two? OK. I can/will do that. I might well wait for those extra units, though. And then start pushing us back towards speeding to space.

Should hopefully have a chance to play today.

Arathorn
 
(0)1250 – Not a whole lot to do. Ky left things looking pretty good. I did go around to each city and micro things, mostly for growth. Wake a knight near Arabia and get him a bit closer to the front. Arabia has a LOT of spears, though, so the efficacy of knights is a bit questionable. I'll make do, though, once I declare there. Gonna focus on Gandhi first and let a couple units complete.

(I) Gandhi came wanting peace. He offered 202 gold and 18 gpt, as well as 2 iron, OB, peace with Venice – basically everything he had. 700 gold would be nice, but... no. It's time for us to conquer our continent.

(1)1260 – Explore the other continent. Always good to do. I'm glad we have a caravel over there already. Kudos on that. Delhi bombarded us a fair bit, but I use up a promotion to heal our treb (in a very dangerous position) and use our nearly red-lined longswordman to take the city!



Other than that, I work on getting all our units into position to hammer Arabia on the turn when I finally decide to declare. India shows up with another archer that could be a problem by Delhi, but I think we'll be OK. Arabia is showing quite a few units. I am hoping the soon-to-complete muskets will play a major role. Third academy by Paris gets its science up to almost 100/turn.

(2)1270 – Healing by India. Watching Arabia move units all over the place. Sell one of our excess cotton to Darius for not-quite 150 gold. And sell Open Borders to Alex for 50 gold. No reason not to.

(3)1280 – Meet Copenhagen. Decide its time and declare on Arabia. Maybe it was a bit early. I killed two spears and bombed two others down to very low life. Captured two workers. Set up in a good position on a number of cities. I don't THINK their counter-attack will be too painful, but I could be wrong. Still healing by India. LOTS of healing needed there.

(4)1290 – Lost a catapult on the interturn. Attacking more. Kill a couple spears, capture another worker, wound more, move on Gandhi's last city. Move on an Arabian city. LOTS of open territory and few units. Good fun battle. I wish we had a few more ranged units, but it's OK.

(5)1300 – Was well bombarded but lost nothing more than hps. Everything is still looking pretty solid. I'll have to be careful on a couple fronts, but as long as units aren't lost, all is good. Venice is fighting well with us, which is being quite helpful. Scientific Method completes as well.

Meet Monaco. No gifts. We can probably start in on a third city-state soon, if we want. Kill an archer, a longswordsman, keep working on cities, keep production managed, work on Machinery. Lots of things will start happening very soon. But before too long I'm going to have to take another heal break. At least the units from India will be able to join in against Arabia soon.

(6)1310 – Few units around to kill. Kill a single spear. Arabia appears to be totally gassed, but I can only do Basra and get ready to raze.

Have to retreat a bit from some other cities. They're doing more damage than I'd expected. Oh well. Multiple other units are en route and we'll be fine. As long as casualties stay low/nil, we'll be good. I do hope to liberate Dublin, too, simply because I think city-states are generally worth more as allies than as taken over cities.

(7)1320 – Basra is burning (and growing). The far continent is getting mapped. Units are dancing. Not much to say/do. Three cities should fall next turn, I hope.

(8)1330 – I failed. I did discover Krakatoa, but....

Nasra survived. But.....

Baghdad has nothing. I'll burn. The pop just isn't worth the extra unhappies and the production cost.



But the last Indian city....



A wonder? I'll choose to puppet it for now. I think we may well want to annex it for the great person bonus. We can always raze later, if that's the team consensus.

Either way....



(9)1340 – Now work on razing Najran. It has nothing.



Liberate Dublin, too. It had a colosseum, so I debated annexing it or puppeting it, but I think liberating is the right way to go. We are a bit unhappy as a nation now, with our recent conquests. We can trade for happies or just not grow as fast for a bit. Either way is fine. We do have at least one colosseum completing soon.



(10)1350 – Well, Kufah doesn't fall, nor does Medina. I didn't expect them to. Actually, too, Arabia showed up with more units than I expected, so we might lose a unit on the interturn. We have a knight near a spear that can be double-bombarded. I was looking for flanking bonuses and rushing because I thought Arabia was totally gassed. I was wrong, apparently.

We are down to one smaller front, though. Arabia is broken, so they should be pretty easy to finish off. I only have one settler under production, but we have a number of cities to replace.

Team talk should include: 1700 gold, what to do with it? Buy luxuries? More city-states? Another maritime city-state would be really nice. Or we could buy some happiness. What about research path? I grabbed a bunch of cheap techs to make research agreements a better plan, because the random tech will at least be valuable. I also unlocked theatres, so we can get more happiness.

An overview of our empire for lurkers:





Arathorn
Corbeau -> UP NOW
ThERat -> ON DECK
Jaffa Tamarin
Kylearan

Corbeau, if you could move the DLC out while you play, I think that will lead to the best results for now. I don't want to have to retcon your turns out again. That was no fun. I think the best we can do is to just avoid the DLC, which is what Jaffa did and it seemed to work well.

I would also like some team input on some of the issues listed above....

Arathorn
 

Attachments

  • Civ5Screen0055.jpg
    Civ5Screen0055.jpg
    68.7 KB · Views: 635
  • Civ5Screen0058.jpg
    Civ5Screen0058.jpg
    102.9 KB · Views: 649
  • Civ5Screen0059.jpg
    Civ5Screen0059.jpg
    55.6 KB · Views: 601
  • Civ5Screen0062.jpg
    Civ5Screen0062.jpg
    74 KB · Views: 649
  • Civ5Screen0061.jpg
    Civ5Screen0061.jpg
    95 KB · Views: 620
  • Civ5Screen0060.jpg
    Civ5Screen0060.jpg
    106.2 KB · Views: 623
  • Civ5Screen0063.jpg
    Civ5Screen0063.jpg
    63.4 KB · Views: 602
  • Civ5Screen0064.jpg
    Civ5Screen0064.jpg
    146.9 KB · Views: 676
  • LotR28AD-1350.Civ5Save
    624.3 KB · Views: 161
Nice progress and it's great to see 305spt. We ought to make that even bigger.

I would use the money for city states and a rushed building here and there. After taking out Arabia, we will get into settling/building mode and get our cities up. I think it was mentioned earlier, that we do need some production cities for the spaceship parts. We should decide which are those cities for us. Paris is obviously going to be our science city.
 
Money: I wouldn't suggest buying new city state allies until we have more income. Save our cash for keeping allied status with our existing allies, and rushing occasional useful buildings.

Research: maybe go for Military Science and build the Brandenburg Gate for bonus great scientist points?
 
Nice tuns, Arathorn! :goodjob: Interesting choice to make yet another academy with the great scientist, it's definitely different from what most players do, which is nice.

I also think we don't need more city states. Instead, I'd say we should rush-buy happiness buildings all over the place, as we'll need it if we want to take down Arabia.

This doesn't feel much like a space race so far, more like a domination attempt. Good thing we're not on a Pangea, or otherwise we might not stop conquering more AIs... :lol:
 
Got it. I think. Civ 5 patched itself just now, and suddenly there's actually *another* DLC folder with the Mongols. I'm going to have to take a spin round the forums to check out what's new with the patch, what to remove, and what can stay.
 
I'd actually raze those useless Arabian cities and keep the good ones (now we can have a look at cities before taking them). After which we can replant them with our own.

We should try and grab that social policy that gives us added science for every trade post. This should be very powerful.

By the way, once the Arabian war is over, what are we going to do with all our units? Unit maintenance is pretty steep.
 
I stopped building units. We probably need to keep a few around to limit the AI's proclivity for war. We can disband a few for cash, but I'd keep most of 'em. The social policy we want is in Rationalism, so it shouldn't be too hard to acquire. I think/hope we're already moving in that direction.

I *think* all that's new with the patch is the Mongols (for free, for all of us). I hope that's not an issue, but it's so hard to tell. I've certainly not seen any other patch notes.

As to the academies, I'm basically positive it's suboptimal. But it's kinda nice to build a super-science city, and this is only Monarch/King, so we should be fine. Paris will be cranking half our science once the public school completes and we pull a couple people from production tiles to become specialists. Should be 150 fairly easily on its own.

Arathorn
 
Got it. I think. Civ 5 patched itself just now, and suddenly there's actually *another* DLC folder with the Mongols. I'm going to have to take a spin round the forums to check out what's new with the patch, what to remove, and what can stay.

Allegedly, saves are now properly compatible and it is no longer necessary to remove any DLC.
 
I played a short turnset just in case (is my resignedness to the modern trend of paid beta test "releases" a sign of patience or of trauma?). Six turns, with really only one significant decision and two events worth highlighting.

The decision was to immediately drain our coffers to buy a Colosseum and to ally with Ragusa. Not only is Ragusa a maritime city-state with troops on Arabia's borders, but they have Whales - a luxury resource that we otherwise lack. After one turn of city-burning, we're all the way back to positive happiness:



The events are pretty straightforwards:



Chemistry in; set course for Economics (it's on the way to pretty much everything interesting).



Mecca and Medina are puppeted. All other Arabian cities burn. We suffer no losses.

Now it's time to reconfigure. We're back into minor unhappiness after the conquests, but it's no longer crippling our infrastructure production. We've got a sizable military, but no threats to subdue. We have plenty of open land, but will struggle to find the happiness to settle it. Our technology grants us many future infrastructure options, but that obviously means we haven't built them yet. The continent, however, is quite definitively ours.
 

Attachments

  • LotR28 AD-1410.Civ5Save
    620.3 KB · Views: 170
Got it,

I would wait to settle more cities until we grab some social policies that could benefit us (have to check whether there are still science related policies but surely there are some more).

Develop our science base is surely something we want fast. We ought to make more money as well, our income seems a little low.
 
Science base is primarily population. Population means happy buildings. Happy buildings cost money. They're all intertwined. I agree, though, we can focus on economy for quite a while. We can probably disband some troops. I would go trading post heavy in most cities, leaving aside 3 or so for production. My space race experience is that Apollo is the big cost and the rest come fairly easily. We might even want to try to get a Great Engineer to help with AP.

Loss risk -- keep track of F9 to make sure nobody's getting close to utopia. I tend to doubt it, but the AI has surprised me before. No one will conquer our capital, so domination is out. I can't imagine we'll be beaten into space. And with our local civ-state allies, I really struggle to see any AI making a serious run at diplomacy. Just watch the culture and we should be fine, I think/hope. And don't dilly-dally.

Once we get our economy in shape, we should make certain we don't have any majorly trailing techs (that are really cheap) and start signing some research pacts.

Arathorn
 
by the way, can one Great Engineer finish the Apollo or is this like in Civ4 only a portion of hammers?
 
I don't know about Apollo, but I second the mass trading post strategy. There are enough maritime city states around that we can afford to go farm light, and with each trading post generating 2 science points...
 
lurker's comment:
by the way, can one Great Engineer finish the Apollo or is this like in Civ4 only a portion of hammers?

I am sure GEs give a number of hammers, they don't automaticaly complete a wonder. Though Apollo is a project right, not a wonder? (so it must not work anyway)
 
Played 14 turns to even the turns out. Also, those were very peaceful turns.

I traded some luxuries to Greece and Persia to get us some cash and their luxuries too.
I got into research pacts with both of them. Hence, I cleared some cheaper techs and now we are one turn away from steam (as this will give us more shields for mills)

Our happiness looks better and we might be able to settle new cities soon. Income has increased a lot too as we are now on a trade post frenzy.

I adopted the one important policy for us and that had a great effect on our research


Our empire right now (I included the numbers at the beginning of my turnset as well to compare)


Due to us fighting some barb ship. we got a second GG. As chichen itza finished, I suggest to start a GA which will now last much longer. Or we keep that for the time when we want to build Apollo prograame?
 

Attachments

  • LotR28 AD-1525.Civ5Save
    635.6 KB · Views: 94
Good point, RRRaskolnikov. I didn't think about the difference between projects and wonders.

I've never had a GE not complete a wonder. Nor have I ever had a GS only research part of a tech. They seem to give the whole thing. Broken? I'd say quite possibly.

As for trading posts, they only give one science point each. The civilopedia/manual/tool-tips are incorrect. For whatever reason, they are hard-coded instead of pulling information from the XML files that define things. Even one science and two gold is very nice, though.

Jungles do give two science, though, with a university. And since you can build a trading post on top of jungle, you can get a 2/0/2/3 square (food/hammers/gold/science) pretty easily, which is rather nice.

Arathorn
 
X-post with ThERaT. Nice turns, Rat. Good call on taking 14. Free thought's tooltip is fixed, at least.

Roster:
Arathorn
Corbeau
ThERat
Jaffa Tamarin -> UP NOW
Kylearan -> ON DECK

I would use one GG for a GA now, to speed us along in buying/building happy buildings, so our population can increase to get us more research faster now. I would save the other for a GA when we build Apollo. We should probably figure out which city has the best production potential and start arranging it for max hammers, so it can do Apollo. It should also be force-fed for a while, so it has good population to work all those hammer tiles.

Arathorn
 
Top Bottom