MB4 - GOTM24 Redux [civ3] Roster A

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Karasu
Wow. Three posts in ten minutes!
Were we all here scouting the thread?

Just a note about my worries: if it takes too long to get to tanks, we may have to consider heading straight to Replaceable Parts and stop there, attacking the Han with Cavalry, hundreds of Artillery and some defending Infantries... a bit scary, but not totally out of the picture right now

Sounds interesting! The main worry would be if they have tanks and we don't. We would need more than a few infantry to protect our artillery stacks.

Some questions:

How long do we think it will take to subjugate the Shimazu? And how many techs might we extract from them in the process?

@ Smackster: As you are already moving troops onto the other continent, I assume we have troops to spare. Should we use the Baekje ROP to throw it straight at the Han now while they don't have Infantry, rather than take on the Baekje first? That way we could push the Han into Communism to slow them down, we may cut them down to a more manageable size, and we may grab a tech or two from them in the process. If we can draw Baekje into the fight on our side, so much the better. The Baekje are backward, so they will be easier meat later on.

Are we doing anything about a prebuild for Theory of Evolution yet?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

What an excellent idea Alan!! The Baejke lands can provide us with a base. If we bring them in with a MA we will deny Han the use of Baejke roads, we can make a serious dent in the Han military power and possibly deny them some key resources like rubber. We'll need to grab as much jungle as possible. I think Alan's plan is the best one. Karasu? Smackster?

 

[smackster]

Playing now, assume you guys are all waiting at your keyboards. Hopefully I'll get the update done tonight.

Smackster

 

[smackster]

I am moving troops to Baekje, but not enough to make a dent. Sure we could start a war, but I'm not sure. Actually Maybe I'll do it as there would be no harm it would just hurt them as they'd go to Comm and send some troops to us.

It takes 3 turns to get over there, we only have 4 ships available in the west.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Actually, I'm at work and it is slow. Sounds like we might want to build up a bit and then start the War of the Korean Peninsula.

 

[smackster]

T6 1280 AD continued....
Destroy the Cavalry (4) outside Ozi, begin the attack, lose about 4 Cavalry with a lot of retreats but manage to raize Ozi.

Sign ROP with Baekje, and land near the Han border in Baekje. Start a palace build, but the game will be over before we can build any wonders that way.

IBT

Shimazu Ironclads destroy our Frigate, a second dies attacking another Frigate of ours. They land more Cavalry on our land.

T7 1285 AD
Kogoshima completely pillaged now, will raise all other cities.

IBT

T8 1290 AD

There is a spot from Sagimhara that you can reach Beakje in one turn with Cannon Kublai
Railroad complete from Aki in east to Sagimhara in west. Still need to get it done to south east point.

IBT Shimazu now building Samurai Archers

T9 1295 AD

Ratsushiro razed for no loss, 5 retreats. There was only one Rifleman defending which spells good things for us.
Don't have enough in range to take Ishahaya, but nearly do.

IBT We lose a junk trying to sneak through, for the loss of a Shimahura Frigate.

T10 1300 AD
Sneaky junk destroys a Shima Frigate.

For the loss of two Cavalry Ishihara is raized, leaving a big area of culture free land in Shimahura.

Shima still wont give peace, we want to get those techs.

Electricity is researched. Move onto Medicine.

Score 3986

 

[smackster]

.zip

 

[smackster]

Although Shima is a spent force, it will still take and thought to destroy them quickly as they have a lot of cities left. Suggest we get peace with them for tech ASAP and then continue the fight. As we do lose some Cavalry for each city we take we need to keep pushing them over there.

There is a force of some 10 Cavalry (and others) in Baekje now so we might consider taking out of Baekje cities, they still have Muskets.

We are researching at 10 turns for Medicine so we are still really struggling in that area. Han is so far ahead and probably getting further.

 

[Karasu]

EDIT: Cross posted -'morning, Smackster!

I agree on attacking the Han as soon as possible: we absolutely need to slow them down.
If we also manage a MA with Baekje...

The main drawback is that we will break our deals with the Han, loosing money and further slowing down our research.
At the same time, we will need cash to upgrade and rush...

EDIT 2: Good news from the Shima front! !!
I am beginning to think that we need to do something similar with the Han... How about some guerrilla actions with those Cavs while we prepare a robust pillaging stack...

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I've got the zip. I will start playing today during lunch, and will post what I get done. With the wife having a New Year's party tonight, I doubt I'll be able to play again until the morning.

Bugsy's goals:

1. Get a very favorable peace treaty including techs and their one tile city.

2. Knock Shimazu around as much as possible.

3. Prepare our Han/Baejke Task Force to go to war.

Happy New Year to all,

Bugs

 

[AlanH]

[EDIT} Cross-posted. @Sir Bugsy. Your objectives sound admirable. Happy New Year to all.

I've been suffering with GOTM26 - it's not going well, but I'll press on regardless .

I've only just surfaced to look at this game. Looks good, nice work on destroying Shimazu's will to live, Smackster. Han have Replaceable Parts now, so the window of opportunity to hit them before Infantry has closed. We have a nice force building up in Baekje, so I think that has to be our next target. I suggest we start on them soon, as they have only just reached Industrial. They have Nationalism, but the defenders we can see now are still muskets. Mopping up the Mori can happen any time, and should not be allowed to hold up progress.

@Smackster: You sound cynical about the need for Theory of Evolution. We can get Theory of Evolution in about 30 turns if we work at it, and that would catch our tech level up a long way. It's great news if you think we can complete the game in less than that - how do you see it panning out?

I'm not sure about the prebuild in Kumano. It's already hired a taxman because it has no market place, so its spt is not going to increase from here on. It could also contribute a lot more to our research effort if it had a library. My preference would be to let it build a market and library and either set the prebuild up in Ina which is already at pop 12 and has its infrastructure, or even prebuild in our capital, Shimodo, after it completes its Library. We could use the Military Academy, as we should have Scientific Method in 20 turns or less if we get those libraries finished and/or the Shimazu contribute some early Medicine.

Let's not raze Kunomoto! We'll get a welcome boost to our finances when we capture it. Smith's will pay maintenance on all our markets and harbours.

Any special reason why we are building cathedrals? Oh yes! I guess we own the Sistine Chapel - happy faces all round!

Smackster signs off at a bleary-eyed 4:00 am? Sir Bugsy gets to usher in the New Year for the Oda.

Roster

Karasu
Smackster Slumped in front of his screen after an all-night session.
Sir Bugsy UP
AlanH On deck

Firaxis score at 1300 AD = 3986

 

[smackster]

I went to bed at 11.00pm, on account of being in the UK for Christmas, and posted the final save at 9.00am so no late night for me. Back to the US tomorrow.

I'm afraid I had so little time to play this game this time that I didn't really think much about some of the things I was doing. Actually all my thought was on the war. We clearly do need TOE, just when I went to pre-build it seemed like forever, actually 30 turns is not so bad. I was convinced that I'd get another leader when I got all those elite Cavalry, not sure how many are left now.

My GOTM 26 was going ok but I gave up on it in the end as it would have taken too long and there was a lot of hard fighting to do.

Smackster

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by smackster
I went to bed at 11.00pm, on account of being in the UK for Christmas, and posted the final save at 9.00am so no late night for me. Back to the US tomorrow.

Fooled me! I should have realised your posting times correlated with my waking hours. You have been a globe trotter lately!

I'm afraid I had so little time to play this game this time that I didn't really think much about some of the things I was doing. Actually all my thought was on the war. We clearly do need TOE, just when I went to pre-build it seemed like forever, actually 30 turns is not so bad. I was convinced that I'd get another leader when I got all those elite Cavalry, not sure how many are left now.

That's understandable. I guess it's one of the benefits of succession play that the rest of the team get a chance to stand back from the heat of battle and look at options.

I do recommend that Sir Bugsy reviews the pre-build location before plunging back into the fighting. We need to maximise our research funding by building up population and libraries, as well as snagging the Theory of Evolution. Leaders are as unpredictable as London buses. When you need one there are none around, and then three come along at once.

Don't forget that GOTM26 has a late closing date - there's another week. Though at the rate I'm going I'll be wiped out in the next day or so.

Have a safe trip home, and all the best for 2004.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Pre-flight – 1300 AD – Change Kumano from palace to library
Ina becomes pre-build for TOE
Hamamatsu becomes Hoover’s pre-build

Notice that the Baejke city of Kunsan has the Colossus. That will be out first target when the war starts. We could use the commerce. Wake up our forces and position them right next to Kunsan.

I like smackster’s use of the human shields on the Shimazu front. While we are being dastardly, we might as well go all the way.

According to Mapstat we have 349 tiles till domination.

Han don’t have Medicine yet, but they do have Replaceable Parts.

IBT – Lose a musket to a Shimazu cav. One of our muskets kill a Shimazu cav.
Add an East Wing to the Palace.

1. 1305 AD – A lot of maneuvering. Setting up for the siege of Kagoshima next turn.
2. 1310 AD – Kagoshima falls with several cav retreats but no loss of life. Six slaves.
Found Control Freak Ville on the Shimazu coast.
Shimazu will now talk to us and they are “close” to giving us Nagasaki (1-tile city) in the treaty. They have nationalism also, so those will be the two goals of the negotiations. The Han now have Medicine.

IBT – Shimazu frigate sinks an unloaded Kublai. Several members of our human shield are captured.

3. 1315 AD – Manuever into final position. Trade Baejke our WM for their TM & 4G. Then declare war.
Found Korean Beachhead. Start barracks.
Capture Kunsan and the Colossus at the cost of 4 Cavs.
Raze Suwon (Chosogabe Island city)

IBT – One of our ironclads sink a Shimazu frigate. The Baejke counter is a bunch of sensai and warriors. We lose a sensai in the open after he kills two Baejke sensai.

4. 1320 AD – Kunamoto and Smith’s join the kingdom at the cost of four cavs. Pick off a half dozen Baejke sensai and warriors.
IBT – Baekje have a cav on the counter this time. We kill four sensai and warriors at the cost of a cav. Shimazu ironclad sinks our frigate.

5. 1325 AD – Shimazu will now give us Nagasaki. Mapstat says 301 tiles till domination.
IBT – The Han are building ToE Han complete US. Lose a cav to a Baejke cav.

6. 1330 AD – Picking off more Baejke units. Mapstat says 295.

IBT – Minor counter attacks.

7. 1335 AD – Raze Ch’onan (Baejke). The siege cannon took 3 hp off an attacking cav. No loss of life.
Raze Usuki and destroy half the Shimazu fleet. No loss.
Raze Kokubu. No loss.
Set up to start the Mori war again.
Baejke is now in anarchy.

IBT – No counters. Medicine comes in. SciMethod next. Slider bumped back to 80% to get it in 8 turns. Enough?

8. 1340 AD – Capture Izumi at the cost of three cavs. I kept it for the harbour, and found it had a barracks.
I conduct an investigation of Beijing to see where they’re at on ToE for 172G. See the picture in the next post. It is due in 13 turns. ToE requires 600 shields for us to build. We have approximately 200 shields invested in our pre-build. We adding 21 spt and I’ll have that up to 25 next turn with railroads. That still puts us at 16 turns. The bottom line… we need a leader to get ToE.

IBT – A cav is killed by a Baejke Cav. Some slaves are captured by Shimazu.

9. 1345 AD – Raze Shimazu city of Miyakonojo.
Raze Mori city of Yonago.

IBT – Han sneak attacks our Baejke cities. We lose a musket and a cav, but hold. There is a serious SOD just outside our Colossus city. We also lost a bit of income from them and our source of incense.

10. 1350 AD – We’re still 291 from domination.
Capture Mori capitol. The fragile Mori are destroyed.
Sink two Han frigates. Bombard, then kill 8 Han cav/riders outside of Kunsan (colossus city). There are still six units including an army still within range of Kunsan.

Ina (our ToE pre-build) is getting 28 shields after corruption. It has 252 shields in the box. That puts it at 600 shields in 13 turns. Or two turns after the Han complete ToE. I think I may have started improving those tiles a bit too late. We are very much due to a leader. I must have had at least 30 elite

Capture Shimazu city of Nichinan. We finally have coal and iron on Shimazu Island so we can railroad.

After Action Report – Military Rail Net is just about complete on our main island. I’ve been railing in our cores. I just realized, if you rail and mine the mountains east of Ina, you can squeeze a few more spt out of it. There a lot of Cannon Kublai plying the waters between Sagamihara and Baejkeland.

Shimazu really isn’t into negotiating yet. The only thing we can get is their one tile city. I think they will soon give up nationalism also.

Baejke is talking. They’ll join a MA against Han in exchange for peace and a 26 gpt for Steam deal. I didn’t execute on this since to is bad form in an SG, although I was tempted.

We’re 272 tiles from domination, so that is something everyone will need to keep an eye on. We might want to abandon a city or two in our interior to give us more tiles to use in Korea.

Whether Kunsan survives the next onslaught from the Han will be dicey. There are six units ready to attack and six units in the city.

Since we lost our incense, the cities will need to be MM’ed all over. We also lost a bunch of GPT from some lux deals.

Good luck Alan.

Score 4348.

>>SAVE - 1350 AD<<

 

[Sir Bugsy]

 

[AlanH]

Roster

Karasu On deck
Smackster Back in the USA
Sir Bugsy Thaking a well earned rest
AlanH UP

Firaxis score at 1350 AD = 4348

Got it, loaded and exploring.

So the Han are on 4 turn research programs. Pity about the sneak attack. it's a bit early to be taking them on as well, and they'll have tanks very soon . Peace and MA with Baekje sounds tempting. I've run through the F4 options, and I can't get anything out of Shimazu. Nagasaki, their one-tile island, is "I doubt ...", so I'm not sure what's different about our two loads! However, I'm sure they'll come around in due course.

Theory of Evolution is a bummer! Only two turns adrift. I've been racking my grey matter to think of a way to speed it up in case we don't get a leader in the next few turns. We need 348 more shields in Ina, and in the remaining 11 turns before Han gets ToE we'll produce 308 of those at the current rate, so we need 40 more. I thought about getting one extra spt by making all the citizens of Ina happy, but even with three MPs the lux tax would bankrupt us. If we capture Saiki soon and don't raze it we'll have ivory to help.

If we mine and rail any mountains at Ina and work them we'll run a food deficit as we only have 1 fpt currently. However, we could lose one citizen each turn, and replace them by adding a worker per turn, so we'd effectively be running at 11 citizens each turn once starvation set in. If we manage an extra 6 spt for 7 turns we win the race. I'd need to rail and mine four mountains in a couple of turns, so I guess that would require all the workers I can muster. Anyone know if this'll work, or will the city manager get in the way?

Does anyone know if Colussus is supposed to work autside its home continent? Looking at our current economy I'm not convinced it's doing anything for us currently. For example, Ina shows 18 raw gpt. It is producing 25 beakers, which is 10 gpt x 2.5 (Newton's + Library). It wastes 1 gpt and returns 10 gpt to the treasury, which is 7gpt x 1.5 (Market). If the Colossus were doing its magic we would have an additonal 13 raw gpt from Ina's worked tiles.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I saw that too. The Colossus did not seem to give us a gpt bump.

I've been thinking about the ToE dilemma all night. Maybe the answer isn't to increase Ina's output, but decrease Beijing's. There are several Cannon Kublai that could be loaded with muskets, transported to make an amphibious assault at Beijing. They will need to be able to survive about three-four turns. The amphib force could pillage along the eastern side of Beijing. Once it reached the high ground it could survive most attacks and pillage the high shield production in the hills and mountains where 2/3rds of Beijing's production comes from.

Does anyone else have any ideas on how we can get ToE?

 

[AlanH]

The Colossus did not seem to give us a gpt bump.

Well, at least that means we don't have such a problem if we lose it periodically

Maybe the answer isn't to increase Ina's output, but decrease Beijing's.

Yes, I wondered about hitting Beijing, but it looks a tall order. It's inland, and we'd be hit as soon as we landed given Han's rail net. I'm not convinced we'd get as far as the real production areas. The other complication is that they have additional capacity in Beijing, as they haven't railed all their tiles yet.

We’re 272 tiles from domination, so that is something everyone will need to keep an eye on. We might want to abandon a city or two in our interior to give us more tiles to use in Korea.

I doubt if we have a problem. We only add about 9 tiles per captured city. so we'd have to keep over 20 to get near domination. As you say, we can always abandon inland corrupt cities towards the end if necessary

Whether Kunsan survives the next onslaught from the Han will be dicey. There are six units ready to attack and six units in the city.

We could also be deleted by their infantry SOD near our southern stack. If that happens I think our beachhead city becomes very shaky. I don't know whether an MA with Baekje will deflect the Han, but I suspect it's our best hope right now.

Since we lost our incense, the cities will need to be MM’ed all over. We also lost a bunch of GPT from some lux deals.

Maybe you gained some lux in Shimazu-land, but having retrained a few entertainers as taxmen, we seem to be able to run at zero lux tax and complete Scientific Method in 7 turns with a healthy surplus. With ivory in the next couple of turns we should be OK.

I haven't committed anything yet, just trying out reversible MP movements and slider shifts. This is a critical point in our game, so I'm hoping to hear a few more ideas to put into the pot before I continue. I think I'll call a 24 hour time-out for thoughts and suggestions before I do anything irrevocable. If no one comes up with any other ideas I'll go with the MA - not just a one-turn sham this time. Unfortunately we can't get a ROP. Wonder why? . I'll also try to accelerate ToE in Ina using the mountains.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I doubt there is a lot you can do to get ToE without disrupting Beijing's economy. If you can gather three kublai's worth of units (cavs and muskets) and land them on the coast, you will at least cause a third spot of attention. The first being our beachhead, the second being the Baejke in an MA. I doubt you will get the entire brunt of all the Han units available since the majority of available units will probably be in Baejke lands going after us or Baejke. You will only have to deal with that turn's unit production. I doubt the AI will be able to handle the Amphibious landing as well as a human.


Let's assume that the Han have made at least one improvement to Beijing's tiles and they have a projected completion of 9-10 turns. 3-4 turns to get over there.

On the first turn after the landing the cattle tile can be taken out.
On the second turn the one shield tile directly south is done.
And on turn three the hill could be eliminated.

The AI isn't managing the tiles properly there anyway, so there is a chance you could knock 2-3 turns off with the disruption.

Right now I'd say it is our only chance of getting ToE. Adding a mountain or two in Ina may only get a turn or two by itself.

 

[smackster]

I'm keeping my head low, because if I had started it when you told me too and done it properly then we wouldn't have this headache. Or if I'd kept that leader, or if I got another one from the many elite wins I had.

Smackster