On 1070 AD, we have 8 Galleons. This is enough to simply ship troops over to the next continent.
Eventually, we should should get some more, though. If we want to move a stack from city to city, then we should try to get 15 Galleons or so.
Maybe more. But, at some point, extra Galleons are worthless, when there aren't troops to transport.
The important point is that we can now rely on our fleet, if only for transport.
So, 1070 AD being the turn of great realizations,
We triggered our first Golden Age and switched into Representation, Caste System and Nationhood.
The end of the Egyptian war left us with a large happy surplus, so we can afford Representation.
Caste System is needed to produce a Great Merchant to fund Sunshi Co.
Nationhood will provide us with an army of lowly draftees. Thankfully, we're AGG, so the poor xp on these units may not backfire too badly.
Tlacopan, the National Epic city can run 8 merchants and barely lose food, off of its tremendous surplus :
Regarding drafting, we can draft from the former Egyptian cities. This is yet another advantage of having killed Ramesses (otherwise, his culture would prevent us from doing so).
However, we come to realize that there aren't really 20 cities we can draft from.
This is the F1 screen :
18 cities don't have the minimal size to start drafting (size 6).
There are also cities we simply don't want to draft in : Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan and Tlaxcala, mainly.
So, in effect, we're left with about 8 cities to draft from, plus the size 5 cities that will grow a size.
This means that the happy toll from the draft will be real. Even more so, since it appears that a Large size of map means we can draft 4 units per turn.
On the plus side, we have a good happy surplus.
All in all, we'll revolt back into Bureaucracy after 5 turns, which means we can draft for 6 turns. Can't afford any more unhappiness.
(Drafing 4 cities per turn during 6 turns stacks a total of 72 anger....)
You can see we're still focusing on the navy. We're getting a few Trebuchets here and there (to bombard, mostly), while we're waiting for Military Tradition and the ability to train Cavalries.
Most lowly cities focus on infrastructure.
We finally have 7 universtities and Tenochtitlan has started on Oxford.
Memphis, the Jewish holy city, has just gotten its Bank.
From now on, it will be a stake to get 7 Banks (expensive !), so we can start on Wall Street :
In the meantime, the city can get its Sac Altar and a Grocer. It can, maybe, set up whips as well to overflow hammers into Wall Street.
Oh ! I was going to forget. Research.
We're going for Biology, which is on the way to Medicine.
Churchill is going for Communism (free Spy) in 3 turns and 4 other AIs can research Physics (free Scientist). We don't have a chance at these freebies.
By 1090 AD,
With 5 Galleons now ferrying troops, we have some decent maritime traffic between the English and German/Sumerian lands. We had to evade a stray Privateer (4 moves to our 5 moves Galleons) and, fortunately, an English Frigate did sink it :
You can see on the minimap that 2 units are headed to the front in advance. We scouting !
So, one is going to check Mansa's lands and the other is going towards Mehmed, all the way through Germany.
Tlacopan is now ready to produce its Great Person.
And it is a Great Merchant that we get in 1100 AD. This is very good for us. Wall Street will be late but the Merchant will reach Memphis in time to fund Sushi when we discover Medicine.
To have an earlier Wall Street, we'd have had to go for an earlier war. An axemen war, I suppose. That would have given us the time to develop the Egyptian cities.
Getting Biology next turn, we can work the two banana tiles in Tlacopan and hire full merchants. Losing food this turn is fine when our farms get +1 food next turn.
Doing 1500 beakers / turn, we'll need 6 turns to research Medicine. That may be a little less, since we're completing Oxford University at end of turn.
Interesting thing to note : you can see that Frederick has a red fist.
Well, he's declared war on Mehmed (that's Mansa + Freddie vs backwards, full of troops Mehmed).
In the south-west, we haven't settled any additional island city (yet), but the ones we have start to look good :
Both Pithom and Edfu have a Granary. Buddhism is slowly getting there. We have extra work boats for when we'll get settlers.
Also, we're keeping a couple of Galleons in the area to move troops around.
The stack we had in Buto has been shipped to Memphis, so it can join the East cost.
Finally, our leftover Catapults from the Egyptian war have been spread over for garrison purposes.
1100 AD, this is the final turn we'll be spending in Caste System + Nationhood.
So Tlacopan hires a maximum amount of Merchants yet again. Running another trade mission would be fine. If we produce another sort of GP, then we may just store it for a golden age.
An extra city has been settled West of Tenochtitlan... Maybe it would have been better to ship the settler to the islands (a contested area) but that city can develop quite fast and the culture it will produce will gain us tiles.
Banks have been started. We need five more before we can start on Wall Street. This is another reason to revolt back into Slavery (and remain in Organized Religion, vs Theocracy).
We've been able to trade for Military Tradition with Stalin, so Tlaxcala has started pumping Cavalries.
Now that it has grown to size 15, the city looks pretty strong :
And this takes us to 1120 AD, the turn at which I've stopped.
First, we draft a full round of 4 Riflemen so we can revolt back into Slavery + Bureaucracy (not done, yet).
We've managed to unload :
- 11 macemen
- 9 trebuchets
- 2 jaguars (including our great medic)
- 4 riflemen
We also have loaded in Galleons :
- 2 macemen
- 2 trebuchets
- 2 riflemen
And 5 empty Galleons ready to go pick up troops.
So we're not fully prepared to declare a war but we're almost, almost there.
Overall, we have 4 Frigates, 9 Galleons, 16 Trebuchets, 28 Riflemen, 15 Macemen and 1 Cavalry to work with. Most of those are in transit, as is apparent looking at the troops we've unloaded.
(And some boats are in the west and can't be mobilized for the war in short order.)
The trouble, here, has to do with the choice of a target.
Some things we need to keep in mind in making this decision :
- we want 2 vassals on this landmass. That means 2 wars ;
- we want to minimize the diplo hits we take with our buddies Asoka, Churchill and Asoka ;
- we want to manage our techs properly : we want to bribe AIs and not be bribed against.
Here are a few screens that give some information :
First, tech trades and diplo screens :
Then, some lay of the land :
I think I'll pass on Mansa. Mansa is too far away. We'd need another 10 turns or so before we can DoW him.
Mehmed is much closer and already in a two-fronts war. He's a valid target. The easier one, probably. Although we wouldn't want him to capitulate to Mansa or Freddie before us.
Gilgamesh is the top dog and has some real numbers. He doesn't have Rifling but Grenadiers. That could be a tough 1 on 1 war.
Finally Freddie is a valid target, too. He's close, tangled in a war and has the smallest army. Freddie also has only 11 mainland cities. Of course, he's the most advanced, having Cannons, Riflemen and Cavalries.
Regarding diplo hits, it's conspicuous that every AI has made some friends, so we'll have to bite the bullet.
So, some scenarios :
Say we go after Mehmed... can we prevent Mansa or Freddie to capitulate him ? Probably not.
If we succeed in capitulating Mehmed, can we keep waging war with Riflemen ? Or would the nightmare become real with Freddie/Mansa fielding Infantries moving over Railroads ? This risk is very real.
So, we can hope to invade Frederick and then Mehmed but the opposite is not necessarily true. This is a case where invading the most backwards AI might put us in more trouble than we'd want, because it would force us to tech to a new military era and to invest many more hammers into a new army.
AIs we can bribe are Stalin, Mehmed and Gilgamesh, mainly.
This is notable, and a good incentive, imho, to go on their side.
It took me a while to figure what I wanted to do, here. And maybe I'm doing a poor job at explaining it.
I want to invade Frederick.
What tipped me are logistics.
Look at this again :
We can snipe Berlin and go by the coast straight from Dusseldorf into Cologne and then Hamburg.
It does look very convenient, doesn't it ?
In comparison, here are Gilgamesh's lands :
If we start invading Gilgamesh, can we avoid suffering heavy retaliations ? I don't think we can.
What's convenient about Freddie's lands is that they stretch over a very narrow way. So don't have to fear getting surrounded and stuck over a single place.
Also : we can bribe Mehmed off Mansa's back. So we'll have a war ally. And that will discourage Mehmed from capitulating to Freddie, if he was to lose many other cities.
Also : we can (hope to) bribe Gilgamesh against Freddie. If we can do that, gg, this will be easy. Gilgamesh has a stack that certainly can capture a couple of cities and cut into Freddie's production.
Unfortunately, we need Gilgamesh at Friendly status to do bribe him to war. So, what's the trick ?
We're at +6 with Giggles. We can revolt back into Hereditary Rule to get the bonus from sharing his favoured civic again.
Eh... I've just tested that : it works well enough. We get +4 relations and Gilgamesh is instantly Friendly with us !
So...
That's a plan, right ?
Until this turn, I've moved units as far as possible, thinking I might DoW Mehmed or Mansa.
But now the problem seems solved, so we can stay in place, heal, bring up reinforcements and DoW.
We'll take a diplo hit from Mansa, Churchill and Asoka but, hopefully, that won't stop the latter two from voting for us when comes the time.
Troop production is going to take the priority in the mainland. I think I want mostly Cavalries but Trebs would be fine for bombardment, too, and a little collateral.
Also, we want Frigates to bombard coastal cities.
I'd still like to reach 1,5 of Asoka's power, so we can peace-vassal him. Same thing with Stalin.
Bottom line :
There are upsides to capitulating Frederick
because he is more advanced.
Namely, we might extort Steel from him, which would allow cheap Trebuchets into Cannons upgrades.
.
. To that, one may add the extra food from earlier growths, which harder to evaluate. All in all, maybe 30
Trying to go for a demonstration and all.
is banked. That's a lot.
. So maybe just slow bulid it ???.
?).
corp to see what can be done in association with Sushi and Free Speech (+100% culture). Creative Construction (requires Combustion) would be best.
