Moonraker

[vranasm]

didn't check the save, but WE's+cats can bring you really deep into AI's until castles show up. LB's are complication, but can be overdone with dedication.

I am only following by screens now, so not sure if I am completely right, but I think you're trying to do "everything at once", that's not good (settlers, wonder, infrastructure and military?). It's monarch and all, but you should streamline the gameplay a bit.

I would probably opt for another war against Biz in your situation if Germany is safely away from getting Eng. You should spec around 5 cats for accuracy if you can, the rest suicide and bring more siege then usual (since this game it can kill), it's much cheaper then WE's. WE's can help with top defenders after bombard to free pressure from cats.

Btw lol at that German city behind your lines, not usual thing in BtS...

 

[Cam_H]

Re. "H" ... you lose two Grasslands and just compete with Prague for the Cows if you go 1N. I'd rather compete for the Stone tile with Amsterdam than the Cows with Prague.

3W of "M' is fine, but Dortmund will have to be razed first due to proximity.

Best of luck! (I'm assuming FiveRings has gone temporarily MIA? ... If not, please 'sing out').

Crosspost with vranasm

v,

Thanks for your input - trying to expand quickly and responsibly, so tech'ing to CoL but still supporting a large army.

 

[FiveRings]

The server deleted a long message that I have posted (was very busy, hmm?!) so I'll be very short this time:

Thanks, Cam, seems an outstanding progress! I haven't looked at the save due to soome recent troubles in everyday life, but hope to do it this evening.

I'm still for assault on Germany after redeploying the army.

I'd not push too much on settlers. I consider H and J OK for immediate settling. The rest might be postponed (I concur to V). I have a few suggestions for your consideration: settle I/M on Northwestern wine and on the coastal hill between the Iron and the Fur (coastal cities, getting some tiles in the North that will not be worked otherwise). Purple at least has some resources, while Silver gives us only territory control, so I won't hurry there, too, but would rather settle Purple first (Bismarck might be even more stupid - or wise - we shall see after the war) than we expect! settling the cows rather than the Purple tile might be an option but I personally don't like it.

I'd raise once again the potential of moving the cap in the central part, with a FP in the North (we are not going after the Versailles, or are we?!) If this is done, then early I/M would be more than OK.

I'd go CoL, then either Astro, or Lib beeline, with potential switch to militechs if Bis is too hard a nut to crack.

Do we have OR? Or do we need the missionaries for monasteries?

We also need some hammers invested in phants in the Northern cities: just in case Bis turns too smart to launch HA counterattacks on the cities, not the stack full of WE...

EDIT: this was a crosspost with Cam's latest. What's MIA, anyway?

 

[Cam_H]

What's MIA, anyway?

Missing in action

Boy, I hate the 'Purple' site - I really don't see what you two do!

 

[vranasm]

don't forget that conquest gold is something that can pay the bills for long time, not saying CH's won't be useful, but can be put aside in military push.

if Biz has some hot wonders (I think I saw GLH mentioned) it surely should pay back to build units instead of CH's.

 

[Cam_H]

I just don't want us to fall into "The Roman Trap".

Really - I can't see why we 'can't have our cake and eat it too' at this point (successful military campaign + responsible domestic management). Personally, I'd leverage Organised Religion in our unit pumps by getting Barracks and Stables (finally) up, and then back to the War Elephants, while our top commerce cities get on with their tasks and 'lend a hand' to the military effort where possible.

Cities with >6 maintenance to seriously look at Courthouses though. If things go really 'South' maintenance-wise we can at least swap into Caste and run Merchants for a while.

b.t.w. ... thoughts on National Epic city?

 

[vranasm]

I would have to check the save to comment more on this issue.

I don't have clear picture of military units on hand, economic situation and tech screen. Will look later today if I find the time and mood ;-).

You are already at CoL and if you have currency (at 560 AD you really should have long ago), there really is no real danger going bankrupt.

Other thing is if you can tech decently... you probably won't for a bit ;-).

Eating cake and have it on monarch is probably doable, but since this always was kind of "learning" game I suppose it is better to play with the minds of higher difficulty and thus promoting good play.

Stopping military production, when you plan war, for infra is not good play at this point probably, but as I said I have to check the save ;-).

edit:
about that maint. thingy...yeah usually all cities above 6 should get CH, but if I war I start to be nervous when at -10g ;-)

 

[FiveRings]

Very insightful comments, thank you, V!

I don't see war with Bis as our goal, I see it as a tool to make use of our (current) comparative advantage, so I am in favor of a crippling war, not total war. I am at a lower game level, so I might be totally wrong and with a crippled gamer mind on top, of course. So, I think we shouldn't neglect the economy and can revert to military unit building the moment we feel we need it. I just can't see why a similar stack to the one in the previous war won't let's conquer a couple of peachy cities and then get peace, even if we need to give back one or two of the least so ones.

 

[vranasm]

don't underestimate yourself FR, it's all just matter of thinking.

Everything has its cost and trade off.

About the limited war. It actually doesn't have to be bad idea, but don't forget you have to build some military success on the AI first to even admit defeat and then some more to extort some good things out of the war. Just don't forget that the forced peace is 10 turns and the window is really closing.

I see you have pretty good stack, but from my experience around city 3 it will need reinforcement probably. I checked the power graph and it says you have bigger power then Germany and that is GREAT!

As for why war Germany... go check wonders screen... I think don't stop after you get Berlin (at least 3 good wonders), Munich (holy city) and the city holding Mids.

I would raze dortmund which has 4 troops so that will be some distraction too.

Not sure the place which builds Heroic Epic is the right one without food.
I would move palace to beijing
Actually I think prague would be probably best spot for heroic given the land with 5 hills, cows and couple of grassland workshops. don't understand all those cottages there ;-).

You need CS and spread irrigation everywhere. more workers will be needed.
Don't understand the FP cottage in Amsterodam.

Shangai should be eventually farmed, but that is of course fault of AI not the team.

Shangai and Steel jaw should drop building of settlers and revert to rax->cats
I would stop HE in Monte Carlo and continue with units too.

Not sure with TGL in prague...really really not sure at all. Prime candidate for HE as I already said... do you really need TGL?

According to the TGW boundary Berlin is like 6 tiles north from your stack... I would go for it this TS.
not sure if AI's have already LB's, but I see it as possibility (bismarck didn't promote any archers yet, but that doesn't have to mean much since it can be just the pure lack of gold)... the timeframe if they don't will be pretty close!

The situation looks good.

 

[FiveRings]

Thanks, V!

I don't understand the part that refers to the 10 turns of peace and time running out, but most of the questions you raise seem quite relevant.

I think The Gr Lib is being built as we seem to have the opportunity to do this. As I mentioned, war with Germany was not on our priority list, looks like the war with Mao turned out too successful...Now, that you have drawn my attention to his wonders, war might have climbed up on that list... So, I am in for continuing to build the army. The question is: do we go all out war with Bis? I am not sure I understand exactly what the Roman trap is, but I guess it's overextension overkill based on those super units, the Pretorians, and the advantage in war related to them... I guess we're are talking the same thing: get the nice cities, get peace. Are we able to pull this out? I don't know. Do we need to get an enormous army - and related costs - right now? I don't think so. Might we regret no getting them? Quite might be. When do we take action to prevent this? I say, after the several first turns of war. Could this decision turn wrong? Sure. Could it be worse than building a huge army and getting into the overkill? You answer that, please. To my mind, both the GrLib and army-buiding seemed equally plausible; no, I am backwhitewashing: the Gr Lib had precedence.. Now, you have sawn some doubt there...

I'd also do the HE in the current cap. And I see the benefits of turning Beijing into a wealth-creating city AND capital. Esp with the future the 50% related to Buro. So you might be right provided that we do the FP in the West. A plausible, maybe better, option, I'd say. But then, Berlin, or whatever the city with TGL, might be an even better one. So, my suggestion is to wait how the war with Bis develops. The current cap might become the SSC+wonder city (HE there, hence), Beijing or Berlin - the wealth creator. I am very open to this.

Decisions re farms/cottages might be wrong or correct. I don't think it's worth discussing them now, though, except for learning purposes. I don't think they are that much wrong to need correction. But it's very helpful to get a better player raise the issue, so, thanks again, and the divergent thinking/corrective remark were externalised by Cam somewhere in the previous posts, if I remember correctly.

 

[FiveRings]

Darn, Cam, it's only now that i noticed the link to the clip: thanks! I couldn't very well understand what the pumping was related to, or what the KGB had to do with it, but I have always had problems with listening to English: only a couple of native English speakers in my school years, and so long ago...

I liked the tune though, and the spotty white pants... looked like that famous BGs' clip... but on much prettier butts...

 

[woopdeedoo]

Thanks for the comments, all. The farm in Amsterdam was never meant to be permanent, IIRC, only for initial growth. It needs to be replaced with a cottage. I'm in agreement regarding workers, not sure how many we stole from Mao. On the flip side, war with Bis, which I think we can handle if we consolidate our forces properly, could net us a whole bunch of free workers.

On that note, I think that for this turnset, I will drive our Southern forces on Dortmund and consolidate our main force in the North. I'd would also keep some scouting forces (maybe HA's once we get HbR, possibly after CoL) to spawn bust and kill any sneaky AI settler parties.

Although I see the need for more settlers, I propose that any settlers that require more than 4 or 5 turns to complete can wait behind some more military. Although we have the power on Bis, he may bribe his brother in the faith in a Holy war against us and that means our entire war effort could backfire terribly.

So to that end, I would prefer to consolidate our scattered stacks, get reinforcements going and Bismarck.

 

[woopdeedoo]

If you read between the lines in my post above, you would note I don't plan on attacking the irritating and poorly placed barb city. And Cam, the crappy purple spot won't be THAT bad in the end. Merely mediocre. I'm not too keen on getting it settled any time soon

EDIT: Also, you guys have had all the fun war stuff and I only got to prep... IT'S MY TURN TO SMASH SOMEONE NOW!

 

[Cam_H]

The Roman Trap

'Spot on' FiveRings. Early game over-expansion courtesy of successful warfare. Economy ends up in a hole, you spend ages trying to dig yourself out of it, while on the other side of the world Mansa's got ten tech's on you and is freely trading them with Cyrus who has 35% landmass and Frederick as his vassal. Sometimes you get out of the hole, sometimes you abandon the game as a lost cause.

M.I.A.

It just reminded me of 'Paper Planes', and there was some small irony in vran's suggestion of using city capture gold to fund our economy versus "All I wanna do is ... bang ... bang ... bang ... ding ... and take your money".

War with Mao "Too Successful"?

In a strange way I agree with you (FiveRings). I didn't lose a unit taking the two southern cities (both razed) leaving us with a larger than anticipated number of injured (but surviving) units in the south, which meant that there was less pressure to produce 'replacement' units in the core empire - in turn leaving our northern forces arguably a little bit on the light side.

Infrastructure

Granaries across the board, Libraries in commerce centres, and Barracks / Stables in unit pumps 'in my book' is a very responsible commitment to infrastructure - especially with the support of Organised Religion. The theory that this is somehow something that you can get away with at Monarch but not at Immortal has me puzzled.

Prague, Beijing, Berlin, Munich, everybody talking 'bout, mmm Pop Music!

Call me a "frigg'n traditionalist", but I would be very supportive of the strategy to keep Prague as our capital and develop it into a super science centre, while Monte Carlo is 'fine' as a Heroic Epic city.

Otherwise we may as well abandon The Great Library build there if you're going to make it into a Heroic Epic unit pump. While you're at it, also knock over those cottages that we spent much of the early game working on maturing. Monte Carlo ... no food? It's got two food resources plus eight Grassland tiles that can be farmed with Civil Service ... so when it's up and running; 8 surplus from the Farms, 3 surplus from irrigated Wheat, 1 surplus from the Cows, and 2 surplus from the city centre. Still, a total surplus of 14 (pre-Biology) is clearly insufficient for our Heroic Epic city.

"No sir and no ma'am!!!"

We keep the fine city of Prague as our capital. (If we're lucky) Get The Great Library and run extra Scientists supported by The Parthenon, and have that city popping Great Scientists like a Philosophical leader! If we take The Pyramids and adopt Representation, this city becomes even more 'kick bottom'.

Monte Carlo will do fine as a unit pump; it will blossom with Civil Service, and surge with Biology.

Concerned about distance maintenance? Build The Forbidden Palace somewhere in Germany. Eventually we'll probably be aiming at State Property anyway ... depending upon where those Gems are to some extent (variant rule).

vran's right in that Shanghai will benefit from some chain irrigation, but bear in mind that this city could be our Wall Street city (presume we 'shrine' it), so I would champion the view that some cottage retention is in order.

Beijing is a really nice city, but it'll need some maths to work out if it will 'top' Prague. (Unfortunately I'm away from my civ' computer and can't do the sums). Also bear in mind that there's a cost to moving the Palace, and a Harbor in Prague will extend a lot of extra commerce ... bolstered by The Great Lighthouse ... which is not the case for Beijing.

I envisaged that Amsterdam could be a very handy whipping site for a few units' production in our war with Mao, but could be cottaged up once we were in rebuild mode and had dedicated unit pumps elsewhere. The Floodplains Cottage there was not part of this plan, but it's there now, and could serve us well for the rest of the game.

'Purple' remains a crap site until we get close to Optics.

Workers

We picked up at least 10 from Mao in my turnset, which will sure help with chain irrigation when we get there. Just be aware that I put two on 'clear Jungle' for that northern Ivory before a DoW on Germany.

 

[vranasm]

@Cam

well the infrastructure is usually done before you commit to whipping army. I have yet to see it done split (meaning half cities catches up on infra, the other already commits to warfare) on Immortal, that was my issue with this.

AZ even in his games pumps out some units out of conquered cities before committing to infrastructure if you watch his videos.
But of course new captured cities have to build the infra usually from scrap.

With biology eventually everything will blossom... but that is not the point of the current situation in my view.
CS is strong argument.
Monte Carlo has the known plains cow glitch as half the food and another wheat, has worse number of hills then Prague though and even worse hills (desert hills).
Prague has 5 hills, 4 of them are grassland (if I remember right). You're a bit away from good workshops.
I don't see how you can even compare this... Prague is clearly better HE spot.

My issue with cottaging the land the way it was done is that it wasn't done in a way that should be. You can cottage, but don't throw cottages around in 4 cities which half of them has really other purpose.
And at some points it even doesn't make sense since the cities lack good food. And that is imo the case with city 2 and Amsterdam which both has FP cottage that would be better farmed.

As for Shanghai... well I think I would wait how turns out Munich. It's holy city too and if it's already shrined... other thing being you really want to hunt Great Prophet on purpose? Not sure it's good play.
You surely need to irrigate the rice, that is imo clear and we both admit it.
The cottages are mostly ungrown.
I had lately some interesting talk in S&T about shrined city and actually I found the idea of building the usual stuff in such city + farming for running Merchants pretty neat. Especially if you will run Rep (you will of course after you get the Mids from Germany's cold hands...)

Well I am strong anti-cottage advocate, Cam seems to me a bit on the cottage side usually so we have already for like 3-4 games? strong arguing against each other (that is remark for woop and FR, so they understand our fight).

To me the cottages slow you down, but you're doing fine really no panic mode. You will have a bit problem with whipping from cottages, since without enough food the whip usually doesn't look like strong tool.

 

[Cam_H]

vran',

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Heroic Epic

Prague is better than most cities 'full stop'. I'd make a better unit pump than most, it'd make a better commerce centre than most, and it'd make a better Great Person Farm than most. Given that we've wiped out one AI, soon to at least cripple ... if not kill off another, is it more important for key cities to continue to focus on units, or better to improve the commerce haul? Given we're required to win by Space, I'd propose the latter. Monte Carlo is in my view completely up to the task of being a fair unit pump, and in light of our position here on this map on this level, I think that our best cities should focus on commerce and let secondary cities churn out the grunts.

CE vs. SE

It's not been lost on me that you're not a great fan of second-tier commerce hubs. I love 'em. You - not so much. That's fine - it takes seven colours to make a rainbow.

The Temple of Solomon

I'd be surprised if we don't pop another Great Prophet out of either Prague or Beijing. I'd prefer Great Scientists, but I'm 'banking' that we'll get another at some point or other.

Civics

With Spiritual + Caste (in one turn / two turns), I won't object to us at some point really going 'full tilt' at a few Great Scientists through Caste (+ Parthenon [+Representation via Pyramids?]) - but Slavery can serve us well for a while yet.

Judaism in Prague

Provided that we're still committed to The Great Library in Prague ... again, please consider a Jewish Missionary build in Amsterdam to spread Judaism into Prague to leverage Organised Religion there.

Spiritual Trait

Don't forget we get fast builds on Temples as we're Spiritual, so Priesthood might be a good tech' to pick up along the line.

 

[vranasm]

I didn't play much Warlords (actually played only 1 game lol ) so not sure if what I write now is the same as BtS.

Usually the place where you build TGL gets National Epic to maximize the effect, thus nominating the city as GP farm for almost whole game.
You're a bit late on the schedule with TGL (560 AD is really bad date and you're still like 15T off) so wouldn't be surprised if some AI takes it.

The complication standing out of it is that you usually build OU in other city. The more I think about it Beijing looks like new center for this.

Didn't realize you have SS as VC that puts pressure on the science. From my experience you can get good dates if you have around 30 cities overall. So maybe you should capture your continent whole and then full steam towards SS.

Based on the number of captured cottages you will decide on US x Rep for late game. Both are viable options for doing SS in reasonable time, granted as I see it the date will not be spectacular, but you should be able to beat AI's culture on Monarch without problems (hopefully ).

As for tech order. I think your best bet is to continue towards EDU. Problem with lib is you will not have the race under control.
You should decide which war to take on Churchill. Being the date as is...I am almost afraid you will need either cavs or cannons.
Capturing all the hot wonders from Biz should really quicken things significantly.

So I think next TS objective is to capture the good cities from Biz. Then can be decided for temp peace for techs.

Btw wasn't sure why you opted for Juda instead of Hindu as SR. It is some kind of rule?
Would have to recheck some things again to offer more insight on the religion and overall situation, since this is from memory how my thoughts went yesterday.
Really surprised me that you're standing alone with religion.

 

[Cam_H]

Again - thanks.

We don't have any religion other than Judaism ... can't swap to Hinduism if we tried. Two-thirds of our cities are Jewish.

I'd like to Lib'-swing Astro' if we can.

I agree - late run at The Great Library, but we've got a monopoly on Literature on this continent, so there's some chance.

 

[FiveRings]

Thanks, V!

I really appreciate your comments very much, even when I argue about one thing or another! They do provide me with an alternative view and a lot of insight about how the game works.

Usually the place where you build TGL gets National Epic to maximize the effect, thus nominating the city as GP farm for almost whole game.
You're a bit late on the schedule with TGL (560 AD is really bad date and you're still like 15T off) so wouldn't be surprised if some AI takes it.

The complication standing out of it is that you usually build OU in other city. The more I think about it Beijing looks like new center for this.

I don't understand this. TGL is a WW, NE and OU are NWs, and we can build two of these in each city, IIRC.

Didn't realize you have SS as VC that puts pressure on the science. From my experience you can get good dates if you have around 30 cities overall.

On Standard? That sounds quite a few cities to get to SS victory. That's an important consideration and proves again that, as I have suspected, all types of victories - with the potential exception of the Diplo - are slightly modified Kill-them-all-s.

As for tech order. I think your best bet is to continue towards EDU. Problem with lib is you will not have the race under control.

Do you mean to go EDU first on the path to Lib? I thought that Edu is one of the prerequisites to get Lib, but may be mistaken, and can't check the tech tree right now.

Btw wasn't sure why you opted for Juda instead of Hindu as SR. It is some kind of rule?
Would have to recheck some things again to offer more insight on the religion and overall situation, since this is from memory how my thoughts went yesterday.
Really surprised me that you're standing alone with religion.

No rule here. We faked Mao's friends. Cheated the bloody AI!
EDIT: crosspost with Cam.

We also like TGL very much not to give it a try under the circumstances. Stone is not enough!! Some softer tissue needed as well!!

 

[vranasm]

I am not sure right now if academy counts as national wonder or not.

the pairing of TGL with NE is due to the 2 free scientist which GENERATE gpp (in BtS at least, not sure with WL). So pairing TGL with NE is natural thing since with library (prereq for TGL) you can run 4 scientist GPP's outside of caste very cheap. NE doubling this.

OU is usually paired with running cottages and preferably academy and all that jazz (capital +50% basic commerce from bureau having big word in this - this multiplier doesn't work with employed scientists), you occasionaly build OU in GP farm if you don't have great cottage side.

So as I said not sure with the rules right now.. you have 2 NW's in city. if Academy counts as one you can't have academy, ou and ne in 1 city.
The usual praxis is not mix NE and OU, but right now am not really sure if it is mostly due to other land being worked or it has some more basic obstacle.

You can compete for SS even with less (those 12 you have should suffice), but it's more risky in a sense.

Edu is before Lib that's right. The thing is, you can go for Edu for 2 reasons, one of them is "lib race" if you're sure you will win it to get even more tech advantage and decisive advantage at that for renessaince breakout, Lib->Steel, Lib->MT, Lib->Nat are most popular lib beelines (and some good tech trade fodder).
If you don't control the race, other path towards the steel, mt can be taken, since then the lib path can be in a sense useless and Edu has BIG tech cost for it's era.
You have to realize that to fully bulb Edu you need 2 GS, compared to other things being at almost the same position in tech race which mostly cost 1 or 1 and a bit teching.

Your strategy probably involves building OU though probably. The cost of OU is pretty steep though (it's not about the OU only, but the 6 unis too) and you basically don't have many cities benefiting from unis at all.
If you would aim for military victory I would scrap OU Totally, but the target is SS and I think the OU will at least pay back it's cost.