MRG's Random Game of Randomness

At the moment, everyone has Horses except America.
 
I usually go for Mass Production & Motorized Transportation first, as I think that Tanks are more useful than Bombers (especially with Armies and railways). A Tank Army kills even Infantry cleanly, so no need for any preparatory bombing. (And: the Artillery we have, seemed to be sufficient for the job, according to your writeup...) Also, 2-3 Battleships might be useful for protecting our ship-chains against the pirates (if there are still any around?!)

I would even stop research after getting Tanks and then use the cash for rushing Armies. We won't need any other tech to win this game.

On the next target I agree with tjs282: Portugal first, then Egypt, and if we still need territory, take a few American towns. But of course it also depends on who has which resources. Don't have the game open at the moment, but does any of the two have rubber and the other doesn't? Then I would go against the Rifles and hope that by the time we need to attack the Infantries, we have Tanks...

A strategy could look like:
  • Conquer what we can conquer with Cav Armies
  • Research Tanks quickly, while preparing rail connections where needed
  • Stop research, sell any surplus resources to Sumeria and Korea for as much gold/gpt we can get
  • Use all our income to rush an Army every other turn and fill them with Tanks
  • Game over
 
The artillery we have are doing the job fairly well, but Spain only had Riflemen and didn't have any cities above size 12- right now only Korea and Sumeria seem to have built any hospitals, but the other AI's might eventually build up some larger cities.

Korea's the only civ I've seen with Infantry so far, but I think most of the other AI's can build them.

The only resources I can currently sell are Horses and Salt to America and Coal and Rubber to Egypt.

From what I can tell from resources everyone has in their territory:

-Sumeria has everything but Rubber, and we're exporting them Rubber
-Korea has Saltpeter, Oil, and Iron, and are getting Horses and Rubber from us
-Portugal has everything but Saltpeter, though their only source of Horses is in an isolated city on the other side of Egypt, not sure whether they have it hooked up or not
-Egypt has Oil, Saltpeter, and Horses
-America has Iron, Coal, and Rubber in their territory, but might not have them all hooked up

-The currently active AI trade routes are between Portugal and America, Portugal and Korea, America and Korea, Sumeria and Korea, and Sumeria and Egypt. We can say for sure that the Sumeria-Egypt trade route must be Sumeria exporting Egypt their spare Iron, I'm pretty sure Korea must be getting Coal from Portugal since no other AI has more than one source of it, while Portugal must be getting their Saltpeter from Korea because America has none, and must also have that far-off source hooked up if they have Horses.
 
Also, we still have 4 turns left on deals with every AI, so I think I'll let them expire before attacking, I'd need to wait a turn or two for all the armies to heal anyway.
 
Bombers for sure are more useful. Portugal seems like the next logical choice if someone else doesn't attack us first. And invading Sumeria would get the Koreans after us because they signed a MPP with them. Unless of course the MPP expires between now and then.

Actually better check and make sure there's no other MPP around before attacking anyone first.
 
If Portugal indeed has rubber, while Egypt doesn't, then Egypt would be the better choice. Also check out, which wars may currently be going on. If we can get 1-2 other nations to join us, like in the Spanish war, it'll make things much easier.
We could for example use horses or salt to bribe the Americans (and sell the other resource for gold?!).

Yeah, let the deals expire first. 4 turns for healing, regrouping and getting rail lines ready is not too much. And if we want to earn gold by selling resources, our trade rep is important.
 
There's currently no wars going on in the world.

The one thing about Portugal that would make them an attractive first target is that they have Oil in a size-2 town right near our Spanish territory, while Egypt's Oil is more towards the middle of their territory, plus Egypt's lack of Coal means we'll have to build railroads as we advance through them and that might slow us down a bit.
 
It is good to group units up and have a small recovery period after a war. I have a feeling that within those 4 turns you'll likely see some suspicious activity from a nation that's about to attack. The game may decide what war we have next instead of us.
 
So, am I going for Mass Production->Motorized Transportation then, and not Flight? It sounded like that was we were leaning towards
 
And, second part coming right up. Our deals with Portugal and Egypt expired on the IBT before my last turn, I'll leave it up to team discussion what we do next.

Spoiler :

1330 AD (Turn 6):

-Per team discussion I switch from Flight to Mass Production, due in 11

IBT:

-I see all the AI units start heading home

-Resistance ends in most of the former Spanish cities, but a few remain in Cordoba, Merida, and Santander

-Barcelona: Worker->Wealth (It’s completely surrounded by 1-food tiles)

-Smyrna: Worker->Worker

-Almarikh: Cav->Cav

-Tabriz: Cav->Cav

-Ulaanbaatar: Cav->Cav

-New Kazan: Settler->Worker

-Baruun-Urt: Cav->Cav

-Batshireet: Factory->Destroyer

-Ulaangom: Market->Factory

-Tosontsengel: Frigate->Courthouse

-Merida: Worker->Worker

-The volcano near Baruun-Urt erupts, destroying the road on a nearby mountain

1335 AD (Turn 7):

-Not wanting to build more Frigates, I turn any active Frigate build into a Destroyer build

-Rush a Harbor in Logrono to keep it from starving above size 5

-Build New Choyr near some Horses

-Send some Cavalry from our homeland through Korean territory towards our Byzantine lands, immediately become dismayed at how little progress Korea has made towards railroading their territory

-Trade Combustion to Sumeria for 111 gpt, 128 gold, and their world map, and when shopping around immediately realize nobody else but Korea has any money at all

IBT:

-Korea declares war on Portugal! Well, certainly glad Wang Kon doesn’t want to fight us. I immediately see Korea attack a bunch of Portuguese units in or near our territory.

-Karakorum: Cav->Cav

-Kazan: Cav->Cav

-Darhan: Cav->Cav

-Dalandzadgad: Cav->Cav

-Mandalgovi: Cav->Cav

-Dyrrachium: Settler->Worker

-Tsesterleg: Cav->Cav

-Logrono: Harbor->Artillery

-New Ulaanbaatar: Settler->Worker

1340 AD (Turn 8):

-Build New Ulaangom in former Byzantium

IBT:

-I watch as Portugal utterly destroys one of Korea’s stacks of medieval units but Korea has tons more coming to wreck Portugal right back

-Almarikh: Cav->Cav

-Septum: Worker->Worker

-Baruun-Urt: Cav->Cav

-Taegwon: Library->Market

-Korea’s cities just changed look, so they’re Modern, now.

1345 AD (Turn 9):

-Aaaaand… A solid wall of workers and mountains in Korean territory completely blocks the Cavalry from moving forward. Great. Luckily I can send them through American territory instead, but that’s a bit of a detour, even if America has more railroads.

-Found New Tosontsengel

-Rush an Infantry in Nicaea and upgrade all the Rifles in former Byzantium to Infantry- if we do decide to attack Egypt in the near future we’ll need more units here.

IBT:

-More Korea/Portugal battles. A couple of injured Portuguese Infantry make a valiant stand on a hill but can’t withstand Korea’s overwhelming number of units.

-Karakorum: Cav->Cav

-Nicaea: Inf->Inf

-Kazan: Cav->Cav

-Tabriz: Cav->Cav

-Salamanca: Worker->Worker

-Mandalgovi: Cav->Cav

-Choybalsan: Artillery->Artillery

-Tsesterleg: Cav->Cav

-New Darhan: Worker->Worker

-New Choybalsan: Worker->Worker

-New Erdenet: Worker->Worker

-New Tsetserleg: Worker->Worker

-Our deals expire, meaning we lose our supplies of Oil, Silks, and Dyes

1350 AD (Turn 10):

-Build New Altay

-While passing through Korea I see they have Mech Infs, so they must have gotten Computers as their free tech.

-We can trade for Oil from Egypt, Silks from Korea or America, and Dyes and Furs from Portugal. Korea and America are both “insulted” by Ivory for Silks straight up, so if we want Silks we need to trade America a tech, probably, but they have no money. Egypt won’t give us Oil unless we trade them both Combustion *and* Electronics, though they’ll throw all their money with the Oil if we give them both. The other option would be one of the techs + money for Oil. Portugal will trade us Furs and Dyes for Electronics, but they have no gpt to offer. I leave any trades up to the next player, particularly because we should obviously only trade with the one of Portugal and Egypt we aren’t fighting.


So, Portugal or Egypt next? With Portugal, the fact that Korea is already fighting them saves us the trouble of signing a military alliance with Korea (in all likelihood, Sumeria will also join the fight at some point due to Korea and Sumeria's MPP), and the fact that there's few of our units in former Byzantine land isn't really an issue in that case. Portugal also has a source of Oil right near our borders in Alciente, but there's currently a ton of Korean units surrounding it and it might not last long enough for us to grab it. If we do, though, that makes our lives a lot easier for the future- we'd for sure get Egyptian Oil from fighting them, but their Oil sources are near the middle of their territory, would take a bit of time and effort to claim them.

I also must note one of the downsides, that the area between us and Portugal has barely any roads right now, so we'd be going really slow to start off.
 

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I would go after Portugal first. They do have rubber and a few Infantries, but some towns that can be seen, are protected only by Rifles and even Muskets. They are probably too bankrupt to make large scale upgrades?!

To make sure that they don't build new ones, we could send an Inf Army to pillage their rubber. It seems they have only one source near Rio Janeiro. (Unfortunately, CivAssist II is not able to load the save, and I didn't check the entire map manually... Ah, no, there is a second one near Lagos. That can be pillaged on the first turn of war from Egyptian territory.

We need to send 2-3 Infs to New Hovd, to protect our coal, and then we are ready to go.

Atm I would not buy oil from Egypt. We need it only once we can build Tanks, and that's going to take almost 20 turns. The few Destroyers will finish without oil.

Let's buy silks from America, and that's it. We can quickly retake our old furs colony and dyes from Portugal. Three more luxes will get rid of the lux tax we have to pay.

And we can speed up the research some more, if we do something about our unit maintenance (276gpt). Our rail network is done, the few rail lines we need for the advance into Portugal, can be done by the slaves we have, so we could now join most of the native workers to cities. That would free up some 100-120gpt for research. And we need more settlers to fill the Spanish territory and for unit support.

So the first war objectives should be:
  • Take New Karakorum (furs)
  • Disconnect their two rubber sources
  • Take Sagres (dyes)
  • If Korea didn't manage to take Alicante, give it a try (oil)
  • Take any "soft" targets and let Korea fight the Portuguese Infantries...
BTW: who's up?
 
BTW: who's up?
Original play-order was you, then me, then MRG, then Chox, but then Chox and I took a long break, and Spoon- GP jumped in.

Not sure where we're at now, but it seems like it might be GP or you again, at least based on "time since last turnset"?
 
Going backwards in history, I see that we played in this order (last played on top):
choxorn
tjs282
MrRandomGuy
Lanzelot
MrRandomGuy
Spoonwood

So, unless @GrandPhilosopher wants to become a "regular" team member and take another turn, I could play next.
 
Ok, got it. My proposal for what I would pursue during my turnset is what I wrote in #476. Please post, if you have any other ideas, objections or additions.
I will then probably play on Saturday. (Not much time during the week: I'm back at work plus my basement got flooded last weekend, so still lots of cleanup to do... :sad: )
 
That all sounds good to me, sorry to hear about the basement.
 
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