nero03 SID

[Heroes]

Not if we're constantly sending reinforcements. We need lots of spears to defend our newly conquered cities. Cats are simply way too slow, but will definately be used on defense/leaderfishing.

IMO we should treat this like an AW game, since one sid opponent will probably throw as many units at us as 4 emperor AIs.

Man, I think you CANNOT build spears as Carthage
For reinforcement, why send lots of defenders? I don't get it. Gather more attackers and raze their capital, this would be better to secure your grabbed land. And fast units (horses here) are good for reinforcement, because sword will take too long to reach frontier

 

[Own]

Oh, yeah, I meant NM's. After each city taken, with horses weak attack and some retreated, they'll be heavily wounded and need to heal, something that can't be done when the AI sends stacks of death our way without good defenders.

 

[Pentium]

Ok, people, this is Sid, not Emperor. We can't outproduce the AI and just send more and more units. We have to out-think it, by using artillery and minimizing losses.

I agree Horses are good for reinforcements, because they come to the front faster. If we start the war with Cats, NM's and Archers and then send Horses, it'll be the best, I think.

 

[Own]

I was wondering that too, when I remembered the NM. The AI doesn't pack all their units in a city, just 2-3. We can take those with horses painlessly. Then come counterattack, we got some NM's with cats to defend/leaderfish (with the NM's, horses need to heal). And with a very productive empire, whihc will come easy with good micromanagement, we can send reinforcements very quickly. We only need to "outpower" the sid defense in their cities, and what's great about horses is they have no chance to reinforce the city. Our superior NM with cats can deal with the rest.

Btw, does anyone have offa's town capture simulator? It looks really useful, but it's a pain for me to download anything, if someone has it, we may need to use it.

Hey, we'll be in monarchy, so we can cashrush settlers in newly conquered cities! Oh yeah, resistance . We'll need heavy garrisons, I guess.

 

[Whomp]

Preturn: Look around. Anarchy. Ok not much to do with that.
975 Nada mucho.

IT We are hopeless according to some subjective stiff.
950 Two more anarchy turns. Byz have kindly hooked up our iron. Leptis is 19% probable to flip. Ikes.

IT Ottos land a spear/warrior tandem.
925First I check the peace picture. Ottos will give 8g. Well let go knock of a couple of their units first. Cats go 2-4 on the spear. vArcher takes the warrior and the 2nd promotes flawlessly knocking off the spear. Leptis is down to 9.4%.

IT Shoot. The Sumerians request our curragh to leave immediately. I must of landed in front of one of their cities. The curragh is parked on the wrong side of their continent next to our other one now. What's the byz archer looking for? We are now King.
900 Economy sees immediate improvement but I still need lux at 30%. We are luxless. That's bad in any game. Well let's go check out Theo's capital for 48g.

She's still annoyed with us.

Decide it's time to give peace a chance for 11g with Osman. We need to prepare for Theo and she looks like she wants to sneak attack. There is not a country willing to sell currency for our gpt. I am curious why the min run was not on currency vs. republic. Without luxs we have no chance whatsoever to be a republic IMO.

IT zzz
875move, road, mm

IT Byz start Sun Tzu.
850move, road, mm

IT French start Sun Tzu
825 Ottos and Americans get currency and republic. At least they're getting cheaper.

IT Iroquois and Ottos now want Sun Tzu. Entremont finishes the GREAT LIB. We may need it in our future.
800move, road, mm

IT Dromons appear in the north. Nasty. A French horse appears near the iron city. Iroquois and French move Sun Tzu.
775move, road, mm

IT zzz
750move, road, mm

SUMMARY
My.02 on the great horse debate is they are all needed. Horses can shut the back door when we need some help on our flank. Which is one enormous flank right now. Rivers are slowing our movement but I think we may have enough to execute the war for iron. Most everything is fortified. As far as the GA goes we have one NM. I'm not so sure we want to spend it until we have a harbor in the capital so we can possibly trade for some luxs. Lux is at 40% and I'd prefer to spend the GA building libs and markets not sad faces.

 

[Own]

How bout a temple in leptis magna . In 5 turns it should flip. Do the byz have iron? If so horses can't be used, they aren't anything compared to pikes.

Byz have iron, but it's not hooked up to constantinople. Let's sneak around and take constantinople on the second turn of the war, they lose the great wall and a sweet city. Second key city is the iron city, but should be taken after the fall of COnstantinople so no walls.

Byz are in their golden age :shakehead: Perhaps America would be a better target, and when we're done we can knight Byzantium to death?

Edit2: Another idea, put workers/warriors around the iron city so they can't hook it up to constantinople.

 

[Whomp]

I would suggest we proceed with the iron city and stop there. I don't think that city will be carrying pikes and they didn't have them in the captial if you see the picture. I would proceed with that city then consider the Americans for their wines. Americans have wines nearby.

Leptis is a problem. I'm not 100% sure a temple will rectify that situation.

 

[Obormot]

Why didn't you leave an ottoman unit in our land? We could have used that to trigger a new war without WW or a rep hit in case of a flip. Now if LM flips we either loose the city or our rep. BTW, when i checked it it as at 4%, maybe the risk went up during anarchy? Anyway, i think that now it would be better to resettle the city.

The road on iron is nice, we can move our stack on the mountain and get better protection. I also think that a GA it is too early for our GA, we should trigger it during max-research. We should investigate the iron city and a few other nearby byz cities to see how many defenders they have.

About research goal: i chose republic because currency is much easier to extort in a peace deal, and by the time the min-run completes we may be better prepaired for becoming republic.

 

[Own]

If a flip is inevitable, why don't we gift it to the Ottomans and at least improve thier attidute? Eh, who cares.

I bet they do have pikes in that city, because if they're building Sun Tzu's they have feud. In Constantinople the strategic resource box doesn't have iron, so it's not hooked to const., so I bet the iron city has pikes. We will need cats to take that city. We can then go with Obor's plan against America.

 

[Own]

Crosspost- Why resettle? We only have like 10 osman culture on that city, and it is big and has improvements, right?

Flip risk definately goes up in anarchy. A temple IMO is the way to go. Or a lib.

IMO we need a golden age now, to help us in early conquest when we're weak. Once we've taken out America with out golden age help, we can easily take out the Byz probably with knights, and then France (or arabia or inca?) with cavalry.

 

[Obormot]

OK, i see it is my turn now, i think we should take their iron before they hook it up to their capital so that we don't see many pikes in the future. After taking the city we'll see how the war goes and either stop there or take another city or two. Maybe we should do the same to american wines after that. Later we build up our forces and prepair for blitz against ironless AI. I'll check the flip risk again and may abandon LM.

 

[Obormot]

If we want to keep LM the granary should be cash-rushed to complete before growth and start making workers. But if it is higher then 5 percent it will be to dangerous.

 

[Own]

Obormot- Didn't you play before panda boy in a swap? That's a very good plan, knights vs spears sounds good later on. But, the AI starts to surge ahead in the middle ages by sid, what if they get guns by the time we can attack.

 

[Obormot]

Yes, i did play, i forgot
So what is the roster now?

The tech pace would be very fast in the MA, but much depends on luck. Invention and guns have a high priority for the AI, but engineering has low priority. If none of sci AIs gets engineering for free they may learn education and even astronomy before getting guns, but if somebody gets engineering they'll beeline to guns. But there is always the possibility that they don't have salt

 

[Own]

Roster is

Obormot- swapped
nerovats- up
Own- on deck
SW- in hole
Pentium- in bigger hole
Bigfoot
Whomp- just played

 

[Own]

Dave's article on AI's favorite techs based on Alexmans research. Might come in handy .

All Middle Age Techs
1. Invention
2. Feudalism
3. Gunpowder
4. Astronomy
5. Magnetism
6. Navigation
7. Literature
8. Theology
9. Chivalry
10. Monarchy
11. Engineering
12. The Republic
13. Theory of Gravity
14. Monotheism
15. Education
16. Economics
17. Metallurgy
18. Military Tradition
19. Banking
20. Music Theory
21. Printing Press
22. Free Artistry
23. Chemistry
24. Physics
25. Democracy

 

[Whomp]

I have learned from DocT the upper half towards Printing Press can be very successful for potential monopolies. They will trade for PP.

One other point. There were two Byz reg. archers lurking near Hippo so I left two of ours nearby. They could probably afford a defensive unit so they impale themselves on the archer.

As far as leaving the unit on our territory I hadn't thought of that. My bad. The good news is we got an elite out of it. They do have boats regularly crossing our waters.

 

[nerovats]

Can play in 24, if Own can play earlier we can swap?

 

[Own]

I've got SGOTM that I can never get around to, so just play on nerovats.

 

[Obormot]

There was a discussion in the thread about the tech list and there seems to be a bug with calculations of goverment techs. Techs that give goverments should be moved up on that list. And still AI priority depends on the beakers AI generate and since we are playing on sid it should be different from the list (i think Dave used average values for that).

Based on my experience Printing Press, Music Theory and Free Artistry are very good monopoly techs on sid.

@Nero: Don't forget to check the flip risk at Leptis. If it is reasonable don't forget to rush the granary. Another thing: i noticed that Utica is building a settler, maybe a horse there is better and the settler in the capital after the harbour? It is better to build settlers in high-food cities and also growing the capital will require a high lux tax.