Nero04: Skipping some levels? It's training day

[Hawk Chieftain]

Pre-flight:
Rush Galley at Salamanca for 80 gold
Rush Galley at Logrono for 40 gold
Rush Galley at Barcelona for 88 gold
Switch Murcia< Galley (2 turns)
Switch Ivory City< Cat (4 turns)
Switch Toledo< Cat (1 turn)
Switch Seville< Cat (1 turn)
Ottomans built The Hanging Gardens

Turn 1- Disbanded 3 Warriors in Toledo, got 6 shields back, gpt went back to +4
Toledo<Cat (3 turns)
Seville<Cat (3 turns)
Disbanded 2 more Warriors near Seville
Madrid<Settler (6 turns), move Settler north
Consolidated Swordsman around Santander & Jaen
Disbanded 3 more Warriors in Barcelona
IBT-
Move to 4.4.2. GPT is -5
Vikings build The Great Library, we’ll have to take it from them
One Galley near Barcelona sinks.

Turn 2- Move Swordman closer to front
Murcia< Galley (10 turns)
We made contact with the Babylonians. They are up Poly, Currency, & Construct. They also are offering contact with the Arabs for WM and 50 gold. We’ll take that. They’ll give us Poly for 180 gold, Currency for 12 gold (but since we only have 1 turn to get it, we’ll pass), & Construct for 300 gold.

IBT-
Vikings will give Poly for WM & 160 gold, & Construct for WM & 290 gold
Ottomans will give Poly for WM & 50 gold, & Construct for WM & 170 gold
Persians will give Poly for WM & 170 gold, & Construct for WM & 300 gold
Zulu will give Poly for WM & 170 gold, & Construct for WM & 300 gold
Arabia will trade Poly for The Republic & Literature- we’ll take that. Will give Construct for WM & 180 gold.
Accepted Ottomans trade of Construct for WM & 170 gold.
We are now even tech wise, except for Monarchy, which is an optional tech.

I'll try to find time to finish my turn set soon.

 

[CommandoBob]

Turn 1- Disbanded 3 Warriors in Toledo, got 6 shields back...

I thought we would get 5 shields per warrior, not just 2.

You may want to switch the build in Toledo from Cat to Sword. Toledo has a barracks, which is good for Swords, but does nothing for Cats. That still leaves 2 Cats being built, in Seville and Ivory City.

You did some good trading.

Some Quick Questions
Did we get a World Map from anyone? If not, we can later.

What are we researching next?

We have troops at Santander and Jaen. Are we planning on two major lines of attack?

Is Iron the only strategic resource we have? I do not remember any others, but I cannot rely on my memory all the time.

 

[Hawk Chieftain]

Commando- thanks for the advice on Toledo. I'll switch it to a Sword.
I didn't get a WM, but I'll explore some more.
I was thinking of researching Monotheism, since I think that the other civs will take either Feudalism or Engineering.
The Vikings have 2 irons that are nearest Santander and Jaen. I think we need to concentrate our forces to capture their iron. We could attack with a stack of 6-7 swords, and a stack of 2 swords & 3-4 cats on each city. We could use the rest of our swords for defense on the Viking counter-attack. I think that if we split our forces up to attack 2 different cities at the same time, the Vikings won't know how to react. Also, since we don't have any defensive forces, we would have to use the remaining swords to attack their forces that are approaching our territory.
What do you think?

 

[TimBentley]

Lurker's CommentYes, all types of artillery units are equal, whether built in a rax town or not.

lurker's comment: Except H'wachas.

 

[Hawk Chieftain]

IBT- Vikings move settler into our territory. Ask them to get out.
Currency is completed, we are in the MA.
Checking the points, we are in 2nd to Last with 456 points
Research Monotheism (17 turns)
Ivory City< Cat (2 turns)
Lost Galley near Babylonia.

Turn 3- Move swords closer to Santander & Jaen.

IBT- Vikings don't move out of Spain. Vikings are up Monarchy, Monotheism, Feudalism, & Engineering
Barcelona< Galley (4 turns)
Seville< Cat (3 turns)
Toledo< Marketplace (20 turns)

Turn 4- Move workers

IBT- Traded WM to Ottomans for 3 gold. They are Monarchy, Monotheism, Feudalism, & Engineering.
Traded WM to Zulu for 10 gold. They are up Monarchy & Engineering.

 

[CommandoBob]

The following map is my first serious thoughts on attacking the Vikings.

The Vikings have three deposits of Iron; north of Stavanger (1), west of Bergen (2) and southwest of Oslo (1). Only the cities of Bergen and Oslo are connected to Iron. Which means few, if any, swords in the Viking army.
Birka (1) was founded on a Horse, and another Horse is east of Odense (2). Only Birka is connected to Horses. These resources are the thin, light blue circles on the map.

The Blue and Red open squares are good places for our forces to be before we declare war on Ragnar. I am thinking our forces will be split 60-40, with the 60 being the Red and the 40 being the Blue. Blue is further west and will target Stavanger, Bergen and Reykjavik (5). Red will target Birka, Copenhagen (3) and Trondheim (6).

If we used all our swords, 10 to 12 would be Blue, the rest would be Red. Cats could be spilt 50-50. If we are making swords/cats in most of our cities, we may want to gamble with sending all our units to war and using our new units to protect our cities.

First moves would be to the Blue/Red dots. The blue dot is a mountain and the Red dot is a hill. I expect to be attacked on the first turn we enter Viking-land.

I expect to conquer Birka and Stavanger fairly quickly. Both will be auto razed, since they are size 1 and have no culture. We need to rebuild Birka. It is on the second ring and it has horses, which we currently lack.

After conquering their first cities, our armies start walking to the next target. It will take the Blue five turns to get into position, the Red will take only four (the semi-ovals). Blue will attack Bergen from a hill, which gives it a defensive advantage, if needed. Copenhagen is surrounded by mostly jungle and a river. We have to cross the river and attack from a plain for the best odds.

Depending on the battles, these cities may both auto raze, but I expect Copenhagen to survive. To keep if from flipping we will have need to leave a garrison. It is a slow growth city, but it does connect to three dyes (?), which we could trade.

We may need to pause and let new and healed swords catch up with us before we go after Reykjavik and Trondheim. I expect the capital to have swords. Walking distance to both cities is three turns. Neither has good defensive terrain, so we will attack from the solid boxes.

This attack would split the Viking Empire and reduce the Vikings from ten to four cites. To the west would be one city, the other three are in the east and close to England.

If we get a Military Alliance with England after we declare war on the Vikings, we have twenty turns to subdue the Vikings with little English interference. After those twenty turns, our swords will be close the English border and we can remove England from the land of Spain and the land of Spain-To-Be if we so desire.

This is just a first study. Other eyes could find ways to improve it and are welcome to do so.

 

[Hawk Chieftain]

Commando- I like your War plan for the Blue route. It will take out 2 Irons, which will cripple the Vikings big time. The problem is that the Cats won't go thru Jungle. We would either have to fight with just swords, or clear the jungle with workers.
For the red route, I was thinking of attacking Odensa first with swords & cats, then move to Olso to take out their other Iron. It will 3 turns movement from Odensa to Olso with Cat protecting our swords stack. Then, we can move onto Trondheim.

 

[nerovats]

roading the jungle will also let the cats pass.

 

[nerovats]

I'd reduce the blue army. 5-6 sword will do, those cities are pretty useless to the vikings anyway. Better to take out their core, to cripple them, then make peace for some small cities, take last couple out after 20 turns. During those 20 turns we could join the English for a cup of tea.

 

[Hawk Chieftain]

Nero- What would you do to invade the Vikings? What cities would you hit? When would you attack?

 

[CommandoBob]

For the red route, I was thinking of attacking Odensa first with swords & cats, then move to Olso to take out their other Iron. It will 3 turns movement from Odensa to Olso with Cat protecting our swords stack. Then, we can move onto Trondheim.

I had mentally put Odense and the rest into the 'cleanup/2nd wave' category. I should have said so.

If we can get an MA with England we will have 20 turns where we cannot attack England and we could encircle Trondheim from three sides. We would want to get Oslo, so that England would not have that iron source. And I did not check England for resources, sorry.

If we cannot get an MA with England, I would like to have our conquest of the Vikings end with our units close to England, so that we could 'drop in for tea' unexpectedly, as nerovats suggested.

If England helps, she helps. If she doesn't, she doesn't. Either way, in 3 to 4 turnsets, she is history, or a one-city-wonder.

But we also need to think ahead. What do we do with all this new territory to make it productive for Spain?

 

[nerovats]

Nero- What would you do to invade the Vikings? What cities would you hit? When would you attack?

I would have attacked a lot sooner. Now I would gather units fast and move in. Small stack for the 3 western isolated cities, 8-10 swords to be save, no cats. Take rest of troops now rest-2 swords + all cats + lot of workers and couple of settlers (if we got them) to Odense->split of half the swords (swords only) to Copenhagen rest towards Trondheim. When timed correctly these stacks are able to reach Trondheim at same time. Take that. Depending on how fortunate we are we could split off couple of sword+cats to take the ivory city, move bulk to Reykjavik? can&#180;t read name from picture (the one with harbor). The blue line should have taken Bergen by now, and moved towards Reyjavik as well (just leave 2 swords or so near Bergen). If this blue campaign was succesfull part of the red team could be moved to the floodplains city in stead, thats all their productive cities. This should make their capitol jump to Aarhus, which would be a great place for them to OCC for a while. The 2 swords left behind should stay neer birka to control possible couter attack from there. New units go there, and when enough units take it. Workers should by then have completed a road to the front as well, making it easy to move these units to the front as well.

Workers road asap, settlers replace key positions. Might be wise to raze cities to prevent flips. When keeping don&#180;t leave units in them but station outside. If england did not join the war, this is a good time to claim some cities, and leave them with just 1 or 2.

There are a lot of if&#180;s, but war is not predictible.
As soon as we got horses switch to them, they are great to counteract landings.

 

[CommandoBob]

We can build a road to where-Birka-used-to-be very quickly. We have workers nearby completing the South Loop. When they are done they move to the grassland due north of Birka and road. This will need three worker-turns.

To get to the Viking core we have to build roads in jungles, but only two of them. We road the grassland due south of Birka and continue making roads in the two jungle tiles due south of Birka. Our road will then end adjacent (northwest) of Odense. From here it is only one grassland tile to road to connect to Trondheim.

If we want to connect to Reykjavik, we can work the road to only pass through one forest.

I think we should keep Bergen if possible, or at least plan to resettle it, maybe even on the iron hill itself. This will keep the iron out of Vikings control. But to connect it will take a lot of time. And it will need some culture to push back against the Viking capital.

 

[Hawk Chieftain]

IBT- Vikings move settler pair closer in
Vitoria builds Temple<Walls (7 turns)
Ivory City builds Cat< Cat (2 turns)

Turn 5- started to move some workers toward the Front
Have 9 swords for Blue line attack
Founded Palma< Barracks (40 turns)
Have 2 archers fortified in Santander
Madrid build Settler< Settler (6 turns)

IBT- Have 1 archer fortified in Jaen, switch from Temple to Walls (4 turns)
Move 5 swords in position for Red line attack
Move sword that was fortified in Ivory City, Salamanca, Valencia, Seville, Zaragaza towards Santander
Vikings move deeper into Spain
Galley sinks

Turn 6- Have 2 stacks next to Odensa; sword & cat on one, 5 swords on the other
Founded Cordoba<Walls (20 turns)
Changed economy to 5.3.2 so we can have more money to either build more units, or get another civ involved in the war
Ask Vikings to get out, they will

IBT- Salamanca builds Galley<Spearman (4 turns)
Ivory City builds Cat<Cat (2 turns)
Seville builds Cat<Spearman (3 turns)

Turn 7- move movement toward Front

IBT- Everyone except for England & Arabia is up Monarchy, Feudalism, Monotheism, and Engineering
Jaen builds Walls< Barracks (20 turns)
Ottomans are building Sun Tzu
Another Galley sinks
Barcelona builds Galley<Sword (3 turns)
Zaragoza builds Worker<Walls (20 turns)

Turn 8- more movement toward Front

IBT- English enter our territory
Toledo riots, raise economy to 4.3.3
Vikings building Sun Tzu, hopefully they will get it, so we can capture it
Persia has built The Great Lighthouse
Ivory City builds Cat< Cat (2 turns)

Turn 9- movement to Front
IBT- Seville builds Spearman<Marketplace (13 turns)
Babylon building Sun Tzu
Order restored in Toledo

Turn 10 (110AD)- movement toward Front.

Here’s what we have:
Barcelona (Size 8) building Sword (1 turn), will grow in 38 turns, fortified by Warrior
Cordoba (Size 1) building Walls (16 turns), will grow in 6 turns
Ivory City (Size 6) building Cat (1 turn), will grow in 13 turns
Jaen- (Size 3) building Barracks (18 turns), will grow in 7 turns, fortified by Archer
Logrono (Size 3) building Galley (5 turns), will grow in 10 turns, fortified by Archer
Madrid (Size 7) building Settler (1 turn), will grow in 6 turns
Murcia (Size 4) building Galley (2 turns), will grow in 7 turns, fortified by Warrior
Palma (Size 1) building Barracks (35 turns), will grow in 5 turns
Pamplona (Size 2) building Worker (1 turn), will grow in 10 turns, fortified by Sword
Salamanca (Size 2) building Spearman (1 turn), will grow in 7 turns
Santander (Size 4) building Barracks (13 turns), will grow in 10 turns, fortified by Archer
Seville (Size 7) building Marketplace (13 turns), will grow in 1 turn, fortified by Spearman
Toledo (Size 8) building Marketplace (11 turns), will grow in 9 turns
Valencia (Size 3) building Granary (16 turns), will grow in 17 turns
Valladolid (Size 2) building Galley (1 turn), will grow in 18 turns
Vitoria (Size 3) building Walls (5 turns), will grow in 5 turns, fortified by Sword
Zaragoza (Size 1) building Walls (18 turns), will grow in 7 turns


Units:
Settler- 1
Worker- 18
Warrior- 2
Archer- 4
Spearman- 1
Swords- 24
Cats- 9
Galleys- 2

Trading
England- 3 gold, has Monarchy, will not go into MA against Vikings
Ottomans- 31 gold, up Monarchy, Mono, Feudal, & Engineering
Persia- 95 gold, up Monarchy, Mono, Feudal, & Engineering
Zulu- 1 gold, up Monarchy, Feudal & Engineering
Arabia- 11 gold, up Monarchy
Babylon- 15 gold, up Monarchy, Mono, Feudal, & Engineering
Vikings- 45 gold, up Monarchy, Mono, Feudal, & Engineering

We have 281 gold, earning 2gpt, and have 9 turns before Monotheism.
There are 9 Swords in position for the Blue line attack. A stack of 6 swords, and a stack of 2 swords & 4 cats in position for the Red line attack.
You should be able to attack the Vikings within a turn or two.
Go get ‘em Commando!

 

[Hawk Chieftain]

Here is a few screenshots:

 

[CommandoBob]

Got the save. Some quick notes.

Blue Army looks good.

Red Army is a bit spread out (not badly, just not all in one tile).

No units take out Birka? It will be (would be) our first horsie.

Building lots of galleys.

Not building lots of replacement units (swords).

Galley snooping (exploration) looks good.

Vikings will soon have Invention (if not already), which gives the ability to make Berserks. Could be a problem, but not if we attack fast and hard.

Our biggest cities are the crankiest ones. Make settlers to bring their size down and then lower the luxury rate? An idea only, not thought out.

May be able to play tonight. Plan to do at least the pre-flight tonight.

What if..
If we get a Great Leader, which could happen, but proabably will not, since we are not a fighting people, what should we do with him? Build an Army or rush a Wonder? Forbidden Palace comes to mind, but where to build it?

 

[nerovats]

When going to war it's usually best to keep building units until victoryu can't be missed anymore. Suggest to stop galleys (we appear to have met everyone, let current galleys explore, postpone markets, get military and some settlers.
C-Bob new units could first go to Birka when enough units take it. Could switch to horses them as they'll get to the front faster and are upgradable to knights.

 

[CommandoBob]

C-Bob new units could first go to Birka when enough units take it.

I had thought of upgrading the warriors in Murcia and Barcelona to swords and move them to attack Birka, along with the sword just north of Birka.

I had planned to attack all three cities (Odense, Birka, and Stavanger) on the same turn, which mean some delay (1 or 2 turns) to get units into position to attack Birka.

But with the Viking so close to getting Berserks, it might be better to start the war now and have Birka taken by the soon-to-be-formed Green Army (second wave of units).

 

[nerovats]

Declare war before entering viking space or we get a rep hit.

Upgrading soem wariors is ok too, we should leave at least some behind to adress possible landings.

 

[CommandoBob]

Brief update (after 6 turns of 10):

War News
The war goes well. Auto-razed Birka, captured Stavanger and Odense. We have lost two units near Bergen to a wandering Pikeman that is wandering no longer. And so far that has been our only losses.

We have a World Map and the Vikings have a hovel on an island north of Cordoba. We can either remove them from Greater Spain or leave them Aarhaus (?) and take this island city. I would like to keep them to only one city, just so that they will trouble us no longer. Cannot take Aarhaus this turnset, so plenty of time for discussion.

England has not been helpful in dealing with the Vikings. They have an ROP. I do not think that England's help will be needed. Or wanted.

After the War and Beyond
Culture
We have serious culture problems, which we cannot solve quickly. We are the most uncultured people on the planet, with no one even close to us. After this war is over, we need a plan to change this. We are still aiming for the stars, but we need to prevent someone like Persia from taking a cultural victory. And we need the librairies to help research.

Second core cities
We have no Elites, and thus no Great Leaders. We will need a second core of cities to help us get to the stars. I am not sure of the details of how it is done, but I think we need to consider building our Forbidden Palace in our current core, build up a second core of cities in the south and then abandon our palace and move it somewhere in the south. This will take some time to set up and some good planning on our part to make it work. But if we do not do this, I think we might be too behind to get to the stars. We could still win by Domination or Conquest, but that was not our original goal.

Again, this needs to be discussed and planned out, but first we need to finish our war with the Vikings and decide on a war with the English. I favor a war with the English, just to get their land. They have island cities, so we do not need to worry about removing them from the game, and thus increasing our own research cost. But, English war or not, building a second core needs to be explored and discussed and planned. We would need to plan our conquest in advanced and decide on which cities to keep and raze, which we have not done with the Vikings.