New Succession Game

[Optional]

It's not a dead cert or me it's the Hittites we should be declaring on. With them getting their resources from the Dutch, we could consider declaring on the Dutch and getting the Hittites in an alliance, using Theology.
At least then you get 2 civs in a Golden age fighting each other instead of us. They'll probably sign peace again in 10 turns or so, since they're both in Republic, and then we can fight the Hittites when they've lost steam and resources.
We're still a bit thin, with just 3 knights and a bunch of maces, and some unupgraded units, so I would probably use an alliance first.
But please, Salarakas, do it your way, since you're the one who's playing now.

 

[TheOverseer714]

We have Saltpeter..........yes! The Dutch maybe don't........double yes! Let's get this war fired up! Should be good for 2 reasons: more land and unit support lets our budget stay on max research. We need to hurt them before they get too many decent units from their resource trades.

 

[Spoonwood]

This game might work a little bit differently since the AIs might have had Gunpowder already, but in general when you either want to pick up the tech pace, or worry about trailing in tech, Theology makes a fairly good choice.

 

[Salarakas]

We have Saltpeter..........yes! The Dutch maybe don't........double yes! Let's get this war fired up! Should be good for 2 reasons: more land and unit support lets our budget stay on max research. We need to hurt them before they get too many decent units from their resource trades.

They have had a cheap def 4 unit (the Swiss Merc, their UU) for a while now already but it would sure be easier to fight against knights instead of cavalry.

 

[Daeron]

I'd prefer fighting the Hittites first, since the Dutch have the Great Library. We'll get more out of it that way and we can pour all our cash into unit support, once we've researched military tradition.

 

[Optional]

Yes, I prefer fighting the Hittites first as well. It can just get a little bit rough with them building a bunch of 3 man chariots every turn, which they will be able to do in a Golden Age.
It's not an unusual tactic on the higher levels to first sign an alliance with the civ you're planning to attack, to let another civ first hack into their military. With the Hittites now having iron, horses and the Great Wall, I'm not so afraid the Dutch will simply walk over them. But again, we'll probably hear what Salarakas' ideas are.
The Great Library is owned by the Arabs.

 

[Daeron]

Ohh, right, I mistook the Lighthouse for the Library.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Do we want the Dutch in vs the Hittites? That would cut off their access to Horses and Iron. The risk that the Dutch would run all over them is pretty high. If we don't, the Hittites Silks will buy an alliance vs us and we end up fighting a two-front war.

 

[Optional]

We have nothing to offer the Dutch, and paying lots of gpt would ruin our research towards cavalry, so allying with the Dutch would be my least preferred option.

 

[Salarakas]

Preturn: I feel that we have waited way too long for the war. We could have pummeled the Hittites long before they got to gunpowder but at least they don't have the saltpeter connected yet so we got lucky there.

What's with all these regular maces and horsemen? After the age of the warrior is over, units should never be built in towns with no barracks unless absolutely necessary. If they are warrior upgrades, that's not any better - only upgrade veteran or elite* units.

001CC is almost finished building a knight but doesn't have a barracks yet. Change it to a library that will be done on the IBT.

011 also doesn't have a barracks and is building a mace. No good. Change it to a barracks.

004 change the build from mace to knight. Knights are way cooler even though they cost more.

005 (size 1) is building a settler but only makes +1 food. The settler build would be ready way before it would get to size 3. Change it to a trebuchet.

We still have a lot of unimproved tiles near our core towns. That's not good especially since we stopped expanding a while ago. Why use workers to clear marshland and jungle when there are still a lot of more important tiles to improve? E.g. 008 could be building its knights a lot faster if those two hills next to it were mined. There's even a grassland tile right next to our capital that's not mined!

When prioritising worker jobs, jungle and marsh are the least important tiles since it takes so long to get them productive. I never touch them apart from key roads until I can't think of anything better for the workers to do. And if you do decide to work them, make sure to go one tile at a time instead of spreading your workers all over the place. We now have workers on six different marsh/jungle tiles and they are all clearing them. A good tactic is to first use one worker to road the tile and then move a big stack of workers there to clear it quickly. It's way more efficient to get a tile cleared e.g. every four turns instead of waiting for full 20 turns to get five tiles cleared all at the same time.

Stop the task of one such pair that had almost full turns left to clear a jungle next to 005. Leave the others since they are nearly finished.

Also what's with these two stacks of 3 workers each mining unroaded hills? That's four wasted worker turns right there by moving them on tiles that don't have roads on them. In general, always use one worker to first build a road on a tile and then move others in to help irrigate/mine it more quickly if needed.

013 is at size 6 with a full box of food and is making three extra per turn but doesn't have an aqueduct. It should either be building settlers/workers or an aqueduct. Change it to a settler.

010 library->aqueduct. The town is so corrupt that the library would do little good.

007 also doesn't have a barracks and yet is building a knight. Change it to a barracks.

Although things are not optimal, I feel we have wasted enough time. Move units around and give Mursilis the finger. We are now at war.

 

[Salarakas]

IBT
Defeat two Hittite units with no loss.

001CC lib->barracks
009 knight->knight
010 aqueduct->treb
011 rax->knight
014 treb->worker
019 treb->settler

Turn 1: 70 AD
Kill a mace with a knight after bombardment (redlines but promotes to veteran)

IBT
Defeat one archer with a regular spear fortified on a hill. Haven't seen any stacks yet.
One galley moves in from the east.
012 treb->treb

Turn 2: 90 AD
There have still been no units inside our borders so I haven't had a chance to start the golden age yet.
Move one knight, one reg mace and some horses closer to take care of any landings.

IBT
Defeat a longbow.
001 rax->knight
002 knight->knight
007 rax->knight
014 worker->settler

Turn 3: 110 AD
Kill one warrior near 007 Golden Mountain.
Kill an archer near Kadesh promoting the knight.
Move a stack of 6 trebs, 4 maces, 1 jav and 2 knights next to Kadesh
001CC is now a 3 turn knight factory (even without a golden age)

IBT
A longbowman kills one javelin thrower on top of a mountain.
004 knight->aqueduct
006 rax->knight

Turn 4: 130 AD
Kill the redlined longbowman with a reg horse that promotes. Move it to the mountain for more safety.
The trebs in the stack next to Kadesh destroy their rax and library but little else. "Yay". Decide to attack anyway and take the town with no losses. It comes with 4 resisters but we get two slaves.
A suicide galley in the east made it two turns on the ocean and we meet Rome. They are up monarchy and down monotheism and engineering so no trades.

IBT
Defeat one Hittite UU on defence.
008 knight->knight

Turn 5: 150 AD
Have to drop science to 40% because of the unit costs.
Defeat a warrior with a knight near 007.
Defeat an archer with an elite horse near 019 but no leader.
Decide to possibly sacrifice one javelin thrower by putting it into risk on the next IBT. Attack an archer near Kadesh and win, starting our golden age.

IBT
Lose the JT as expected against a longbow
001 knight->knight (every 2 turns in golden age)
003 knight->knight
017 treb->treb

Turn 6: 170 AD
See the first Hittite knight
Bombard and capture Adana with no losses. Get one slave.
Lux back to 50%

IBT
Lose a JT against a longbow near Adana. Beat another near 007.
The Hittite galley finally drops its load near 002. One spear. "Eek"
009 knight->aqueduct
011 knight->lib
The Egyptians complete Sun Tzu in Thebes
An Arabian galleys spots us near the Roman coast. They aren't down anything, up only monarchy.

Turn 7: 190 AD
Kill a longbow near Hubishna, our next target. Move a stack there as well.
Take care of the dropped spear with a reg mace.
Try to fish for a leader with an elite horse. Win without taking a hit but no luck.
Disband one reg horse since we are drowning in unit costs.

IBT
Defeat a longbow and a knight on defence.
Spot two Dutch galleys near Roman shores so they have contact with probably everyone already.
001 knight->knight
002 knight->lib
013 aqueduct->rax
014 settler->aqueduct
015 settler->aqueduct
019 settler->worker


Turn 8: 210 AD
Defeat four units in Hubishna and capture it with no losses. Get five slaves. The eastern shores are now in our control.
Disband a reg mace to speed up a knight build in 006.
Science to 30% still gets us chemistry next IBT

IBT
A Hittite knight defeats one of ours defending Adana.
Chemistry->metallurgy (8 turns with a slight deficit)
004 aqueduct->knight
005 treb->settler
007 aqueduct->knight
The Dutch complete Knights Templar in Rotterdam

Turn 9: 230 AD
No one else has chemistry yet but the only tech we could get with it is education which is useless at the moment.
Revenge the death of our knight.
Found 020 Xcalumkin near the marsh area that's now clear of Hittites.
War weariness starts to kick in. Not a problem yet but have to hire a couple of clowns.

IBT
Defeat one longbow near 007. A knight retreats against another.
Arabia offers us monarchy for chemistry. I laugh at Abu Bakr's face and send him away.
001 knight->knight
003 knight->market
006 knight->market
012 aqueduct->lib

Turn 10: 250 AD



Notes to the next player:
-I left the trebs and knights unmoved since I wasn't sure whether the next target should be Hattusha or Aleppo. They can go either way.
-011 is starving at the moment but will finish the library on the IBT this way.
-You should starve Adana and Hubishna to size 1 before letting them grow again. This way the flip risk is much smaller. Kadesh is size 1 already.
-Most of the action should happen where you expect it - near 007, 019, Kadesh and Adana. Be wary of the Hittite knights and longbows.
-Having a road 1E of 007 would have helped a lot during my turns. It's now too risky to build it until Hattusha is ours.
-We have enough knights now to advance quicker if we want. However, it would mean more losses as well.

We shouldn't stop the war until we have Hattusas (the Hittite Capital) in my opinion as it has the Pyramids. Hopefully we'll get a leader soon. A knight army would speed things up greatly.
The Great Wall is in Ugarit but pretty much all their towns are size 7 or bigger already so capturing/razing that town wouldn't help much.

Spoiler :

 

[Own]

Great progress !

Optional is up. Let's not stop the war until we have to. WW will start to hurt us, and when it gets too intense, we should probably stop wherever we are, although the Pyramids would be turbo-nice. WW is a great reason to be extremely efficient in our fighting and lose as few units as possible, as that contributes to WW. But it looks like we're really rolling over them, so it might not be an issue at all.

 

[Salarakas]

Well, with the help of one knight army we would be rolling over them. Now the progress is very slow. Veteran knights vs fortified veteran pikes behind walls - about one in three chance of losing the knight. Having to use artillery slows us down considerably and the Hittites do cause us some losses with their longbows and knights.

There are a few settlers fortified in border towns by the way. We'll need them to fill the gaps after capturing a couple more towns.

 

[Optional]

What an RNG luck you have, Salarakas! I was already surprised about that in your previous set, when you had no problem with those barbs, but taking 3 walled towns without losses is beginning to get freaky! I know we didn't have that much artillery units, so how on earth did you manage that? I thought the Hittites had pikes?

Plenty to discuss. Certainly we'll want to keep the war going, because we've got all those knights. Minor war weariness is not an issue. But we'll be worse after taking a few more towns, and their capital is still far away. Anyway, if I play and war weariness gets worse, I'll probably stop the game and ask for team input.

What about trades? We have a monopoly on Chemistry just now, while other civs learned Gunpowder for us a while back. I don't think we'll keep this monopoly for a long time, while we can use some money.
The Dutch offer Education, 350 gold + 88 gold per turn. Also other civs, like the Persians, have money. Making a trade round would end our unit support worries for a while and help our science.
The Dutch will almost certainly declare on us again when they're paying us gold per turn, they're stronger than us, but it should be a piece of cake to get the Hittites in on them to spread their attacks a bit.
I really like an embassy with the Dutch now, so we know who they know and their relationships.

 

[Salarakas]

What an RNG luck you have, Salarakas! I was already surprised about that in your previous set, when you had no problem with those barbs, but taking 3 walled towns without losses is beginning to get freaky! I know we didn't have that much artillery units, so how on earth did you manage that? I thought the Hittites had pikes?

I did get lucky indeed now against the pikemen. The trebs did help although I didn't manage to redline a single defender. Knights are great since they can retreat so that helped a lot too.

The previous set I didn't actually fight pretty much at all against the barbs. There were so many Hittite and Dutch units after them that they did all the fighting. I just sat back and concentrated on busting the remaining fog.

What about trades? We have a monopoly on Chemistry just now, while other civs learned Gunpowder for us a while back. I don't think we'll keep this monopoly for a long time, while we can use some money.
The Dutch offer Education, 350 gold + 88 gold per turn.

That is a tempting offer indeed and one we might want to take. It will mean that they will get to cavalry quicker but at this pace we can't strike against them properly before that anyway.

 

[Own]

I'd do that trade. Never turn down a tech and over 2000 gold at this stage in the game basically for free. They may get cavalry faster, but a human player with cavalry beats an AI with cavalry, and it means that we'll get cavalry faster too. What makes it so valuable is that it's a monopoly. So even if the Dutch were about to research it in a turn or two, it'd still this expensive because it's a monopoly. Who knows, maybe the Dutch are about to finish researching it. Let's take advantage of this free money before they get it themselves, and we could definitely push science up to 80%.

 

[Daeron]

Surprised I messed up building military units from cities with no barracks that much. I specifically looked for it in the beginning, but guess I lost focus halfway through my turns.

Spotting the Dutch at the oher continent explains a lot about us getting beaten to Theology by almost everyone.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Excellent progress! You had an interesting turn-set, Salarakas. The trade sounds good, any gpt we can get out of a future enemy is good.

 

[Optional]

I'm not sure I'll play this today, but here's a pre-turn:

Maya, 250AD, Republic.
Researching Metallurgy at 60% science, coming in in 7 turns.
243 gold in the bank, running -25 gpt. Lux at 20%.
2 domestic luxes + incense imported from the Netherlands.
Minor war weariness against the Hittites.
Golden Age, still 15 turns to go.

Our units:
3 settlers;
30 workers + 7 slaves;
4 spearmen;
5 horsemen;
15 knights;
11 medieval infantry;
9 trebuchets;
4 catapults;
1 javelin thrower.

In the war against the Hittites, we have captured 3 towns from them:
Hubishna (0.9 - 1.7% flip risk);
Adana (1.0 - 1.1% flip risk);
Kadesh (0.3 - 0.8% flip risk).
These flip risks are very low, I find. You'll usually get these kind of flip chances already in your own border towns on Demigod.

What I'm noticing by looking at the tile yields in Hittite lands is that they also are in a Golden Age. A 3 man chariot must have been victorious against us. This won't change our plans, though.

Our main builds:
4 towns building knights;
1 town building barracks;
4 towns building libraries;
2 towns building markets;
2 towns building aquaducts;
some lesser towns are building settlers, workers and trebuchets.
Most of this makes sense. We are paying unit support; 86 gpt, but this shouldn't stop us building military. We are still weak compared to the Netherlands, so I rather build more than less.
What we don't need in my opinion are the 3 settler builds, since we have 3 spare settlers already. I like to do this:
Hubishna, size 5, with 100% Hittite population; worker instead of settler; we don't want a Hittite settler, and workers will slim down the town quicker.
Kadesh, size 1; trebuchet instead of settler; we can let this town grow now.
Silk, size 2, trebuchet instead of settler; this can grow also, as jungle is getting cleared.
Lazapa is building a courthouse. I'm thinking of changing that to a harbor, so that it doesn't max out so quickly with those hills around it. Not sure, though; courthouse isn't bad either.

I'll certainly do a trade round with Chemistry, we all agree on that, but first, I do really fancy founding an embassy at Jan De Witt's. 76 gold is a bit dearer than I thought it would be, but here is Amsterdam:

Spoiler :

7 defending Swiss pikes, well, well..
No saltpeter for the Dutch indeed, but it would surprise me if they wouldn't get that, and also more lux, once they have ocean trade, as here are their contacts:

Spoiler :

Not surprisingly, they know everybody, probably the 8th civ as well. No intercontinental broker position for us anymore. The RoP with the Hittites also comes as no surprise, but it's still good to know.

 

[Salarakas]

What I'm noticing by looking at the tile yields in Hittite lands is that they also are in a Golden Age. A 3 man chariot must have been victorious against us. This won't change our plans, though.

You can't see that based on the tile yields. You see extra shields and commerce because we are in a golden age. I am pretty sure they didn't win with a 3MC on my turnset so they shouldn't have (had) a golden age yet (unless from a wonder build, didn't check that).

Hubishna, size 5, with 100% Hittite population; worker instead of settler; we don't want a Hittite settler, and workers will slim down the town quicker.

The idea was to starve the town to size 1 first in order to minimize flip risk like I mentioned in my notes so the settler wouldn't be a Hittite one. Feel free to change the builds though to what you want. I should have built more trebs on my turns to make it easier for you.

Lazapa is building a courthouse. I'm thinking of changing that to a harbor, so that it doesn't max out so quickly with those hills around it. Not sure, though; courthouse isn't bad either.

I thought that we should build the courthouse now while in golden age. It will help to speed up other builds.

Interesting that only one of the Swiss Mercs inside Amsterdam is veteran, all others are regular. Most Hittite pikes were regular as well which helped a lot in taking the first three towns. The towns in their core are probably better defended.