P3-03 - The Eternal War

[Pindrus]

Last night I got tied up in finishing a SP always-peace domination game, featuring the 3.19-improved "Spread Culture" espionage mission. Lots of fun and ended with a win a couple dozen turns before I won a cultural victory Game was only on Noble though... It is a very powerful mission but gets pretty expensive later in the game (2-3k espionage points vs. enemy capital ~1900). It can be very useful early on in flipping border cities and surrounding tiles when the cities are small and not producing much culture, and at that point missions cost very few points (20-50).

Anyhow, I may play a few turns tonight so that Muxec can do something more exciting on his set and to keep this game moving along. I had forgotten he was scheduled to come back on Fri, so thanks for the reminder.

I think at this point pillaging stacks run a high risk of being wiped out by incoming AI stacks. I would rather try and knock out JC to get a nice city (Rome) and then start moving our front-lines forward by capturing Mansa's closest cities. Don't think I'll get to any of that in a short set though, will just build up some swords + cats for Rome. Hopefully JC doesn't get Feudalism before we attack.

 

[Pindrus]

Preplay:

Currently Construction is in 8. Should be able to whip a library in island city soon, which will speed that up. I'll probably play through the tech and maybe get a cat or two out, just a short set to keep things moving. Hopefully nothing funny happens on our eternal war front...

Mono is 8 turns of research off at current rates, so I think I will hold the prophet until then for a Theo bulb. If the team decides in the interim to settle him then it's ~20 and 50 down the drain!

Also, all smileys must be used in pairs!

Turn-by-Turn

IT (141 - 620 AD)
Susa needs some farms to work all of its tiles, even if they're on plains, so that will be next for the worker down there.

Not sure why Ecbatana is making a barracks. Even in AW we should specialize cities, and this one is pretty hammer-poor and will likely get cottages on its green land. Especially with a culture fight vs. Mansa for BFC tiles, a library will be next. I actually also swap it to work the farm for growth over the ivory with the gems coming in soon.

Otherwise all looks good, should have plenty of attackers by the time cats come in for a quick romp of JC.

Turn 1 (142 - 640 AD)
Generals! We need better training! A Mali axe who has been wandering in the jungles for the past few centuries took out our elite squad of axe-wielders! 9% odds you say, well go back to the barracks and have all the troops drop and give me 20 good ones!

Near Susa SB continues to suicide sparingly against our mixed stack.

Turn 2 (143 - 660 AD)
Persian scientists decked out in glittering jewelry have redoubled their research efforts due to the fashionable accessories. I mean, what else are scientists known for?

Turn 3 (144 - 680 AD)
Mansa has a stack approaching (no siege) Susa as well, hopefully to continue the historic tradition of ritual suicide.

Hmm... it's tempting, but the city will answer to us soon enough... Do note that JC has Praet's out now. Unfortunately I saw that after moving the galley. Joao must be gifting him iron (one by Rome not hooked up still). I should have blockaded him. Hopefully he won't whip another one this turn.

Turn 4 (145 - 700 AD)
Our galley perseveres in our first naval combat and sets up a blockade. It is still wounded and will have tall odds if JC whips another galley, but I want to shut off his metal supply!

The forces in Susa also give up the marble patch (2 turns left for quarry) in the face of two oncoming stacks. Better to leave it with a couple turns left than to finish it and get pillaged right away ...


Turn 5 (146 - 720 AD)
Only Mansa advanced to the gates of Susa. Hopefully he will suicide his melee stack before the cat arrives (it's a few squares behind). Any bets?

We also issue Executive Order #1294: Initiative to Rapidly Mobilize Human Resources for the Improvement of Tarsus Reading Sciences ...


Turn 6 (147 - 740 AD)
Construction is in! Apparently we need to know how to build things in order to know how to knock them down. Next we will spend many decades figuring out how to straddle an animal that we don't have anywhere in our empire! ...

I should have known! Mansa of course pulls back into the forest to unite with his catapult, postponing the exciting conclusion of this week's episode of Invaders: Longbows vs. The World.

Tarsus begins on a Lighthouse. I also notice that we don't have one up in Persepolis. It's only worth 1 food, but we are well under the happy cap with cottages to grow, though I let the current axe finish.

"Taoism" was also founded this turn. Could be either Theo or Philo (choose religions). Hey Mansa, do you have any extra religions for us? ... ray:

Turn 7 (148 - 760 AD)
Ugh, a barb galley has shown up on one of Tarsus' clams. Really don't want to whip Persepolis, will push on a galley in Tarsus' queue for an overlapped whip.

Sally also shows up in the north with some "stacks" of swords + chariots. Umm... Sally you do read the strat & tips forums right? You know that the chariot bonus vs. axes is only on offense right?

Turn 8 (149 - 780 AD)
Fishing Boats--
... Persepolis loses its scientists to not starve.

In clearing out some Arabian troops, we earn another GG. I'm holding him to make a medic for the moment as we are at 9/13 xp coming out of Pasagardae atm and plan to go on the offense soon.

Turn 9 (150 - 800 AD)
Fishing Boats--

Also, another super happy event that empties the treasury... ...

And the people are thrilled to hear of a new executive order #2210 - Resolution for the Expedition of Seaside Illumination Facilities for the Betterment of Fish Retrieval Efficiency in Persepolis! I guess we might as well take advantage of the lack of tiles to work. I have queued a workboat to eat the overflow. We should be able to whip the galley at Tarsus in 2 turns.

I also have turned research down to 0% to regain some cash cushion. Probably turn the spigot back to a trickle in 2-3 turns as currently HBR is due in 124!

First cat about to roll out of the workshops in Pasargadae, will leave things here. In the south, Mansa has been bombarding the walls. Hopefully he will suicide in the next couple turns and we can finish the quarry. SB likes his trees and refuses to leave the forests unless there are pointy sticks for the troops to impale themselves upon.

Near Ecbatana there are a couple stacks spending their time whittling walking sticks in the woods. Just don't send a worker to say hi... Hopefully the purple ones will disappear soon.

And an update on Rome under blockade by land and sea. Do you think that Praet will see use of his CR promo's? Not me! Also note that we lost 1 archer to the Praet when checking on the iron. Well, an archer saved is a nickel less earned as they always say...

And here are our friendly visitors with a sweet tooth for herring.

Closing Thoughts

Not a terribly auspicious set here I have to say between the barb galley, Rome getting iron, some long-odds losses, the mine explosion, and likely our religion nabbed. At least we got a tech under belts though, right? It feels odd to be trailing Monarch AI's in techs and I think this will be a pretty tough situation to climb out of.

Please whip the galley in tarsus in 2 turns. Unfortunately all the nets will be gone by then, but we should continue to use our high happy cap to get them back up, probably whipping 2 workboats out of Tarsus. We are falling behind in tech and need to get those scientists fed ASAP.

The Great General is in Ecbatana. I'd recommend attaching him to a 9xp unpromoted axe (be sure to leave the city square so it is just the two of them) before we move on Rome. With as much combat as we'll see it's likely we'll be able to get a Combat1-Medic3-Woodsman3 super-duper healer, so I'd go for leadership as the 5th promo (combat1-medic1-medic2-medic3-leadership-up woodsman line) and use him to clean up defenders at 99.9% odds.

Roster
PaulusIII
nocho - Want to squeeze in a turnset tomorrow?
Pindrus - Me again
Ralph Jackson - Played previously
muxec - Up for Friday, unless Nocho wants to hop in tomorrow to really mess up the roster!
OJimiJam - MIA

And I suppose the save would be helpful...

 

[nocho]

Nice work Pindrus! I'll leave it to muxec to play next, I'm a bit pressed for time and an AW set needs all attention. Actually might have to be skipped until about the 9th of augustus. Will be on holidays from next sunday on, with laptop, but first week I'll likely won't have time to play. After that, hopefully yes.

 

[muxec]

Just checked the report. Can't open the save yet. Looks like we had some bad luck but everything is till under control.

Where do I find the attack courage tables for different AI personalities?

Does everyone agree with Pindrus on GG? I think we could promote the axe with W3 and settle GG somewhere. 4 promotions on phants out of the stable? Yes, please.

 

[muxec]

Sorry, forgot to take screenshots.

Checking what our cities are doing... Looks fine.

Press enter...

Turn 151:
MM moves his stack from marble tile to the forest.
Pasar Cat->Cat
Perseopolis - swap tiles for faster WB.

Promoting the 10 XP axe with woodsman 3. GG not attached yet.

Turn 152:

MM moves his stack back to marble tile... Oh
Whip Galley in Tarsus. Can't see the barb galley but I have no doubt that it will come back.

Decided to move the cat to Susa in case I need to sacrifice it to deal colaterial. Also I see an enemy elephant aproaching.

Turn 153:
Barb Galley comes back.
Pasar: Cat->Cat
Perse: WB->WB
Promote new galley with combat and tell it to defend on shore
HA and Chariot appear near Pasar moving one of our Susa spears north.

Turn 154:
Special thanks to Mansa Musa for giving us more GG points.
Bull's Horse archer and chariot moved into forest with Joao's units, they will be able to pillage gem next turn. No spear in Ectabana, I guess I should build one soon.
Barb galley did not attack ours and decided to move to pillage nets. I put our galley on top of the work boat and create nets.

Turn 155:
Susa: Cat-> Cat
Second barb galley appears and first one did not attack. We have some very bad luck here. Switching Perseopolis to Galley.
Our D2 longbow is promoted with formation and attacks enemy HA... Dies at 65% odds. Our cover promoted longbow finishes HA and c3 sword attacks chariot

Turn 156:
Mansa completes itza, Louis moves his stack to Susa preparing for ritual sacrifice.
Whip Galley in Perseopolis, queue more catapults in Pasar.

Turn 157:

Our galley is killed by the first barb Galley. All our nets are pillaged. Newly built galley attacks wounded barb and... the first barb galley is dead finally... This took too long.
Our CG longbow in Susa was killed bu Lou, promoting the next Longbow.

Turn 158:
Pers: WB -> Galley

Turn 159:
Missed a turn somewhere.

Turn 160:
RAWR!!!! A great mediator event. As this game is AW I say yes out of curiosity. Joaos units were ported out of our border but he did not need to wait 10 turns to redeclare. The bad thing is that our longbow was ported out of JC borders. Sorry. Also I can not see our blockade galley anywhere, was it killed by someone before with me not even noticing?

Turn 161:
Joao's ported out units attempted to reenter our borders through guarded jungle tile and were killed.
Barb Galley is finally dead.
Allocating funds for HBR research.

Turn 162:
Whip lighthouse in our future GP.
Lots of enemies near Susa, promoting every promotible unit.

Turn 163:
Tarsus: LH->Granary

Turn 164
HBR in, Aesthetic as placeholder. We have a huge enemy stack near Susa with lots of enemy cats. And we do not have horse archers for flanking them down. We have our own siege stack at Ectabana. Starting Stable there, but just as a placeholder.

Wasn't my best set, someone will need to clean up the mess.

GG is not attached yet. Most units not moved yet.

I consider whipping yet another longbow in Susa and promoting him with drills. I was too siege happy on this set instead of building extra longbow defenders. Also I should have placed our siege in Susa.

 

[PaulusIII]

Got the save.

Also, you can use the Civ 4 reference sheet (linked to here) to find the attack courages.

More thoughts later.

 

[nocho]

Tough luck with the galleys. So the barbarians are the biggest pain so far... Hope to look at the save later tonight.

 

[Pindrus]

Well, I do have some comments on the save...

Romans, Chapter NEXT TO LAST
Looks like we have more than enough units for an offensive against Rome. Our science rate is crawling along (though our seafood is mostly down at the moment, so fewer scientists) and unit upkeep is getting quite expensive, so it's definitely time to put some of those troops to use. Now that he has metal again JC really has to go. That CR2 praet by Ecbatana is scary!

Thanks to the peace-bump, JC has also sent out a settler party. I think we should take out Rome first, but that will need to be cleaned up and don't expect the Roman units to all disappear after capturing the first city.

Spoiler Roman Settlers :

Defenses
I'm worried that Susa may not hold against 3.5 stacks at once. There is a lot of siege (who said we should update to 3.19? ). I would whip a WALL there immediately, then finish the spear while sending down ALL the units in Pasargadae, changing build there (stable) to a LB and pulling back the last north-bound axe. Hopefully we can buy a couple turns to reinforce.

Furthermore, I would send the GG down to Susa ASAP and attach it to the ARCHER there. Promote it with leadership then up the DRILL line, followed by further CG promo's.

There are too many units outside of Susa for a siege-based counterattack to be effective, so I'd save them for offense and rely on our LB's and mixed defensive stack to counter.

Spoiler Incoming Stacks :

City Builds & Micro
Tarsus (Island City) should also switch to a workboat, which should be whipped I think. I would also have netted Persepolis' clams first so that we can work more cottages there. They are the only thing paying the bills at the moment. Perhaps this wasn't possible b/c of the barb galley though.

Ecbatana should have had it's library whipped, it is currently working an open, 2 grassland tile. Likewise at Susa. With HR and so many units as a garrison, we should avoid working unimproved tiles and certainly NEVER 2-yield tiles. Having the extra garrison & walls there would help a lot too.

Worker Actions
The workers at Pasargadae should probably have cleared the jungle & forest on the two grass hills first to mine them. Without CS we can't farm the open grassland and working 2x 13 grass hills beats out working 1x 4 plains hill. We should also cottage the open grass near Ecbatana instead of doubling up workers clearing non-roaded jungles.

Techs & Great Prophet
If we are going to bulb Theo we should go Medi -> Mono. It looks like the religion is taken though, and I take the blame for not settling him when we should have. I'd say to cut our losses and just settle him. We have more important things to research. I would actually vote for Currency -> COL so we can build/keep more cities. We will be at parity with military techs with the AI unless we run all the way to engineering or CS/Machinery, which are expensive techs for 20-30 bpt. CS as a follow-up to CoL makes sense for maces and to start irrigating.

Promo's
Why the Woods3 axe? If for a medic, Combat1->Medic1->Medic2 is better, plus with woods3 it is likely to be chosen as a defender. Were you planning to try and bait JC's stack with it in the jungles by Ecbatana?

Phew
Sorry if any of this sounds harsh Muxec, but the point of playing an SG is to get feedback, right? Sometimes I wish someone would open fire on my turnsets to give me something to think about! Plus, we're all in this game together, so all-for-one and one-for-all and all that. Certainly don't take anything I say as set in stone, it's all just random thoughts by Pindrus.

Sounds like you had some rough rolls with the barb galley's. Nothing is worse than a vengeful RNGod at Sea I always say!

And I might be more placated if there were some pic's in the report I usually read them at work and can't open saves.

 

[muxec]

Thanks for the feedback, now I would have played differently.

The case with workers that I did not know what to build and started roading. Than I realized Pasar is unhappy and started chopping Jungles.

Also I was obsessed with building enough cats for Rome and screwed up the defense.

As for W3 axe - he can go to Susa to heal the defenders while GG medic heals the conquerors of Rome. And 2 first strikes do not add much to the defense chance. BTW check his chances against enemy prat in the jungle.

Prophet could be used for GA.

 

[PaulusIII]

Guys, I hate to say this but the game is pretty much lost. We lack the defenders to keep the combined Joao/Bull stack out of Susa and we cannot afford to lose the city (and probably more than that) in our current position. We're running +16 after 1000 AD...

I say there's nothing more to be done here. We're fighting a battle that we can only win with the Worldbuilder.

 

[Pindrus]

Uh oh... Have you played some turns or are you just looking at the save? After playing with it some in single-player, I'm thinking that having 1-2 GG-attached defenders in our border cities is pretty vital (even though in SP I lost one of mine to an impi with a 0.0% win chance!). Promoted up to Drill4 it doesn't even matter how many siege the enemy brings, because it never takes collateral damage as the top defender.

Though I think as much, and perhaps more so, our problem this game was economic. We cottaged the capital so late and didn't really get another commerce city going at all, with no food at Ecbatana.

Do you at least have a save you can throw back at us Mr. Paulus?

 

[PaulusIII]

I don't have a save. I played 2-3 turns and saw things going the toilet, so I just threw in the towel. Joao/Bull flattened us out with that stack at Susa, and we were already in a losing position before that.

The problem indeed was that we neglected our economy.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Let me look tonight, but perhaps a re-roll same settings/ same opponents and prove we can learn from our mistakes??

Ralph

 

[Pindrus]

If the team thinks the game is done I'd be up for a re-roll too. AW is a very difficulty setting and makes the game play out very differently than standard settings where bulbs pay off w/tech trades, expansion is limited by economy and space rather than units, etc. Good fun! I think for a second go we should put more focus on placing cities on hills and probably attaching our 2nd & 3rd GG's to make super defenders.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Yeah I am up for a re-roll and try again as I hate to walk away defeated (I will run occasionnaly but never walk)

Ralph

 

[nocho]

I had a very quick look last night and indeed Susa didn't seem to hold. I'm surely in for a re-roll if we walk or run away from this one... I think it wasn't the best land we could have hoped for, but of course we can't blame all on that. Still it would be more feasible with one broad front than with two. Like we more or less supposed we'd be attacked from the north but then they all came around towards Susa. The feudalism shot worked out nicely, but I guess our tech pace was a bit too slow. Let's see what we can do about that!