P3-03 - The Eternal War

[nocho]

Preflight, switch build in Persepolis from archer to barracks. Better to get our units out with experience right away, was my thinking. Plan is to get the barracks out, then a couple of archers and then a settler.

T28 Our brave scout ploughs his way through the jungle and finds a hut. The villagers give.... experience. Meh. At least we get promoted to woody 2 which helps ploughing through that jungle.

T29 We meet an envoy of Louis XIV and tell him that this means war.

T34 BW is in. Switch to AH and revolt to slavery. We have bronze just outside Persepolis' borders to the north.

T35 A combat 2 archer from Julius pops up at our borders. Retreat a worker who was mining the hill. I never know if and when the AI seriously considers attacking, but don't want to be innocent prey. Our capital is just defended by a warrior but an archer can be whipped if nescessary.

T36 Julius' archer wanders off. Phew.

T39 Barracks finished with chop -> archer.

T40 Overflow is enough to finish archer in 1 turn -> archer. We meet an archer from Joaoao and like it or not, declare.

T42 Our scout ends up the turn in the woods next to an archer of Saladin. We declare.

T43 Our scout is dead.
Archer -> Settler.

T44 AH is in and switch to wheel. The only visible horse is just outside JC's border.

T47 Settler is done with help of a chop and by maximizing the hammers instead of the food. I hardly ever play imperialistic leaders, but it seems the bonus is only for the hammers, right? Hand it off here. We'll have to decide where to settle, obviously.

The land to the north looks like this.

I would actually settle first to the north. For instance on the blue circle where our two archers are right now, which is a grassland hill. It may be a good outpost to receive the blows. It also has sugars (not really workable with enemy units swarming in), a cow and of course the bronze in the BFC. If the surrounding jungle/forest could be chopped the enemy could only be on flat land.
Alternatively, we can settle 1E of the bronze on the plains hill, with 1 sugar and the cow in the BFC.

I would settle the gold after that. The good news is that no units seem to come from the south/southeast so probably we'll have that peninsula for ourselves . We should scout it more thoroughly though.

 

[muxec]

So far so good. Caesar is not too close leaving us some breathing room.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Ummm large trench in road outside house......
Ummm seems to be a cable at each side of trench but not cable joingin it....
Ummm, yes they have dug up my Internet cable...
Now where was my baseball bat....

Should only take a couple of days to fix so please metemorphise my swap to a skip for the first round.

Ralph

 

[nocho]

Hope your baseball bat can fix your internet connection, Ralph.

Anyway, Pindrus is up.

 

[Pindrus]

Sorry to delay the game, just got back late last night from our 4th of July trip. I can probably play & post this evening. Haven't had a chance to open the save yet, but it seems that we have a small force of archers at the ready and a settler ready to head out.

The land looks pretty good and we should be able to funnel enemy armies through a couple border cities while maintaining some productive cities further south down the peninsula. I've never seen AI's on the same continent send naval attacks, so we should be safe with just MP garrisons in those cities.

Hard to tell from the screenshots on my crappy work monitor, but I agree on settling 2nd city atop the circled hill. In a normal game I would be tempted to settle on the SW sugar for the 3-food city tile, but the hill definitely wins out here. I imagine the city will be able to work the cows, copper, and some hills to spit out defenders and/or sacrificial siege. We will have to see whether a passive defense--with large numbers of defenders to "soak" collateral damage--or an active defense--with sacrificial siege and an army that will sally forth out of cities to destroy enemy stacks--will be preferable. From looking at some of the higher-level AW games on these boards it seems like they faced too many opposing siege to sit in cities, but in my own AW experiment on a small map (4 opponents, monarch) just sitting behind walls worked fine. We should consider attaching a GG or two to make super-defender units (Drill4, CG3, etc.), and possibly oracling feudalism, whether we can snag the marble on the western coast or not.

I will probably prioritize getting out another couple archers and sending out a choke-party, probably to JC.

Any other suggestions, reminders or comments?

 

[nocho]

Not much to add to your plan, apart from stating the obvious that I would also try to get another settler out and a worker. 3rd city could pick up the gold and the marble, which would be great for an Oracle-slingshot, like you mentioned. Don't know if getting feudalism is a bit of a long shot, but I'm no Oracle expert.

If we settle on the desert SE of the gold, we'll end up long term with a mediocre-growth city but I think the short term boost in commerce would be worth it. With gold, sheep and marble it also has decent production for the BC years.

Apart from that, try to scout that southern land, more to the east there are even flood plains looming, I still hope we can get all that land for ourselves.

 

[muxec]

In one of my offline games Toku who shared a land border used two galleys to bring 4 axes to me. Luckily my stack was passing by.

As Persian UU is the ultimate archer killer I'm sad to see horses that far. Oracling longbows sounds good as JC who normally builds oracle very fast will delay it due to being at war.

As for attaching GGs - with good production city I would settle at least 3 GGs first. This game will involve lots of units boosting large fraction of our units feels better than making a few uber units that can be killed anyway.

 

[Pindrus]

Preplay:
So, planning to settle the hill currently occupied by the archers, but will probably wait for a 3rd archer before settling and am tempted to send out the two current ones to mess with the Romans. I doubt we'll see an enemy stack coming at us within my turnset. Plus, the lay of the land makes it seem like not only do we have our own little arctic peninsula to the south of Persepolis, but we share with the Romans a larger subcontinent that is partially blocked off from the rest by a large freshwater lake. If we can keep them grounded and get up a few border outpost cities to fend off attacks we can easily get enough land to win.

We aren't really in a big hurry to settle anyhow as we need mysticism and more workers to really let the city pay for itself.

Turn-by-Turn

IT (2120 BC)
Can't rearrange tiles to squeeze out enough hammers to get the archer in 2, so no changes. Send 2 current archers north towards the purple borders.

Turn 2 (2040 BC)
Well, we couldn't avoid them forever... an exploring Mali skirmisher discovers Persepolis and whips out his handy webcam, through which Mansa Musa declares war. Mansa is the founder of hinduism btw.

Turn 3 (1960 BC)
Wheel is in, queue up Mysticism for the necessary border pop to grab copper. Offensive archers reach the newly-expanded borders of Rome.

Turn 4 (1920 BC)
OK, I forgot last turn that our own borders would expand, even though I remember planning for this before... aiee! I go ahead and swap research over to pottery. We should get to mysticism soon enough that beakers won't decay.

Turn 6 (1840 BC)
Our grand army reaches the very gates of rome itself! Now quit that chopping you hear, no more defenders for you!

Turn 8 (1760 BC)
A Roman archer on top of the rice farm is expelled from Persia after our warrior's sacrificial charge. We really need copper online!

Also, Pasagradae is founded and begins work on a barracks.

Turn 10 (1680 BC)
A Mali skirmisher has taken up position on our rice beds! With only a couple archers around, we can't sally forth and will be pillaged.

Turn 11 (1640 BC)
Farm is safe as the Skrimisher wanders south to explore--yay!

Pottery is in, on to Mysticism to head towards Priesthood. Switch Pasagradae to a granary.

Turn 14 (1480 BC)
Mysticism is in and I queue Poly. Even though we will probably not shoot for the Great Library, we will want Lit for the Heroic Epic. Other options are writing, IW or sailing. I'll pass it off here though so others can weigh in too.

Closing Thoughts
I did get out another worker, but have queued an axe to deal with harassing archers from Rome, Mali, and now the Portugese instead of a third settler. We have a good contingent of archers but need them to protect our improvements (like our copper mine! Sacrifice an archer if necessary to keep the Portugese archer off of it--we need axes then we will be safe for a while). Currently we have 2 sitting on a hill across a river from Rome, which are locking in a settler and two workers. Once Rome has 7-8 or so archers we will need to send another archer or two as reinforcements or risk losing the block. Currently Rome has no improved land tiles to work so they should grow slowly. This may be a better GPfarm site than the island off our capitol. We should hold off attacking until siege though.

Another archer is keeping watch over one of the passages into our subcontinent to warn us of incoming stacks. He can scout more towards Mali as well.

A Mali skirmisher is still wandering around south of Persepolis, and a barb warrior is spotted there too. It would be nice if they met up and kept eachother occupied. I don't think we'll get much other AI vs AI action.

Overall we are doing pretty well and if we can keep the AI off our subcontinent should be in a good position to roll them over come the rennaisance/industrial ages. We even have nice space for some Expanding will take longer than in a usual game with so many troop builds, but the overall tech pace will be much slower too with more AI units and no tech trading. We even have some island sites for trade routes! Elephants are close and if Rome can be kept locked up should be easily ours for medival superiority. Of course the body of water to the NE could turn out to be an interior sea, with a connection to the south to Mali or wherever. Unfortunately archers were needed at home this set and couldn't explore.

I also reallocated Espionage away from JC, as he should be as good as dead before we start thinking about spy missions.

Possibly a Maoi production site if Rome is our historically-fitting GP-farm?

Roster
PaulusIII - SG Leader Extraordinaire!
nocho - Posting on US Holidays
Pindrus - Just Played
Ralph Jackson - Busy DOWing on overzealous backhoes
muxec - UP!
OJimiJam - On Deck

Save is attached:

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Ok I can rejoin the roster as I now have Internet back up and running....

 

[muxec]

Who plays the next set me or Ralph?

a. Any suggestions for my turnset?
b. Rome is too busy thinking about our archers, can we get horse-gem hill city now?
c. Where should our heroic epic go?
d. I only have 3.19, would you allow me to upgrade the game to 3.19 instead of reinstalling civ?

 

[nocho]

Nice going Pindrus! It's probably indeed a good idea to get some axes out for home defence and then start backsettling our land. And good to see JC peeing in his pants already.

Also... I have 3.19 I fear I will need to reinstall Civ4+BTS. For now I will hope that the game will be upgraded by the time I'm up.

Did you downgrade to 3.17, muxec? If not then I guess Ralph should take it.

Edit: crosspost... I think we can't upgrade to 3.19 as yet.

 

[PaulusIII]

I'd have to check that with my other SG's.

So far everything looks good. Going well here, team.

 

[Pindrus]

Seems like you should take it Ralph if your internet doesn't get dug up again. I would be fine changing to 3.19 but I know others are involved in concurrent SG's with 3.17.

For the next set I would send a 3rd archer up to Rome as soon as our first axe is trained. Then maybe get a settler over to marble while teching towards priesthood. I usually expect the Oracle to go 1400-1600 BC but this is Monarch with no tech trades and on my test game things like the Parthenon were still around well into the AD's. I don't remember if Stonehenge has even been built here.

Marble isn't totally necessary for the cheap Oracle, but we'll want it eventually for things like HE, NE, Taj, possibly GLibrary, and with Rome squashed by the might of our two archers it should be a safe city location. I don't know about trying to take Feudalism with it, as our research is mediocre. Probably safer to just knock it out and take CoL or Monarchy. We will have all 3 prereq's for writing, so that will be very cheap

 

[OJimiJam]

Im still on 3.17 with a couple of other SGs, so obviously id prefer to stay that way. Embaressingly my technical nouse isnt up to a dual install :s

 

[muxec]

I will install 3.17 on secondary partition and hopefully play after Ralph

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Ok got it shoudl have report up friday night

ralph

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Well a quiet set with nothing too dramatic
The reinforcement archer was given a run around as JC sent Archers (but no settler) out.

Post Axeman our capital built a settler for our 3rd city

Mean time An Axe pushed out and found Mansa, with skirmishers we are waitng for the Second Axe before going deeper or considering pillaging

Research wise we have finshed Priesthood and writing so now need to decide if we want to just grab code of laws in which case just finish oracle a.s.a.p. Personally i would take the risk of going for a feudalism grab by researching Monarchy. This is about 18 turns so we can probably build a Library in the capital and still have time to finish the Oracle at the same time.

Masonry selected as a placeholder.

You can see it looks like Mansa is land connected to us and has settled in our SW. Spare Axe in Susa for scouting purposes.

Up north the third archer has arrived to strengthen the clamp on JC

So do we go for Feudalism or Code of Laws?
Stick at 3 cities for the Oracle run building Infra in our other two cities?

Ralph

 

[nocho]

Too bad we don't have the south for ourselves, would have been too good to be true anyway. We'll need some defences for Susa then as well.

Considering it's monarch and AW I'd try and give the feudalism slingshot a try, if we only need to research monarchy. If we would lose out on the oracle at least we get some double gold from marble. (edit: we haven't hooked it up yet I now see, oh well... maybe build a few units in capital first waiting for it to be hooked up)

And what whimp is JC if he doesn't dare to leave with the settler from Rome!

 

[muxec]

Checked the save. Louis is industrious with high wonder probability. Caesar is harassed and can not build wonders. Others also do not build Oracle early. Who knows what is Lou's typical tech path?. Lou did not found a religion but with 2 spiritual civs this means nothing. If he usually does not go for oracle early we should research Monarchy and take longbows. Otherwise we should take something else (MC?). COL will let us found a religion that will be difficult to get otherwise but I do not think courthouses will be useful that early as we ca not expand freely.

As for Mansa - I mostly see skirmishers which means we can pillage easily now. I'd suggest pigs first.

May I have a swap or upgrade to v3.19?

P.S: Cover promoted archers FTW!

 

[Pindrus]

Well SH only recently fell (1440 BC), and Louis doesn't have a religion (might this weigh against researching PHood for the AI?). I'd say go for the gamble if you so desire Mucex/oJimijam (whoever plays next). If we go for that then I'd use the extra few turns to get another couple workers out from the capitol for quarrying/chopping (maybe delay 1 turn to let the Cap grow to pop 6).

I would also keep pumping axes from Pasagradae until we have better recon posted at the choke points to watch for incoming stacks. Having 5-10 turns warning is critical. I also wouldn't try scouting any further. The longer we can avoid meeting the other AI's the better.

Pillaging Mali is appealing. Be sure to unhook any horses or metals as 1st priority if you see them.

And what whimp is JC if he doesn't dare to leave with the settler from Rome!

Ah, but we have MO($*R F*@$*G ARCHERS ON A MO($*R F*@$*G HILL! Even the Roman slaves are throwing off their cruel masters with desires to join the great Persian empire!