PH02: Eight Angry Men

[frankcor]

Who was it questioned about us being in two wars? How prophetic. I responded too soon. We got declared on by those angry

Aztecs.

Inherited Turn (650 AD)

Rather than expose my behind to another trip to the woodshed with GreyFox, I check out our vast array of 4 cities to see if anything is sloppy. Actually, it looks pretty tight, but I set Sparta to work a cottage and to begin growing again. She's got a granary and can be whipped again when needed. (my mess has been cleaned up -- thanks!) The catapult is delayed by 2 turns.

Spoiler Sparta :

I also recalled an Archer on fog-busting duty in the southern ice. Stuttgart has popped its borders enough to see that entire peninsula now. The archer can help protect our invasion force.

Turn 1 (665 AD)
Athens finishes: Swordsman
Thermopylae finishes: Swordsman
Both are sent to Ning-hsia

Turn 2 (680 AD)
Judaism has spread: Harappan

Turn 3 (695 AD)

IBT: Bismark offers corn for gold. I take it. Sparta is no longer sick.

Turn 4 (710 AD)
Athens finishes: Axeman

Turn 5 (725 AD)
Athens begins: Settler This will be for the Ning-hsia replacement city.
Thermopylae finishes: Axeman
Harappan finishes: Phalanx
Our exploring archer finds the German capital:

Turn 6 (740 AD)
Thermopylae begins: Swordsman
Harappan begins: Catapult
The defenses at Karakorum.

BTW, the Pasture, Farm and Plantation are currently razed.

The battle for Ning-hsia -- RATZ! the city just popped a cultural defense of 20% With only one catapult within range, I decide to take it without bombarding.
While attacking, Swordsman loses to: Mongolian Archer (3.00/3)
While attacking, Swordsman loses to: Mongolian Archer (0.60/3) Lack of bombardment costs us two swordsmen.
While attacking, Swordsman defeats (6.00/6): Mongolian Archer
While attacking, Swordsman defeats (1.92/6): Mongolian Spearman
While attacking, Axeman defeats (4.20/5): Mongolian Archer
Captured Ning-hsia (Genghis Khan) We capture a worker. There's another next to the city.
Razed Ning-hsia
While attacking, Axeman defeats (5.00/5): Mongolian Worker
So we trade two swordsmen for two workers and a new city site. My vote is to place it here:

Turn 7 (755 AD)

Turn 8 (770 AD)
Sparta grows: 7
Sparta finishes: Catapult
Finally, the expected Mongolian counterattack arrives:

Turn 9 (785 AD) The bombardment of Karakorum begins.
Sparta begins: Axeman
While attacking, Phalanx defeats (2.90/5): Mongolian Keshik That's half the counterattack. I start dancing with the Swordsman.

IBT: Montezuma declares war on us. Bismark could be persuaded to declare on him, but not for anything we have to trade right now. He already has Metalcasting. Maybe shut down research and accumulate some gold?

Turn 10 (800 AD) Monty showed up with the most pathetic Stack Of Doom that I've ever seen him send. There must be more on the way. For now, we have enough defensive forces to withstand what he's sent.

Don't forget, there's a Mongolian Swordsman looking to pillage something. I've been cautious with him because of the new war situation and I didn't want to lose an axeman taking him out.

Once again, I apologize for the awful delay. I really hope to stay out of hospital for a few years now.

 

[frankcor]

no worries ~ as long as you weren't attacked by vicious mice in your computer repair quest

LOL, that was the least of my problems. It cost me $9 bucks. But my computer was infected by that malicious, malevolent virus called Microsoft Automatic Update and it took me over an hour to reboot to get the new mouse installed.

 

[frankcor]

Ratz, I hate it when I double-post

 

[Munterpipe]

I got it. would you rather have a rushed report today, or a thorough one tomorrow?

 

[pholkhero]

I got it. would you rather have a rushed report today, or a thorough one tomorrow?

welp, since i'm up next adn won't have time tomorrow, today would be cool, but i have no problems waiting until tomorrow (esp since you're tomorrow is about 7 or 8 hours ahead of mine) ~ as long as you don't "Pull a Frank" and never report back

Frank's "Patented Unfinished Set' (PUS): When a player plays his turnset, but leaves his last turn for the next player to finish up.

'Pulling a Frank' : When a player posts that he's played, adn that a report will follow . . . but one never does

 

[Munterpipe]

0: I have a look around our cities first. Our locations are solid, Harappan is great. Five goldmines in four cities have got to be good. Sparta needs another cottage on a floodplain to turn it into the moneymaker we want it to be. I also micromanage Athens so that we work 3f1c floodplains instead of grassland forest squares when building a settler. Metal Casting is due next turn now, instead of the turn after.
When the Settler is done, I'll fire up two scientists here, making use of our philosophical trait to get an academy constructed in Sparta as soon as possible.
And why do we have cottages around Thermopylae? Wouldn't it be better with farms and mines here? We need production in this city, and with the copper, it could become a quite good production center. Commerce should come from Sparta and Harappan.

Now, on the war front, we are quite strong. The Keshik is no match for our Phalanx', and Karakorum will soon fall. After Genghis has lost his capital, we may be able to extort some techs from him. On the other hand, we could continue to roll over his empire. Genghis' lands are not as tempting as those of Monty I think. Bismarck is willing to go to war against Monty in exchange for the Alphabet. That's quite cheap I think. Seems like he really hates that Monty. I'll have to think about that.

1: Metal Casting is done, and I consider what to research next. Drama, Machinery and Theology are best for trading as only one enemy civ has got each. Decide on Drama, as it is the cheapest. The theatres are useful in cultural struggle with Bismarck, and soon to be captured cities. Troublingly, it is due in whopping 36 turns. Obviously having such a large army as we have is costing us. There's nothing to do with that. Some of our units will die when we take Karakorum. I change the build in Sparta from an axe to a Buddhist monastery. The 10 % bonus is usually not that big, but in Sparta it's nice. We need the tech more than we need the axe.
The wandering Mongolian sword made the foolish choice of wandering in flatlands between our two axes, and suffers a painful death.
I decide to meet Bismarck and discuss the possibilities of him joining our war against Monty.

The man agrees as long as we can teach him the letters. He even throws 140 gold into the deal! Crank research up again! Hopefully Otto and Monty will slow each others down. Both of them are very powerful. We will also get some diplomatic bonuses with Otto for our Mutual Struggle.

2: The attack on Karakorum begins. First out is a sword against an axe with 63% chance of success.
It wins, but two axes lose afterwards at good odds.

We take the city and keep it. As a bonus, it has an academy inside!
Genghis still refuses to talk, so I guess it is nothing else to do but to march the war machine onwards through Mongolia

3: Mostly healing

4: The Aztecs in northern Greece are acting foolishly. An axe kills itself against our axe in a forest, and then the two jaguars move to flatland. I kill one of them, and I feel that we have full control over our northern front.

5: Whoops. Barb city spawns!

6: Settler done in Athens, start a forge and assign two scientists. Catapult done in Thermo, start a sword.
Beshablik isn't very well defended, is it?

7:

We take Beshablik, and just in time, I think. Genghis has just got himself Feudalism. We should sue for peace now. It will be hard to take cities defended by longbows, we can hardly afford to wage a two-front war at the moment, and War weariness is starting to kick in. Sadly Genghis refuses to give up any tech for peace. Maybe if we close on his capital he will change his mind about that.

8: Monty has taken Düsseldorf from Otto. We can probably take it back if we want to, then trade it to Otto for tech or keep it.

9: Drama comes in, and I go code of laws next. It doesn't really matter though, as our economy is really bad at the moment. I have set us to 0% research to save up some cash.
I forgot that you couldn't keep size one cities, so I attacked the barb city to our west. We got 6 gold for the effort.

10: I save the game with some unmoved units, because we should discuss what to do with them. The settler is at the spot Francor proposed. It could settle right away if next player wants it to. I'm not crazy about the city location, but we don't have much to choose from.

Most of our army is outside the Mongolian capitol. I think longbows are a nut to tough to crack, so we should take what we can for peace. Again, up to the next player. Genghis won't part with any techs, but has some gold to offer.

We also have some units to the north and should be able to take Düsseldorf soon.

We don't want that city, but Otto will hopefully appreciate us giving it back to him. Be careful though. It will be a bummer if he doesn't want it back.

 

[pholkhero]

Munter ~ good to have you back!! I might take out the one longbow there and then continue south to raze that other city down there. He may talk then

as for monty, if dusseldorf is at 1, it may auto-raze, which is fine with me. Calix, though, would be a nice acquistion.

I've got the save and i'll play 10 in a bit.

 

[frankcor]

Great work, Munterpipe! I vote we go after Turfan. Sacrifice the 3 catapults after bombarding it to 0% and those longbowmen will fall -- there's still something to gain, namely happiness and health resources and a new port city.

Pholkhero, just don't pull a Frankcor.

 

[Munterpipe]

I would be careful with keeeping any more aquired cities. Our economy is effectively dragged down in the mud. Razing Turfan will probably get Genghis thinking though. Go straight for Turfan, don't bother with the longbow on the hill.
I forgot about the autoraze rule again. Do you think Bismarck will be upset if we raze düsseldorf?
Other things to note:
Julius wants Drama and will trade literature for it. He also wants us to share our gold.
Bismarck har some resources we might ask him to give us for free.
Those two are our closest allies.

 

[pholkhero]

well, i didn't follow anyone's advice since it wasn't there before i played, but we'll see what you think

t00/0950:
I decide that I don't think our army can take out Turfan with just 2 swords and 2 phalanx. The cats may do some collateral dmg to the units underneath, but they may succeed only in upgrading the longbow there. Instead, our units head NW towards Scythian and the Mongolian horse pastures.

t01/0965:
2 aztec archers and a spearmen die up north, near Dusseldorf, as our army gets into position there. In Mongolia, it is the same. I also found Corinth this turn:

It'll be a Whaling town! What tech is that again??

t02/0980:
Sparta: Monestary > Missionary; Therm: Sword > Forge; I whip an axe @ Athens on the first turn for 2 pop b/c we've got a Mongolian sword/archer pair coming in from Germany...or at least SE.

t03/0995:
the whip overflow from the axe goes into the forge.

t04/1010:
The Mongolian pair show up. The sword goes after our axe, but is narrowly defeated, and so the archer flees into the woods . . . right in front of our other axe and phalanx coming in from Sparta. One dead archer

and Athens in clear!

I also made a couple kills up near Dusseldorf/Dortmund/whatever it is.

t05/1025:
Our scie is now up to 33% with CoL due in 22t and -8 gpt.

t06/1040:
Trade w/Napoleon:

I gave a cat Drill I at Scythian to see if it would help with his suiciding and maybe injure the Longbow. I lose 2 cats with nary a scratch on him. AIEEE!!! i accidently pillage with my 2 swords!!!

the cats may do some collateral dmg to the units underneath, but they may succeed only in upgrading the longbow there.

nice going, pholk ~

i wait w/our 2 phalanx, and whip the people of Therm in anger.

t07/1055:
Therm: Forge > Sword; I recommence the attack at Scythian. I lose a sword, but:

Now, i call up Genghis:

Done.

t08/1070:
our troops are w/drawing from Mongolia is another of their cities goes up on the ruins of the barb town Munter destroyed. Target #1 in the Second Mongolian War. Up in Azteca, I w/d our troops onto Greek territory to heal. We lost a couple units on the IT, so i think we'd best wait for reinforcements.

t09/1085:
In fact, I call up Monty this turn:

t10/1100:
Athens: forge>temple for the extra happy. @ Karakorum, we can whip there in about 2 turns when it grows. Otherwise, it's consolidation time, along with some more infra builds, while perhaps Therm concentrates on military. Finish off Genghis and then on to Monty for at least Calix, a blight on the mainland here.

Roster:
Frank > on deck
Munter >
Pholk> just played
Lobster> UP NOW

GreyFox > OoP until 07/23: Don't wait for his "Got-It", skip him if he is UP whenever the next player can play. He will post a Got-It if he can find time to play during this period ~ but if you can, and nobody's got it, grab it and go anytime since you won't techincally be 'up'

...and herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre's the save.... [i accidently played a few moves on 1106):

 

[Munterpipe]

Good work. I think we got what we could out of the war, and peace will help us get back on line economically. Next time we meet Genghis, he'll be looking at maces in numbers!
Also, I think we should start building the Palace in Sparta soon. It's in the center of our empire anyway, and when Civil Service comes in....
Kachiiing.

 

[GreyFox]

Good play everybody!

I hope your last picture is just a test and you did not actually sign peace with Monty, pholk.

Not a Got-IT, maybe later tonight (my night, or is it your night? I mean my night, but I am actually in your timezone, so its my night, but not my usual night ... ... ... whatever).

--

 

[pholkhero]

Good play everybody!

I hope your last picture is just a test and you did not actually sign peace with Monty, pholk.

Not a Got-IT, maybe later tonight (my night, or is it your night? I mean my night, but I am actually in your timezone, so its my night, but not my usual night ... ... ... whatever).

--

I did in fact sign the treaty b/c we do need to get everything in order domestically, and put out some more units. As it stood, we had a sword, a phalanx and a cat against 4 units or so.

Monty's still at war w/Bismarck so he should be occupied for a bit. Concievable, we could redeclare as soon as the treaty is up, but i think we'll need to wait a bit after that. We also need to push against Mongolia, fortify those cities with phalanx and Genghis will be a non-issue at from that point in time. Monty needs to have a city of two taken from him, and then we'll need to turn our eye onto Bismarck.

If you can, please do grab it and play. It'll be a nice boring turnset

 

[Munterpipe]

Hey guys, check out the next level of chaos. It's gonna be fun.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=177880

 

[GreyFox]

If you can, please do grab it and play. It'll be a nice boring turnset

Hmm .... Ok, will do just that. That's what happen when you go OoP, you are delegated the boring builder's turnset ... Got IT. Playing.

 

[GreyFox]

Its indeed a quiet set of turns ... I think our best move will be to finish Mongolia off, and assimilate its cities into ours. However, we have to becareful abt Monty, he is still all red with us ... and now that bismarck has signed peace with Aztec, Monty may re-declare on us. This time round, his forces seems to be bigger, so next player have to be more careful.

Anyway, my turnset is uneventful. But, I still don't understand why 3 different workers are spread between 3 different tiles in Sparta. Although all 3 tiles are worked on, but its still a mistake to spread the workers. By concentrating the workers, you get the cottages much faster, and get the beenfit of working the cottage much earlier.

After the micromaganing, its just clicking enter until I read this:

Ok, pretty fats for JC to get circumnavigation bonus. This being pangea, however, the bonus is not too important. Notice also in the above picture, we popped our first (I think) scientist ... and I promptly wasted him on an academy ...

Afterwhich, made a trade with JC:

the +1 trade route per city increases our commerce by a bit, and I cancelled our sale of cow to Nappy ... we need the cows as Sparta is going to be unhealthy next turn.

Here is out southern land:

Spoiler autolog :

Turn 241 (1106 AD)
Buddhism has spread: Beshbalik
Thermopylae finishes: Swordsman
Harappan finishes: Library
Karakorum grows: 6

IBT:

Turn 242 (1112 AD)
Thermopylae begins: Catapult
Harappan begins: Granary

IBT:

Turn 243 (1118 AD)
Thermopylae grows: 4

IBT:

Turn 244 (1124 AD)
Al-Khwarizmi (Scientist) (Great Scientist) born in Athens

IBT:

Turn 245 (1130 AD)

IBT:

Turn 246 (1136 AD)
Sparta finishes: Academy
Tech learned: Code of Laws
Thermopylae finishes: Catapult
Karakorum grows: 7

IBT:

Turn 247 (1142 AD)
Tech learned: Currency
Tech learned: Literature
Athens grows: 7
Sparta grows: 9
Sparta's borders expand
Beshbalik finishes: Barracks

IBT:

Turn 248 (1148 AD)
Beshbalik begins: Granary

IBT:

Turn 249 (1154 AD)
Athens finishes: Buddhist Temple

IBT:

Turn 250 (1160 AD)
Athens begins: Buddhist Monastery

>>>> The Save (1160AD) <<<<

 

[Munterpipe]

Good turns. I liked the tech trade, and your choice of researching feudalism is sound, maybe even lifesaving, if Monty comes at us again.

 

[frankcor]

Good work! Courthouses will really help, but let's not forget to keep building military -- it wouldn't do to appear to be sissy target of opportunity.

This makes the youthful crustacean up?

 

[Lobsterboy]

"I got it"; I'm just not sure when I'll be able to play it. Hopefully tonight, but maybe not until Tues. night.

 

[pholkhero]

It's always been my impression that doubling up workers creates wasted worker turns in some cases, i.e., when the turns needed to complete a task are odd. Rather than dbl check in each case to see if i'm wasting a turn or not, i go for individual workers.

if a city is working 2 grass tiles, and I cottage both of them. I can either a)pair up, cottage one (done in 6) and cottage the other (done in another 6) OR, b)do each one at a time (12 turns).

So, with a) we get 1 commcerce at turn 6, 2 @ t12, and b)we just get the 2 at the last turn. If this were 3000 bc or even 1000 bc, i'd say that getting the extra bit of commerce is worth it, but, to my mind, at 1100 ad NOT wasting worker turns is a better advantage.

Of course, i haven't done the numbers on this for sure, but it's just what my gut tells me on this ~ if the group prefers paired workers (which in the end, i have no preference regards) let's just pair them up for good, then.

other than that, though, let's figure out if we should take out Mongolia or focus on Monty for a bit. In my mind, we'd take those two close Aztec cities, and then go back in for the Kahn to finish him off, but that's just me ~ we all know how i am

Frank > on deck
Munter >
Pholk>
Grey> just played
Lobster> UP NOW

GreyFox > OoP until 07/23: Don't wait for his "Got-It", skip him if he is UP whenever the next player can play. He will post a Got-It if he can find time to play during this period ~ but if you can, and nobody's got it, grab it and go anytime since you won't techincally be 'up'