PH16: Guns Make a Man

[pholkhero]

So, i played about 20 turns or so. We are now 1 turn away from Gunpowder and our armies are ready to roll.

There wasn't many screenshots worth taking, but here's what i got.

We hit 5 million:

everyone wanted me to give them education, but as we got closer to D-Turn, i traded it around:

And degaulle also asked me to cancel deals w/darius and i agreed as well.

power rankings:

elections:

and some recon on the eve of the Great War.

and our border with the dutch:

And the likely target cities of ours:

And, with that, we're ready to roll ~ I think ozzie's up in Immy's game, too, but i'm sure Orange, Darius and Asoka will be waiting.

oh, and maybe a swap to Theocracy now that we have it??

Roster
pholkhero >> just played
ozbenno >> UP NOW
rolo >> on deck
White Dragon
GreyFox

 

[Ozbenno]

Nice work pholk!

Getting Guilds is nice as Knights are pretty handy.

I'm assuming Willem is attacking target #1 and that we'll try and nab Nationalism from Liberalism as well?

I've got it but am up in all 3 SGs I'm currently playing in (do you want to swap with me in the FFH game pholk?) so will take the full 48 hours to play.

 

[GreyFox]

Impressive stacks you have gathered. Only minor gripe I have is the lack of pikes in the ranks of our attacking forces, considering we already engineering.

Also not sure abt the unusually high number of HAs we have ... presumably to be upgraded to knights?

--

 

[GreyFox]

Apart from the above, noting that Samsun is reachable by the Indians, I would add some defense to it as well. But probably we could produce a Janissary in this city after the current build.

I would probably move one longbow from Bursa to one of the attacking forces. One should always cultivate the habit of adding defenders to the attacking stack to #1 protect the stack and #2 to defend captured cities.

-

 

[pholkhero]

I've got it but am up in all 3 SGs I'm currently playing in (do you want to swap with me in the FFH game pholk?) so will take the full 48 hours to play.

I'll take that swap ~ will post there ~

Only minor gripe I have is the lack of pikes in the ranks of our attacking forces, considering we already engineering.

Also not sure abt the unusually high number of HAs we have ... presumably to be upgraded to knights?

--

figured 'phants would double as pikes for now. HAs mostly for treb/cat defense. Or upgrade.

One should always cultivate the habit of adding defenders to the attacking stack to #1 protect the stack and #2 to defend captured cities.-

truth.

 

[Ozbenno]

Excellent, I'll get to this tonight or tomorrow (more likely) with the swap.

I'll start Janissarie/Knight/trebuchet production across the board as well.

 

[GreyFox]

figured 'phants would double as pikes for now.

They are great to double as pike ... except when the opponent also have phants.

 

[White Dragon]

I keep forgetting this in only Prince. So used to the enemy armies being triple in size. Super sweet play everyone.

 

[Ozbenno]

Hmmm, there was something I was meant to do wasn't there

Ah, yes, Willem

Willem: Yah?

This means war



Asoka

Asoka: Yes sweetie?

Uh, this also means war.



Darius

Darius puts his fingers in his ears

Darius: La la la la la la, I can't hear you



Darius: If I can't hear you it means you haven't said anything, la la la la la

Hmm, ever heard of alt-click buddy



[Had me stumped for a little while until I remembered]

Anyway, we're at war with three civs la-de-da









We also have some new crack troops, they are actually pretty nifty, especially on counter-attacks as they will handle knights, maces and longbows pretty easily.



A GG merged in our 2nd biggest hammer city.



If you were paying attention to the maps in the screenies above, you'll realise that Willem has but one city left and inevitably...



Willem: Ha ha ha, no dick-on-the-face for me, I have escaped you fiendish elephants

Darius gets some love as well.



Now can we get peace for a map from Willem to hunt him down or just capitulate him (he'll hand over Compass), I pass this onto the rule master.

The race for Liberalism is on, we're well placed but we need to judge our run right as it may just come down to one turn.

No sign of any counter from Darius or Asoka but we may have stirred Darius with our friendly poke at Tarsus

There are masses of troops headed for Bursa (the Persian theatre) and Ankara (the soon to be opened Indian theatre) didn't cancel any of them as its only prince.

 

[r_rolo1]

Got it....

Will wait for a decision about vassaling Willem. He has only one city, so he would be a more than worthless vassal, but hammy is friendly with him, so him vassaling to hammy is a serious possibility....

 

[pholkhero]

vassaling is okay ~ we just have to defeat the others so that's a fine option.

as long as we win by conquest in the end.

edit: oh, and, great turns, Bennie ~ nothing like reminding the AI that it IS only prince. I think i tried something similar to this game in my "Man in the Iron Mask" game and it was much tougher. Ahh, well, that was THREE FREAKIN' YEARS AGO!!! i can't believe i've been playing SGs for over 3 years! ahh civ

 

[Ozbenno]

If we win the Liberalism race, do we want to consider Printing Press instead of Nationalism, not sure we need drafting as we're doing this pretty easy and PP is on the way to Rifles and as we have a few cottages up will get a financial benefit as well.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Lurker Comment:
you can draft janissaries and while this is only prince, draftable UUs with bonuses against all prior era units are quite effective... So lib-nat seems a good move as usual

 

[r_rolo1]

So, in what feet we are regarding Liberalism? Good Ol'Natio or PP ( or something else ) ? We must get Liberalism this turnset or we will lose it, and obviously i can't play without this settled....

 

[pholkhero]

eh, it's only prince. let's hold off on rifles so we can utilize our Jannies more.

let's go with Nat'l.

 

[GreyFox]

Either is fine for me, I have no strong opinion on either, although I am inclined very slightly towards PP. It has immediately benefits, and we lack food in general to make do a lot of drafting.

-

 

[Ozbenno]

Either is fine for me, I have no strong opinion on either, although I am inclined very slightly towards PP. It has immediately benefits, and we lack food in general to make do a lot of drafting.

Quoted for truth.

 

[pholkhero]

Quoted for truth.

quoted for quotes.

 

[r_rolo1]

I played a awful lot of turns because I wanted to bring this to a decent stopping point. Feel free to on me

First of all, capping mr 1 city left:

Spoiler :

As expected he is reduced to a worthless city in a island

Then going to Lib. PP as quoted

Spoiler :

The war was a little more complicated than in Oz set.... well mainly because the AI actually started to build units India stacked units in that city by the lake and I was forced to wait for the veterans of the Dutch war to get in place to move. In Persia things were a little diferent:

Spoiler :

This brought Darius to below of the average of the civs power, but obviously due to the *insert badmouthed word here* vassaling mechanics, he wasn't avaliable to cap because he was afraid of Asoka and obviously Asoka was doing fine on his own ( seriously, this makes almost impossible to vassal one of the 2 or more contenders in war if they have roughly the same strength ... same as in the last set of RR4 )
Anyway, more cities to take:

Spoiler :

And still no capping avaliable ( btw, this was where I ended the set )

Some noteworthy news from during the set:

Spoiler :

Some intel of the end of the set:

Spoiler :

We actually don't have a lot to trade with the AI, except with Hammy ( btw, he built the Taj and won the circum navigation race )....

That spy just arrived to Delhi. I definitely sugest to use it to take the walls down ( Asoka has that worthless wonder with the name of a Mayan city specially designed to make the human player so it is definitely worth to burn some EP in that )

Feel free to change those theaters out of the queues... we captured some resources in this turn and they aren't as needed as they were last turn. Anyway our persian stack needs more siege if we continue the war in that direction. Which leads to...

The real point I wanted to discuss. Like I said above, Darius will not cap to us because he is afraid of Asoka. Now what happens if we make a cease fire with Asoka ?

Spoiler :

This was just a test OFC ( I actually have not saved this ) , but I already knew this would happen ( previous experience ) . My point is to ask if this is permitted by the variant: cease fire with Asoka, cap Darius, war with Asoka. We are in no condition of pursuing the war with Darius without some serious reinforcement ( the RNG was really bad with our trebs in that last Persian city ) and there is not much more we want from Darius anyway. This would have the bonus of bumpimg our SoD to inisde that indian city and save us one turn and another from having a vassal, but it would not make our diplo easier with the rest of the free civs, being Asoka a Jewish. Anyway it would seriously help our game IMHO.

 

[pholkhero]

good turns rolo ~ i don't think about 16 turns is too much either ~

re: vassal ~ as long as we're continually at war with Asoka (that is, we take cease fire, take vassal, break cease fire all in one turn) then i'm fine with working around the poor mechanics.

i didn't realize this game would get to be so easy, but, after all . . .



[btw, i'm currently working on another SG "It's Only Prince" ~ just need some wicked variants now ~ maybe Pangaea AW again ]

roster
pholkhero
ozbenno
rolo >> just played
White Dragon >> UP NOW
GreyFox >> on deck

edit: also, good to see no one listens to me vis a vis Nationalism and PP