Phaedo02- Rage_Against_The_Machine

[Bucephalus]

Pre-turn:

Sell Silks to Greece for 32gpt.
Sell Physics to China for Dyes, Ivory, 3gpt, 9g
Rush Frigate in Tobacco Farm; wake Galleon send to rendezvous.
Rush Settler in Ice Shelf.
Rush Settler in Sapporo.
For some reason we are paying 30gpt for ROP with Hittites ; renegotiate for just ROP.
Move Settlers and more Muskets in to Celt territory.

Enter:

IBT:

Greece/ Hittites MA Egypt - looks like Mursilis found an immediate use for our gold.

1060:

Toyomo founded;
Lose 4 Cavs taking out 3 Muskets in Ebacorum; Metro razed.
Split my forces; send 15 Cavs East, the rest North with Settlers, Musket support.

1070:

Greece has Industrialization.

Fukushima founded.
Capture Lugdunum - JS Bachs is ours.
Celts have Nationalism, facing conscript Rifles.

1080:

Suo founded.
Held up at Burdigala - Rifles are proving difficult; Cavs retreat to heal.

1090:

Sell Economics to Maya for 3gpt, 5g; they are on their last legs but I'll take their gold.
Raze Richborough;
Raze ....hmm, that crappy town NW of Burdigala, sorry forgot to note the name;
WW biting; I could get Incense from the Greeks, but we'll have Celtic Wines next turn, so raise lux slider temporarily.

1100:

Found Bizen, capturing Celt Wines; colonize furs near Lugdunum.
Drop Slider back.
Echizen founded.

Hmm, now here's a strange thing: Greece will not deal in gpt, even for an alliance against Egypt; However, Hittites will deal in straight gpt - no alliance. Maybe the deal for Nationalism has somehow repaired our rep with them.
Anyhow, I strike while the iron's hot -buy Steam for furs, 1300g and 120gpt.
We have 2 sources of coal.
Trade Steam to Egypt for Medicine, 20g;
Begin RR connection North/South.

1110:

Raze Burdigala;
Capture Leiden - that's the Eastern peninsular cleared.
Found two more furs colonies.
Sell furs to Greece for 33gpt.

1120:

Izumi founded.
Build wines colony;
Wines to Greece for 40gpt.
Raze whatever city it was that had the Great Library - we truly are Philistines - and my attention span re. city names is zero when I'm at war, sorry.
Found Salt colony on Beta continent.

1130:

China/ Greece MA Egypt
Sell Magnetism to China for 383g;
Egypt signs trade embargo against us.
Raze Verulamium;
Raze Cataractonium;

1140:

Omi founded, we now have Celt Gems.
Raze Agedincum.

1150:

Echigo founded;
One last push - and Entremont falls; Brennus' ass belongs to the mighty Buce!
For some reason Mursilis is furious with me; so much so that he has returned our Silks and 290gpt.

Spoiler :

I'll give my hand off notes in the morning - I've been at this for four hours, and I'm exhausted.



>>THE SAVE<<

 

[Phaedo]

Nice Work Buce! Look at how happy our Empire is. Getting JS Bach's was great. Murry us just upset that you didn't leave him any cities to take.

So the next order of business is setting up specialist farms and railing the empire. There's lot's of green up there so we should be able to fit in tons of cities. We need to find a way to pump settlers quickly so Murry doesn't get the land before us. We have a lot of productive cities in the core. With rails, we should be able to set up a great settler pump. We will probably have to change some of the improvements to set it up properly but it's more than worth it. We need 6 spt and 5 extra fpt. 2 grass railed and irrigated will support 3 specialists so CxC is fine placement for the NW. It also makes sense to settle on hills and plains as they won't give us food.

Once we hook up gems, we can trade them with Greece.

Tusker gets back from his holiday tomorrow and should be ready to play. I'll try to put together a r dotmap today.

The roster:
Phaedo
Bucephalus
Elephantium UP
Simple Monkey Honoured Observer and alternate
Smart AWOL
Norton II On Deck
Commando Bob

 

[SimpleMonkey]

Truely a lovely thing, these recent turnsets. I'd actually sorta like the challange of losing the trade rep. Does make things more interesting.

Is possible you could make use of the ROP with Murry and plant some troops in the bottleneck to slow down his pestiferous resettling? He could still land one by boat, but it'll take him a while.

Here's also where arty may be useful. With a railnet up, you can bomb any future foe into splinters before they land. The AI usually turns ships around once they're dinged. If this game is going to be won with spy bravado and pointy-stick research by way of tanks, then you'll be have a tussle or two with one of the two biggies overseas at some time or another.

I'd probably work more at propping up Cleo when playing the two of them off of each other. Alex can become a mean runaway AI in the Industrial Age.

Oh, and at this point I'd be thinking more about rubber than I would about salt.

Really nice to drop by and see such beauty.

 

[Phaedo]

Always a pleasure when you do drop by Simp. Hopefully you will be able to get a set in before it's done. I like the ruined rep too, especially as it wasn't because of a mistake.

Here's what I came up with for a dot map. Each spot has at least 2 grass to work and the river spots have more. I just put a green border abound where our final cultural border would be.

It will require 23 settlers that will give us 414gpt at pop 5. It will actually be a bit more as the river cities can support more. These should give us all the cash we need to steal our way to the stars.

EDIT: Also, as we don't really have many city improvements to build, I don't think it would be a bad idea to use core cities with grans to build some of settlers. They will complete them in 2 turns and will grow back their 2 pop quickly enough.

Spoiler :

The West:

The East:

 

[Bucephalus]

Nice work on the dotmap, Phaedo, but can you explain your maths? 423gpt would require something like 10 taxmen per city, wouldn't it?

JS Bachs was a big happiness boost, but a lot of it is now coming from the Sistine doubling our Cathedral's effect.

SM is perfectly right about blocking Mursilis, but we can do it without a ROP if necessary, just put a 'curtain' of Cavs around the NW passage.

Actually, I think we need to be wary of Mursilis; now his long war with Brennus is over, he will start to accumulate a lot of offensive units.

I'd like to see our productive cities concenrate on knocking out 20 or so Rifles to protect our border cities before using them for Settlers; We can cash rush Settlers from our lesser productive cities in the meantime - I've set all our new cities to Settler builds.

Hittites present us with a problem; it can only be a matter of time before Greece take out Egypt and China and become a monster and we will need to trim them down considerably sooner or later.

At such time, it would be nice to have the Hittites gone, but I think we need them in the game, and economoically strong, to facilitate our progress through the tech tree.

I'm sure Tusker will be gagging to play, but I strongly feel that we need to pause and take stock; I think a team discussion is called for, to decide on our short, and medium term strategy. CBob is back on Monday too, so we have a full compliment of heads to put together.

 

[Phaedo]

I think a discussion is a good idea. As for the farms, I made a mistake with the calculator.
23 pop five farms will give 69 specialists (23x3)
each specialist gives 2 gpt, so 138gpt. Sorry, I multiplied the number of specialists by the the total of gold 3 specialists would give. My mistake.
(It would require 9 taxmen per city to get 414gpt )

Still, not bad though.

 

[Bucephalus]

I think a discussion is a good idea. As for the farms, I made a mistake with the calculator.
23 pop five farms will give 69 specialists (23x3)
each specialist gives 2 gpt, so 138gpt. Sorry, I multiplied the number of specialists by the the total of gold 3 specialists would give. My mistake.
(It would require 9 taxmen per city to get 414gpt )

Still, not bad though.

No, not bad at all; it will compensate for the 100gpt that we are currently getting for lux's from Greece, something that I think is going to need to be stopped - I think I see a 'cold war' looming.

Also, now we have cop-dudes, it will be easy enough to put 'ducts in many of them, so it will probably be nearer 200gpt eventually.

This game has become fascinating.

 

[Phaedo]

This game has become fascinating.

It's becoming a good one. I think the trashed rep ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Alex is definitely the powerhouse and will need to be taken down a notch. I'm sure we could get some help in doing that.

Step 1 has to be filling all that new land before Murray does though. We took the land fro farms so let's make sure we get them up and running as quickly as we can. We should be able to at least get the settlers done in a set I think.

 

[Elephantium]

Interesting twists to the game. I'm home from airport, horribly jetlagged, and content to wait a few days before playing (I'm up in Slavemasters, too, and I don't want to play an out-of-comfort-zone game when I'm not alert).

 

[Phaedo]

Interesting twists to the game. I'm home from airport, horribly jetlagged, and content to wait a few days before playing (I'm up in Slavemasters, too, and I don't want to play an out-of-comfort-zone game when I'm not alert).

No worries. We need to all sit down and have a bit of a chat over what to do next. Greece has run away potential, Murray will be frisky, we have a ton of farms to build and a bunch of improving. Take your time. I'm sure Norton wouldn't be averse (see I learn) to a switch. Before anyone plays though we need to settle on a direction. Greece and Egypt are big enough and researching quickly. We need to slow the pace down a bit so we can build cash and get the techs we want (which are?). I think we may have hit that point where we have to be careful who we give luxes to. I wouldn't mind propping up China a bit but the rest are too dangerous. I think we may have some options with Willie. He is so far back that we can trade with him easily enough but he's broke. I need to think about it some more, but we might be able to make him some gifts and them buy from him. Temporarily set him up as our middleman as he isn't a threat.

 

[Bucephalus]

Greece are undoubtedly our most serious rival; I concur 100&#37; with Simple Monkey that we need to prop up Egypt.

Although they are in a war with Greece and China at present, the balance tends to be with defensive units now Rifles are out, so hopefully they won't suffer too badly.

Once our current deals with Greece expire, I would suggest we begin a 'Cold War' with them; that is, we don't trade lux's or any other resources.

It would even be in our interests to gift surplus lux's to Egypt if they can't afford to buy them - a happier Egypt is a stronger Egypt.

We are past the stage where we need to cave to any demands, although 20g here and there hurts nothing but our pride.

Our tech priority now is to obtain Indusrialization; not only does it give us factories and coal plants, it is the gateway to Espionage.

The only way we are going to get this is by a lump sum payment, so lets get those tax farms up and running; we are currently making nearly 500gpt, so it won't take long to afford it once the Hittites acquire it, and bring the price down.

I think that once we have Industrialization, it will be time for our GA; Willie will provide a painless way of kicking this off, so we need to build a few Sammi's.

The North/South Railnet is almost complete, so our copious number of Slaves can be divided between railing the core cities, and railing/irrigating our tax farms in the land formerly known as Celtic.

Once we have RP's, I think getting a toe-hold on the other continent would be desirable; a short war with China would suffice.

We could then use periods of peace (because there will be wars, after failed spy missions) to build up a large force of Arty and Infantry.

Sooner or later we will need to trim Greece down to size, and it would be suicide to launch an amphibious invasion while at war.

 

[Elephantium]

Phaedo, I like your dotmaps. My first order of business will be to try and seal off our new land from the Hittites and get it under our culture borders. Once we have that all set up, I'll start filling in more specialist farms.

We have a few leftover elite Swords; should I disband those or save them for leader-fishing long shots?

Beyond that, I concur with what Buce and Phaedo have been saying.

 

[Bucephalus]

Phaedo, I like your dotmaps. My first order of business will be to try and seal off our new land from the Hittites and get it under our culture borders. Once we have that all set up, I'll start filling in more specialist farms.

We have a few leftover elite Swords; should I disband those or save them for leader-fishing long shots?

Beyond that, I concur with what Buce and Phaedo have been saying.

No reason not to save the Elites; when we go for our GA against Willie, they will get their chance against some AA units.

I think that there is an Elite MI kicking about somewhere, too.

Since nobody else appears to have any input to give, I'd say play when you're ready (subject to Phaedo's confirmation, of course), though pause for discussion if anything major occurs.

If I have any further thoughts, I'll post today.

 

[Phaedo]

I agree. I think your turn will be mostly setting up infrastructure. Think about the settler rushing. Make sure there are some shields put in (we were rushing Sammys at 2 turns left so the same should be fine for settlers).

I agree that we don't want to feed anyone luxes. Murray might get feisty so make sure to keep some units up there. I think blocking off all the land approaches with cavs is a good idea too.

It's been a long day and my brain is fried so that's about all I can contribute at the moment.

Good luck Tusker

 

[Bucephalus]

If we have any surplus lux's that we can't trade, I think now would be a good time to start gifting Cleo; if nothing else, it will help slow down Alexander's advance, and it should help her attitude towards us.

In the unlikely event that Alex DOW's us, (although he may demand Gems, which he should not be given), try to ally Hittites before he does.

This may not be possible, given the recent events with Brennus, but if the worst happens, you have an almost completed Railnet to facilitate troop movements.

It would be best to resist the temptation to go on the offensive, though; ATM, the advantage is with the defender, so just make him suffer maximum casualties.

Be sure to have enough Rifles in any city he can reach in one turn - nothing feeds WW like losing a city.

Good luck.

 

[Bucephalus]

Also, our cities will need some mm; I didn't do so after my last turn, when we lost WW, and gained Sistine.

Kagoshima, for example, can now swap tiles with The Hague, which can lose the Cop, and work the coast so both can grow.

 

[Elephantium]

I won't be able to play tonight (working late), and I'll probably be just as busy tomorrow night. If you guys don't mind waiting on me 'til Saturday, I can play my set, otherwise I'll need to ask to switch with Norton.

 

[Norton II]

I don't have a problem with waiting until Saturday, but I can play tomorrow if Phaedo and Buce don't want to wait. As I understand it, the plan's basically as follows:
1. spam tax farms
2. buy our way to espionage
3. prop up Egypt and China vs. Greece
4. get some galleons and sammis ready to start our GA after we get industrialization

As for point #3, Egypt lacks iron for rails, though they'll only give us 120 gold for it because of our busted rep. Should we make that deal?

 

[Elephantium]

IMO, it's worth "gifting" iron to Egypt...it's not like our trading rep can get any more busted, can it?

 

[Bucephalus]

I'm OK with a switch; the game has slowed down a bit.

I'd say we should gift Egypt everything that we possibly can; if they collapse, we have got ourselves a real problem with Greece.

Looking further down the line, the more land Greece has, the more likely it is that they will have all necessary strategic resources for a launch; we can only hope that Egypt can get peace soon, and helping them with their economy makes that more likely.

Also, although it's not an immediate problem, we need to be prepared to snatch the UN; this means that once we get Espionage, we need to keep hot on Greece's coat tails, and be sure to have a pre-build in place.

Strategically, I'm leaning towards the idea of damaging Greece big-time once we have RP, and before they have tanks; if the team concur with that, it would make sense to maximize output on Rifles from now onward, pausing only to build factories/ coal plants.