Phaedo's 1st basic skills training game: patience required

[Salarakas]

A couple more comments/hints:

Pillaging a resource square is (of course) the most effective way of disconnecting it from the AI civ towns. Pillaging some roads around towns is nice but keep in mind that if the resource is connected to a town that has a harbor it will still be shared with the rest of the empire. Then again, the Romans might have more than one iron so disconnecting the one we see won't necessarily do us any good. Also, without iron they'll start building longbows which have the same attack strenght. If they had knights then pillaging the iron would be high on our priorities but I don't think it's that important now.

Sometimes it's worth capturing towns if you're going to abandon them soon anyway. The town acts as a road but when you abandon/raze it the road vanishes. Therefore I usually keep towns when speed is important as I can move units through it and advance quicker.

 

[Aabraxan]

The Romans didn't have gunpowder invented, I think, during my turns. Do they have it now?

Off the top of my head, I don't know, and I've got Xmas stuff to handle today, so I may not get a chance to look today.

Losing that army.. ouch. I had to abandon Viroconium for that same reason - it had 6 medieval infantry in it and only a wounded army inside. It would have probably been attacked and killed if I had kept the town. How badly was the army injured?

It wasn't. It had 17/17 HP, iirc.

Losing towns is bad for war weariness so we should avoid that whenever possible. Abandon the towns if necessary.

I will.

Luckily we can afford to run high lux rate if needed and we'll probably get a couple of new lux resources connected before long.

Yeah, we're at 20% now. I've already started looking for more luxes.

I think building the Leo's is just wasting shields at this point. It would have been useful if we had started building it long ago but right now it won't do us much good. One of the AI civs is bound to finish it soon as they have a wonder fetish all of them. Also, how much upgrading are we going to do in this game anyway? Cossacks won't upgrade to anything and that's the main thing we have right now. Caravels can be upgraded to galleons but it's only 30 gold a piece. You already upgraded the cats/trebs to cannons. We might have replacable parts by the end of the game but that's it. I think we might even get more money (than we would save in upgrading costs if we had the workshop) by running wealth in Moscow for 19 turns - or however long it will take once the golden age ends.

Also remember that the cossacks have the blitz ability. If one still has lots of HP left after killing a unit you can use it to attack another one on the same turn. If the medieval infantry is on flat ground (with no defense bonus) you should be able to kill lots of them in no time.

Well, no one else is working on the Workshop and I don't think anyone else has invention, but I'll double-check on that. At any rate, I'm not married to the idea of Leo's, and I could switch it if anyone has any strong feelings about getting a different wonder.

And as far as the blitz ability, I remember that and am basically killing any strays left out.

 

[Aabraxan]

Pillaging a resource square is (of course) the most effective way of disconnecting it from the AI civ towns. Pillaging some roads around towns is nice but keep in mind that if the resource is connected to a town that has a harbor it will still be shared with the rest of the empire. Then again, the Romans might have more than one iron so disconnecting the one we see won't necessarily do us any good. Also, without iron they'll start building longbows which have the same attack strenght. If they had knights then pillaging the iron would be high on our priorities but I don't think it's that important now.

Sometimes it's worth capturing towns if you're going to abandon them soon anyway. The town acts as a road but when you abandon/raze it the road vanishes. Therefore I usually keep towns when speed is important as I can move units through it and advance quicker.

I realize that it's possible that they have more than one source of iron and am going to send a couple of galleys along their coasts to see. I'm tempted to switch a couple of galleon builds to frigates for shore bombardment.

Good point about longbows.

 

[Aabraxan]

Christmas stuff & a sick daughter prevent me from playing my turnset for a couple of days.

Hope everyone has a Happy [insert holiday expression of your choice here]!

 

[Phaedo]

Thaks your time
Happpy holidays everyone

 

[Phaedo]

What do you think Aabra? Do you know when you can take it? Don't mean to rush you just a little reminder

 

[mr_2_you]

What do you think Aabra? Do you know when you can take it? Don't mean to rush you just a little reminder

..........

 

[Aabraxan]

I can probably get to it tomorrow (Friday) evening. If I can't, I'll post and let you know. Apologies for holding up the game.

 

[Phaedo]

No worries. I just wanted to revive it a bit. If you can't take it, I think Mr_2 can

However, before we keep flapping around like a cod at the bottom of a cape islander, we need a plan for invasion and victory. There is a lot of confusion about what exactly we are trying to do in our invasion. A winning continental invasion this early in the game is new for me. It is exciting and a great learning opportunity. However something has changed in the past little while in this game. Part of it was the replay issue, which I think has been resolved. But more fundamentally, we have got bogged down with discussion over details and the end goals and how we plan to achieve them have not been discussed. I have the save open and have been looking at it and I don't understand what we are doing. This is absolutely NOT a criticism of Aabra in any way (as I don't think any one of us could explain what we are doing in a way that would get general agreement and understanding from the team).

Working towards this goal, I would like to pose a few questions. Hopefuly these questions will help focus us a bit.

1. Why are we attacking the other continent?
2. Do we expect/hope the game will last long enough to make cities on the other continent in any way productive?
3. Is there anything we can gain from the various civs on the new continent?
4. We have talked about leader hunting with our CASSOCKS . Why do we want more armies? [Meaning what are we going to do with armies that is different than a stack of cossacks?]

My personal answers:

1. To destroy every rival civ on the planet
2. No
3. We are ahead on tech, we can grab luxes that come our way but we don't really need them so; nothing worthwhile
4. This one isn't for me to take credit. It took some discussion with Buce to make it clear in my head. We use the armies with a load of cossacks moving with each to kill cities. The cossacks leader hunt gets accomplished through the odd attack on the field and final attacks against fortified units. We have the infrastructure to keep sending cossacks to replace dead ones (although with a city on denver island, we could have worked out a more orderly shuffle). And if our goal is to be the last man standing, let's just raze cities. There is no value in trying to defend a long front we don't care about. We can still use roads that are outside of enemy territory. Also, let's use the workers to road the path we want our forces to take. There's no point in clearing jungle at this point. We basically have the game won, our goal should be figuring out how to finish it as efficiently as possible.

 

[Salarakas]

1. It's the quickest way to win. We could of course go for the space ship or delay the game in order to try communism out but since nothing has been said about that I figured that conquest/domination would be the preferred way to end the game.

2. Absolutely not.

3. Nope. Kill them all.

4. One army is way more powerful than a stack of 3 or 4 cossacks. We'll start seeing muskets soon and attacking them with cossacks is not fun unless you bring the slow artillery units with you. And that takes away the thing that makes cossacks or other cavalry units so great - their speed. Speed kills. Armies can deal with muskets although it's still slower than fighting just pikes. The regular cossack units can concentrate more on killing the stray enemy units outside cities.

You mentioned a long front. I disagree with that. Cossacks are fast and can easily cover a large area. What we should do is pick one target and advance that way. Stop advancing completely on the other "fronts". I suggest we first take care of the Roman core which should be fairly easy. Then, leave a couple of cossacks behind and move the rest of the troops to the north and start advancing there.

Edit: We should also use the cossacks to our advantage. We haven't seen any knights yet so we should have very little trouble defending against the slow movers. Let them move themselves next to our towns, use cossacks to kill them and then move them back to the safety of the towns on the same turn. A 4/4 cossack unit has only a 4% chance of losing when attacking a 4/4 medieval infantry on flat ground. You don't need artillery for that. If you let that same medieval infantry unit attack you the chance of losing the defending cossack is like 6 or 7 times higher.

 

[Aabraxan]

No worries. I just wanted to revive it a bit. If you can't take it, I think Mr_2 can

As I said, I think I can play my set Friday. If I can't, I'll find time to post & request a skip. I'm more interested in keeping the momentum going than making sure that I get to play "my" turnset.

However, before we keep flapping around like a cod at the bottom of a cape islander, . . .

Off-topic: My, but that's a colorful expression!

This is absolutely NOT a criticism of Aabra in any . . . .

But if there be criticisms, that's OK. Let's hear 'em. I may be argumentative and stubborn, but I am here to learn.

Working towards this goal, I would like to pose a few questions. Hopefuly these questions will help focus us a bit.

1. Why are we attacking the other continent?
2. Do we expect/hope the game will last long enough to make cities on the other continent in any way productive?
3. Is there anything we can gain from the various civs on the new continent?
4. We have talked about leader hunting with our CASSOCKS . Why do we want more armies? [Meaning what are we going to do with armies that is different than a stack of cossacks?]

My responses:
1) Because that's where the other civs are and we want to destroy them.
2) My lawyer's response: define "productive." Cities on the other continent will probably never build a single military unit. What they may do is provide, in no particular order: (a) a place for our units to heal; (b) beakers; (c) some minimal amount of gold; (d) a harbor to ship a lux back home.
3) Very little, aside from the sheer joy of watching their cities burn. They don't have enough gold to trade and no techs to trade (iirc). They'll provide a few slaves, but little else.
4) Two reasons: (a) we just lost one army (much to my chagrin ), so we need a replacement; (b) we can also rush improvements with them, e.g. a harbor if we ever get a lux hooked up on this continent, or a rax for healing.

Edit: Having now seen Salarakas' comment re: long fronts, I have something else to add. IIRC, the other continent forks into a rough "Y" shape on the northern end. Once we take care of the Roman core (which was what I am going to focus on), we should be able to set up two chokepoints, greatly shortening those front lines.

2nd Edit: Also, any cities on the other continent provide 1 more for unit support. Off the top of my head, I don't know what our unit support looks like, so this may not be useful.

 

[Aabraxan]

Aabraxan turnlog 850 AD-950 AD

Preflight Assessment:
Taking Sal's & Phaedo's comments into account, I need to rethink some of my strategy & tactics. I stand by my decision to pillage Roman Iron. LBs aren't great for our business, but LBs are 4.1.1 and MIs are 4.2.1. As I plan to be on the offensive, I'd rather face LBs than MI.

We're 3 turns from Theory of Gravity & the Industrial Age. Here's hoping for Steam as our free tech, though I wouldn't complain about Nationalism, either.

We need to retake Nuremberg and hold Stuttgart. Those will be our chokepoints to the northern half of the other continent.

Leo's WS may be wasted shields, but I leave it because we may want either it or another wonder. We can use it as a prebuild. Looking at the tech tree, here are some possibilities that we might get to before I complete Leo's:
Military Academy (we could still build it, guys)
Smith's Swap Shop
Universal Suffering
Theory of Evolution

Over 2K in the bank.

And away we go.
***************************************************

IBT: A few Romans running around. No attacks.

Builds:
Harran: Cossack --> cossack (5)
Iron Town: cossack --> Cossack (5)


Turn 1: 860 AD
Stuttgart starves
Upgrade Treb to cannon for 30
Upgrade 4 cats to cannons for 240
Move workers into position to begin roading into Roman core.
Move cannons on other continent into position to retake Nuremberg.
Lots of worker moves.
Pillage a road and move the Cossack Army up to begin the Siege of Brundisium.
Fumble-finger a bunch of loads into Galleons. Drat.
Call up Abe and Biz. Neither has much gold. Biz'll give me 13 gold +1 gpt +2 workers for Theology.
Abe'll give us a flat 20 gold. Nothing else.
We've still got 18 turns of peace with Bismarck, so if I'm ever going to take the deal, now's the time. However, we've got 1725 gold in the bank at +217 gpt, so the deal with Biz doesn't help us enough to be worth it. I pass.

IBT:
Roman LB attack cossack and dies (1-0)
Roman MI attacks cossack and dies (2-0)
Entremont riots. Drat. 85% "It's just too crowded." 14% "Give peace a chance." Dadgum hippies.
Hire a scientist until I can get Entremont under control.

Builds:
Rotterdam: cossack --> cossack (6)
The Germans are building Sun Tzu's Art of War.
I'll investigate this in a minute.

Turn 2: 870 AD
Germans are building Sun Tzu's in Frankfurt.
Americans are building it in Philly.
Units are in position to retake Nuremberg.
Test the mettle of a pike at Brundisium. Lose a vCossack (2-1). I see a Legionary defending, so I know he wasn't alone. I'll wait until I get more of a stack formed up.
Pillage a few roads so that incoming traffic (if any) is slowed down.
Straighten out my loading fiasco at Anjar.
Found Rostovaria, so that the inhabitants will be, of course, Rostovarians.
I notice that the Germans are roading in our lands near Brandenburg. Hey, I'll let them improve our tiles.
Moscow is wasting food. I do some MM and reduce Leo's to 16 turns, in the event that we want it. At this point, the only way to eliminate the food wasteage at Moscow will be to mine the wines.

IBT:
MI emerges from Brundisium and redlines a Cossack, but dies (3-1)
More shuffling around.

We enter a new age:

We get Nationalism for our free tech!
Steam power in 5 at -31 gpt.
Stuttgart's resistance ends.

Builds:
St. Pete's: Cossack --> Cossack (4)
Rostov: cossack --> Cossack (6)
Krasnoyarsk: cossack --> cossack (9)
Yekaterinburg: cossack --> cossack (5)
Gem Town: cannon --> cannon (4)
samara: settler --> settler (30)
Nizhny: worker --> worker (10)
Add an entryway to the palace.


Turn 3: 880 AD
Move a mondo load of cannons into Anjar & load for transport to the Roman front.
Shuffle a few more cannons on our coastlines in case I need to ping any foreign boats.

The Pounding of Nuremberg
I've only go two cannons there, so it barely qualifies as a pounding. 1 HP each off of 2 MI stationed there.

Move an army in and retake Nuremberg. (5-1)

3 vMIs north of Nuremberg threaten to retake it. A preemptive strike with 2 vCossacks and an eCossack eliminates that threat (6-1), but no leader produced.

Mace Army attacks at Pisae and kills a pike. (7-1).
We're already moving units about as fast as we can build them, so I spread some of our galleons out to protect our shipping lane.

Begin moving workers towards the core.
My rail plan is:
1) Rail from Moscow to Anjar. Any cossacks produced in the core can get to the rails in a turn and, hence, be in Anjar in a turn,
2) Rail the perimeter of our continent.
3) Rail the interior of our continent.

Hurry the settler at Kazan for 40 gold. It's at 3 & 3 on the happiness scale and will grow in 1.

Pillage iron south of Ravenna.
Attack a Pike out in the open, but lose a cossack. (7-2)
Stupidly attack him again and lose another cossack. (7-3)

IBT: zzz . . .

Builds:
Yakutsk: cossack --> cossack (4) (Hey, it's still our best offensive unit.)
Vladivostok: cossack --> cossack (4)
Riverton: cannon --> cannon (4?)
Kazan': settler--> settler (30)

The Germans are building the Knights Templar.
At this stage, that just doesn't seem like much of an issue.


Turn 4: 890 AD
Attack and destroy Pisae. (8-3) Gain a couple of slaves in the process.

Just for fun, I send a galleon to check out the Amis on Denver Island. Nice warrior ya got there, Abe!

I drop 3 Cossacks and an eSword on the island with Tarentum. It's on the way, might as well eliminate it.

Against my better judgment, I attack a Roman vGalley with one of our rGalleys. Unsurprisingly, I lose (8-4).

Tver' is about to riot. I hire 2 geeks and a clown & rush the settler for 48 gold.

Rome is willing to negotiate. Too bad I'm not.

IBT:
Abe gripes at me for leaving one little galleon in his waters. I apologize and promise to move it. ("Honest, Abe.")
He'll offer 30 gold for Theology. I'd still rather make him work for it.

Romans run around, no attacks.

Builds:
Hattusas: marketplace-->harbor (7) (time to start putting some warships out!)
Verulamium: settler --> settler (30) (a settler factory it ain't, but it's at +2 fpt and 1 spt, so it will keep growing)
Yaroslavl': cossack --> cossack (5)
Tyranna: cossack --> cossack (5)
Aleppo: courthouse -->rifleman (8) (this can be changed, but cossacks are 6.3.3, and rifles are 4.6.1. It just seemed like we need at least a few defensive units)
Tver': settler--> settler (15) -- do a little mming to slow down growth, as it's already size 6. No need for an aque here, so extra food is really just a waste. I'll probably rush this settler in 5 or so.

The Germans are building Leo's.
Do they have a wonder fetish or what?!?
A look at CAII tells me that the Romans still have iron, so my pillaging expedition was just a waste of two cossacks. You were right, Salarakas.

Turn 5: 900 A.D.
Attack a lone Roman by Cologne (9-4) & capture 2 slaves.
Attack the Isle of Tarentum. Capture & burn the city.

Burn Brundisium (11-4). I don't have any combat settlers in place, but I'm more interested in crushing the Romans than I am in cities, so I burn it to the ground.

Rinse and Repeat at Cumae. (14-4).

Unfortunately, two of our cossacks got redlined by Legionaries, but we didn't lose any. A little tinkering and I can still get steam in 3, but at +39 gpt.
I know that Phaedo wants to go commie, and I agree, but I'm going to head for Scientific Method to get Theory of Evolution with our Leo's prebuild. Leo's is currently 13 turns out and with our research time, we may be able to grab ToE with almost no downtime.

IBT:
Lots of Romans running around, but no attacks.

Builds:
Silk town: courthouse--> barracks (5)
Harran: cossack --> cossack (5)
Iron Town: cossack --> cossack (5)
Ankuwa: worker--> settler (30, but there's a forest nearby)
Murmansk: cannon --> wealth (Murmansk is only producing 1 spt & a cannon is a 40 turn investment. We've got enough other good military producers).
Omsk: settler-->settler(30)(just because we need a couple more cities down in that area, but it's not pressing)

The Romans are building Leo's Workshop.
(At least they think they are.)

Turn 6: 910 AD
Kill straggler Roman Pikeman. (15-4)
Check F3: We have a strong military compared to everyone.
Spot American settler/MI/worker trio by Cologne.
Blitz 2 Roman MIs. Cossack by Cologne kills both and promotes to Elite (16-4)
Steam in 2 at +124.

IBT:
Bad news: Our Golden Age has ended.

Lugdunum riots. Drat. 66% Crowded/33% WW. The slider is at 20%, and I hate to go higher, but I might have to.

America founds Dallas near some dyes up by Cologne.

Builds:
Ugarit: harbor -->frigate (30)
Orenburg: marketplace --> frigate (12)
Nuremberg: walls (I rushed them)--> rax (40)
Fustat riots. Dagnabbit. Hire a beakerhead.
Gem Town riots. Crud. Hire, oh, something.
Tver' riots. This is really getting ugly.
Novosibirsk riots. Darn, these people are tired of war.
Irkutsk riots. Rinse and repeat.
Kick lux up to 30%. Man, that sucked.


Turn 7: 920 AD
CA2 says that Kadesh and Silk Town are about to riot.
Even though I just turned up lux, I rush their projects just in case. Then I remember that happines is calculated before builds, so I may have just wasted 264 gold. Sorry.

IBT:
Lots of Romans running around.
Romans land an archer and a Legionary up by Bremen. As it has no defenses, I'll figure this out in a minute.

Builds:
Silk town: Barracks-->Rifleman (12)
The Hague: cannon-->cannon(20)
St.Pete's: cossack --> cossack (6)
Baghdad: settler --> settler (30)
Basra: worker-->worker (10)
Yekaterinburg: cossack -->cossack (6)
Smolensk: cossack-->frigate (9)
Kadesh: Galleon--> Wealth. This one's at +0 fpt, no specialists, and 0 growth. As soon as I can, I'll get some workers in to chop and irrigate.
Riverton: cannon-->settler (5)

Order is restored everywhere.
I hit the F1 screen and try to rid the empire of jokers.

Turn 8: 930 AD
Take a look at Bremen. Rome just dropped off an archer and Legionary by it. I could rush the Rifleman for 284 gold, or I could give it away. I choose the latter.
Go visit trading partners. I know it's late in the turnset, but we've got obsolete techs and they've got gold.

Germany offers 50 gold and 21 gpt for Theology. Save and look at CivFanatics to see who's in, if anyone. We have 11 turns of peace left with Bismarck. Nobody from the team is online. However, it is so late in the turnset and I don't want to hamstring the next player, so I don't take the gpt.

Take Bismarck's last 56 gold for Theology. Guess it's his lucky day. I could trade Education for Chivalry, but I'll hold off.

I give Bremen to Bismarck to avoid losing it to the Romans.

We're currently allowed 137 units and we've got 173, paying unit support of 72 gpt. Now that we've got plenty of Cossacks, I am disband all Ancient Cavalry that are merely standing guard. I find 4. The last (5th) is an Elite* who can't produce a leader, but he does have 6 HP, so I let him live.

By dropping units off directly on the Roman shoreline, I now have 11 cannons to go with my stack (and 4 more one turn away). So let the pounding being:

The Pounding of Neapolis:
It turns out that Neapolis only has 2 units stationed in it, so the pounding is brief and they are redlined.

Raze Neapolis (17-4), but it's late, so I don't take a screenshot.
Went leader-fishing. No luck.
Kill stray MI (18-4)
Kill a pike in Antium just for fun (19-4)
Just for fun, I check with Caesar to see what he'll give us for peace. In short, he sure is stubborn for a man whose empire has taken a beating like this. Only 1 or 2 cities and 4 gold. Geez, I'd rather just beat on him, so I do.
Kazan' grows in 1, so I rush its settler.

IBT:
Roman MI attacks the cossack I have sitting on their horses and dies (19-4)
We learn Steam.

Begin studying Electricity. We can have it in 8 @ -13 gpt. Leo's is 16 turns out right now.

Coal:
We have one source near Gem Town.
Other Sources: Near Bonn and Konigsberg (both German), Cologne (Roman) and a source on Denver Island. That's all I see.


Builds:
Kazan': settler-->wealth & begin transition to full tax/science farm
Stuttgart: worker-->wealth
Yakutsk: cossack --> cossack (5)
Vladivostok: cossack-->cossack (6)
Augustadorum: settler --> settler (15)
GemTown: cannon --> settler (5)(happiness getting close here)

Turn 9: 940 AD
For 180 gold, rush the harbor at Beachhead. That gives us access to all of our goodies back home.
Begin railing at Moscow.
Pillage Roman horses.
Sink a Roman galley with a galleon. (20-4)


IBT:
American settler pair emerges from the fog to the north.
Romans actually kill a cossack w/ a longbow! (20-5)
Romans fortify Cologne with a galley-full of military units.

Builds:
Medina: settler -->settler (30)
Rotterdam: cossack -->cossack (12)
Camulodunum: Galleon -->wealth
Beachhead: harbor --> wealth

The Germans are building the Sistine Chapel
(And yet another stunner from the Germans!)

Turn 10: 950 AD
Currently, the Romans, the Germans and we are building Leo's. The Romans aren't an issue, because they're buiding it in Lutetia. I have a galleon w/ 4 cossacks on the way to Lutetia, which will put a stop to that nonsense (though it may have to wait for the next player).

I build an embassy in Berlin, where the Germans are building Leo's. (If I'm going to spend the gold, we might as well get an embassy, right?) Leo's is 44 turns out for Berlin, saltpeter is its only resource, luxes are dyes and incense and Berlin's guarded by 6 muskets, 1 treb and a longbow.

While I'm at it, I build an embassy in Washington. It's got horses and iron, furs, dyes and incense. Guarded by a whopping 4 spears.
Pillage Cologne's dyes.
Just for fun and to weaken Rome's defenses, I attack a pike in Rome. Little did I suspect that it would be the ONLY UNIT guarding Rome!!! (21-5)

Rome, the Eternal City herself, turns out not to be eternal, after all. I burn it.

Having had such great luck with Rome, I try my hand on Ravenna. The army loses 5 hp before killing the ePike (22-5). There's a vPike under it, but I won't push my luck.



Team and Next Player Notes:
Consider trading or gifting Bismarck into the IA. If he gets Medicine, we may be able to buy it or trade him out of it to make our journey to ToE easier. For that matter, with judicious giving (i.e. we give Bizzy Steam and Nationalism), we can guarantee that he'll get mediciine, right? Then bargain him back out of Medicine and we're on our way to ToE.

There's coal on Denver Island, on the north side. I've loaded a galley with 2 settlers and 2 cossacks. As we only have one native source of coal, we need to try to secure another one.

Northwest of Antium (Roman), I have workers hidden under Cossacks to road faster routes to Antium and points east. I already have a pipeline road into Roman territory finished. I also left some workers under the cossack army under the place where Rome used to stand.

War Weariness is beginning to get heavy.

Rome is crippled at this point.

Finally, look around for coal. I listed the sources that I saw, but it's late and I could easily have overlooked some.

Edit: It looks like I miscounted. I think the final tally should have been 24-5.

 

[Phaedo]

Looking at the set it looks good Aabra . Do you have the save?
Nice work on Rome

 

[Salarakas]

Consider trading or gifting Bismarck into the IA.

Gift him into the IA and we'll be fighting riflemen with cossacks.

For that matter, with judicious giving (i.e. we give Bizzy Steam and Nationalism), we can guarantee that he'll get mediciine, right?

Nope. We can't gift him steam and nationalism until we've gifted the last middle age tech and closed the diplo screen and called him up again. He'll get the random IA tech after we close the diplo screen.

I'm not sure I understand this ToE thing. If I'm not mistaken we need 3 more techs just to build it (medicine, electricity, scientific method), none of which we need in this game. ToE would give us 2 free techs, which is nice, but what are we going to use them for? Atomic theory and electronics? Replaceable parts and industrialization? Replaceable parts is nice but we can probably research it ourselves faster if we skip medicine and scientific method. Electronics would give us the opportunity to build the Hoover's Dam but it's useless without any factories. The game won't last nearly long enough for it to be of any use to us.

If you ask me we have all the techs we need (and more) to win this game. If we really really really want to continue researching we should go for replaceable parts for 1. faster workers 2. artillery 3. infantry. Everything else is just wasting resources. Shut off research completely, up the lux slider to 50% if you have to and just part-rush cossacks and whatever else we might need to win the game faster. I'd definitely use the prebuild for ToE for military academy as it at least will help us by making the armies stronger.

 

[Aabraxan]

Gift him into the IA and we'll be fighting riflemen with cossacks.

Only if we give him a chance to build them. Nonetheless, probably better not to do so.

. . . I'm not sure I understand this ToE thing. If I'm not mistaken we need 3 more techs just to build it (medicine, electricity, scientific method), none of which we need in this game. . . .

Yeah, I didn't think about medicine. I probably should have gone ahead and changed Leo's.

 

[Aabraxan]

So here's the save:

 

[Salarakas]

I took a look at the save. Wow, that's a whole lot of fortified cossacks in the south. You could probably capture all but Hispalis in the Roman core before pressing enter. There's dyes next to Cologne NE of Nuremberg but the town next to it will autoraze so we have to bring a settler there and settle on top of the dyes in order to connect it to our empire right away.

One thing to keep in mind is that barbarians can still appear in foggy areas. They could kill injured troops so we might want to station some useless units like slaves in key places (mountains, hills) in order to bust the fog.

 

[Aabraxan]

Yeah, there's a bunch down there. I guess I quit moving forward when the cannons ran out of movement points. At that point, I fortified to help protect the cannons, iirc. Also, the Romans continue to produce troops on the island to the east and ship them in via galley. If we can get a couple of galleons or frigates over there to control the channel, that supply line is done for.

Good plan on the dyes. There are a couple of settlers floating around. I know I had one prepped to go to Denver Island to secure more coal, but perhaps he should be diverted to the Cologne area instead.

 

[Salarakas]

Ravenna, Veii, Pompeii and Antium are all on flat ground so the chance of losing when attacking the 4/4 pikes with 4/4 cossacks is 14%. No need to redline the defenders first with the slow cannon units. If we lose a cossack or two it doesn't matter much as we bring in more and more from the mainland all the time to replace the lost ones.

What I meant by my earlier comment ("I would use the armies only for capturing towns at this point") was that there's no point in using the armies for attacking stray units outside towns as the cossacks can take care of them easily enough. The armies should only be used for attacking towns unless there's something important that needs to be taken care of first. I hope I didn't scare you into playing more defensively than you would have otherwise.

 

[mr_2_you]

i believe it is my turn, so i've GOT IT. i'll try to play tonight unless a certain young lady decides to grace my world with her presence. i'll post a save and turnlog by sunday afternoon at the latest.