RAT-02- Deity

[Shevek]

OK, I've played 5 turns and here is the situation:
- We have next to no money.
- We are way behind in tech. Persia has actually completed ToE. We are behind roughly 1 age as the rest of the world has at least 2. tier of the industrial techs
- Rome was lacking navigation but we are on research for metallurgy. Not that it matters now as they got nav last turn
- We have loads of Berzerks. Enough to take Bursa. But taking it will incur heavy losses and after that it is doubtful we can hold it. Ottoland is crawling with Sipahis. They can penetrate deeply into our territory and we have no serious defences.
- War with Osman means war with Persia as well. And that means we lose ivory. We cannot afford another notch up the lux slider.
- We cannot afford alliances either. But Ottos and Persia can. Who knows who else they will convince that we are a juicy morsel ready for carving up.

Well, this is precisely the situation I found myself in at every of my own diety attempts. Which is why I usually play emperor or maybe demi.
I am at a loss as to what to do with this situation.
Just playing on peacefully?? Will we be able to turn this game around this way? Or shall we go out with a bang?

I post the save now. I think we really need some discussion before playing on.
Maybe we can ask some seasoned diety player for advise?

 

[ThERat]

Pre-turn
since I am also pretty confused what to do, I just try my luck. we are in deep unit costs, time to burn them. ask Ottoman to leave and they declare, since we attack them, Persia also declares.
Ottoman attacks our stack a lot, unit cost go down a lot, but they do not take any city

we eventually actually manage to raze the two border towns, Persia takes 2 towns in the south, they have inf.
America and Rome also join the fun and declrae on us, Rome eventually captures Odense

turn 4, when Ottoman has mainly rifles left, they are ok to sign peace but for 100g.

turn 5 make, we peace with Ottoman, pay 100g. get wines and 230g for iron from Babs (we don't need iron at the moment)

continue to lose towns in the south to Persia, but they refuse to talk

turn 9 we make peace with persia for 10gpt and 150g, no choice, else they rip us apart. immediately trade lux with them and get 50g back. tunr lux to 0%
take Seleucia from Rome

turn 10, we take back Odense from Rome and we can take Nicomedia next turn. we can pound them more until they give us metalurgy

we can make peace with Rome and America, we should try and get MT as soon as possible. Ottoman have no salt anymore, we can then build Cavs and rip them apart. we now make 118gpt.
I actually never believed we would survive my turns with Ottoman so strong, but they burned all their units in the first 2 turns. desperatuely even attacking with rifles

does the situation look better now?

 

[ThERat]

our little land, the new town is founded on the salt hill.

 

[Shevek]

Wow, ThERat, you are a very brave man. I was sorely tempted to do the same and didn't dare (I know, chickennnnn )
That was really well done. And the right decision. after all.
I just thought the Ottos would rip us apart on turn 2.
I guess it looks much better now. At least for a moment.
And the lesson learnt? The world belongs to the bold

We still need to put a bit planning into where we are going from here.

 

[ThERat]

actually I also thought they would rip us apart, but luckily they concentrated almost all attacks on that huge stack. I got tired of watching the attacks and did something else in between. just saw our income rise due to units being beaten.
well, surprisingly, we still had a big stack left and we then proceeded to attack and there were lots of 1hp sipahis parked and we offed them.

where do we go from here? maybe we could still irritate the Romans a little with our zerks. raze a few cities at their east coast and then try and get discount for metal. at the moment we need to pay around 45gpt for that. we should then get MT as well. that gets us broke for 20 turns but we can then build Cav.
I strongly feel, If we want to have a chance in this game, we need to beat Ottoman on our island and then steal our way through.

The Roster
shevek
ThERat - just played
rrau - up
dl123654 -on deck
AK - needs a skip, but is welcome for comments

 

[rrau]

got it, but I'm up in another one before I get to this one.

 

[rrau]

preflight (1100ad)

ibt: China demands TM + 40g, ok

turn 1 (1110ad)

capture Nicomedia

ibt: Babylon and Rome signed peace treaty

turn 2 (1120ad)

who traded away our only iron? I can only build horsemen, not knights.

turn 3 (1130ad)

ibt: Persia demanded TM + 25g, ok

turn 4 (1140ad)

Captured Pompeii
Full price metallury is 70gpt. Make peace with Rome and get it at a discount price of 53gpt.
Make peace with America and get a discount on Military tradition. We're paying 60gpt for it. (I don't know what full price was, as offering the full 69gpt we have to other civs was "doubtful")

So, we're at peace and making 9gpt

ibt: two privateers sink two of our caravels

turn 5 (1150ad)

not much

ibt: America and Persia sign MA against Babylon

turn 6 (1160ad)

not much

ibt:

America wants alliance vs Babylon, no thanks
we get 2 palace expansions

turn 7 (1170ad)

not much

ibt:

Ottomans move 4 rifles next to Farsund

turn 8 (1180ad)

settle Batsfjord
move some troops towards Farsund
Wake one of the two stacks of workers in range of the rifles, but then the game did it's auto move thing that sometimes happens when you go out of order and had the other stack go ahead and continue to clear jungle this turn, so I couldn't move them - hope I don't lose them

ibt: no attack, but they move the stack next to Bodo

turn 9 (1190ad)

reinforce Bodo

ibt:

Ottomans and Babylon signed peace treaty
Ottoman rifles seem to be just moving through our territory

turn 10 (1200ad)

not much

We're building some cavs.

 

[dl123654]

Got it

 

[ThERat]

who traded away our only iron? I can only build horsemen, not knights.

that was me, because I knew we would have Cavs soon, so we do not need it. we have to be creative here and one thing is to try and trade whatever we can. we also have to avoid to hoard too many untis again. disbanding spears etc might help keep our gpt up. we want a Cav army big enough to strike Ottoman so hard that they won't recover any more. Or is there any alternative plan out there?

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

cav army to pound AI sounds good

 

[Shevek]

I just read somewhere on the forum that the AI put a higher value on our offensive units than on the defensive ones. Meaning that if we have 10 offensive ones we will appear much stronger than with 10 definsive ones.
So we really do not need so many muskets/rifles and rather concentrate on cavs. The AI will then believe we are stronger and better defended against attack.
And a good offense is the best defense or so the saying goes.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

reporting back in. on deck.

 

[dl123654]

Save

Nothing happened during my turn

Odense deposed to Persia, There is a flak in the city (flight)

We are breaking even but I did build ~10 cav

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

got it. tomorrow.

 

[ThERat]

The Roster
shevek -on deck
ThERat
rrau
dl123654 - just played
AK - up

remember our 100gpt+ deals will be up soon, then we can either buy new techs or think of other things.
we will need more than 10 Cavs, I am thinking of 30-40 before we attack Ottoman again
now we are paying again 90gpt for unit support. disband spears etc to get more cash, we really need it

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

you'll probably want to forget these turns every happened and have the next player start from 1275. To make a long story short, I dumped the boats and spears, merged the native workers back into cities and started almost exclusively cav and cannon builds. Then I decided that the roman LB had to go. When I very politely asked them to withdraw, they declared. Things were fine for 3-4 turns. Roman would land 4-6 units, I would kill them no problem. Then X signed up rome for a war with Hammi. Then with less than 100g in the bank, Rome signs X up vs. us. Suddenly we're getting bombed (by planes and armor and infantry are showing up and taking cities). If you go with my turns this is over. Sorry. I hate the PRNG.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Ragnar_Lodbrok_of_the_Vikings,_1325_AD.SAV

 

[ThERat]

I am against a replay, what has been done has been done, never mind. this game is a toughy from the start and if we can't make it, so be it

 

[dl123654]

So whats happening then?
Are we calling this a loss, passing it on to the shevek, reverting to save
Haven't looked at the save yet but from AK description it sounds bad

 

[ThERat]

our mainland is not taken yet, so i suggest we continue first, before we throw the towel.
IMHO this game was lost when we decided to abandon the Glib and go for a sword rush. ever since we did not recover and had a huge amount of units that we did not dare to use. this is a good lesson I learned. if you build many units, you must use them even against the odds.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

There probably at 20 turns left unless we pull a rabbit out of our hat. We still have the homeland and some cavs and cannon and are building more, but unless we can make peace with X, we're toast. Rome alone is not a serious threat.