Rat 24 - AWE Training Game

Greebley · Aug 7, 2007

I was thinking of possibly posting the "essay" posts like the army one and the civs AW list in war academy when I am done - assuming I have time to do so.

As ThERat mentioned there are other topics that are worth an essay type post.

Ansar · Aug 7, 2007

ThERat - I'll actually need a skip.

(Got signed up for some AP Classes and discovered I have to do assignments :blush:

)

Othniel · Aug 7, 2007

Ok, so I'm up next.

I might find time to play tonight, but it'll more likely be tomorrow night.

I plan on:
- Continuing the Chinese war while fighting a holding action against England
- Concentrate builds on swords, spears, and walls at frontline
- Build settlers from capital? Also, get some more workers from somewhere
- Irrigate towards the core
- Pushing a military road toward China

Random questions/thoughts:
- Research Lit --> Math or if we get horses from China soon, do we prioritize HBR?
- I think we should consider doing the palace jump around the time when we finish off China.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Greebley said:
Palace goes to 400 at 2/3 OCN, but I always forget what the OCN is. In any case I don't think we are close - we probably need 11-14 towns or so?

Based on a despotic government, our current OCN is 20. That means we need ~13 cities. We currently have 9 cities.

Greebley · Aug 7, 2007

Govt type won't matter I don't think, it is the base OCN (mapsize) that counts, IIRC. I am guessing that is also 20.

Othniel · Aug 7, 2007

Greebley said:
Govt type won't matter I don't think, it is the base OCN (mapsize) that counts, IIRC. I am guessing that is also 20.

Government type does matter, at least according to the OCN calculator I use that you can find here

Ansar · Aug 7, 2007

Well, different governments do have different rates of corruption.

Anarchy - Rampant.
Democracy - Minimal.
Monarchy - Problematic (IIRC)

So it (kinda) affects it.

Greebley · Aug 7, 2007

I mean it doesn't effect how many cities you need for the palace to grow to 400 shields - at least that was my understanding.

Same with the FP, you don't need more cities to build it just because you change governments.

At least that is my understanding.

Othniel · Aug 8, 2007

@Greebley

You're probably right. I've never known the formula for the # of Palace shields (nor for the FP), but I just kinda intuitively know when I'm close to a cutoff point.

I thought I saw a chart of the cutoff points somewhere on this site... *runs off to look*

Anyhow, I haven't played yet but I'm planning to tonight. That's the window of opportunity for people to chime in before I take the set.

EDIT: Here's the War Academy article on Palace Shield Costs.

I was confused on the OCN thing and I realized this was so because Greebley was talking about base OCN (like he said above!

) and I was talking about modified OCN. It appears from the article I just linked that the Palace cost is calculated using the base OCN. Our mapsize--Standard--means the base OCN is indeed 20.

The modified OCN is used in empire corruption calcs and is affected by government, Commercial trait, difficulty, etc.

Othniel · Aug 9, 2007

Turnset is done. I think it went pretty well.

Summary:
- Dowed Spain. They are west of China.
- Captured Beijing and Chengdu, and have units poised to capture Nanking
- Good RNG. Killed 20 units and lost only 1 unit, a vet sword.
- Cleared out English initial rush and have units advancing toward them
- Lit in 1 turn, Palace in 5. Make sure to switch Palace to GLib.
- Hit the city limit (with capture of Beijing) for the FP.
- Two settlers newly built

I'm guessing the Chinese should only have Nanking and one other city in the fog. At first I was wondering if we should wait to kill them for GLib purposes, but contacting Spain changed that, IMO. Spain looks strong in techs and has a bunch of wonders started, including the SoZ.

One thing I did to improve the kill ratio was to let the English archers advance to the doorstep of Gmawanda, then kill them with cats and swords. That way I didn't expose any units to counterattack and also was able to use just a couple of roving defenders for the task, rather than commit a big stack.

I changed the builds in Ansar's Tiedye Shop and Aabra's Folly to catapults, then to settlers. This did lose us a few shields and a turn of production, but I think raxes in those cities would have been a bit of a waste.

The English archers made Irrigation a little too risky, so I'm just getting it started up the choke now. Although the screenies don't show it, we have workers roading east toward the English and south toward Chengdu, plus one on the mountain east of the silks.

Settler builds in Chinese cities just placeholders. They might be better as Worker builds.

The palace jump looks like we can do it soon. I see some of the overall timing this way:

GLib will be built in around 16 turns from now. We might get Monarchy from the GLib, although that is not guaranteed (England has it, and I forgot to see what government Spain is in. I don't think China has it.) If we do get Monarchy, I don't see why we wouldn't want to revolt.

Do you guys want to research HBR or turn off research until we get the GLib? Regardless, we should be near or at getting horses/MW by this point. China's horses are around one of their two remaining cities. That means we're looking at getting a GA, Monarchy, and a palace jump almost simultaneously. I think we should do the Palace Jump at this point because we'll have more cities--in better locations-- near the front than near Salamanca. That's just an opinion, though.

The best way to do the jump will be to pump up the new capital site with pop, sell Salamanca's improvements, then abandon Salamanca. Check with CA2, of course, before doing this.

>>Here's<< the Save.

Ok, here's a turn-log, detailed as normal:

Spoiler :

And some screenies: My edits make the first one a little busy...

TheOverseer714 · Aug 9, 2007

Excellent turn set, Othniel! I like the spot near Beijing some, but I'd like to see the capital have some bonuses like lotsa shields or food or gold. Maybe Beijig itself? The Gem tile is a gold bonus, the city is on a river, and theres a good mix of shields and food there. On other areas, how about Greebley River as a future FP? Use its proximity to the current capital to get it built fast, finishing right before the palace jump. That should help keep the corruption in our 'old core" from horrible to not too bad. Otherwise, I'd say build it to where we are expanding toward.

ThERat · Aug 9, 2007

most excellent progress :goodjob:

I don't like a forced palace jump. I think if we jump (and we should), the palace must be built by a MGL. As suggested,we should build the FP in Greebley's River before jumping the palace.

I got it and will try and expand to take out the Chinese. Their horses must be somewhere nearby.

The Roster:

Greebley - out from 15th onwards
ansar -
Othniel
ThERat - up
Aabraxan
TheOverseer714
gmaharriet

Ansar · Aug 9, 2007

The horses are obviously towards the Southwest because (AFAIK) they aren't in Nanking.

ThERat · Aug 10, 2007

save

Pre-Turn
MM: Greebley River should really get as many shields as possible
we can get 2 2spt tiles from Rat Falls and make 11spt instead of the meager 9spt. This might be very important
to get the GLib on time. The rest looks good
Move spear that was resting on the mountain into Chengdu, there might still be horses around that could attack the town with archer as top defense
wake up 2 slaves that irrigate land that we don't even own yet.
We better improve our core than doing this kind of stuff.

There are 2 workers roading mountains (we don't really need that now). Since they have invested some time there already, I leave them alone
I wouldn't do such stuff when we are working unimproved tiles in our core
Likewise there are 3 workers roading individually near Chengdu, put them together in a team and we can road a tile every 2nd turn

IT literature is in, go for HBR in 5. As long as the GLib is not a certainty, I prefer to run science at max

1.390BC
switch to GLib now due in 12 turns
attack Nanking with 2 sword defeating 2 spears and take city

IT London finishes the pyramids (good that will be ours later on)

2.370BC
playing it save. Thus, I wait for the Chinese and English units to come closer
since we are expanding fast, we better don't lose too many units

3.350BC
there are now 3 archers next to Beijing
take 2 of them out with our elite sword and archer, no MGL

IT a dark blue boat comes into view
Chinese lone archer decides not to attack

4. 330BC
we say hello to Korea, these guys are big with 12 cities just like us and have all techs of the AA
bomb and defeat 2 English archers
take out 1/2 Chinese archers at Beijing. Remember that I do not take out the other archer as I don't want to expose our units

It only dawns to me now that we already have the horses as they are underneath Nanking

UU here we come

reduce science to 40%, HBR still due in 1

IT last Chinese archer commits suicide at Beijing, where a settler pair enters our borders as well
English show up with 4 more units, we get HBR, go for mysticism as we can easily get that in 4 at 50% science

5.310BC
found Centralia, do not rename it as it is really central
take out one of the English archers to make way for another settlement
move a stack of settler with 2 swords and spear on forest to settle next to 3 English units

IT English do not attack as expected, the first Spanish warrior shows up

6.290BC
our 2 cats fails to hit the stack, but 3 swords manage to take care of them nevertheless
found Nevertheless
decide to move swords out to take out warrior and go after Chinese

a sword army will be just nice as it is much better at defense than a MW army

IT no good as the Spanish finish SoZ, we will be facing those ACavs soon and should conquer them sooner

7.270BC
this time our cats do better and we easily defeat a redlined English archer
take the risk and eliminate another archer with our archer
fill army with *sword and we can go on a rampage now
start to attack Xinjian, there are 3 Spanish warrior nearby

8.250BC
found Sealant as we now close the new core we own
take out 2 spears and take Xinjian, we might want to abandon it, because it is a little off the front
capture 2 slaves in the process

science down to 20% as mysticism comes in next turn

IT Chinese suicide an archer and Spanish a warrior at Xinjian, our army is yellow now, but ok
mysticism is in, switch off science for now as the Glib is due in 4

9.230BC
take out another English archer, no MGL this time

IT as expected, the Spanish suicide another warrior at Xinjian
we get our first 2 mounties

10.210BC
change of guards in Xinjian, remove army and move in sword/archer/spear while taking out 1 warrior
army moves towards Chinese remaining cities taking out a Korean warrior on the way

though the number of turns is very odd, I stop here
GLib is due in 3
As suggested we should go and build the FP our GLib city and then rush the palace in our new core

Our mounties will trigger the GA, maybe we can wait a while with that and delay it until after we get into monarchy though that seems a little tough
If we decide to delay that, we should not build any mounties. If we go for the GA now, then we wait to revolt (not sure whether we get monarchy with the GLib in the first place)

situation, the new core is settled, we have now another settler that should fill the space between Beijing and Nanking at the coast

Beware of the Spanish ACav's

ThERat · Aug 10, 2007

by the way, looking closer at it, Shanghai might be a good choice for the new palace???

Roster
Greebley - out from 15th onwards
ansar -
Othniel
ThERat
Aabraxan - up
TheOverseer714
gmaharriet

Aabraxan · Aug 10, 2007

Apologies, but I'll need a skip. RL won't let me loose long enough to play.

Greebley · Aug 10, 2007

We will get Monarchy from the GLib. Spain and England were Monarchies IIRC.

I would revolt immediately.

After we are Monarchy I would like to start our Golden Age. Will we also be able to move our palace in a short amount of time? If so I think we should do that as well before the GA. Make sure we don't use our UU before that.

If we are going to abandon our capitol any time soon, lets make it pump out settlers while it can. Population is more scarce than shields for Swords especially with a GA coming.

I think the next player can even out the number of turns by playing 3 Extra. That player will have the Anarchy for about 1/2 of them so it will be more close to the normal 10. Then the turns will end with 50 and it will be easier to know when to stop (i.e. 50 AD, 250 AD, 350 AD, etc).

Othniel · Aug 10, 2007

Situation looks good. :thumbsup:

I'm glad the horses were under Nanking. I was going to check but forgot.

I like Centralia as the new capital over Shanghai, but I'd like to look at CA2 before I say that definitively. The reason is that Centralia is at the center of a strong group of city sites, making it a good spot to reduce corruption in all of those cities. Shanghai looks too much on the edge, IMO.

I would also revolt immediately and wait on the GA for the palace jump, if possible.

ThERat said:
Pre-Turn
MM: Greebley River should really get as many shields as possible
we can get 2 2spt tiles from Rat Falls and make 11spt instead of the meager 9spt. This might be very important
to get the GLib on time. The rest looks good
wake up 2 slaves that irrigate land that we don't even own yet.
We better improve our core than doing this kind of stuff.

There are 2 workers roading mountains (we don't really need that now). Since they have invested some time there already, I leave them alone
I wouldn't do such stuff when we are working unimproved tiles in our core
Likewise there are 3 workers roading individually near Chengdu, put them together in a team and we can road a tile every 2nd turn

Just to explain some of my reasoning on the MM stuff:

Pumping up the shields per turn for the GLib actually never occurred to me, so that was an oversight. :blush:

The two slaves were irrigating in anticipation of Centralia being plopped down right around the same time when they would finish. Since I felt Centralia is a strong capital location, I wanted it to work improved tiles ASAP. Also, I think it's a MM waste to move workers many turns to do a job, until RR come in of course.

The mountain roading occurred partially because the English were nearby and there were few better things to have the workers do. I shouldn't have roaded the western mountain next to Overseer's Chunk, but I think the road to the east where the spear was sitting was an important access road because that was adjacent to the path the English archers were using.

Lastly, I've found it to be a matter of personal preference on whether to group workers together early in the game. For the most part, I avoid doing so because I find that I'm forced to use too many turns moving a stack of workers around to get to the next job. Quick-building a military road, however, is a different story.

Anyhow, that's my little $0.02 on MM.

TheOverseer714 · Aug 10, 2007

You do mean revolt immediately after we finish the GLib, and get Monarchy, correct? I agree on revolting as soon as we get Monarchy, but only then. It'd be kinda silly to revolt and have to go right back to despo. Just clearing that up. As far as MW's, yes I would wait until we are a monarchy before starting the GA. Build swords, spears and archers until then. I guess I will be busy this weekend, I'm up on both my SG's.

Othniel · Aug 10, 2007

@Overseer

Yep, I meant get Monarchy first before the revolt.

Just FYI in case you missed it, Aabraxan is up next in this one...

Aabraxan · Aug 10, 2007

Othniel said:
Just FYI in case you missed it, Aabraxan is up next in this one...

Just in case you missed it.

Aabraxan said:
Apologies, but I'll need a skip. RL won't let me loose long enough to play.

Rat 24 - AWE Training Game

Deity

Détente avec l'été

fighting for Achsah

Deity

fighting for Achsah

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Deity

fighting for Achsah

fighting for Achsah

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Deity

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Deity

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