Rat 40 - Introduction to CCM

[vmxa]

I see we are split on the trade. I have not looked it over to see where I would vote, if no preference I will go with the leaders choice. Should I interpret Greebly as a yes on the trade?

I guess it is not life and death either way. For sure I am not going to forget about the settler issue.

One thing about taking out Spain that I like is that we lock up our rear. Once we start on India it will be hard to not forge south all the way. India is boxed in a valley it would seem. I can hold off till after lunch to see if can get clear vote on the trade.

 

[ThERat]

I had a look at the save.

A few things, maybe the trade can wait until we have more options. So, let's get those 5 turns for chivalry. Hopefully by then, we have met some new friends.

As we are about to take out Korea, we can develop our own empire a little. Remember that the AI's put down cities for us as well. There is no point to rush and take out all AI's on our continent and then we need ages to fill it with cities. Thus, we can let Spain spread a little more. I would take on India as they are the leaders currently.

Instead of building all those Buddhist communities, why don't we build the world religion in our capital. It means an automatic community in every single city. On top of that, this is the wonder that doubles the wat happiness, I was wrong on the Great Pagoda.

 

[vmxa]

The World Rel is fine, but we really want to get a move on Philosopher Stone. It is a 400 shield wonder that gives two techs.

I agree we do not want to do so much on continential civs that we have holes that will take forever to fill. I would like to hit Spain first as they have more land that does not have mountains, but we have a 16 turn deal in place.

I would start World in some second best or third best city as the Stone is like ToE and not to be missed. We can put it up in about 16 turns. CAII seems to say Alchem is about 2800 and we are about 200.

This means we need to go ahead and take the trade to get on to research it. The draw back to India is we will then have troops out in the SW and may have to deal with Henry attacking as well.

We have a lot of open land in Korea's land, mostly desert, but we need to get it in our borders or someone will decide their is oil and drop off a settler.

 

[vmxa]

BTW where is the settler we have now going? I would like to get one over to the coast to grab those wines soon.

 

[Greebley]

The settler was just created and I mis-clicked thinking it was a worker, so the answer is that it was going to the coastal square to build a road. The next player should send it off in the right direction. I think grabbing another luxury seems a good plan to me. We are currently paying for the wines (11 gpt in addition to the lux we were trading).

I was thinking someone else would build the world religion before us, so I didn't pursue it.

Its hard to decide on the trade. We did find a piece of land, but the lack of cities is odd. Is it an empty island or is it simply that cities haven't been planted there yet? With 31 civs, I am a bit surprised to find empty land. I mean look at where Washington ended up. If we are going to find new civs then maybe waiting is fine, but I think it a mistake if we are not going to find civs as we will fall further behind.

BTW, my warmongering was fine, but I almost decided to stop playing because I was tired and kept forgetting to check for unhappiness. We got a lot more civil disorder than we should have.

 

[vmxa]

I am strongly in favor of the trade due to the need to get Alchemy in time to build the Stone. The problem with the 800 trade is it includes silk and is with India. If we make that deal, which would be the best one, we cannot go to war.

It is the best one in terms of cost and in that giving India 800 does them no real good as they have 10k now. Canada wants 940 and Spain wants 1210, all with silks. So Canada is the only option that could work.

We would get our money back from India as we take towns. I could not find out about alliances in CCM. If they exist and if so what tech is involved. Anyway off I go not sure right now on the trade.

 

[Northern Pike]

If you're going to use the settler to claim wines, don't take the coastal wines--that's an unpromising site. Claim the river wines and the flood-plain wheat.

I don't know whether we can beat the Indians to Philosopher's Stone now, but I see the point of trying, so buy Chivalry if you like. If we're beaten to PS we might be able to save the build with World Religion Buddhism. More to the point, we can pre-build PS with WRB, I assume.

Again, it's not necessary to attack the Indians during your round, but it's crucial to build roads towards them.

 

[vmxa]

We probably have no shot at the Stone. First no palace to use for a pre. Second I was hoping that the World could have been the pre, but it was built during the 3rd turn. I was able to switch to Royal Tourney on the next turn as we finished Chiv.

Did not look to see where Stone was going up, but if it was good city we could not have beat the 30% discount anyway.

Yeah I have not even exposed the path to India so far. I am trying to get roads going to Ulsan and on to India, but we have few workers and several tiles just to get to Uslan. IOW will be far short of India by the end of my set.

I hope we are at least standing on a road that lets us see the borders clearly. We also have to sit on the road to prevent them from sending in hidden units.

 

[Northern Pike]

Oh well, at least the bad news arrived quickly enough that we didn't waste any shields.

 

[vmxa]

The save of 750AD:

 

[vmxa]

IBT:
lots of boats shoot, most miss.
India starts on the Stone, so they already have Alcem.
Korea land enslave and archer at Pulsan.

525AC (1):
eWE and vWE kill the landers (2-0).
eWE kill spear and captures Ulsan (3-0). Goodbye Korea.

Houston we have a problem. I moved a cat towards a town and it proceeds to go into combat. So we had at least one hidden unit deep in our empire (4-0).

Saigon and Angkor need more specialist. Will need happy structures.
I up lux slider as we will lose the war happy effects. [4-0]

550AD (2):

IBT:
hidden unit dies attacking AC near Da Nang (1-0) [5-0]

575AD (3):
AC kills one of Henry's units (1-0). [6-0]

600AD (4):
625AD (5):

IBT:
I messed up last turn and misclicked a chariot so it did not land on the same tile as the AC. Henry sent a chariot at it across the river and killed our unit (0-1) [6-1].

650AD (6):
Upgrade a few chariots and AC units to Eastern Knight for 30 gold each.
Making infra right now.

675AD (7):
Upgrade two more AC.
Upgrade a chariot.
eWE kills warrior (1-0) [7-1].

700AD (8):
Found Mandalay.

Yogi kills warrior, no monk (1-0).
AC kills chariot (2-0).
At least 1 upgrade.

India has Eng/Alchem on us.
2 making Stone.

IBT:
Hidden unit kills our enslaver by Mandalay and gets a slave. The slave belongs to Spain.

eAC attacks our covering vAC and dies (1-1) [9-2].

725AD (9):
We can now build supply center for wines in Mandalay.
WE kills the enslaver (1-0).

I knew where it had to be, but workers arrived and I could see it.

Boats run into ocean. I reverse course as we are at the top of the world and it would probably we a waste to run the ocean there. Will head south a ways and then turn east. One boat is coming around Spain to head into the fog on our NW.

A number of builds are just arbitrary right now.

The battles with Henry for the troops exploring towards India have forced a retreat back to get some more support. We got a training chariot, but now they upgrade for 30 gold to Eastern Knights. Apprentice was upgrade as well last turn.

I have the two 1hp AC's heading to Osaka for upgrades.
8 boats are pounding on Rangoon. Did not send over the Castleboat from Hanoi as it would just get sunk. Two gangs (too small) are still trying ot get a road to Ulsan.

Once they both are joined we can make some headway.

750AD (10):
Maybe we should bring the warrior back to do MP, rather than wait for it to get converted?

Osaka has a beakerhead becasue we actually lose beakers putting him back to work.

Pusan making an MP unit, could be switched.

Satsuma was on a Acad and I just let it go on, but not sure it is the best option.

Da Nang probably should switch from the castle, given the terrain and neighbor.

I am not forting units in the jungle for fear of dying, not a huge risk, but then neither is an attack.

[10-2]

Slow motion set for sure.

 

[vmxa]

Barslinger, did you get the save to load or do you want to skip a round?

The WE was not moved so you could find the stack and decide to park, or retreat for more help or move forward or whatever comes to mind.

 

[Northern Pike]

Little stacks of slaves and foreign workers aren't going to build us a road to India in a reasonable time. At a minimum, the next player must start using the stack near Bangkok (two Asian and three Japanese workers) to road one tile a turn in that direction. I'd send the stack of three Asian workers near Tokyo to help as well.

 

[ThERat]

Too bad on the philosopher's stone. I hope we can get back into the trading game soon to get some cash.

I could not find out about alliances in CCM

There are no alliances in CCM, only MPP's but that's much later.

barbslinger, can you get the game working or do you need a skip?

 

[vmxa]

The workers near Ulsan will be combined in a couple of turns. No roads led to it and in fact none were even close to it. Worse it is all jungle, then you hit the hills.

We are also sucking as we have to cover any workers and very few troops were built in my set. All the cities were in big need of happy structures or the slider. Most now have them and can make knights.

I must have run into 4 hidden units in our land. The 3 attack hidden units can be quite dangerous for a solo cover. I would submit that hidden units should have their movement cut to 1 or all hidden units should be able to detect them.

Large maps that are part of CCM make it very hard to block access to them and there is no where near enough workers to use for detection. We cannot even get roads down on many worked tiles.

Once workers are in one part of the map, you can't send them back over such large distances.

I am not even sure that Alchem was the best tech now that we missed the Stone. With no real pre options we are going to have an issue trying to get a wonder, until we can get ahead in the tech race.

 

[Northern Pike]

I must have run into 4 hidden units in our land. The 3 attack hidden units can be quite dangerous for a solo cover. I would submit that hidden units should have their movement cut to 1 or all hidden units should be able to detect them.

I imagine you're concluding from this that we have to have two units in every city. In that case we need to build some pikes, because we've got a lot of striking power in the form of elephants tied down in Korea.

 

[barbslinger]

Whew, it took a while but I was finally able to get the save to open. I had 3 biq's in 3 places. All better.

I'll review it tonight, post my thoughts, wait on responses and play it Saturday. I'm at around 1600 in the regent CCM I was doing so I'm aching to get to that tonight.

Thanks for the invite and nice to see everyone again.

Got it!

 

[vmxa]

I imagine you're concluding from this that we have to have two units in every city. In that case we need to build some pikes, because we've got a lot of striking power in the form of elephants tied down in Korea.

Not in the towns, covering the workers. Korea is pretty save from hidden units as they would likely need to be dropped from boats. They could snake all the way back there, but it would take a long time and they would run the risk of workers or just like my cat, accidential contact.

Two in in cities is just going to be for MP duty, so one decent attacker and one cheap unit.

I did not move the phants as the last town only just came out of resisting and we had no MP units to take their place. We do need some cheap units to swap with the cities nearer the front.

Some of the biggest places actually need 3 MP or more slider or specialist to stay even. It was only a few turns back that the cat ran into the hidden unit near Bangkok on the way to Angkor. That is pretty deep.

Phants are not all that great now with 3 attack, so not sure if we can gain much from trying to replace those in Korea, except any elites.

The bulk of the combat will need to be Knights and hopefully we can get some cats in the action once we get a road. Maybe we could even send a few under a spear and an MDI.

 

[Northern Pike]

Yes, that's my thinking too about invisible attacks on Korea. Thanks for the explanation.

We have five elite elephants in Korea, and I think they still have a lot of value. An attack factor of three times six hit points gives an attack score, so to call it, of eighteen, against sixteen for veteran knights. Jumbos also have their second attack.

 

[vmxa]

One of the reason I am more worried about workers than towns, is we can always take a town back. We may not always be able to get a worker back.

Yes the elites have a lot of value, we just cannot send them all to the front 10 turns ago. We can send some now or very soon. Not a huge rush as we do not even have a target right now. In a bit we will have some clear idea of the route and the start of a road. Some knights are already close to Ulsan.

They can cover a lot of ground then and we should have a few cheap units to send back to replace soem of them. Idle Enslavers make good MP's. Even 2 bombardent units would make things a lot different.

If a cat could bombard, then enslavers could do more and Yogi's would be much safer to use.