Rat 40 - Introduction to CCM

[ThERat]

Btw, we still have some land in the west, though full of jungle to be settled. I would send the settler there.

 

[Northern Pike]

No flips to boot, that's even better.

No doubt some luck was involved, but we're also getting the benefit of laying down a good cultural foundation early with the cheap builds. We're not grossly inferior to the Indians in culture, and we're at least even with everyone else.

 

[ThERat]

In my solo games, I usually exceeed the opponents in culture before the IA. This helps a lot, but also shows the AI's flaw in not rushing builds.

 

[vmxa]

Removing culture pressure helps, but not a sure thing. Rolling them fast combined with decent culture of own gives a good chance. I think India only had one port town, so we have good shot of them not having a settler at sea.

Looking very good. Not heard a lot of wonders going up with unmet nations. We can get some boost with our large empire on research and get better units than them to help up our kill ratio at times.

 

[barbslinger]

On leaders - In this mod we can rush Wonders I believe. Perhaps in the war against Carthage we can rush the 2 science wonders. Great work on India! I'm thinking Se now that we can cruise past Portugal. I looked around those islands pretty well and there is still some sea down near Portugal. However, if there was something there wouldn't we have seen Portugals techs change? Is it possible we would have a tech lead after India's demise?

 

[Northern Pike]

We're the ones with the Great Lighthouse, so in principle we could make contacts across sea tiles that the Portuguese couldn't. It is a distant hope, though, and I imagine we'll have to reach galleons halfway along the bottom tech line before we make any overseas contacts.

We'll basically be tied with Spain for the continental tech lead once India is gone, and after that we could begin to pull ahead, having so many more cities than Isabella.

 

[vmxa]

Henry is not going to venture out to sea, if it means ending the turn in a sea tile. So we still have a shot to make a jump down there. It sure seems as though we drew an island map so far.

I would like to know how many hills/mountain tiles are in this map and how many are on our continent. The graphics keeps fooling me as the hills look like mountain tiles.

 

[Greebley]

Ok, I got it.

 

[barbslinger]

Took a look at the save last night. Probably have to regroup/heal to take the last hill towns. It sounded like they are packing 5-6 units in each city and they are rushing units too I'm sure. Flip risk is still there but below 10%. I would think that goals for next 2 sets are WAR continuing with India through to Carthage
Probing that SE is important too. Man in both my personal games I had no problem finding neighbors using the sea. Cash rushing is nice too with all of Indias gold! They have like 8500g left to take from them.

 

[Greebley]

An interesting preview:

I hope I don't sink this IBT.

 

[vmxa]

Looks like two civs, so maybe we are not looking at a tiny island this time.

 

[Greebley]

In 1360 AD, I went for a map steal from Holland. It managed to work so I have another picture:

I am building ships in one of our towns until we get two ships across.

BTW, the turn before I attacked, India upgraded their defenders to defense 4. My attacks with about 8 units for each town barely dented the defenders with only one 1 and most attacks doing only 1 hp. Either I got really bad RNG (except that almost every unit retreated) or there is a big bonus to defense in the towns. I am guessing 75 for Castle, 50 for walls, 25 for fortify, 50 for hills for defense 12? I am gathering a lot more units if each battle only does one hp...

 

[ThERat]

finally some contacts

By the way, map trading is disabled to speed up the game. Hence, if we want maps, we have to steal them.

As for attacks, it is indeed wise to attack with overwhelming numbers to make sure defenders aren't only dented but killed.

 

[Northern Pike]

Exciting developments.

BTW, the turn before I attacked, India upgraded their defenders to defense 4. My attacks with about 8 units for each town barely dented the defenders with only one 1 and most attacks doing only 1 hp. Either I got really bad RNG (except that almost every unit retreated) or there is a big bonus to defense in the towns. I am guessing 75 for Castle, 50 for walls, 25 for fortify, 50 for hills for defense 12? I am gathering a lot more units if each battle only does one hp...

Ugh. We can be grateful we got through most of India's cities before the upgrade, I suppose. It's probably pessimistic to assume those small towns have castles, but just defense-four units fortified in hills are an ugly enough prospect, when we're mostly limited to attack-four knights.

 

[barbslinger]

Looks like two civs, so maybe we are not looking at a tiny island this time.

Now we're talkin'

 

[vmxa]

Speaking of ugh, look at all that space cover in fog.

 

[barbslinger]

Speaking of ugh, look at all that space cover in fog.

Are you talking about Hollands pi$$ poor job of reconning their own continent or all the fog remaining on the map?

 

[vmxa]

The whole map, lots of area for all those civs to be hiding. Talk about poor, not finding our land is the sad thing. I guess no seafaring nations.

 

[barbslinger]

I don't see the save?
How long until ocean going vessels? Probably by the time we scoot around this new continent. Is there another ship coming to circle counter to this ship?
BTW - I really like the Map steal. It could be used to provoke a war if the attempt failed.

 

[Northern Pike]

There's no save because Greebley isn't finished--he just posted some midway screenshots and comments.

We'd have to research Navigation --> Naval Guns --> Exploration along the bottom tech line to get to ocean-going galleons. That line doesn't make sense in terms of our overall strategy, so we'll have to hope we can get some or all of those techs by trade.