Rat 41 CCM - AW a first attempt

[vmxa]

The save here I hope:

 

[vmxa]

(5) 475AD: continued
While I wait a bit for feedback I decide to cause a little havoc. Genoa is a problem in that it make 12 net shields and is making 25 shield Legions. It is also size 6 and will grow to 7 in 4 turns. I have no shield increasing structure available.

I am minning a tile, so that will get us to a nice round number, if no corruption still. I would like to get up a happy structure to allow for more pop as we need more shields for knights. To that end I switch the legion to a temple. We could not get one up in time, if we wait.

Need to get some workers to connect Turin. With pikes we can cover a bit better, I hope.

We may want to start squeezing in some happy buildings in Rome so it can grow. No rush, but soon we will want more than 31 shields.

Ok, I decide that all I really can do with the leader is rush a Wat in Pyongyang.

Legion kills Indo spear at Pyongyang (3-0).
Cat kill Indo cat (4-0).
Use cat* to kill Indo bow (5-0).

Decide that I do not want to let those chars attack the colony. Send out 2 legions and
first retreats a char and the other kills it cleanly. (6-0-1)
Enslaver kills the retreated char and goes elite. It also gets a slave (7-0-1).

Char retreats from Zerk (7-0-2).
Enslaver retreats as well (7-0-3).
e/Char finished Zerk (8-0-3).

IBT:
Hum Ottoman want to make a nice trade, straigth up lux. I cannot find them, so they may have a hidden unit. Not sure if hidden units can make contact. I suspect they are the borders near Rome. DOW them.

BTW Ottoman are Turks in CCM. I also scratched my head that some civs are refered to by two different names at different times. Well I complained about that to Civinator already.

(6) 500AD:
Check on CAII and the color matches, so they are to our west.
4/5 enslaver kills warrior get slave (1-0). [31-1]
That may turn out to be bad. The slave has no place to go that is safe and the enslaver is down to 2hp.
Settler heads out. 14 of 17 spears are now pikes. The 3 remaining have no access to a barracks right now.

IBT:
Ugh many units arrive near Pyongyang.
Naples finishes Legion and start AC as they can be upgraded to knights. 1 extra turn.
Naples is size 9 with one taxman. It needs some happy structures and an aqua down the line.

Venice starts on a harbor. Next person should be able to switch it. I am thinking that little is going on here right now, so why not try to get it a bit stronger. Harbor, unit, happy building maybe?

Cheju starts AC.
Yup the enslave got whacked (0-1) [31-2].

(7) 525AD:
Carthage has 3 WE near Pyongyang and Indo have 6 units next to it.
Whoops misclick a slave by Turin, cover with a pike.
Upgrade training char.

e/legion kills Indo spear (1-0).
cat kills one (2-0).
legion kills spear and goes elite (3-0).
e/char kills bow (4-0).
*/cat kills sword (5-0).
e/cat kills last Indo sword (6-0).

e/legion kills Russian spear (7-0).
legion kills Russian bow (8-0).

I whip the rax in Pyongyang. Can't recall the last time I whipped, surprised I even thought of it.
4/5 Legion kills warrior (9-0).
Legion retreats AC (9-0-1).
Enslaver kills Korean AC and gets slave (10-0-1).

I leave the three WE, cannot reach them safely. [41-2]

I decide that I would rather lose a couple of Legions than take a chance that Pyongyang could get both spears killed and be at risk.
The AC and at least 1 WE will attack the town and likely kill the two spears. At least now only one can be killed and I can upgrade the other next turn. Legions I can replace.

BTW I have 2 slaves in Pyongyang now. Once we get the next town up they can get moved.

IBT:
Rats, the WE went red and then won 3 rounds to kill spear (0-1) [41-3].

Pyong start pike.
Genoa starts AC.
Turin start Christian Community as it is not connected and cannot make better units. It will take only 3 turns.

(8) 550AD:
Start supply towards Rome, unescorted.
e/cat kills the WE (1-0).

Legion goes red, but kills a determined Russian warrior (2-0). That would have been embarressing. This was at the colony.
e/enslaver shows him how to deal with a 1 defense unit, cleanly killing a russian bow
(3-0).

Legion kills Indo spear at the hill behind the Seoul site (4-0).
Cat kills ine of the WE and goes elite no loss of points (5-0).
Pret retreats the other WE (5-0-1).
e/Pret drops 3 points killing the 1HP WE (6-0-1). [47-3]

IBT:
We need to get those roads under our borders as a WE comes out of the fog and kills a Pret (0-1) [47-4].

(9) 575AD:
Warrior wandering around see more borders not a new color though. Who are Siam? Another case of confusion from dual names I bet.
I move him away from the new border as it looks like it is Indo. May as well walk him around from a distance.

e/cat kills the phant (1-0).
e/slaver kills Indo spear by Cheju and gets a slave (2-0).
[49-4]

IBT:
Yet another unit comes out of the fog and makes me pay. This was a Turkish horse. The roads will close next turn as the settler will be on site. (0-1) [49-5]

(10) 600AD:
4 Turkish chars are sitting on the site I want to found upon.
WE kills one (1-0).
4/5 cat kills one (2-0).
Slaver kills one goes elite and gets a slave, sweat (3-0).

Legion dies on the last char (3-1).
Legion barely kills char (4-1).
Found Pisa and start a wall.
Get in pike forted, AC no moves left, legion 1hp, 4/5 WE, 3/5 cat, 5/5 slaver. A pike next to town.

4/5 legion kills the turkish horse and get a leader (5-1).
Move leader to Pisa.
Legion kills vike warrior by Venice (6-1).

2 Turk warriors heading for Turin, but now has more troops.
Char kills Russian spear by Cheju and goes elite (7-1) [56-6].

Enslave in Rome captures the supply and banks the 25 gold. BTW the supply had no movement remaining. That seems a bit flaky, C3C issue not CCM.

 

[vmxa]

ThERat- up
CommandoBob
Northern Pike
M60A3TTS- hanging loose for now
Elephantium
vmxa- just played

Screen:

 

[vmxa]

A second AC came out. There is one spear under the stack east of Pisa, only one left not upgraded. That stack lost its elite Pret and has only a spear and a vet Pret right now.

The roads from the western Korean area were the ones hurting me as the units came out of the fog and could go any where. Now they are stopped once they enter our borders, so we should be able to deal with better.

The bad part is they will be on mountains and hills. Even with a wall and some bombardment those phants are a bugger. Attacking them on mountains or defending will be costly. Atleast they will not be able to attack units on the east side of the river as they have in the prior turns.

 

[Northern Pike]

Tremendous kill ratio, for CCM and for this situation.

We can have Rome build its granary (two turns), let it reach size twelve, and then revolt to monachy, I'd say.

We can see all three remaining Korean cities, so we may be able to finish them off fairly quickly, unless they've got an unused settler. Even assuming they do, they've been one short on the city count for some time. Possibly they've lost one city to another civ, or to a volcano.

It sounds odd, but we might want to use our present Leader for a granary in Turin. Considered in terms of turns saved rather than shields saved, we'd be getting good value, and Turin certainly needs that structure.

 

[ThERat]

Great turnset

It really pays off to play more aggressive in CCM to get a better kill ratio. Fast units will very often retreat if they are losing, which makes them more valuable than other units. W will be able to upgrade any chariots and ancient cavalry to knights, which will help us a lot.

I got it and hope I can make some progress on the Korean front, possibly taking them out.

I didn't check the save but maybe the timing for a revolt might be right as NP said. However, with an empty food box we might just lose another citizen due to starvation. Might not be such a good idea. I will have to check whether we would starve anywhere. If that's the case, i would revolt right away.

By the way, I often just use the MGL for some building rush near the front. Unless there is a small wonder coming up.

Do we know whether there is any Civ that has started the philosophers stone already? That would be a target wonder for the next era, which would bag us 2 free techs.

 

[Northern Pike]

By the way, I often just use the MGL for some building rush near the front. Unless there is a small wonder coming up.

My basic point is that getting Leaders we can't use for armies or Small Wonders is a new situation, which requires new thinking. Just having them rush the most expensive available structure in the nearest town isn't always going to be right. I'd rather look over our whole empire, find a long-term build it would be useful to have immdiately, and send the Leader to rush that, without letting travel time or the structure's cost dominate our thinking. In the present situation, this may well mean that we rush granaries in small towns. That's fine with me, given how badly we need empire-wide growth.

F7 doesn't say that anyone has started PS. Of course that tells us nothing about civs we haven't met, and the Poles, who've already collected two free techs with Oracle, must be very advanced.

 

[ThERat]

My basic point is that getting Leaders we can't use for armies or Small Wonders is a new situation, which requires new thinking

You do know that small wonders can be rushed with MGLs.

I agree that granaries are very important. I will check what is best. By the way, if we have some cash rich AI's, we should siphon their money to rush buy things once we are monarchists.

 

[Northern Pike]

Of course. The full meaning of that sentence was "Leaders we can't use for armies (at all) or Small Wonders (right now)".

 

[vmxa]

I did not give it much thought, but the two things that came up was a granary and the other a market. I was just lucky that we had two small wonders to rush and I could do it in a one turn move, so not a lot of lost time for elite combats.

Edit the kill ratios will soon slip once we start seeing some defense 3 units. Right now it is just 1 and 2 defense.

Edit I agree you have to attack as much as you can, as long as you do not take big risk. I hated to put a unit in a spot where it was exposed. I did not think they all were exposed, but a couple were for sure.
Still as mentioned, I would rather lose a cheap legion than risk a town.

 

[Elephantium]

Here is the report up to this point:

PRE:
move pop from river forest to spice to gain 1gpt.

Not sure what we want out of Venice. 1 pop I move from unimproved grass to spice with a road. I gains 2gpt and 1 shield, but lowers food by 1. Right now I go for the faster troops and extra cash.

I was trying to hit a better shield breakpoint during the GA, but I didn't have the Workers to pull it off. More pop there would be nice, but it needs more improvements to get any shields from that growth.

Are we wanting the warrior to keep looking around? We have 6 nations now, I would just as soon disband the guy. I know later we will wish we had more of the map, but that is a long way off right now. If he stays or moves, eventually he will be killed and maybe provide a promtion or a slave for someone.

I was never a fan of searching for more enemies in large AW maps, even more so in CCM.

No idea when the next clan will arrive, but I would guess the only direction we can support right now is towards Korea or SE.

IBT:
We have/had a lone Legionare that went 1-1-1. Would not have died, if we had the razed town as the finally archer would not have been able to reach him. For sure we cannot have lone units outside of the borders at this stage, too many units about and they will just get chopped.

1-1-1?

I was trying to avoid leaving enemy WEs floating around in range of our supply lines; killing them is why there were units scattered about Old Seoul. Should I have let them cross the mountains and approach Florence/Cheju instead? If so, I'll make a note to fight differently in my next set.

Livy reports:
Italy
Inca
Austro
Maya
Greek
Persia
Indo
and the forgotten Canadians. Were does that leave the rest?

8 boats bombard Venice. I sure did not miss that part of the game.

Hum, I see we have a colony that is sort of out in the open, so that would seem like a good area to fill real soon. Do not want Iron to be exposed that much.

Zerk arrives at the doorstep of Cheju.

(1) 375A:
e/CA kills the zerk (1-0).
We have a short string of units that seem to be moving toward Korea, but 1 spear is fortified. Was that intended, not sure so I leave it for now.

The spear is there because wounded units would be returning from the front and landing there (it's on one side of a hard-to-see river).

cat retreats from a spear in Pyongyang.

e/CA kills a spear (2-0-1).
Legion kills spear (3-0-1).

Enslaver finished the damaged spear (4-0-1). We get 2 gold. The town has a market, WorldReligion Buddhism and Buddhist Community.

Starts a wall.

Legion goes elite killing Indo spear (5-0-1).
e/cat kills Indo sword (6-0-1).

Workers finished a road in Naples, but I have no idea why. Rome and Naples are on no growth and neither can use another tile for some time.

It was still growing when I started that project. Happiness levels changed at the end of the GA.

 

[Northern Pike]

1-1-1?

I was trying to avoid leaving enemy WEs floating around in range of our supply lines; killing them is why there were units scattered about Old Seoul. Should I have let them cross the mountains and approach Florence/Cheju instead? If so, I'll make a note to fight differently in my next set.

I believe that by 1-1-1 Vmxa means the Legionary defeated one attacker, redlined/retreated one, and was overcome by the third.

There are no easy answers about tactics in AW without bombardment or armies, but attacking tough units that are at full strength and can also retreat is unlikely to pay off. I might have let the elephants attack walled cities, accepting some loss of cheap units if necessary, and then counterattacked them when they were depleted.

 

[Elephantium]

At the beginning, I was hoping that cats and Praets could overcome the tusks of the WEs. Rather foolhardy, that.

 

[vmxa]

Elephantium none of the things you quoted by me were meant as any knocks on your play. Often times I get the game and so much has passed I just am not sure what is going on or why. I just toss out what I am thinking at the time.

The spear was just fine parked there and it still is there, except it is now a pike.

The other thing to consider is some of us knuckle heads had a lot of playing time in C3C and AW and even on massive maps. The experience helps, but I know I will make errors and not always even agree on all things with the others. Not a big deal.

I turn over many sets with the next guy questioning management of towns and workers. Some time laziness, sometimes carelessness or sometimes we just disagree. IOW's one is immune. You point them out and they may be useful or they may just be ignored.

The fact is the phants are tougher than their stats would lead you to believe. They have 2 defense, but are a bear to kill with that extra hit point. The key thing about units that have more attack than defense is to not let them attack, if you can. If you can't attack them, make them attack you from inferior position. Even so, they may still prevail. You jumped in and I suspect we are all happy to have you. In the end it only matters that we had some fun and maybe a few cool experiences.

BTW it would seem Korea is near dead or very busy elsewhere and Russia has slowed down. Looks like we got deep into their auto produced cats/chars. We can hope anyway.

 

[vmxa]

I should say that I did not mean to harp on the razed town, it may have been required. I wanted more to warn about the fact that so many roads in neutral land is bad for us. It is not like C3C normal games where we would cut a bunch of roads and replace them later.

Workers are hard to come by and are not safe even in our border, if not far in the interior. With no armies we cannot ensure that a frontier town won't get over run. There was 10 units near Pyongyang at one point. Only one got to attack though.

 

[ThERat]

I would say razing cities in CCM is not a good idea as cities are very hard to come by and we should make use of them. Corruption has been reduced significantly and almost all cities on a big continent can produce something with courts.

I rather let a city being retaken if we can't hold it and then come back later. With monks, taking a city will be easier as we can pop borders instantly. Hence, when I send out an attack stack, a monk will always be with it.

 

[vmxa]

No one would say it is a good thing. To me the big thing is to control the land, that needs culture and that means towns. I seemed to recall it is not so easy to come up with enough monks, but I like the sentiment.

 

[Elephantium]

Elephantium none of the things you quoted by me were meant as any knocks on your play. Often times I get the game and so much has passed I just am not sure what is going on or why. I just toss out what I am thinking at the time.

I didn't interpret them as knocks; sorry if I sounded defensive (I didn't mean to). I just thought it would be good to clarify my thinking behind those moves -- if something is unclear enough from the save and turnlog that the next turnplayer questions it, it deserves further explanation.

The spear was just fine parked there and it still is there, except it is now a pike.

The other thing to consider is some of us knuckle heads had a lot of playing time in C3C and AW and even on massive maps. The experience helps, but I know I will make errors and not always even agree on all things with the others. Not a big deal.

I turn over many sets with the next guy questioning management of towns and workers. Some time laziness, sometimes carelessness or sometimes we just disagree. IOW's one is immune. You point them out and they may be useful or they may just be ignored.

Point away! Many of you are better players than I am, so a little bit of constructive criticism can go a long way.

The fact is the phants are tougher than their stats would lead you to believe. They have 2 defense, but are a bear to kill with that extra hit point. The key thing about units that have more attack than defense is to not let them attack, if you can. If you can't attack them, make them attack you from inferior position. Even so, they may still prevail. You jumped in and I suspect we are all happy to have you. In the end it only matters that we had some fun and maybe a few cool experiences.

BTW it would seem Korea is near dead or very busy elsewhere and Russia has slowed down. Looks like we got deep into their auto produced cats/chars. We can hope anyway.

Boy, did I find THAT out In a lot of cases, the phants were in position to blitz our stacks, with Praets on top. Not having Seoul really hurt (though I agree that it would have been hard to hold).

I should say that I did not mean to harp on the razed town, it may have been required. I wanted more to warn about the fact that so many roads in neutral land is bad for us. It is not like C3C normal games where we would cut a bunch of roads and replace them later.

Workers are hard to come by and are not safe even in our border, if not far in the interior. With no armies we cannot ensure that a frontier town won't get over run. There was 10 units near Pyongyang at one point. Only one got to attack though.

I actually DID cut a road to decrease access to the mountain pass. I didn't do it lightly, though -- having all those roads in neutral territory was kind of scary.

 

[Civinator]

boy this is an "edge of your seat" read. Good going so far.

I second this. I´m still thinking you have no chance in this game, but you perform very well until now. One more time thank you all very much for your interesting reports and your input.

This is peculiar. My version of the Civilopedia uses the same wording to describe the tile penalty for despotism and for theocracy, and there's no mention of city centres in particular. The reference is to "any city production square" in both cases.

Yes, theocracy has the same tile penalty as despotism. But it has a very strong building, the monastry, that works like barracks and a library at the same time. I tried to balance monarchy and theocracy in a way that it could be a tough decision to change to any of these governments. There are situations when you have a better researchquote with the additional boost of the monastries than with much more population in monarchy - and additionally you receive veteran units with the same building - and mostly underestimated - can heal your redlined units in one turn, and you receive autoproduced good offensive units (crusaders, warriormonks, answar warriors) for a longer time than in monarchy and if you have access to different religions you can receive all these units together when you have built the buildings to autoproduce them.

Interesting that your choose in your special "Always War"-situation, when you must research all techs yourselves and can need all autoproduced units you can get, is monarchy.

The 'pediea entry on supply caravans is bad. It does not explain how to use them. I had to go back and re-read the prior games to solve that problem.

Suggested explanation: I do not know if a unit can be 'escorted' for more than one turn; I haven't had a chance to check this out.At Monarch, each one adds 25 gold to the treasury. Does that vary by difficulty?

As ThERat explained some posts above, the supplyshipments (caravans) in CCM can move by themselves. So they can move themselves to the capital - but to gain the 25 gold (a sum of gold that is constant under all governments), the last move into the capital must be done by a unit that "captured" the caravan. There exists a special button for this action in CCM.

BTW Ottoman are Turks in CCM. I also scratched my head that some civs are refered to by two different names at different times. Well I complained about that to Civinator already.

Aren´t Ottomans Turks??

 

[vmxa]

Aren´t Ottomans Turks??

I know that, but not everyone will make the connection. In an often intense turn, you do not want to stop and think to make connections like what other name applies to the Siam people.

If you are just setting back in an easy solo game, that can actually be interesting. For me, I do not want to stop concentrating on my moves to do anything else.

As to the supply I actually point that out in my set as I moved it with no escort. It is easy for many of us that played AoI or scenarios like this prior to CCM. We already know what they are.

Glad you are still keeping an eye on us.