Rat16 - warmongers go immortal

[acidsatyr]

I'm sorry theRat, I have to agree with Mutineer here. Starting position was in some ways better than the one in acid03 (true no bronze, but gold on the front door), but I think I said before going for pottery very early was a mistake, pottery should've been obtained with trading, and those beakers should've went somewhere else. Also we have cottages everywhere even where we want production. If we blined for IW instead of pottery (and archery) we would’ve started warring much earlier which is the key point here. The advantage of financial lies in the fact that you can get more commerce with less, so you can concentrate on other things. And it's early to say where this game will go, I think we have decent chance here.

 

[Till]

There was no way to avoid researching archery, in my opinion. Even without pottery, we would have been forced to switch to archery, as those barbs just appeared too quick.

 

[Greebley]

IIRC, if we hadn't gone for archery we would have lost our capitol to barbarians and probably the game. This won't happen in every game, but it did in this one.

Up to my last turn, I thought we were doing well for an immortal game. I will have to see how we are doing on my next turn, but I am not convinced we are doing badly. We held off two early Greek attacks with no losses and made significant progress and expansion.

Note that the Greek attack did slow us. That couldn't be helped. It could have been much worse though. (It occurs to me that archery saved us there too. I am not sure we would have had Iron in time - especially with no cottages).

 

[Gotag]

Gonna give it a real good look over.

Gotag

 

[ThERat]

Gotag, are you playing this?

 

[Gotag]

Yeah and it looks very grim indeed.

We can get peace with Khan for Guilds I believe. It may be worth taking. I can make little headway as he seems to have uncanny luck (all his bloody cats withdraw all the time) and his Xbows seem to feast on our knights.

I've tried to create a killing zone but although we have a kill ratio of 3-1 he seems to have troops to spare and we can barely keep up.

I've sold like a whore, chopped like a lumberjack, bullied poor Nappy and for some reason we've lost the ability to trade resources with Hatty. We can maintain 70% research for a bit longer and may get Chem next turnset. We need time to build Grens though.

1250 Preturn

Trade Hatty gold for 5gpt but this gets canceled along with furs for dye a few turns in. Don't know how we lost resource trading with her. Whore our world map around for 70g and sell gunpowder to Cyrus for 200g. Everyone else who matters has it anyway.

Couple of things. My last turnset I tried to cultivate Cyrus as a potential ally against Khan. Now I see our relations with him are hurting from an unreasonable demand. Given our position on the power graph with respect to him, this doesn't make much sense. Nobody that far ahead of us is going to agree to a demand.

Also we are running 20% lux and as far as I see that only means one more tile worked in York. Not worth the 30gpt I believe.

IBT we lose 2 maces and 2 cats for peanuts. not starting off well RNG wise.

1256 to 1310 I move the bulk of our forces to the forest by Samarkand. Best defensive place around and we can try to winnow Khan down a bit.

I whip Samarkand pretty heavy here btw, also York once.

I lost a full str combat 1 knight to a 1.5str wounded cat. Moused odds were 100%. First time I ever remember seeing that. Pretty idicative of the whole turnset really.

We have an Xbow and a knight in Cyrus's territory for some looting on Khan's territory. Been pretty profitable so far.

I believe we can still get peace for Guilds or something less. I would grab it if possible. We need to rebuild..

There is a khan musketman beating on Lyon and we have a musket due there next turn. Hopefully we can hold him off till reinforcements get there.

Sorry for the sparce report and the lateness. Been rather busy.

Gotag

 

[angeleyes]

Gonna give it a real good look over.

Gotag

he's serious

(amazing, this post crossed with Gotag's)

 

[Till]

I see we have units in Bactra. Did Khan attack us there? Because that city looks like one hell of a killing zone to me!
Khan is still at was with Hati and Alex. If there is any way to hold out for us, i would continue the war. Sooner or later he will run out of gas.
If we make peace now, we will have achieved very little. ( Khan wants Samarqand back for peace)

 

[Till]

Inherited Turn:
Reinforce Rheims with spear and archer from Tours.

1
Eastern Front:
Musket attacks Rheims. Lose newly built musket.
Knight gets slaughtered in the open by a Mongol pike.
Take out knight-killing pike with crossbow.

2
Eastern Front:
Lose axe to musket in Rheims.
Keshik pillages iron.
Mongol Longbow fails to kill a crossbow, heading for a sweet spot.
Kill pillaging Keshik with a spearman.

Western Front:
Kill Keshik before it can pillage the horse supply near Smaranqand.
Mongol Musket on its way to said horse spot.
Move two catapults back to Smaranqand in anticipation of a fierce fight.

3
Eastern Front:
Musket kills archer. It's getting dire.
A newly arrived musket finally kills the trouble making Mongol musket.

Western Front:
Both catapults die without causing much damage, but a Knight saves the day and kills the musket.
Khan has some high exp troops, which are really hard to crack.

4
Western Front:
Mace and catapult show up.
I move all units save for two crossbows out of the city to avoid uneeded colleteral damage.

5
Western Front:
Catapult and Mace attack, but fail.

6
Western Front:
Oh boy, Khan just won't run out of units.
Two stacks appear: Two Keshiks and one pult. And one mace and one pult.
I sacrifice a pult to soften up the first stack. Also whip a musket in Samarqand and York.
York is really screwed up. +9 unhappiness due to whipping. But such is the cost of war...

7
Western Front:
Only a catapult attacks. The Keshiks and the other pult retreat like the pansies they are.
Only remaining unit is a Mace with 4(!) strenght promotions. Where does Kublai get all that exp??
Move our last cat back to Samarqand. We have no units with a realistic chance of taking it out. I hope it attacks the city instead of pillaging.

We learn Chemistry. Huzzah! Set research to Steel as nobody has it yet. It is almost 40 turns away, though. I am not sure about what to research at this point at all.
Trading Chemistry around could bring us Divine Right and Banking. No way, i'd rather capitalize on our Grenadier monopoly while it lasts.

8
Western Front:
Mace moves on horse tile. Kublai seems hellbent to pillage it. I feel i can't let him pillage our lands at will, so i attack with a cat (which dies). A knight finishes the job.
Nappy gets a spare gold for 2gpt.
Kublai still demands Samarqant back for peace.

9
Western front:
A crossbow and a pult show up.
I move all but 3 defender out.

10
Western front:
WTH?! A full strength crossbow with city defender 2 promotion dies against a catapult?!
The Mongol crossbow didn't bother to attack.
Musket destroys the crossbow.
I didn't attack the catapult, as i am not sure, if a knight has enough movement points to move back into the city afterwards. Take a look and judge yourself. Because of that our units on the western front are mostly unmoved.


The situation is not half bad. We have mostly lost catapults and old units and were able to put some pain into the Mongols. He still makes demands for peace, but now that we have grenadiers, i feel we have a chance of taking out New Sarai.
We have short on catapults, though. I would definitly press on and not go for peace unless Hati bows out of the war.

Btw, Cyrus is incredibly rich. ~1300gold.

(Part of) Our army:

----------> The Save<----------​

 

[ThERat]

sounds like a rough ride here...this is immortal. Hope grenadiers can make the difference for us

Roster
ThERat
Gotag
Till
Greebley - up
acidsatyr

 

[Till]

The going is rough, but it is lotsa fun!
Ever since the pesky musketeer near Rheims bit the bullet, the luck seems to have changed in our favour. Judging by the last 10 turns, we can win this war with a little endurance.
Sure, it will take a toll on our cities and reasearch, but if we pay Kublai for peace now we will have achieved nothing and will still have to pay the price.

 

[Greebley]

I got it, but probably can't play tonight - Tomorrow or the next day seems more likely.

 

[Greebley]

Khan's towns were too well defended. I simply held off his attacks.

Our luck was fair at best. The first IBT was sad - a musket completed in time to defend our town (rushed) and died to the attacking musket without doing any damage at all to the attacker.

We can now build grenadiers though. I did not yet trade Chem.

GL to the next player. I hope we will finally be able to do something. Beware though - expect at least 7-8 units in a town with about 1/2 catapults.

 

[Till]

Greebley, i think there is a problem. The save you submitted is from 1370, which was the last turn i played. However, it doesn't look like my turns at all.

The first IBT was sad - a musket completed in time to defend our town (rushed) and died to the attacking musket without doing any damage at all to the attacker.

The exact same thing happened during my first IBT as well. But at the end of my turns, there shouldn't be any enemy musket in striking range.

Could it be that you played from Gotag's ave and not mine?

 

[ThERat]

Greebley, do you want to play with Till's saveagain or hand over to acid?

 

[Greebley]

Whoops, first time I have done that. I guess I will try again.'

I think part of the problem is that I tend to miss Till's save

 

[Greebley]

Now I can't load Till's save (uploads is down). Guess this will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[Greebley]

Uploads was down again last night. I just successfully grabbed the save though and should be able to play tonight.

 

[Greebley]

finally playing the game...

 

[Greebley]

Well this is pretty lame, but I got one turn done.

We are suddenly going down to delaware for the long 4th of July weekend.

Some random comments on the preturn:

Why so many muskets? They are defensive units and useless for attack. A few make sense, but we seem to have built them almost exclusively.

I would have built Catapults instead of the muskets. Otherwise we are just building up WW with no progress. I cancelled some the of the musket builds that were still ongoing as well.

Use our Hereditary rule better. By moving defenders around I was able to supress unhappiness.

York was size 2, unhappy, and not growing. Thus we were completely wasting the city. We have 8 unhappiness from whipping! We can't do anything about that, but by moving some muskets into the city, it can become 3x more productive at the very least. Try not to whip anymore (Only reason should be to save a city). Given the large number of muskets, their best use seems to be unhappiness supression, which should still leave us some to defend our stack and towns.

I did the following:

Got a bunch of gold from trades as well as banking and divine right.

Upgraded our Maces with city attack to Grenadiers.

My plan was to wait for the 2 Catapults and then go and capture or raze that one city in the north to allow our city to grow. With strength 12 units with city attack and 2 cats to knock down the defense, tehn we might be able to do it. At that point we can probably make peace. It is also possible our force will just be killed.

Passing off the game to the next player. I won't be back until wednessday.

Note that the capitol just went unhappy so one Musket was heading back to the capitol.

Also I think I left the Catapults and Grenadier with move-to's that you can cancel. They are going to the one town on the border.

Good luck.

If things go badly, I would end the war and go after Napolean. I think we need to be strongeer to really go after Khan. Killing that one city would be nice though.

ThERat, if I am up in another game then just tell ppl I need a swap/skip. I think you are in every game that I am playing.