RB23 - Alex the Decentral....

[Ozbenno]

I firstly try to get Engineering out of Vicky for peace. She declines, I try everything else other than Feudalism (which we're researching) and likewise.

I decide to take one more city before trying again.

Kublai ends up declaring for free so I get to keep the GS for now . I change research from Feudalism to Paper as we'll be picking that up of Vicky in about 3 turns I reckon.

Hastings already has a market in it, and is our number one commerce city, and number one unhappy city with 28 . We should think about cottaging some of the floodplains though and getting a missionary to Thermopolae, our only non-Jewish city..

Bismark was definately bribed to war as he only has one longbow wandering about and its not even pillaging.

As predicted, after we aquire Vicky's last decent city Warwick, we get Feudalism and Compass for peace. Our economy picks up immensely (close to 20gpt and one turn on paper).



Trade Kublai incense for sugar, cancel spice/silk deal as we have spices and then trade silk for fish.

The spying value of the Jewish Holy City shows us that he pretty much has just a spear and longbow combo in his cities except for Berlin. I've sent the troops onwards to Sparta because...



Although we can't see what's parked in that city.

There's some troops parked at Dusseldorf in the south, defended by a lone longbow. The barb city might be ripe for the picking too.

The Save

View attachment 138446

 

[ThERat]

well played and great thing we didn't give away paper for war

 

[darrelljs]

Nice! Using the GS for Education is probably the right move, gets us to within one step of Liberalisms free tech, although right now there isn't anything good available. I'm surprised to see some gaps between Victoria's old borders and Bismark. I think we should probably just make peace with the idiot, taking whatever he will give us. He's thin, but do we think his cities will be worth the maintenace burden? We're overdue for some peaceful infrastructure turns. I also think most of Victoria's farms could use cottages at this point, espeically the floodplains. The way she was farming, makes me wonder if she was trying to run a specialist economy. If so not very smart for a Financial civ .

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

I'd say definately raze Dusseldorf first then maybe peace, I think he still was refusing to talk at the end of my turns. It is a faux war anyway as he hasn't attacked or pillaged anything. Hopefully Bismark and Kublai can biff it out. If Kublai starts winning the war, we should head his way. JC and Vicky are still at war as well.

 

[darrelljs]

Yeah, next target needs to be Kublai probably, he needs to be taken down a notch or three. That will leave JC as the only true friend on the continent (well, until we need his lands for the domination limit ), but IIRC we should not have any penalties with Bismarck since he declared on us. Unless of course we raze a city, but even then probably not a large enough penalty to make him a permanent enemy.

Darrell

 

[Qwack]

Great turns Ozbenno. He declared for free

I think diplomatic victory is quite possible here, as long as kublai will not be the populaiton leader, we can eliminate victoria, and can get bismarck to vote for us(or take his land). This would be easier to decide if we knew where the other island was and how large it is.

Im going to need some time to play this, possibly until tommorow night.

 

[Qwack]

Played 10 turns.

Overall pretty quiet turnset. Raze Bismarck's southern city for 52 gold. I notice we have a worker sleeping in hastings. Wake him up immedietely, we have alot of stuff to be improved.

Paper researched on turn 7, burn our scientist on Education. Education is now due in about 6. Brought our entire army back towards sparta near Bismarck's front.

I think we have alot of approaches we can follow here, we can expand the rest of our land and just build up for some turns, or we can go after bismarck and take some of his cities. Im not sure what to do, as both options seem viable. Other options include going for chemistry/military tradition and use grenadiars or cavalry to go after AI. Im not sure which way to go...

The question is, can we outproduce the AI's with 125-150% of thier land without slavery. Kublai's power just keeps skyrocketing and its making me sad, we can try to go after Kublai here but it might hurt us, as the only army we have is offensive. If he lands a stack somewhere it will be extremely difficult to defend. Bismarck's cities on the other hand are very crappily defended, 1 or 2 longbows in most of his cities, but can we afford them?

Other than that, I think we need forbidden in london ASAP, I think we should build a courthouse in Athens just so we can get 6 for forbidden in 15 turns.. Also a note about athens, I was building aqueduct there because it had 2 unhealthiness, we can grow that a bit but we will need aqueduct for that, or we can build army there instead of growth. Armyt will probably be better if we decide to go after kublai..

Army which can be used to attack bismarck: TheRat has option to move this out or not. Bismarck will accept peace right now and gives us 50 gold + world map for it.


Power graph:


save:

 

[ThERat]

I think we have no choice but to slow this fellow down, otherwise he will simply run away. maybe we can draw another Civ into a war. With our despotism government, we have no choice but to fight I guess.

Anyway, got it, play tonight

 

[Qwack]

Yeah im inclined to agree with you. I think I had a bad turnset being stuck between military and rebuild phase, should have gone 1 way or another. Btw, I have some units south near barb city to take it in a few turns.

 

[darrelljs]

I took a look at the save and had a couple of observations:

1. KK has 17% of the land area but 25% of the population. This is vs. us at 18.7% land, and only 16.25% population. So, he has done a better job at vertical growth.

2. Our GNP is 42 (7th in the world) with an average of 96 and a tops of 226. It is deceptive as we are living off deficit research now and can keep teching in the near future.

3. If we got Liberalism then the best tech we could grab is Printing Press (Nationalism being kind of useless with our rules). Caesar will give Optics/WM/20 gold for Paper/WM, which will open up Astronomy. Of course, we have enough land on our continent for domination so that is probably worthless.

My personal suggestion is we go Education -> Guilds -> Liberalism (Gunpowder) -> Banking -> Chemistry (need to trade for Engineering) -> Steel. We continue to dedicate most cities to military builds with key cities getting Banks and a couple building Missionaries. All with good hammer output should also get Courthouses, and definitely need FP (London is good). I would proceed in this order towards Domination:

1. Settle our land to grab the Fur, Silver and Barbarian city (this brings in Clams and I believe Corn). Also Settle to grab the Sheep in that English city we razed.

2. Take out England.

3. By this point I assume we should have Grenadiers and be near Cannon, and that we should be on our way with Banks in several high Commerce cities (especially the Shrine city). I would then declare on KK and try to pull in our good buddy JC. Interesting enough both are at Friendly with us right now, but with JC we do NOT share a war (he is at war with Victoria, KK with Bismarck). My fervent hope is KK and Bismarck fight an inconclusive war and wear each other out, my real fear is KK rolls over him in which case we might have to bump #3 up in priority. Make peace when we need a breather.

4. Repeat step #3 until KK is a non-factor

5. Repeat step #3 with Bismarck until we hit Domination limit.

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

Missed your posts while typing mine .

If we want to go for KK now I am also okay with that, however we cannot bribe JC to join since he "has enough on his hands" with victoria. I guess we could try to ask him to make peace with her (might be good since we want her cities), then try and pull him in against KK. A three team dogpile on KK (us, JC and Bis) at this time might be just what the doctor ordered.

Darrell

 

[Qwack]

Well, one thing that should be expected is peace between bismarck and kublai soon after we declare on him. We can beat Kublai even with his current army, but my fear is quickly reinforcing defense against kublai's stacks without slavery. What im hoping is kublai has already used all those stacks on bismarck, which means he will send 1 or 2 units at a time, which we can beat easily.

 

[ThERat]

usually the AI burns it's excess tropps pretty fast and after that is unable to cope with a human onslaught. I hope KK really burned all his troops against germany.

 

[Ozbenno]

I'd say get peace with Bismark, start a rebuilding session until we're ready to take on KK. Maybe think about taking out Vicky once and for all.

If KK starts getting on top of Bismark (ie taking his cities) then we should declare on him as he may start to be overstretched.

 

[GreyFox]

I kind of agree with Ozbenno here. However, from the screenshot seems like Bismarck is still holding on to his southern city ... suggest taking it out before peace.

Vicky seems to be surviving with only one city (unless those cities I thought belonged to Bismarck on the minimap actuallu belongs to Vicky). We could take it out, or wait for JC to do it. I'll suggest taking out Vicky ourselves to hasten her death.

I would not declare on KK right now. I would only do so after killing vicky. This will free JC from his "tied hands". But JC would most likely be a coward and dare not attack KK.

We need to shape up our defenses before declaring on KK. That means at least a couple of longbows on each city.

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
we still have some silver resources way south, might be worth settling there later on
MM Canterbury to slow grwoth there into unhappiness
move our stack as suggested towards Germany
get some cahs for our WM

IT JC asks us to join the war against Vicky, in order to collect some brownie points, I agree
(we're now at +13point with him)

1. 1226AD
need to up lux to 10% due to WW, but our English cities aren't really that happy

2. 1232AD
spot a English maces and german settle pair. march

3. 1238AD
raze Bremen for the loss of 1 cat
he offers 210gold, 5 gpt and WM for peace, take that

4. 1244AD
need to upgrade an archer because London is threatened by a mace

5. 1250AD
zzz moving on to Coverntry


6. 1256AD
we get education and Heron is born in Athens
he is heading to London to rush the FP for sure
we need more cash for research, thus trade paper
get 400gold theocracy and optics from JC and KK
go straight for liberalism as guilds are know already

IT spot Germans pillage KK's land and thus a lux deal with him gets cancelled

7. 1262AD
our religions spreads to 2 more cities
take the barb city in the east
bomb Coventry

8. 1268AD
start to attack Ravenna, 2 units left
attack Coventry and lose only a cat even winning a battle at 30%
city is ours

9. 1274AD
start some theatres since we have happy issues and will always have
Germans and KK sign peace, not so good
take out Ravenna and England is gone , raze city as there is absolutely nothing appealing to it

10. 1280AD
all the whiners are finally gone, London will get it's court in 3 and with a rushed FP, it shoul be much better for us

liberalism is due in 11 at a deficit, but we have 600+ gold and with the FP should be faster
once we have finished all those courts, we can start to prepare for the next war

 

[ThERat]

this is a tough game and I can say that having no slavery, is the toughest thing. Well, we didn't wish for an easy game.
I am going back home soon for almost 3 weeks and I have to be skipped for the next few rounds. I will however, lurk and post comments as much as I can

 

[darrelljs]

Got it, will try to play tonight. Is it only 10 turns this round? Should I play 25 to make up for Qwack and ThERat ? I agree Slavery has been the most missed civic. I still like Hereditary Rule the most (unless it is a water map), but then I usually don't war quite this much.

I'm going to focus on economy and defending our cities a bit better.

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

Excellent work TheRat! I agree with darrlljs, some infrastructure and economy, while getting some military buildup would be good. I think we need to peg KK down some next. Will have to have a good civil defense for force beacuse no whipping/drafting.

Slavery has been sorely missed indeed! As well as Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy .

 

[darrelljs]

Going to be a brief report fellows, I have to pack all night.

Did some minor micro, mostly switching Theaters to Universities since they are half cost. GreyFox, I did leave the Theaters in queue since there seemed to be a turn or two in them. I also emphasized growth in cities well below the happiness cap, slowly switching to cottages and mines as they grew. BTW, we have our sixth Courthouse due in 7. I don't believe the FP is going to give us much, but the GE is still in London now in case you want to rush it.

I think about the game situation a bit. First off, KK's southern cities lack Judaism, so we can't spy on them. We don't have a single Monastery and we can't run OR. So I order up a Monastery. His northern cities are very well defended. Cats, Longbows, 7/8/9 deep. It looks like the Bismarck war didn't harm him a bit, his power graph didn't budge. I decide for the team mischief: ) that the best path to beating him down is Grenadiers fast. I hold off but when Liberalism is 5 turns away I pull this trade:

Liberalism comes in and I take Gunpowder, which is not the most valuable tech. I then make a trade (the sceenshot didn't take) of Education eek: ) to KK for Engineering, about 400 gold if memory serves, and his map. Total beaker rape but we are now researching Chemistry. Let the idiot build Universities for us to take. Right now we don't have enough cash to fuel us all the way there, so more trading might be necessary. JC dropped to Pleased and we are at his WFYABTA limit. KK will give us Banking + WM for Liberalism or war on Bismarck. I suggest waiting several turns and doing it for Banking and cash. Another peace tech that won't help him for the coming storm, and Banks are going to be huge for us, even if they take forever to build. If we do this, we should build some banks while waiting on Chemistry, then run all cash to upgrade our Maceman to CR2+ Grenadiers and stomp him .

Conventry and Parthian are building culture to get a border pop, please cancel when they do.

Darrell

P.S. There is a barb city spawned down south

P.P.S. Qin showed up, and an American is out there:

P.P.P.S. 10 turns feels short on Epic, should we go back to 15?