Rise of the Machines

[IceLion]

We CAN declare war and ask another civ to go to war, but that is it as far as opening diplomacy goes. Once we are at war, we CANNOT ask for peace, but can accept it if the civ we are at war with comes asking for it. We cannot open negotiations for trades but can accept offers made by other civs, we cannot change the offer or renegotiate it in any way, simply accept or decline.

 

[vovan]

[0] 950AD - Looking good. I move the stack West of Bangalore towards Kagoshima, just in case I decide to attack the Japanese on my turn. I guess I forgot we could ask other nations to attack our foes. I'll see if I can convince someone to declare on the Japanese, and if so might attack them myself, too, a little later, when they are battle-worn. The cats NW of Calcutta, I move south towards Nagoya. Nice setup there, I must say, IceLion. If I ever attack the Japanese, however, my guess is that I'll be mostly razing their cities, because boy, I'll say, our finances are lousy.

I also shuffle the governor orders around a little bit.

[1] 960AD - Forge is built in Calcutta. I start it off on a catapult. The puny human resistance in A5 is subdued. The slaves have seen the light and are ready to bend their will to us. We force our slaves to build a Barracks.

Our forces march to the gates of Tenochtitlan, hopefully the last city of the Aztec resistance, and reconnaissance bots tell us that the city is only protected by one archer unit. We should be able to crush the puny humans soon.

The Japanese, however, apparently just founded another city by our borders.

This insolence cannot be tolerated much longer. I am starting to like IceLion's plan of attack on the Japs more and more. Let them burn!

[2] 970AD - We whip our slaves at Tenochtitlan into action, and lo

The Aztec resistance is no more!

[3] 980AD - JC wants Open Borders. Ummm... I'm thinking no. A3 completes barracks, starts construction of a catapult.

Our troops are in position to simultaneously attack Nagoya, and stand at the gates of Kagoshima, and the new southern city just east of Nagoya. I must say, it is very tempting to go to war now. I have toys to play with, and I am itching to have them see some action. So... What the hell. I firstly contact Bismarck, to see if he would like to scrap with the Japs (him being their closest neighbor as far as we can see). Apparently not. Oh well, suit yourself, good sir. An emissary is sent to Tokugawa to inform him of his imminent doom.

At the loss of a catapult (with 80% odds of winning, btw) Nagoya burns.

Our troops are at the gates of Izumo and Kagoshima.

 

[vovan]

[4] 990AD - The Great Library is built in Delhi. Work starts on a Market to improve our economic situation.

Izumo burns. No losses.

Kagoshima burns. No losses.

Now that three of Toku's cities are gone, I contact Bismarck again to see if he has changed his mind. And so he has. I give him Drama in exchange for him declaring war on Tokugawa, and Meditation. It's funny that this deal would work out, since the F4 screen shows that Bismarck and Toku used to be the bestest buddies. But of course none can resist our powers of persuasion.

[5] 1000AD - JC wants drama in exchange for Monotheism and 600 gold. Sure. Why not. Bismarck will probably trade it to you any way, so might as well benefit while we can. We need the money to fund deficit research any way. Thanks, mate.

[6] 1005AD - Calcutta builds a catapult. Starts and whips a spear, because Toku has horsies, and Horse Archers are +50% vs catapults... A3 builds a catapult, and does the same spear whip.

[7] 1010AD - Mansa demands Music. Meh. Don't push your luck, boy. Calcutta builds spear. Starts a cat. A2 completes courthouse. Starts Library. A3 completes spear. Starts on a cat.

[8] 1015AD - We get Feudalism. Start on Civil Service. We gather round Edo.

[9] 1020AD - The defenses of Edo are reduced to zero.

[10] 1025AD - Between turns, the first of Toku's horse archers show up. They kill off one of our swords, and a Japanese sword kills off one of our axes. The northern attack stack is now pure, unprotected cats. Could get ugly. Calcutta finishes catapult, and starts on another one.

The good news is, at the loss of one sword, the city of Edo burns. The bad news, I couldn't take the city without using up the spearman, which was the only chance for us to get him two tiles NW to protect the northern stack from the Japanese Horse Archer, so more losses will follow before the first turn of the next player.

I don't know... Maybe I should have kept the city. That way, the Japanese would have taken it back, and concentrated on sending the troops into the city to reinforce the defenses, whereas now they can concentrate on mopping up our wounded troops... Hope I didn't make too a decision there. Hopefully, too, Bismarck will keep Tokugawa somewhat occupied.

But any way, I think I did alright in my turns, burning five cities altogether. Much thanks to IceLion's nice setup. May the next 10 turns be no less successful.

 

[vovan]

Roster:
Vovan
Hamtastic - UP
IceLion - On Deck
ruff_hi

Good luck, Hamtastic.

Vovan

 

[hamtastic]

Great start on crushing the puny humans of Japan. We machines will rule all!

Incidentally, this machine decides to crank up research again. I don't like saving gold for anything (what will we buy?), although I'm open to arguments for why we should.

I begin shuffling catapults around, so the promoted ones with city attack can get near some cities that they can attack, send some other ones with few promotions up to man the Northern border. The initial situation near Tokugawa is slightly disturbing looking. Our machines have been damaged by those human scum!

A human who has been influenced by our machine thinking is born: they call him an "engineer." Not likely - we are the only engines here.

Mansa asks us to cancel our deals with the Greeks. I refuse, since the Greeks are currently favorable towards us, while Mansa dislikes us already.

Our troops are moving! Perhaps this "engineering" skill would be useful, as it promotes faster movement.

I continue to build our excellent "catapult" machines to destroy the humans.

Mansa offers theology and 200 gold for Music. I accept. Additionally, Julius offers us silk for corn. This deal is also accepted.

Tokugawa has founded another city! Oh well. We will crush it sooner or later.

As we have grown to trust our new war enemy, we open our borders to him. Although contact with humans is generally negative, our humans have already been exposed to the false gods of "religion" and so they are unlikely to be further perverted by contact with the german humans. Eventually, all must fall before us. Besides, Bismarck's cities have a desire to trade with ours.

We discover the usefulness of a "civil service," and adopt a bureaucracy. This makes our humans in Delhi much more productive.

We approach Satsuma, which has only one puny axeman, an archer, and a chariot defending it. Surely we will take it!

Our troops rally towards Satsuma, but, before we attack, a rogue horse archer of Japan's roars through Germany's territory and attacks us! We lose A3 to the puny Japanese !!

I detach several troops and divert them back to A3 but press on with the attack on Satsuma. We lose two catapults but take Satsuma. I install a governator there so that we can block the advances of the pesky Germans.



Odd - we machines seem to finally understand the secrets of "machinery." Perhaps now we can more fruitfully recreate ourselves, rather than simply creating weak, mindless versions of ourselves in the form of catapults. We begin a National Epic so that our humans will produce more exemplary members for us to cull.

A few notes for the next Machine Mind to rule: we have recently experienced much growth in our research. Trading with Bismarck and the adoption of Bureacracy has done us well.



Do not whip the humans of Delhi! They are, oddly, more valuable alive to us, through their production of research, than they will be dead. (Strange to think that we could value a human).

Finally, we have two "great" people located in Delhi: one engineer and one artist. We may wish to have the engineer help another city complete some large project quickly. Perhaps a Forbidden Palace somewhere, or perhaps Notre Dame, so that our humans will stay happy. I think this would be best: our empire, although it may benefit from a golden age, is still not truly large enough to reap the benefits appropriately. Perhaps the artist can discover some form of technology that will be useful for us as well.

 

[IceLion]

All hail the mighty machine leaders Vovan and Hamtastic. Nice set of turns, both of you.

Nothing I like seeing more than Toky gettin what he deserves, he is a pain in the neck in every single game I've ever played with him in it, and he always seems to be there.

I looked at the save last night but didn't get to play, my daughter was in rare form. Couple of things I will concentrate on during my turns is first of all securing our northern borders. We have both JC and Mansa up there, and I don't trust JC. Mansa is usually less likely to attack, but JC will often build stacks and then randomly pick a target. I'm not sure what the two of you think, but I think it would be a good idea to skip the GA for right now and culture bomd our borders out. We have 3 neighbors that are cramping our borders. I'd also like to use that GE to research Engineering, which is a tech that we need to get to Steel.

I'll play tonight when I get home from work, but would like your feedback to what I've proposed.

 

[vovan]

Well, as far as culture-bombing, I don't know. Which city were you planning to bomb? It appears to me like both A5 and A3 have strong enough cultural influence where they won't flip, and they will have enough of a radius available to them where their growth won't be stunted. Any way, I am not sure we will gain much territory by c-bombing those two.

A2 maybe to put more pressure on Tekedda and Knossos, but again, I haven't had enough experience with c-bombs to tell how much territory we stand to gain here.

Now, if you are itching to c-bomb something, I would say it might be wise to do so with some Japanese city. If we acquire their capital, say, it will probably be in resistance for a long time, and will probably be surrounded in enemy territory. However, if we c-bomb it upon acquiring it, then it will immediately come out of resistance and be ready to start churning out more cats, and possily might push the borders out a tile or two so as to speed up our treck to the other cities.

As for the GE, he would shave off 8 turns off of engineering (out of the required 9 or 10 to research it), so that might, indeed, come in handy.

Any way, I think we are doing fine here, and both courses of action - either using the GPs for their respective tasks or kicking off the GA - will clearly benefit us, though in different ways, and, personally, I can't say I am confident that one choice is clearly superior to the other. So. I'd say chose that which you think is right, and we'll try to make the best of the choice, and see how it goes.

Vovan

 

[IceLion]

I survey the growing machine empire, the Japanese are close to extinction, this is good. As usual, the previous two members of the hive have left me in great position to deal more destruction, I will not fail them.

Immediately beginning my reign the pathetic human leader known as Alexander DEMANDS Drama, demands it!! He will pay for his insolence soon enough.

The next few years are quiet, building and whipping slaves to create and finish improvements. The human leader Julius Ceaser demands dye, he too will feel the might of the machine army in due time.

We, the enlightened machines have discovered the theory of Guilds and move our intelligence to Engineering. The person who the slaves worship as a Great Engineer is executed to feed his essence to the machine research mainframe, this Engineering theory will be learned in the next turn of the machine time matrix.

The Japanese city Osaka falls to our machine minions, we lose one Spear and one Catapult in the exchange, I divide the machine forces and send a troop of 5 Catapults to the Japanese city of Kyoto, their so called Capital.

OK, I did a bad thing here... I absolutely had to take Kyoto in my turnset, by the time I got to it and bombarded its defenses down, It took two additional turns, so I played 12 turns, you may disassemble me if you please.

Japan is divided...

I have started the Hagia Sophia and moved research to Gunpowder. We are WAY ahead in technology right now I believe. I built some units and reinforced to some degree our nothern border. I left the GA in Delhi, though I want it known it was VERY hard to resist the urge to C-bomb, I'm so proud of myself.

Our next target I think chose itself for us, at the end of my turns, JC declared on Mansa. Mansa is second in score, BUT, JC has the largest army. My opinion would be JC as the next target.

There is a nice little stack of untis here that can be used to attak Nagasaki should you have the urge to do so ruff_hi.

 

[IceLion]

I may have spread our troops a bit thin in my lust to destroy Japan, but it shouldn't be too difficult to reinforce them, provided Toky doesn't have enough troops to retake the cities, heh. I have 3 Cats on the way to reinforce Kyoto, they are on GO TO, so don't be surprised when you suddenly have more Cats there.

Here's our Demographics

And the save...

 

[ruff_hi]

got it - I have assimilated the rules and will follow the actions based upon the dictates of my programming.

 

[vovan]

Excellent work, IceLion! Toky's only got three more cities. Nagasaki can fall on the zeroth turn of Ruff (and that's what I'd use those troops East of it, for ). Nara is also a pretty small city, since it's only been founded after the beginning of the war. And then there's only the new Japanese capital left to conquer (Tokyo?). I'd probably keep all three of these cities (maybe not Nara): the back of the Japs is broken, so I severely doubt they can retaliate, and if we keep those cities, then nobody will be tempted to settle the area, and we will pretty much secure the southern part of the continent.

As far as a war after that is concerned, maybe it is time to lay off warmongering a bit, and head for cannons? I still dislike our economy, and think we could use some building up. And plus, the cats are starting to get kinda weak. strength-5 cats v strength-6 longbows in a city is not a very favorable matchup for us.

And also look at the power graph - the power of romans has skyrocketed! I think we really need to let Mansa and JC duke it out for a while before we go in.

Vovan

PS: The power of Mali, however, leaves much to be desired, and we already have something of an attack stack on the borders of Takedda, so maybe it is *them* that we should be attacking? I mean, doesn't the sight of a city protected only by a spear and a skrimisher, and five of our cats just across the border just make you salivate?

 

[ruff_hi]

Sorry All - a few things have come up on the home front that will mean I won't be able to complete this round - can I get another skip.

 

[IceLion]

Vovan, you got it?

 

[hamtastic]

Hey, good turnset there icelion. By the way, Vovan, my first thought would be to say no to your question, but I realized that I might be a bit too conservative. For example, I wouldn't have started a war with the Japanese, but that obviously worked out just fine. So maybe it would be fine. We might want to let them actually sue for peace, though. By the way, might be a good time to rename our newly captured cities.

 

[vovan]

Oh yeah! I got it! Time to finish off the Japs!

Also, hamtastic, as far as attacking Mali, I was more just throwing ideas out there. IceLion wanted to attack JC, which I think atm is definitely a bad idea. Attacking Mali, however, is not that bad of an idea, IMO. In fact, it would sort of be nice to kick them in a bit. Sure, JC's got tons of units, but JC is way behind us in tech, so when we get cannons, it will be carnage. (And that's when I suggest we attack them.) Mali, on the other hand, is the leader of the AIs in tech (I think) - they are only one tech behind us, so we won't have much of a tech advantage no matter when we attack. But now when they will be overwhelmed by JC's SODs, it is the perfect time to attack. But then of course, there is the problem - our economy is not doing too well. Can we handle another war? Or maybe we need another war, so we can plunder and keep funding our deficit research? I don't know. I guess I'll just take things as they come, the first on the order of business being dealing with the Japs.

Vovan

 

[IceLion]

I was just throwing JC out as a possibility, I tend to agree more with the Mali suggestion. I know that we need to build infrastructure, but I also think that in order to win, we are going to need to be at almost constant war. Don't forget that the only victory condition enabled is Conquest. Now would be optimal to get after Mali for the reasons that you stated previously, Vovan.

-IceLion

 

[vovan]

[0] 1140AD - I take stock of the nation. Firstly, it would appear to me like we are still referring to our new possessions by the names our enemies have given them. What is this? An oversight by one of our wise rulers? Certainly not! Machines don't make mistakes! Must have been a low priority task before. Not too low for this machine of destruction, rest assured. We must crush the spirits of our newly acquired slaves, and for that we must eradicate all traces of their own 'culture'. Hence, the cities will heretofore be known as:

Satsuma -> J1
Osaka -> J2
Kyoto -> J3

Next I notice there are 5 catapults protected by a slave just West of Calcutta. They are ready to do what machines do best - kill puny humans. So I send them on a charge to Nagasaki. Thanks to withdrawal of one of our machines from combat, we only lose one unit in the charge.

Nagasaki, ahem J4, is ours.

Also, J1 is dangerously close to German borders, so, just in case, I rush the Theatre there for 2 pop.

[1] 1145AD - You'll never guess what happened!

Well... I'll say! If there ever was a better excuse! Of course JC, ol' buddy, we shall help you!

A1 completes the Lighthouse, starts on a catapult. A2 completes a catapult, starts on another one. J1 completes its theatre, starts on a courthouse.

Troops from A2 roll for Tekedda, from J4 to Nara, and from J3 to the new Japanese capital.

BTW, why are building the Hagia Sophia in like one of our lowest production cities?

[2] 1150AD - Between turns, a catapult from Nara attacks our spearman, and *gasp* kills it!

Bombay trains Fast Worker, starts on Granary. Madras finishes Forge, starts on Market.

At the loss of two catapults we take and burn Tekedda.

[3] 1155AD - Between turn, the longbows from Nara attack and kill another catapult!

Delhi completes the National Epic. Starts on a Grocer. A2 completes a catapult, queues up another one. J4 comes out of resistance, and starts on a theatre.

We kill off one of the Longbows in Nara. The defenses of Tokyo are bombed down from 50% to 20%.

[4] 1160AD - A1 completes catapult, starts Granary.

With no losses, Tokyo falls.

 

[vovan]

[5] 1165AD - JC offers compass and 160 gold for Civil Service. Not enough money, amigo. I would have been seduced by more, but 160 is nothing to compensate for the difference in costs of Compass and CS.

A4 builds a catapult, starts granary. J2 builds a theatre, starts courthouse.

We notice a Mali settler escorted by two skirmishers heading south towards our territory. Man, the site of Tekedda is attracting them like flies! Except for now they will die.

[6] 1170AD - JC wants open borders. Nah, I don't think so. Miscellaneous builds complete.

Bismarck makes peace with Tokugawa! And speaking of Tokugawa, his last city is only now protected by one half-dead catapult.

[7] 1175AD - Gah! I lose my catapult attacking Nara at 95% success chance! Lame.

[8] 1180AD - Finally, the long-overdue event happens. Nara falls, and burns, and the Japanese are destroyed.

[9] 1185AD - JC moves a praetorian, War Elephant and two catapults towards our border at A5... Say... What are you planning to do with those, ol' buddy? Just in case, I start moving some troops to reinforce A5, in case JC's got something funny in mind.

[10] 1190AD - Between turns...

You rat-bastid. I am absolutely speechless. "Our mutual military struggle brings us closer together", eh? Well, JC... We shall see whose turn to die it is.

Well, I like round numbers, and plus, IceLion played 12 turns, so why can't I. Also, I couldn't leave the game in this messy state to the next player. I simply must deal a blow to JC first.

A great scientist has been born in Delhi.

I contact our real ol' buddy, Bismarck, and give him Theology in exchange for some change and his promise to attack JC. Duly, the Germans declare war, and now JC is at war with us, Mansa, and Bismarck. Hopefully that will divert some of his attention away from us. (Especially since we only border with him in one city, whereas Bismarck has a very long border with him.)

[12] 1200AD - I destroyed one of Mali's core cities - Gao. That sent Mansa straight to the bottom of the list in score. To that end, I suspect he might come begging for peace soon enough. Then, we can concentrate on JC.

 

[vovan]

Speaking of JC, here's his main front of attack at the moment:

More reinforcements are on their way from the south (no goto orders, so consider moving them carefully). We should *hopefully* be able to keep the city. It would be wise when some of those stacks come in to suicide some of the cats to wound them. I noticed that on Noble, the AI will very rarely attack with wounded units, even if they have otherwise very good chances of winning. Hence, bombarding those stacks before they get to actually attacking the city is crucial. Also, it might be wise to rush some defensive units, like Muskets (gunpowder in 1), in cities with large pops, such as A1, A2, A4, Bombay, Madras, Delhi.

This here is the former site of Gao:

I would move those troops to deal with JC. I doubt Mansa can muster much troops to attack us - he has his hands full with JC. Also, hopefully us taking his core city will convince him to come begging for peace. If he does, accept.

Also, this here is my counterattack on JC.

If anything, it might distract his attack on A5. Hopefully it will.

Also, you'll notice a worker deep in German territory. I used him to scout the German / Roman border. I saw Bismarck sending some troops JC's way, though nothing the crazy Roman can't deal with. Hopefully, Bis can gather up more troops to distract JC from us.

Any way, JC's treachery sure did add some spice to my turn. Good luck to Ham in dealing with him.

Also, don't forget about the two GPs in Delhi. Right about now might be a good time for a GA, so we can boost our production and churn out even more cats to deal with JC.

 

[vovan]

Roster:
Vovan - Just Played
Hamtastic - UP
IceLion - On Deck
ruff_hi - Skipped