RR13 - Hearts and Minds

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Taking a look at the map makes me agreeing to LK. I too think we need to speed things up. And also for military production and stack protectors rails seems to be the better desicion.
About Pacal: The only way I see is to get towards him as fast as possible.. So going for Shaka as our next target should be the way.. I'd leave SB's cities behind and would get some culture there the common way..

 

[LKendter]

We need to get a lot more spies going. We need to be hitting multiple cities at the same time.

The last two sets did a great job of getting rid of SB behind our lines. Now we need to expand our lines.

 

[r_rolo1]

I'm pissed ... I'm definitely pissed with my computer. It bluescreened 3 times during the set and one right now when I was already finishing the report...

Anyway, like I said below, i loaded the save and seen DG and pacal with Sci met. I was thinking that with some luck and with our stone, they would go first Physics and then Communism, and even if we were beaten to Commie, we would still have good chances on the kremlin. I was wrong :/

But going to the set ... first thing to do was to spread confu to snaketown. That city needs definitely more culture to give a worthwile culture output per mission and a discount is also good.

Spoiler :

I was prepared to get chaco via AP ... that would probably need 2 votes given the previous happenings with SB. Thankfully it was not needed:

Spoiler :

So i was free to get another city via AP:

Spoiler :

Some turns of rotten spy luck, sabotages coming from all sides ( Brennus, France, Ethiopia ... ) and we got a very fitting event on SB:

Spoiler :

Free EP is free EP and I'm not exactly worried with SB being pissed with us ....

BTW I decided to start in this set to not make any mission with more than -30% discount due to wait to cut time. i strongly suggest we continue with that. Ep is not the limiting factor, time is.

Some more turns later ( and while I was making military to deal with Shaka and a possible Ethiopian invasion ) and i seen Breenus capturing yet another city of DG. I brokered peace between them ASAP:

Spoiler :

And in good time ,because Brennus would surelu capture another city and cap DG in the next turn:

Spoiler :

This is actually good, since SB will be forced to evactuate part of his army to hold that city north

I ended the set with Commie ... and to my dismay we will not get Kremlin ( i already knew that 2 or 3 turns ago, but better to finish the tech anyway ). I left Steam in queue ( 7 turns @ sustainable spending )

Some end of set pics...

First, cities with revolt risk to us

Spoiler :

Only mesa verde is AP reachable.

EP and tech screens:

Spoiler :

No problems in that sector, in spite of not being reassuring to see brennus going Rifling :/

We opened a path to one of Zara cities in the last turn of the set:

Spoiler :

He dropped his hands full status 2 turns before the end of the set ...

And a possible city spot, for when it is open:

Spoiler :

Ok, some discussion:

First, sorry for the bad played set. My comp is really giving me the fits today and I definitely lost focus in between the 1st and 2nd Blue screen ( hence the GT city with 10 pop and the cities without garrison ). I also made a bet on the kremlin and lost ... But I can't do anything to solve that besides replay the whole thing

On grand planning .... dunno. We can definitely make a splendid little war with SB, btu I'm not sure if that will only make Breenus to jump on him for the finish job. Shaka would most likely give us a decent city for peace if we wanted to , but i feel that we need to do put more culture out of Ondini bfore even thingin on that. We can also make war with Zara, but we will need a bigger military ...

The big if is Brennus. For now he is quiet, but I'm pretty sure he will plot another war very soon ... especially when he gets rifles. because of that I strongly urge the next player to continue to make military to face Brennus. The Shaka stack needs no reinforcements .... BTW we have 2 GG idling ( one inherited, the other got in the last turn of my set ). Save one for medic and settle the other somewhere ?

The next targets for EP IMHO should be, besides the ones we are already focusing on Chartres and the other ex french city that borders us ... to get to France proper.

Thy is up if he is already in the area.

>>Save Here<<​

 

[LKendter]

Commie - what happened to rails?

 

[r_rolo1]

Commie - what happened to rails?

My idea was to go rails indeed, but then I loaded the game to play and seen 2 AI with SciMet. Decided to take no chances.

 

[LKendter]

EP isn't our problem at this point, it is production and getting spies to the front. We badly need the spies to get to cities faster (rails).
IMO if we lose it will be lack of spy missions, not EP. We need that to be the sole focus. Even why I built almost no military during my set.

 

[LKendter]

I agree 100% with Rolo's city sign above Mesa Verde.
Glad to see the spy count up again.
The other good news is we seem to have the tech lead.

Chaco Cannon - can we get theatre first and hire some artists? I want to get the border push city built ASAP. Courthouse is useless - we don't need EP as much as we need to push culture. Build the CH second. We are at the point in this game IMO that we must go culture push above all else.

We need to talk war about with SB. We need Burgundian ASAP, as that is part of the pathway to De Gaulle. In addition it has a settled general and priest. This should make a decent military city. 3 west of that town, and we start to push on Chartres.

We got the two expected cities - Chaco Cannon and Qohaito (needs garrison ASAP). We now need to work toward the next block of cities. I see Ondini (8% flip), Mesa (62% us), Snaketown (8% us), and Yeha (no chance near term except via AP). That isn't enough at the moment.
Adulis should open up in 19 turns with Calcutta's next border expansion. That is a 5th target.
Burgundian should give us a 6th target, and open another direction. That is why the proposed war.

We are at 21% for the push city past Ondini, so that is one potential spot to really push hard.

 

[LKendter]

I am not sure what the GT city is doing. It is at size 10 using a useless water tile. Can we please put a whip / draft sign above it?

I am again going to propose to not wait for spy missions to hit 50%.
I know I am sounding like a broken record, but TIME is our enemy. IMO at our current pace we will lose. We need to keep up the pace of the last 3 sets for flips, but we don't have enough potential new cities.
Mesa Verde @10% discount costs us just 29 EP for 31 CP.
Snaketown @ 10% discount costs us just 15 EP for 16 CP. In addition, it is an oil source I want to take away from the AI.
Any city we take from Brennus is huge. We can slowly kill the #1 threat.


Iron Works - Delhi is our best production city. I would like to start it here. We need a strong city to snag the late game wonders.

Kremlin - It probably a lost cause.
Pacal is 7 turns away from finishing it. I need to see the report from Rolo to comment further. I'm confused on this one. If we pushed Commie, I don't understand why no Kremlin I/P.

It is tough, but we must be attacking all directions at least somewhat to win this. Right now we are doing decent there with push on southern Celtic cities, one Zara city, and one Zulu city. The one direction lacking is toward De Gaulle. That is why I would like SB war and pushing Burgundian. Pushing the Zulu, pushes us toward Pacal.


r_rolo1 - just played
Thy_Spellcraft - Up
nocho - on deck
lymond -
LKendter -

 

[r_rolo1]

Pacal is 7 turns away from finishing it. I need to see the report from Rolo to comment further. I'm confused on this one. If we pushed Commie, I don't understand why no Kremlin I/P.

Fair enough, I was already teching commie when Pacal got there ... i haven't placed it exactly because of not having a single place where we can beat Pacal to it. Was quite disapointed to notice that :/

Anyway uploading pics ... report in 20 min/half hour

 

[r_rolo1]

Finally finished editing. I really need a good OS reinstall

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Got it and I'll hopefully find the time to post some PPP this evening.

 

[AJ11]

EP isn't our problem at this point, it is production and getting spies to the front. We badly need the spies to get to cities faster (rails).
IMO if we lose it will be lack of spy missions, not EP. We need that to be the sole focus. Even why I built almost no military during my set.

Lurker: Why did you bother with a Time VC? Why not disable that but leave the other VC? Time always is a silly VC to me, because it ain't 2012...!

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Ok, some PPP:

Shaka would give Ondini, his 290 gold and would convert to Conf for peace. As we'll need the "Push City" as fast as possible for further expansion I'm not sure whether it would be faster to get this via spy missions or the normal way. So in case it would be faster the normal way I'd take the peace. This also would leave the SOD for fighting Zara quite soon. And we'll need it as I'm pretty sure he's plotting for us..
But even in case we don't stop the war I'd move some troops towards Zara just to be save and would keep building some military..
Concerning IW: I'd rather put it into Bombay. It has some more base prod and would get 12 additional hammers from levee.
My spy action I'd mainly concentrate on Burgudian as well as on Yeha.. Some in snake and Mesa but both cities don't seem to be that important at the moment.
Techwise we should keep headding towards rails.
And as usually: spies, spies, spies. End even some more spies..
Any more suggestions?

 

[LKendter]

Take Ondini for peace. That is the faster way to get that city, and then whip a theater ASAP to work toward the next push city. Two artists vs. the Zulu should get the push spot fast since it is already 14% Indian.
As I've been saying, time is our enemy, and this saves time on the Zulu front.

I agree on rails - that is the path I've already been pushing for.

I feel we have to keep spy actions on several cities at once.
Burgundian is a high priority.
I feel we still need to push the southern cities from Brennus.
If nothing else, we need to have cites to steal via AP. The extra bonus with flipping those cities is our front line doesn't expand. We can't get Burgundian via AP with it being the last city from SB.
Bombay IMO is the worst possible city for Iron Works. It already has Heroic Epic for a production boost.
I've suffered too many games where late game wonders kept getting built in the HE / IW city wasting the boast from HE a good part of the late game.
In addition, I've seen way too much shield wastage from building military with TO many boosts in one city.
I reconfigured Delhi to be shield heavy, and I can get it above Bombay now. Delhi also has a ton of rivers, and more tiles that benefit from rails.
Not to mention that fact that we can't afford to shut down our strongest military city. We need troops NOW.
There is nothing you can say to convince me to accept Bombay, as I very strongly oppose this choice.

 

[lymond]

LK - I'm in total agreement with you about IW in Bombay. Mixing IW and HE is counterproductive

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

To be honest I totally missed HE in Bombay. Taking this in account I have to agree to you! So Delhi is the way to go fo IW!

 

[LKendter]

to be honest i totally missed he in bombay. Taking this in account i have to agree to you! So delhi is the way to go fo iw!

.....

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Ok, played a bit shorter set, but at least the gamme keeps gioing..
And here's the report:

IT:
First of all I started with returning to peace once again:

Spoiler :

The Confu I took to make sure he'll like us at least a few turns longer before redeclaring..
And looking through the available ressource-deals I found this one:

Spoiler :

After changing the EP focus (we won't need that many EPs on Shaka for quite some time) I decided to change to civics to free speech as we need to spread our culture onto 3 spots for further push cities the 100% additional culture seems a bit more important than the possebility of drafting and the 25% additional EPs. (By the way: of cause I made a turn of drafting beforehand and yes I also did it in our GT-city!)

1650:
Gaulle came with quite a nice demand:

Spoiler :

No way!
But another AP resolution came up as well:

Spoiler :

No need to think about wich one to take: We demanded Mesa "back"!
To finish the quite eventful turn a GSpy was born. As I don't have any clue what to do with him I left him be for now.

1655:

Mesa is ours:

Spoiler :

1665:
We finished stream and went on with rails.

1675:
In case there's nothing to laugh about the game comes up to give you something:

Spoiler :

*lol*
But we also got a bit lucky:

Spoiler :

And I finished my set with the first of our needed push cities:

Spoiler :

We need to discuss, what to do with the GSpy, and whether we want to stay in FS or change to natio once again. And Burgundian seems no longer the critical city. The city north of it witch Brennus took seems to be the better push city.. And we already spread some culture there.. And there's a second city in ethopian lands we could spread culture to.. (the one west of Yeha)
On the military front there are two smaller stacks to be able to fend off Brennus but I decided on more spies and some infra than for military.. Seeing Yeha this might be a wrong decision. But I think we should prepare for Zara!

 

[LKendter]

r_rolo1 -
Thy_Spellcraft - just played
nocho - Up
lymond - on deck
LKendter - taking a nap.

 

[LKendter]

Quick look:
YEA - we have 4 coal sources.

We now own Mesa Verde. We are close to controlling the flip city point above.
We got border push city below Burgundian built.

Surprised we are in free speech, but being religious not too big a deal. We still make 857 EP a turn.

Madras is now size 11 - GACK. Why did we build GT if we aren't going to whip / draft?

Potential flips: Snaketown (6.42), and Burgundian (2.95 - building Hermitage).
Yeha is 61% us, but no flip possibility.
Chartes is now open to culture spread. We have a start toward De Gaulle.
Zulu push is at 21% - hopefully not too far away.