RR13 - Hearts and Minds

[LKendter]

Good point on SB - we are war warring with Zara for a while.
I agree Matara looks UGLY to get from Zara via culture. I would put a sign on the make MUST get from peace treaty.
Debre is harder to call. Madras expands it borders in 55 turns. That will be less post Eiffel Tower. I can't tell if that will touch or not after that.
However, the worst Zara can do at this point is pillage a bit, so I won't object to trying to get that city.

I am guessing that Mgun is the trouble city with Shaka. That looks ages from Pacal border. I would put a sign on that on also about being off limits.
The Zulu city kwaDukuza needs to get confused. I would like a push city put on the fort 3 west of that. That is another spy only city.
At this point I would like to confuse ALL of Shaka's cities. At this point, it looks like this will be the direction from us to steal cities via AP.
I would like to get Nongoma next from the AP. We gain another rice tile to help Sushi. The bigger bonus is that is THE city to give us access to military attack on the Zulu capitol.

I like the proposal to rail up the Zulu land. My one request is that we do it exclusively on grasslands, plains, etc. I would prefer to not give any AI a production bonus.

 

[LKendter]

Can we please hire two artists in Verlamion? We are at 23% control of the oil tile that touches Durnovaria. I would like to get that city open to attack. Spy missions will also help (in Durn), but we should work it both ways. We only have so many spies, so we should give them supplemental help where ever possible.

I like guided missiles to get cities to 0 troops. The trick is for artillery to weaken the units first. I would only use those in cities that can't be reinforced. Cities like Adulis behind our lines would be the perfect target for these.
They do come with the big disadvantage of going away after attacks.


I do like another war with Brennus. We have the 2 southern cities open to attack right now. Chartes isn't a great city to get, but we can also go after that.
We are at the point in the game that we MUST be pushing every direction at once.
Right now we are pushing Ethiopia and Shaka hard. We still have the challenge of pushing Pacal and DeGaulle.

We have two cities that are culture monsters left in the AIs hand - Aksum and Paris. These cities are on the 5 cities list.

We can't afford to slack off. This game is NOT a lock to win.

 

[r_rolo1]

Good point on SB - we are war warring with Zara for a while.

That was my point. SB must not survive this war.

I agree Matara looks UGLY to get from Zara via culture. I would put a sign on the make MUST get from peace treaty.
Debre is harder to call. Madras expands it borders in 55 turns. That will be less post Eiffel Tower. I can't tell if that will touch or not after that.
However, the worst Zara can do at this point is pillage a bit, so I won't object to trying to get that city.

I'm worried with Debren because the culture must travel through water and culture and ocean together are wacky in civ IV. But anyway, I'm pretty sure we can get those cities faster via peace deal than through culture spread + revolt and we could definitely get the others faster by other means ( AP or flip )

I am guessing that Mgun is the trouble city with Shaka. That looks ages from Pacal border. I would put a sign on that on also about being off limits.

I think you are right ( can't check the save now ). THAT CITY SHOULD NOT BE OURS BEFORE WE GET CULTURE TO PACAL . By my maths and IIRC , we are getting around 200 culture per mission there, so to make the needed culture for the next level ( 10 k IIRC ) we need around 20 sucessful missions. We can't do that in 2 turns with the spies in place or in the way.

I really should had put a sign in that, but I only thinked about this when I was writing the report ...

The Zulu city kwaDukuza needs to get confused. I would like a push city put on the fort 3 west of that. That is another spy only city.
At this point I would like to confuse ALL of Shaka's cities. At this point, it looks like this will be the direction from us to steal cities via AP.

Yup, confuse Shaka at will.

BTW we need to sour somehow the mood between Shaka and Pacal ... Pacal is pleased with Shaka and the last thing we want is Shaka becoming a vassal of pacal.

I would like to get Nongoma next from the AP. We gain another rice tile to help Sushi. The bigger bonus is that is THE city to give us access to military attack on the Zulu capitol.

I like the proposal to rail up the Zulu land. My one request is that we do it exclusively on grasslands, plains, etc. I would prefer to not give any AI a production bonus.

Yup, Nongoma of the AP if possible. I do not expect to see shaka defy that.

Rails through shaka should cut us 2-3 turns of spy movement. That is huge. Same for France. OFC avoid hills and forests within reason .

Can we please hire two artists in Verlamion? We are at 23% control of the oil tile that touches Durnovaria. I would like to get that city open to attack. Spy missions will also help (in Durn), but we should work it both ways. We only have so many spies, so we should give them supplemental help where ever possible.

Ok, my sloppy spec management during war is showing You are right on this OFC.

I like guided missiles to get cities to 0 troops. The trick is for artillery to weaken the units first. I would only use those in cities that can't be reinforced. Cities like Adulis behind our lines would be the perfect target for these.
They do come with the big disadvantage of going away after attacks.

I've decided to play a little with cruise missiles and i think they are quite OK. The do damage between 20% and 50% of the target str, they can kill, they don't have stacking limits and AFAIK they can't be intercepted. In contested warfare they can beat both air power and siege ....

Getting to our situation, they have the big advantage of killing without leaving our territory and they can give quite a punch to the enemy units. They are not reusable , though ... and unfortunately you don't win war success with missile units unless they are nukes :/ ( but again you also don't win war sucess with siege attacks and both aerial bombings and combat ). But again we are talking of 30 hammers

So , I propose a compromise. We use the cruise missiles to kill the last unit in a city and to keep it that way if possible, by killing incoming slow units ( takes in average 3 missiles to kill a unit, so the break point for hammer per hammer destryoyed in on 90 hammers, less than a rifle ). But the main job of clearing the garrisons should be left to siege and to air units ( remember that we will be able to build bombers as soon as we get flight since we have radio already )

I do like another war with Brennus. We have the 2 southern cities open to attack right now. Chartes isn't a great city to get, but we can also go after that.

You forgot Numidian And Dur , as soon as we get there.

We are at the point in the game that we MUST be pushing every direction at once.
Right now we are pushing Ethiopia and Shaka hard. We still have the challenge of pushing Pacal and DeGaulle.

We have two cities that are culture monsters left in the AIs hand - Aksum and Paris. These cities are on the 5 cities list.

We can't afford to slack off. This game is NOT a lock to win.

True. i would add that the mayan territory as a whole is another headache. But to be honest, I think we made very solid progresses in the last sets. It is not a lock to the win and we should definitely not drop the ball, but things are not as shaky as they looked in RR12 by this time period.

I would like to add another thing: we still have some gaps in our land where we can put a city. Food now is irrelevant with sushi so we should fill every place possible, even if that city does noting besides being there hiring 2 spy specs.

 

[LKendter]

It is not a lock to the win and we should definitely not drop the ball, but things are not as shaky as they looked in RR12 by this time period.

I agree 100%. By this time RR12 felt hopeless.

I would like to add another thing: we still have some gaps in our land where we can put a city. Food now is irrelevant with sushi so we should fill every place possible, even if that city does noting besides being there hiring 2 spy specs.

And build spies. We can never have enough. Maybe it is time for this city "E" - even had a 3 food spot with biology.

 

[r_rolo1]

Yup, that was exactly the spot that I had in mind I haven't settled it in my set because there were more juicy spots to settle, but this one should be settled now ...

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Ok.. I don't think there's truly much left to discuss about.. Nonetheless some points on my set:
- There are still some spies in cities with more than 50% of our culture (Camoludunum) or that irrelevant at the moment (Nobamba) that it seems to be a waste of EPs right now.. In case they already have less of a discount (<= 20%) I'll send them to some urgent cities.
- Just to make sure I got you: You want me to DoW Brennus, won't you?
- About Matra: What about a Push city 3S of it? And with Sushi it would get it's border pops fast enough I think..
- And about the next AP Resolution: In case I could stop DG from warring Shaka shall I I shall I not?

 

[LKendter]

Unless DG starts to make progress, I don't see any harm in letting them to keep fighting.

I would hate to skip a potential city grab for that. If we have to, I would rather give them a tech. I want to keep the AP solely on city grabs. We could still lose this, and I hate to give up any possible city via the AP. Keep taking from the Zulu (except that critical city), to get us ready to fight Pacal.

Once troops are ready, and the peace is over - I'm in favor of another Brennus war. We have two potential cities in the south plus Chartres. We need to get more flips ASAP. Worse case, we sign peace again and grab some cities.

 

[r_rolo1]

Pretty much what LK said. i do expect that shaka loses atleast one city fast ... and if that happens pull it out with a tech. Keep the AI to grab cities ( except the already mentioned one ).

And yes, DOW brennus ... after the troops are in place OFC ( and after the truce is over ). There is no reason to be in peace with him until he gets back to the AP, so we will war him until he tosses cities out, truce and repeat ( with the optional revolt to us ) . Brennus is no longer the threat it was 20 turns ago, so I think we can handle him nicely.

P.S A city 3 S of Matara is a good call. File it under "crappy cities to make spies and hire SoL + merc specs"

 

[lymond]

and switch to OR

By the way, I think we would win the UN vote regardless if Pacal builds it. I don't think he is getting any votes

Bombay should get a coal plant. There's 2 health buildings available to counteract the unhealth.

 

[r_rolo1]

Just one minor thing, before Thy plays: I've run a small WB test and indeed a city 3 S of matara will get culture of ours to Matara fast enough due to the 2 artist slots of broadcast tower Eifell gives filled with our free specs + sushi + confu.

That said, the order about the Ethiopian war becomes :

- Do not peace out until SB ceases to be a vassal of Zara ( either by death or by devassaling )

- Take peace by getting Debre. Do not acept less than that.

That said, I think that I also should give some pointers on the Celtic war that is coming out... First, we should not take Chartres of the peace deal until we get culture to Numidian. And we should get out of the war as soon as Brennus is willing to toss a city out ... Shangian would be nice due to the fish, but we maybe can get that one via revolt with some ease.

In fact, all of our wars from now on should take as little as possible and focus on getting cities. The variant is not about flips, but about all the possble tricks you can pick to get a full conquest vic without getting a foot outside our land and flips are only part of the deal.

To end, we should DOW shaka fast . Like I said before Pacal likes Shaka and we really don't need Shaka getting AL from pacal due to vassalhood .... DOWing him will make that more unlikely since we are clearly more powerful than Pacal .

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Just as short info: played at least half through my set.. will finish it momorrow!

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

So here we go:

IT:
Once again I started with making some cash:

Spoiler :

And I made some drafting as well as some MM.

1836:
As predicted the french started to make some progress against the zulus:

Spoiler :

But as you can see, we got another revolt.. This time in zulu land!

1838:
We founded the push city:

Spoiler :

1840:
Another AP resolution came:

Spoiler :

As we couldn't grap any city I just took the peace deal..
And the second city got founded:

Spoiler :

1842:
We finished Flight and went on with Rocketry.
And we got some BAAAAAAAAAAAAD event:

Spoiler :

First I didn't realized what the meant, but we came out with 10 turns of peace with shaka ARRRRG!!! I wanted to declare this turn!!
But at least the peace succeeded:

Spoiler :

So this left only Brennus to DoW and here we go:

Spoiler :

1846:
Finally we make some progress to the Natives:

Spoiler :

1848:
Here we go with Eiffel:

Spoiler :

And another GG was born

1850:
We finished Roketry and I decided to go for Satelites next to continue to AFlight next.
And yet another WW:

Spoiler :

1852:
Some funny demand from Pacal:

Spoiler :

Of cause: NO!
And finally we made it to the Mayan lands:

Spoiler :

And thats where I decided to stop..

 

[LKendter]

What I don't understand are all the spies in Camulodunium. They aren't just moving through, as some have discounts. We already have 58% culture and can attack it.
IMHO Durn and / or Vieene would be much for useful as we are close to be able to attack them militarily.

Glad to see we finally got progress vs. SB. Hopefully that city will flip to us soon. It is frustrating that we still haven't gotten an AI capitol.

The AP not giving us a choice for gaining a city can be summed up in 1 word - GAG.

The natural revolt in Nongoma was nice.
The culture spread continues to move. We now touch Numidian.

Culture into Pacal is great news .
Some rails into Zululand are also nice.
Sushi has been spread a bit more.

It looks like Lalibela is going to be another pain city. That costs are really high to spread culture, and we are force to wait for 50% discount.

I forget about the other bonus of Eiffel Tower - we can hire two artists upon founding a city.


When is Adulis going to flip to us? It is at a 9% flip risk! We are grossly overdue for more flips!

 

[lymond]

We are STILL in Theo

 

[nocho]

Looks allright. May not have time for a plan today, but will try. OR is probably part of that plan to make lymond happy.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, let's start with the critics :

-I see no rails in france

- We should already have culture in the first french city ( that is in the place we see rubble since Brennus gave the city back to the french after we seen it for the last time ). We do not need spies in Isca anymore, so move them out.

- We need culture in numidian.

- We need more planes and guided missiles ( nothing you can do on the last since we only got rocketry now )

- We need some forts near the action areas to harbor Guided missiles and planes.

- We need to be able to attack Dur.

- Chartres and Numidian need to be cleaned out of units. Those cities are isolated of the rest of Brennus land and we can keep them clean with ease

I know this is a harsh list, but it was doable. Planes are now our siege, so the lack of them is hampering our efforts and i see 3 cities that should already be cleaned out of units with guided missiles.

Besides that all is going as expected. Still too little war success to get anything of brennus and SB is still alive ... nothing that can be done on that since the city had it's first revolt in this set. Thankfully the Zulu are still free as well ...

Ok, mini plan of action for next set:

* Missions in ( by order of importance ) :

-Orleans ( the city where we see ruins in south France ). This one is critical , since it will take the same culture to get there from Paris as we needed to get into mayan land . BTW same restriction on AP grab on this one than the one we had in uMug . IMHO we should move our spies out of Isca to it now.

- Mayapan and , when reachable , Hoxhuiza. We need to get to Mutal fast

- Durnovaria. We need to get acess to that city to attack

- Chartres until we get culture in Numidian. Do not acept Chartres for peace before that.

- Nobamba until we reach Bulawayo

- Adis Adeba until we can attack it.

- If there is time , get the cities near 50% up to it . Like Labileia or Ulundi

* Make rails into France, preferably near the border with Brennus. Brennus has no OB with France, so we are safe to do so. Avoid hills

* Forts in:

- 1 S of Camulodunum

- 1 S of Labileia

* Get more planes and Guided missiles. if needed get one of the spy cities to spit guided missiles en masse

* Techwise i would prefer Industrialism->Plastics or Fission to go Adv Flight now. Industrialism means tanks and we might need to fight infantry soon.... We might also need to self tech Arties if pacal does not want to tech it itself :/

* confu in the new cities ASAP

* Get that destroyer back into ur waters :/

* Mess with the civics of our targets. Zara is extremely vulnerable to that, for a example and that way we can also keep them of of FS and Emancipation besides putting people in anarchy when we want to

 

[lymond]

go for it, but switch to OR (not sure if I mentioned that before )

 

[LKendter]

REPOST - I'm getting confused who is up.

r_rolo1 -
Thy_Spellcraft - just played
nocho - Up (and got it)
lymond - on deck
LKendter -

 

[r_rolo1]

Yup, nocho is up

 

[nocho]

Yes got it. Many thanks to rolo for posting my plan.

I'm not really sure yet when I can get to this though. Hopefully I won't have to make you wait for too long.