RR13 - Hearts and Minds

[r_rolo1]

I would say that any move north would be beneficial since our original cap is deeply in the south. Must see the map better but probably any city in that sector south of Qohaito would do in average. OFC that if we want to focus more on the western foes, moving a little to the west is also a nice idea.

Tours is a nice war prize: good building portfolio, near of french cap, good pop and not even with a majority of our culture yet. BTW if we acept peace now for it we should use the spies in there before the peace deal ( some have stationary discounts and we need to make certain that we will not let the city starve too much ).

Orleans major bonus IMHO would be to open the path to another celtic city and to claim all that land that already has a majority of our culture but not legally ours since it is too far away of any of our cities. Also, as Tours, it puts us 2 tiles away from Paris proper...

 

[nocho]

Tours indeed tilts the yes/no question about peace with France to yes. Not sure if we can kill some more units to get Burgundian tossed in as well, but in any case, Tours+Orleans sounds like a good deal for a 10-turn breather for DG.

 

[r_rolo1]

The french have units in the move to reinforce Orleans, so atleast we should be able to kill 2-3 more units in the next turn. Most likely that is not enough to make DG to toss one more city, but who knows ...

OTOH making peace now would allow us to move the orleans stack to Isca and to redeploy the air power in a more coherent sense sooner ...

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

So here we go for the plan:

1. On the capitol discussion I'd vote for Verlamoin or Indraprastha.
2. The GSpy in Bombay I'd use for another SY.
3. In Mayan lands I'll focus our missions on Lakamba to ensure we'll keep another city for the AP resolution beside Oxhuitza.
4. I'll try to make some more war success with france and take peace for whatever we'll get. And main target in france seems to be Paris.
5. Zara will get peace once again in case he'll leave at least Matara or Gondar.
6. On the celtic front I'm not sure whether to head for Bibacte or Isca. I tend for Bibracte as we'll be able to start the attack a way earlier. And of cause he'll get his DoW after we'll be able to charge Bibracte!
7. Buildwise I'll try to get some money up while spreading some more sushi and keeping an eye on our spycount
8. Military wise I think we've got enough gunships and should focus on some more bombers and artrilleries..

Anything I forgot?

 

[r_rolo1]

Well , Gondar will be hard to get via peace deal ... Matara is a better deal.

Get some missions in Mutal as well ... both it and Lakamla hae 30% ish of our culture.

I wold build some more 3-4 gunships to be able to rotate them ( one heals, one attacks ), but otherwise you are right: some more siege and more bombers ... and some jet fighters as well. but besides that I think we don't need so much of military.

About the celtic war ... Isca , obviously ( after cleaning out the isolated city, that is ). We don't have enough EP to open the attack route to the celtic cap anyway ... atleast for a couple of turns.

In terms of builds, check the cities that are on perma spy service and make apropriate buildings. I haven't checked it during my set, but some most likely don't even have the full spy building set and that is a huge sin now that we are running the EP slider high. Some will most likely lack markets and grocers as well ( remember that you need a grocer to build a supermarket ) ... and OFC some have it all, but we might not need them in perma spy anymore ( then revert them to wealth )

There are two items you forgot ... no biggies but anyway:

- we should take Shaka out of emancipation. There is a spy already in place waiting for the discounts to do that.

- We are making manhattan and we should finish it this turnset. Remember to make some tac nukes ( not ICBM ). I hope we don't have to go nuclear to win the game, but it is a option I prefer to have

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Ok, before I'm going to slow this game too much, I'll just finish my set after 6 turns. But I won't find any time this weekend so next player should pick it..
And here's the short report, as there's not that much to tell about:

IT:
Started with the "usual" MM of about an hour..

1912:
Pacal canceled the deal bananas to 15 gold. Hmm so what.. Not that biggie.. And I attacked as many french units as I could. One elephant and one infantry. But whatsoever it was enough to get Tours, Orleans as well as Burgundian. I'm not sure whether this came beause we killed two mor of his units, or becaus we hit 50% in Tours.. Unfortunately the pic of te peace deal got lost.
But this one is interesting as well:

Spoiler :

I tried my best to get some more culture to Lakamba, but I'm not sure whether we'll hit the 50% until next AP vote.

1913:
It's once again happy DoW time:

Spoiler :

And I forced Shaka back to slavery.

1914:
Refrigeration is in and I decided to go for Laser next.

1916:
We got a bad event:

Spoiler :

1917:
A truly happy hour:

Spoiler :

And that's it so far.

As I already said: The next player should try to get as many culture to Lakamba within the next one or two turns to have an additional chance to get a city via AP! So don't wait for the 50% discount!

 

[r_rolo1]

5 cities in 5 turns ?

 

[LKendter]

5 cities in a few turns is nice.

Burgundian is finally ours.

I had a feeling Thy was referring to Numidian. We still have 3 more isolated Celtic cities to work on.

Nocho gets to start the next round vs. France.
He should get at least one city via AP vs. Pacal.

EP still is being tough. We are still trying to break those culture monsters of Aksum, Paris and Bibracte.


r_rolo1 -
Thy_Spellcraft - just played
nocho - Up
lymond - on deck
LKendter - in the dugout

 

[nocho]

5 in 5 doesn't sound bad at all indeed! Something tells me we won't maintain a 1 city per turn ratio till the end of the game though.

Got it, will study the thing later today. Any suggestion meanwhile are welcome of course.

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Edit the report!

 

[nocho]

Thanks for the report Thy! Unfortunately I already played some turns, so didn't get the Lakamba hint on time. Anyway, we got the other Mayan city via AP and one of Brennus' cities revolted to us. 2 more first revolts. All capitals are now accessible.

Played 5 or 6 turns just now, plan to play another few later today or tomorrow but need a break now. I'll upload the save in case you feel like commenting stuff. If Zara would give 2 cities for peace I'd take it, but so far he just offers 1 (Addis or Debre). I tried with Brennus for Icsa and the 2 empty cities in our territories but he wouldn't bite either. Note I moved the capital, it seems to save quite a lot of EP in general and obviously specifically versus France, but also Celtia. Oh, Shaka broke free. Could declare but didn't bother just yet.

Edit: Uploaded start of a turn, so I know I need to clean out some units in Ethiopia and Celtia, in case you were wondering why those units were there.

 

[LKendter]

I'm happy with a city from Pacal. Especially since we now have direct access to Mutal thanks to it.
On Lakamba - we have a few more rounds of AP votes. We need to have at least one target.
I understand why a lot of wealth, but a city like Nongoma still needs SecBur. I don't want to see wealth if EP buildings still needed.
Calcutta can use a market place. Decent number of cottages and it will get us one more happy face (silks) into that city.
Polynesian can use a one turn theater to wipe out those 2 unhappy people.
Hopefully the EP needs drops by my turn. There is no way I am keeping all these cities on wealth that are missing useful buildings.

Can we please save the current GS toward a GA? At this point we will get far more EP from a GA then another SY.


WAR: We are by no means locked to win this, so let us get back to war with the Zulu and France. We now have access to Paris, and that is going to a bear to break.
We have *NO* incense sources, but one of the Zulu cities is sitting on incense.
We badly need happiness, and I want that source.

I notice our culture borders continue to suck up AI territory, but we still have work to do. Avingon is at least one stray with no Indian culture.

 

[nocho]

Okay, grinded on and hand it over.

Unfortunately no more flips, but culturally good progress has been made. We have cultural majority in all enemy capitals! Especially this last turn lot of spreading, happened to have many spies just at 50%. That's also the reason not as many spies are located in position, quite some are back in our capital and we spent so much EP we temporrily lost sight of Celtic and Ethiopian cities. Well, that should reestablish itself next turn.

We'll need luck with flipping, but with the biggest cultural "monsters" now culturally ours, the rest should get gradually easier. Though it'll still be long turnsets.

Anyway, as Mutal and Paris just became ours culturally, we can declare right now on both the Mayas and the French. Will leave that for the group to decide though. Did declare on Shaka some turns ago.

Took into account some of LKs suggestions and microed every single god darn city we have. Happy issues were solved by getting nearly all AIs out of emancipation back into the nice practice of slavery. Right now we run 90% spy slider with green numbers. I'm sure with a few more cities on wealth we can run 100%. We hardly need units any more. We need to replenish spies, though EP was more of a constraint than spy-availability.

AP resolution must come up shortly. Various options available there (Addis, Lakamba, though precisely these two are in revolt right now).

Anyway, I'm quite positive about the outcome. Haven't checked, but I think we have cultural presence in nearly all, if not all, tiles of our pangaea-continent. I think in a set or 2 nearly all tiles apart from cities refusing to flip can be coloured purple. (Edit: checked, we only lack cultural presence in the celtic city of Durocortorum, the most northern one on the west coast. That'll solve itself once we start spreading in Lyons )

In totally unimportant news we finished laser and ecology and are now working on composites.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, now it is for real

Anyway, two corrections to nocho:

- No we still have a city that does not have our culture : Durtocurum. Nothing that some missions in Lyons can't fix.

- Well, not a correction, more a clarifying: AP vote is in 3 turns according to BUG

Not much of real gripes Just to point we have 40ishs less spies than in the end of my set ... but anyway, nice work. I'm pretty sure that lymond will reap some benefits in the next set.

Ok on points for the next set:

- On missions priority, by decrescent order:

Marseilles until we can reach it ... and to the 50% if possible as well, but not as a main objective

Uxmal until 50% culture

Gondar

Lyons until we can reach Durtocorum

Tolosa and Durtocurum ( will explain below why )

- On our wars ... Shaka is to keep pounding until he dies barring some wacky vassaling ( everyone is pleased with him ,except brennus that is friendly ... damn warmonger respect ). Brennus is to keep pounding, no ? Not sure on this, since brennus will not toss more than one city for now and even then nothing better than Shangian or Isca ( Gergovia would be pretty nice to isolate the Celtic cap ). Zara will toss Matara , but nothing better ... it was the objective of the war , so i would say to acept it, but i would not object to keep the pounding a little more. On objectives for the french war ... marseilles seems flipable with ease ( since it is easy to isolate ), so maybe Rheims ? it would isolate Paris completely

- We have 2 possible spots to settle: the fort in the east coast next to the current pacal border ( already labeled as "City?" ) and 3 W of Orleans ( 2 S of the "City?" tag ). More cities are always useful at this point and they will help us isolate the remaining cities of our enemies ( hence missions in Durtocorum and Tolosa )

- We need more confu on the west ... I would suggest to put a city churning missionaries for that atleast for a while

- I wonder if we should steal some of the Mayan treasury ... for the 20% spy in Mutal it gives 165 EP to get 184 g ... with 50% should be better

- We don't need more spy missions in Lakamla and I'm debating with myself if we should not move the spies in Bibracte elsewhere or not

- We need a northern navy now ... not a big priority, but we should make one destroyer in the northern and in the north-eastern coasts.

- Techwise ... who cares just avoid mass media for now ... and maybe computers ( sankore in Aksum and SM in bibracte ... with so much religious buildings around , the benefits should be massive )

- Military wise there is not much to say ... but i would like more nukes, just in case. We don't need the war sucess bomb yet, but we migth need it.

Lymond is UP, LK is on deck. Good luck to both

 

[LKendter]

I vote peace with Pacal for now. Let's keep one player we can AP steal from.

OTOH time for some French fries (if you know what I mean)
WAR WAR WAR (subtle hint)


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

 

[lymond]

Got it. NFL is king on Sundays, so I'll take a look at stuff tomorrow.

 

[r_rolo1]

Don't need to rush ... just play slowly and focused This game is so big now that it is easy to lose the sense of the big picture ...

I agree with LK: peace with Pacal until we squeeze what we can with the AP and war with the French. On the other wars ... i refer to the edited post of mine above. I'm with doubts on the brennus war since I feel that brennus is close of acepting something better for us, the Ethiopian one is probably Ok ( not too confident on that either ) and Shaka one is obviously to keep .

BTW team, I'm quite impressed with our EP output. Almost 9k EP/turn ... and could still use some more

 

[lymond]

Ok, my Falcons lost so I'm swearing off NFL forever (or at least 7 more days ). I will start my round tonight since I need to focus on the SGOTM tomorrow.

Honestly, planning at this stage is BS. Just big picture stuff.

Peace w/Pacal...grab some AP cities
Drop some Frenchies in the fryer
Eternal Zulu war until no mas
Keep Celts running until they give us what we want
Pretty much same with Zara...pound on the Ethopians
Lastly, Guided Missiles are your friend.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, you can ( somewhat ) erase the last one, since that now we have gunships, that do the same ( kill units without entering cities ) without getting invariably killed in the process

I still think that we should consider peacing out with Zara for Matara ( and pocket change ) . It was the stated war objective after all and I don't think we will collect enough war sucess for another city in 10 turns anyway .

Oh, and don't forget on more cities, more sushi and more confu

P.S Don't try to rush it. I took 7 h to play my last set and I suppose you will take a similar ammount of time

 

[lymond]

Ok...i'll peace out with Zara now