RR17 - Team A

[vanatteveldt]

Playing the set. Will edit this post until done and add some screenshots at the end.


37: revolt to emancipation

38:city micro: swith boston to work only cottages. Washington is not growing fast
enough for my taste, but only way to improve that is replacing cottages by farms

41:steam power in, set research to steel->rr. Jewish Apostolic Palace built by Holy
Roman Catherine. Switched boston to Levee (slow....), NY and Wash should build a
couple more units so we can start the attack before the AI comes in.

AI will trade SciMeth for Steam Power, but Huayna Capac already has steel so we
should probably keep Steam for a while to prevent him researching RR before us.

43: HC wanted us to adopt HR; I refused.

Army now 4 trebs and 3 grens, with 1 extra gren next turn. Will produce one more of each before switching to levees.

44: Figured that it should actually be enough as attacking damaged riflemen with pinch grenadiers should be a pushover. Mauryan captured at the loss of one treb (plus one lucky withdrawal).

48: Army moving west. Catherine demanded Steam which I refused, but we are running into -5 with her (close borders, refused to help, refuse to stop trading)
Boston lost some tiles to portugal, which is really annoyinh .Queued in a theatre but it's a shame to be distracted from the levee which it badly needs.

50: Magyar captured and the cost of another treb and Mauryan out of revolt and starving while building culture.

Great Scientist popped in Boston, so we should keep the first one for RR. GS can pop an academy in Boston? Steel can be researched in five turns

The South:

Sent the explorer east to look at the coast and found a juicy peninsula. Two proposed city sites dotmapped.

The east:

As you can see Boston is getting kind of besieged, by culture from the north and annoyed Catherine from the south and east...

The West:

Western part looks good, will need serious worker attention. I dotmapped one city to be squeezed in (much) later.

Our cities:

City overview; Boston is feeling the cultural pressure. The two grenadiers are placeholders. As you can see Washington is now outsciencing Boston because of buro + university. We should probably start building universities in other places as well to work towards Oxford. Plenty of happy room for most cities because of +3 happy resources and no emancipation penalty. Cities are growing at a decent pace but NY and Washington could both use a bit more.

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We still have a monopoly on Steam which is good news for our RR/mining inc chances. We might want to work on farming a merchant next for Sushi, we could put two merchants in Washington?

Since it is turn 50 we can now turn our attention to non-barbs. HRE Catherine is a logical target, followed by Portuguese Washington?

We should make micro plans for Philly and the two new cities. Mauryan looks production with cows, horses, iron and four hills. Magyar is not so obvious: gems, sugar, and lots of non-riverside grass and plains. Cottage her up?

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r_rolo1 - up
Thrar - on deck
LKendter
Sengir
vanatteveldt

 

[Thrar]

Looks good!

We have 6 cities now, which is what we need for the various national wonders. New cities will take a while to become productive and we're aiming for a quick military victory, so I'd say we don't need to peacefully expand any further.
Each of our cities should eventually get a university for Oxford, but we don't need to hurry. We're now in turn 50, so let's get an army and start bashing some heads! After steel is in, we can build cannons almost exclusively and wipe out our two eastern neighbors.

I don't think we should trade for SciMeth. We simply don't need it any time soon. Sushi is at Medicine, which is quite a detour from the warring technologies. If we want to focus on war, I'd prefer going AL and then towards artillery. Thinking about it, even Biology (with National Park) might be a waste of time compared to the warring techs. We want this game to be over soon after all!

 

[vanatteveldt]

If we plan for portugal to be our first victim (he will probably make the easiest pickings), we might as well cancel the theater in Boston...

 

[r_rolo1]

Got it for the weekend.

As thrar says it looks good. And I also agree that it is time to prepare to clean out Cathy and Wash ...

 

[Sengir]

Looks good indeed. Let's prep for war.
I think going for war techs after RR and extorting the other techs will get us to the end soonest

 

[vanatteveldt]

Let's move some explorers to the north and east to check out stacks/garrisons. I think that it might be best to do a quick strike on Lisbon to cripple Portugal, extort some techs, and get cultural breathing room for Boston (and Portugal is dead last on the score board so should be easy to crack). In the meantime, build up army to attack HRE.

First strike should probably be grens/rifles plus cannons. Current 'army' is 3 trebs, 4 rifles, and 4 grens, so we will need some serious buildup. The explorer near Washington can be next to Lisbon in two turns so we have some intel.

Please don't forget to build an academy in either Boston or Washington before pressing end turn, as I set research to 100% and it would be a shame to waste 35 beakers...

 

[LKendter]

I vote Boston for the academy.

 

[vanatteveldt]

O I guess I didn't express any preference..

+1 for Boston. Washington is 10 beakers or so better short term, but as soon as we move out of buro, get back the lost cottages, and mature them plus free speech Boston should be a lot better...

(edit: as an aside, I played a single player industrial start yesterday with HRE, playing a hammer-heavy mining+sushi game. Corporations are great fun with 75% rathauses. I suppose England would also be a good candidate with red coats for an immediate boost and the stock exchange to offset corporation costs... I must say I like the industrial starts, ancient starts were getting sort of repetitive, and the industrial era offers some interesting tactic choices, while leaving enough room for scientific advance.)

 

[r_rolo1]

So basically:

- Finish Steel, and go for AL ( I agree that for now, we need to concentrate in pure military power and AL also has factories to boost up )

- Academy in Boston

- Buildup of cannons and grens+ rifles ( some prebuild of trebs before steel ? ) + some cavs to get easy pickings. To be honest, I'm not sure if a serious buildup is needed given that I see a city defended by 1 cat ....

- last but not least ... how about getting the SoL done ?

 

[Sengir]

Sounds like plan to me. And a good one at that.

 

[Thrar]

Is SoL really worth it? It's an expensive wonder even with copper, we don't have a lot of cities and don't want the game to last all that long anyway. Those hammers can be better spent on grens and cannons imo.

I'd go RR after Steel to secure mining. Railroads will be nice to speed up reinforcements as well. With mining, I think RR gives a similar production boost as factories anyway and we can get by without infantry for a bit still.

 

[vanatteveldt]

+1 for RR
The benefits of RR are pretty much immediate and don't need expensive factories; we have workers enough anyway, and logistics become a lot easier with railroads. It doesn't matter so much whether rifles clean up after cannon or infantry.

We don't have a GE for SoL, so we will have to pay to full (copper-reduced) cost of 600 hammers = 7.5 cannon/grenadiers. Is that worth it?

After we extort SciMeth and research AL, do we want to get biology for the farm boost and NP (and future road to sushi), or are those not worth the detour given that we don't really have some many farms? The alternative is beelining tanks/SEALs, which means AL->SciMeth->physics->Electricity->Industrialism->Combustion (for oil). Since bio is only a single relatively inexpensive tech, I think it should be worth it?

IF we will go for biology, I think NY should become a natpark driven merchant farm to fund 100% science in cottage cities and should get mining HQ, wall street, and possibly SoL; and our capital should become iron works city.

IF we don't go for biology, I think NY should become iron works city as I think it has highest base production after railroading all these forests. In that case, I vote for Philly as merchant farm and corporate HQ. It has double food (albeit second rate), two flood plains, and has not really been cottaged up.

In about 15 turns we will have 13 towns, with a couple more villages, say 15 towns shortly. Will it be worth it switching to US+FS (+FM?)? Yield: 15 hammers + 30 commerce + 6 gold maintenance saved. Buro is currently worth 16 hammers and 22 commerce, and rep is worth around 20 science. So it seems that staying in US+FS until the conquered lands come online is superior? (edit: if Boston gets an academy commerce there will be worth more than in Washington, which might tip the balance..)

Rules clarification question: is saving - revolting to FM using GA to check out trade routes - reloading permissible to gauge the effect of free market?

 

[r_rolo1]

I'm ok with reloading to check that ... it is the devs fault that the F3 screen does not show a accurate effect of civic changes.

On RR, I can live with RR, but I'm not so sure if it really a better alternative than AL. AL gives infantry , and that is what I was thinking on when I proposed it not the factories ( they are a cool supplement , though ). As I'm expecting that the AI will gun as dumb ducks for the free GPs, it would not be unlikely to have a monopoly on them for a while and given that infantry trounces every previous gunpowder unit ...

On SoL I can live without doing it if the team feels like not doing it, I can go there ... especially given the opportunity cost of the thing at this point vs more military.

BTW on trading for SciMet ... well do we really want to? I don't see much of a point unless we want to go physics ->Artillery ( in there I can definitely agree ) ...

 

[Thrar]

I'd say let's get a bit of an economy going, build railroads and crush everyone with cannons and grens+rifles and a little later infantry. Imo, we can actually turn off teching after AL and pour everything into troops. Capture some of the east, then overrun and raze the west.
I didn't check the numbers but we're talking about 15k+ for artillery as the nearest military tech - just imagine how many units you can rushbuy with that!

There is nothing that can really stand up to massed infantry/cannons until considerably further down the tech tree (late modern era); even if someone could get to artillery or tanks that shouldn't be a problem. Sci Meth and everything behind that isn't worth the investment imo. If need be, we can spend some of our cash income to instigate wars slowing down those further away.

Thinking about it, building an academy wouldn't make all too much sense then. We could hold on to the GS for a bit, then pop a GA when we're ready to switch to FS/US. Would be a nice way to kickstart our troop production.

 

[LKendter]

I can't recall if we already can see coal. Not use to industrial starts. Do we have some in reach, or do we need to research the needed tech?

If the plan is fast military, then I agree SoL is not with the bother.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Re RR vs AL: I think that in the first one or two wars, cannons will be more important than the infantry behind it... but we might not need so many suicide cannons (the first two into fortified riflemen have a good chance of dying) if we back them with infantry.

I think the bigger question is whether we feel that mining is worth it. We don't have so many resources (1 each of iron, copper, gold, silver) but capturing a couple more should be easy. Benefit is that newly captured cities become productive pretty quick. If we want mining, it might be prudent to go RR-AL to secure it.

Re trading for scimeth: I wrote extort it, not trade it . My plan would be to capture lisbon while building up the army for a proper invasion of HRE. Portugal has poor land so should be easy to push over. They might even capitulate if we capture Lisbon plus possibly their coastal town W of Lisbon...

Re coal: Yes, steam power revealed coal. We don't have any, but Portugal does

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, time to roll out ...

The mission for my set was not exactly the ones I prefer: military buildup for others to do the hammering. But it has to be done, right ?

Anyway, the set pretty much started with a demand ...

Spoiler :

Thanks, but no thanks. BTW, we need to keep a good eye on this one. He got hands full during the set and I'm thinking that he might be our biggest stomp on the victory path.

Back on the subject, free workers !

Spoiler :

The barbs were kind enough to let the workers there for us to capture...

In case you haven't noticed, we got Steel in the IBT:

Spoiler :

I continued in the RR track, but have been piling cash for deficit research

We got gems in our cap:

Spoiler :

Not that I'm complaining, but I would had preferred iron or something like that

We got a theatre event .. I chose the culture. Not that it matters much:

Spoiler :

And I ended the set with pretty much that. So, end of set pics:

Spoiler :

Well, techwise there isn't much to say. I could had traded for SciMet, but I'm not seeing it as useful.

The real question is about the war. As you can see in the last pic, I already have a decently sized SoD. It might not be as noticeable as that, but the cities that we are aiming to pound in Portugal are thinly garrisoned ( the biggest garrison they have is in the cap, with 2 rifles and 1 cav ), so I think we can strike now. Do we , or we wait a little more ?

Roster

r_rolo1 - just played
Thrar - UP
LKendter - on deck
Sengir
vanatteveldt

>>Save<<​

 

[LKendter]

Ok, time to roll out ...

The mission for my set was not exactly the ones I prefer: military buildup for others to do the hammering. But it has to be done, right ?

These are the sets I prefer!

I'll take peace turns any time.

 

[Thrar]

Got it, but no time for a closer look now. I've done buildup sets twice in RR16, finally some !

I think we're seeing thin garrisons because of the late start. Usually, by this time the AI has tons of old units sitting around that it can cheaply upgrade, but in this game they have to build everything the hard way. All the better for us!

 

[Sengir]

I can't look at the save right now, but with a power rating of 1.4 and small garrisons visible, I'd say we take them out now.