S-02 Learning to Ride

[angeleyes]

I bet Blid would have loved to capture Paris but he's to late :




The french are destroyed:





First turns were not that easy, i could capture Lyons only in my third turn, but than it went smoothly Here a short summary:

0 MM city's to non-grow. Do something weird: gift Tokugawa music to please him and to be able to trade with him again. Well, he accepts, and that's all

1 RP comes in > steel (drydock). Lyons now defended by 5 defenders.No attack. Looks harder than i thought. Cossack (95%) dies when attacking pikeman.

2 Capture of Rouen.

3 Capture of Lyons (Holy city of the christians, Notre Dame).

4 Capture of Rheims.

6 Capture of Chartres.

7 Capture of Orleans (our Holy city, Temple of Solomon > +26gold).

8 Raze Becanson. Steel comes in > Steampower & scienceslider 0%, let Blid decide.

9 Bis asks for economics. NO!
Raze Avignon.

10 Louis made peace with Hatshepsut. Good for Hatshy's conscience i think because .... Capture of Paris and Elimination of French civilization. Paris has Parthenon, Sistine chapel and Stonehenge. Culture to 40%

11 culture 0%.

Think Blid needs a few turns for preparations before he can attack Bis.A few galleons. We can attack Bis at two fronts, north and south. There's also a galley near London you can upgrade.

save

 

[sooooo]

Well, Asperge and Cosmichail have captured Blid's entire country, but he gets to take it out on the germans.

Cosmichail
Kikinit
mike p
Asperge - Just Played
blid - UP
sooooo - On Deck

 

[angeleyes]

Since we were in a Golden Age and Financial, our coast tiles were generating 2 Food and 4 Commerce, which meant I fired most of the specialists in Moscow, since the merchants and scientists are only generating 3 commerce equivalents. Slowed down our great people points, but we just ended up getting another crappy artist anyway.

Bit late with commenting this but what you are saying doesn't make sense to me: if you had held those specialist, chance to get something else than an artist would have been much bigger. Always keep as many specialists as possible in the national epic city i would think.

 

[Cosmichail]

Blid's entire country, but he gets to take it out on the germans.

Now that's irony.

Nice work Asperge, impressive, most impressive. It's always nice to see Louis get it.

 

[mike p]

Bit late with commenting this but what you are saying doesn't make sense to me: if you had held those specialist, chance to get something else than an artist would have been much bigger. Always keep as many specialists as possible in the national epic city i would think.

Scientists were giving 3 beakers. Putting them to work as fishermen generated 2 food and 4 commerce - about 3 beakers and 1 gold. If we just leave them as scientists then we are getting less benefit from the Golden Age. Ideally you should fire all of your specialists during a golden age, and let them work tiles that receive the benefit. (great people points aside - and firing them delayed our great person by no more than a turn or two, and we didn't use him right away anyway.)

We were still only about 20% for a great artist but we just seem to hitting them.

 

[angeleyes]

Ideally you should fire all of your specialists during a golden age

Oh no. For example 5 specialists in our Capital changing to the watertiles gives you in 10 turns 50 gold extra, but you loses 150 great persons points.
For example you need 900 GP-points (middle game)and a great merchant gives 1800 gold, than 150 great person-points are worth 1800/6 = 300 gold. That's 6 times more.

Other approach: if 900 GP-point gives you 1800 gold, than 1 GP-point is worth 2 gold, and 1 merchant is worth 3 gold + 3GP-points (=6gold) = 9 gold. Much more than 4 you get during a golden age.

I'm curious if i made a big mistake somewhere in my arguing...

EDIT: yes, forgot Moscow has national epic so 1 specialist = 6GP. (= 12 gold)

 

[mike p]

That's true, but you could also hire extra specialists after the golden age to eat up the extra food you stockpiled and replace the great person points. It's a make hay while the sun shines kind of thing. You can play catch up on the GPP, but the Golden Age is use it or lose it.

You can also generally play catch up faster if the added food means the city grows and you can hire another specialists. 10 turns of five specialists working a 2 food tile is an additional 100 food. I'm not 100% sure that 2 Food and 4 commerce is better than 3 commerce (beakers or gold for scientists or merchants) and 6 GPP, and it's certainly not better in every single instance, but on the whole it's probably a better use.

 

[angeleyes]

I'm not 100% sure that 2 Food and 4 commerce is better than 3 commerce (beakers or gold for scientists or merchants) and 6 GP

6GP is worth let's say 12 gold. So you have to choose for your citizen between a 2food/4gold or 0food/15gold, then the latter one is almost always the best. Food is very important but it's purpose is hammers and gold. You wouldn't leave a goldhill if your city is still growing??? And a goldhill is only 7 gold.

 

[Cosmichail]

Ok you guys Mike and Asperge I am reaching for the aspirin now. Too much thinking makes my brain hurt. We just a bunch of blood warriors anyways and Great People not really that necessary but hey I like the explanation. Like I said Asperge is a detail man which every good corporation needs. By the time we get another Great person we'll be near won. Soooo games are the fastest I've ever played. Talk about "blitzkrieg". (please no explanations about blitzkrieg either I do know what it means but just like the word it sounds cool)

 

[blid]

Can I understand why Egypt can live and France must die ?
Eh, they don't have icelands to exile to ? Bah

It seems like I need to regroup units first in the southern part. There are a bunch of cossacks healing up north in the former France. But something is annoying. If I wait too much, Bis would certainly get rifles. He has all the pre-reqisites for rifling and has some grenadiers already. Even if we start now, I guess we'll be facing rifles in the middle of the war but we'll have just to overhelm that. I'll whip some galleons though to act quickly

I am not sure attacking on 2 fronts is a good idea in this position. We can't hold cities south because cossacks are poor defenders and that city in the north is isolated. My plan is attack it, wait for Bis to bring units there and attack him in the open while galleons make stealth attack on coastal cities. But wait, this is tilted axis. This changes things a bit ... . This is awkward (never played tilted axis before) but I understand now what Asperge was saying about attacking south. Those units in French territory don't need to move. They are right where they need to be

I switch Yekaterinburg from courthouse to galleon. Yaroslav'l whips a galleon and Yakutsk should follow next turn. These northern cities will produce galleons to be used in the southern attack (still following )

I estimate to be able to attack on turn 4-5. Let's just see

Press enter

Research to 70%. Steam power is fine by me. This is a pre-req for railroads and that may be the thing we need most.
London frigate rythm is insance. Must be 2 each 3 turns. DryDock + heroic epic is a nice combo. It was a while since I've used any drydocks. I play fractal maps and they seem to be more often panagea type than not

We got an engineer which is quite lucky since artist had more than 40% odds. Send him to London, the most productive city. I'd rush West point probably but first see if any wonder may be worthwhile

Nearly all cities are working on military. Orleans, a shrine city, is set on bank

I feel a bit shameful about this but I asked Bis for 190g and he gave me. Mind we had about 1000 gold in the treasury but he agreed. That was mainly to slow him on the upgrade process. 190 may let him upgrade at least 5 or 6 longbows. Don't know exactly what is the bonus they get on upgrades on monarch level


Sinan arrived in London, at which point I thought 13 turns for west point was not a good deal and we can afford it once we finish with Bis. I'd rather use Sinan to get Pentagon once assembly line is hooked. So I send him back to London where the 2 great engineer points are more useful. At least he saw some country

Turn 5 : I am ready to declare on Bis and saw that Sally got rifling. Bis has corporation. He is pleased with Sally so he may have traded that with him. I just hope he was researching that rather than rifling.

We were having a fair number of deals with Bis.

I cancel them and try to see if we can get substitues but the only one who can trade is Toku but he is not willing to. Guess we'll have to keep german cities if they have valuable resources we don't have

I declare war. Germans were not waiting for such a stab. We have 0 trade routes. I open borders with Hatty and get some money (she probably got more but phbbbbt). I was only prepared in north germany, but Like I said, I'd like him to send units north so I can get more kills in the south

First city to fall is Frankfurt

Cossacks were separated to avoid colateral damage from cats but Bis did not attack and we take the city with 0 losses. After some frigate bombing down to 30% defense, pikes and grenies were easy prey for veteran cossacks. Gave one of them range and discover a new city of Bis. Gotta be razed. I knew I should have bought his map (he was asking for 20 gold).

How crappy : 10 gold plunder ? it is brand new. Burn baby, Burn

Look at this frightening Bis retaliation troops (they all die next turn with >95% odds)

Another razed city

On my turn 9, got some bad news

Biz has rifles and Sally democracy. With WW and emancipation, we'll have to lead a luxurious life

I take Bremen for the wine

But Dortmund got razed

I know that rifles in the hands of Sally and probably Toku next make domination an easier goal. But we said conquest, so conquest it should be

Some cossacks are waiting in London to make military police. Don't know if this next wave is necessary to finish continent Bis cities. Maybe send them to the cities on the islands

Troops in Frankfurt would finish healing next turn and should go on to Hamburg.

Cologne is down to 0% defense thanks to permanent bommbing nearly all my turnset

This is first time I use cossacks ever. I had 0 losses. What were they waiting until warlords to nerf those ? They are unstoppable
Just for taking cities, WW is striking along with emancipation penalty. Lux is at 10%. Guess we'll have to increase it again soon. We are researching railroads

Why are we not playing 15 turn ? Rifles should fall to the veterans or at least take serious damage. I hope Bis won't make enough money to upgrade too much units. We'll see after sooooo turnset if we can take Sally with cossacks or not. IMO, overwhelming numbers should do even against rifles

Sooooo, I am transporting units in galleons for faster movement so you need to check around to get a grasp of the situation. I can tell you what I was aiming for but I trust you to find better tactics

save

 

[Kikinit]

Nicely done guys. How many of Bismark's cities do we want to keep? We must be getting close to domination. We'll need to keep an eye on the limits and decide at some point to raze all future cities.

 

[angeleyes]

We are still far from domination (37% > 64%). We certainly can take all good german city's. Only the capturing of the inland city's ( Hamburg, Berlin) will be bloody, cause we can't bombard them.
Zero losses against a tougher opponent, i lost two cossacks against pike's iirc at 85-90%.
We could change to mercantilism. We don't have FP either, both are not really necessary. Use GE for FP in germany ?

 

[Kikinit]

The ease at which we are completing this game says to me that this group needs to play either harder variants or step up from Monarch to Emporer. We could always try blid's ring variant again.

 

[sooooo]

I see it and will play tonight. Probably go to mercantilism. The remaining german cities will be a good test of how well cossacks do against rifles, to see what our options are with Saladin+Toku.

 

[blid]

The ease at which we are completing this game says to me that this group needs to play either harder variants or step up from Monarch to Emporer. We could always try blid's ring variant again.

Well, if we really want to loose, we can try the ring on emperor
Just kidding of course but I'd like to try something on emperor.

Now game is not finished yet. We may need to go all the way to metal horses. Concerning domination, I think with all the ice tiles, it doesn't play very differently from a conquest anyway

Zero losses against a tougher opponent, I lost two cossacks against pike's iirc at 85-90%.

I had poorer odds at 75% but Was lucky enough to win them. Bombing helped a bit too, since I took coastal cities.

Haven't thought about mercantilism myself but I do agree 100%

We need to keep Cologne. It has dyes and givers a wonderful passage for ships

 

[sooooo]

I played my 10 turns but they took me much longer than I anticipated so this report will be rather brief. I also apologise if you spot any .

IHT: I see a crossbow is being built! What's going on here? Catherine would not approve. Change it to a cossack.

T1: Capture Dusseldorf (ivory+dyes). Revolt to mercantilism.
T2: Capture Cologne (city which links 2 seas)
T3: Capture Hambug and Berlin (Pyramids).
T4: Capture Essen. Culture to 30%, science to 0%.
T5: Raze Hannover.
T6: Sign a cease fire.
T8: Redeclare, raze Stuttgart and the Germans are dead.
T9-T10: Move troops near remaining civs.

I faced an average of 1 rifle per city, the rest were longbows and pikes. A highly promoted cossack with bombarded defenses has just over 50% odds. A fresh pinch cossack has 30%, and with cultural defense that drops very low. Saladin has all rifles, so we will need a lot of cossacks to defeat him. Thankfully we have a lot of cossacks. However, he is much more advanced than we are and may get infantry soon. I didn't discover a single tech on my turns due to WW. If the next players want, I have no problem with them attacking Togugawa and going for the domination win. These turns took a long time and weren't that much fun either. But if we desperately want Conquest then we should attack Saladin ASAP. The majority of our troops are in a single naval stack near Japan/Arabia. I bribed Tokugawa to cancel his deals (including the DP) with Saladin. We have a few cossacks in a position to finish Hatty off soon, and a healing stack on the island at marble-town.

Cosmichail is up.

Cosmichail - UP
Kikinit - On Deck
mike p
Asperge
blid
sooooo - Just Played

Here is the save

 

[Cosmichail]

I bribed Tokugawa to cancel his deals (including the DP) with Saladin.

Nice work Soooo that saves a bit of aggrevation. This is "I got it" and will play late tonight with the owls. Will check back to see if there is any feedback. Warmongering does get tedious sometimes. I too would like to step it up a notch to Emperor. (playing two SG's on Emperor and sure makes the brain matter work. Isolated on both SG's ARGH)

 

[sooooo]

Cool Cosmichail, seems we can always rely on you to play the same evening as me .

By the way, who has Warlords?

 

[Cosmichail]

Not yet but do have the itch.

 

[angeleyes]

The short report looks impressive, so(ooo) you could take the 2 inland city's in the same turn

Let the current player decide what he like's: going for domination or conquest.

I've bought Warlords today and i'm playing a "toroidal"-map confused: ), that's a map without pole's! You can go from W>E and S>N and you have to do both to get the circumnavigation +1.