SAM-01 Smoke and Mirrors

[Glare Seethe]

As far as Rostov's tiles, this may be due to my misunderstanding of how granaries work, because it was originally working the cow. Thought it'd work out better if the granary was built first, but it seems I was wrong about that. Whoops.

Oh, I see your point, have the granary built before growth so that once the city grows we immediately get the 50% food bonus? That makes sense. But I think the granary is 3 turns now, and growth is 2. Working the cows they are both 2. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, though, I actually don't feel like loading up the save just to check. :\

It's good that Nappy's going for Astronomy, hopefully he's going to load his stack into that navy that you spotted and ship it overseas somewhere. Makes it even easier for us, and the more he delays Rifling the better.

 

[Dave Hartwick]

I'll try and get a set in ASAP but if radio or Xanthus are about and have time, hey, go.

Allow me to dissent from the majority here. IMO if we were going to make war, we should've started by now. Also, from what I've read, we're still not ready. Intercontinental invasions can be a real grind, too.

Fastest way to victory may be the Apostolic Palace. We don't even need astronomy to get started. Plus it doesn't come up very often in these succession games. Everybody and everybody's brother does conquest or domination.

Speaking of what everybody else is doing, and I know you all were just saying let's win this one before talking about the next one, but a variant rule that would drastically change how I play would be a no slavery rule. I've learned to lean on the whip, it would be a challenge to go without it.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Yeah, AP is fastest and easiest, we can easily get Sury's vote and him and Nappy will be enough for the win. A bit anti-climatic, but if everyone's eager to move on since this is basically won we can go for it.

In any case I think the team should make a collective decision before you play, Dave, since the next set determines which way we go (hell, if we go AP the next set could even be the last), cause if we want to war we have to start building the army immediately.

 

[Whosit]

I wouldn't mind an AP victory if only because I've never personally seen it done.

Stalin kinda screams "kill them all!" but I can live without it. We probably could start a war now, if we wanted. Let the French throw the bulk of their army at us, and once they're exhausted, we could probably sweep them even if we didn't get Cossacks yet. Yeah, we'd have to build trebs, but we could crank a bunch out over a 10 turn period.

Anyway, yeah, for a AP win we just need to deliver Confucianism to all the Civs, right? Just convert one city in each. I don't know if it's a guaranteed win, though, since we still have to beat Capac in the "pope" vote.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Spoiler :

I have no problem going for either victory. Right now though we aren't even the AP resident and we have 4 votes to go until the next election. I'm not sure if that's 40 turns or not so we have a ways to go. I think we should continue teching to cossacks and then see where we stand. If we wrap it up before then - terrific.

Dave, I LOVE the idea of the no-whip variant. I know others have done it but I agree that is a great way to learn. I normally don't whip much in my SP games as it is. I find that being a creative civ helps with the border pops you have an extra turn or two to prepare for barbs. Is anyone else interested in this?

 

[Dave Hartwick]

Yeah, it'd be a least two sets I think for an AP win, and we do have competition from the Incas.

I was going to have a look at the save and see if any of the AIs are running Theo, but I pulled the wrong file. Anyway, the real question is, is everybody happy with an AP victory? What I'm seeing is everybody's OK either way. My argument is that AP will be quickest, maybe 2 or 3 sets, while domination or conquest, well, I don't even want to guess. Twice that.

Incidentally, even if some of the new world AIs are running Theo we can get around that by settling real close to them (and bringing a missionary with the settler) and then liberating the new city.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Zara and Mao are in Theocracy, if I remember correctly. You can just open borders and gift them a missionary, just land it in a city with small population.

I personally don't mind going Domination because we've been building towards that. Winning AP now feels a bit like cutting the game off just when it was getting interesting... Although I suppose one could argue that since victory is basically ensured the game has become uninteresting. But again, if the team wants to move on to the next game, then by all means... it's not that important to me and of course it will take a lot longer to win through war.

But we shouldn't aim for both, if we go to war we need our cities producing troops, not missionaries or caravels, and diplo decisions will be different.

 

[Norvin_Green]

I'm not changing my mind, but as it is our first game together maybe going to war would be good as we can find out who's the real military genius among us. p.s. It won't be me!

 

[Dave Hartwick]

OK, sounds like domination and I can play a set tomorrow. Novin, you have any pointers on how to use spies in war? I haven't used espionage in single player and when it came up in succession games it was somebody else's go.

 

[Norvin_Green]

I can't look at the save to see how many points we've accumulated against Nappy or HC so take this with a grain of salt. First thing is to get the spy to the location at least 5 turns prior to initial attack (it provides both a discount to the overall cost of ep's and each turn increases the likelihood of success). You can either choose to revolt a city (which you would want to do ON the turn you plan to attack the city as it only lasts for 1 turn) or to pillage vital resources or roads to hamper their response. You will often want more than just one spy as there is always the chance of it being caught.
Revolting a city is usually best if the attack is a surprise so in order for it to work our cossacks would have to be able to reach the revolted city within one turn from our territory. Sometimes this isn't possible as the distance is too great to reach it in one turn. We might want to have two stacks - (1) a cossack force that can attack cities our spies take down and (2) a regular siege/CR type stack that can plod along.
The one thing I've noticed in reading SG's of the better players is that when warring the swifter we strike and finish the war the better off we are. It would be a good idea to come up with a solid attack strategy to try and keep our "turns at war" to a minimum.

 

[Norvin_Green]

It would be great when Napoleon launches his attack on Sury (just a hunch) if we launch on him.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Some thoughts about the war...

Spies are nice to have but not really necessary I think. For a cuirasser war yes, for a cavalry war not so much (assuming we are facing medieval units, or musketmen/musketeers at worst, and a non-Protective leader). The revolt city mission was made twice as expensive as it used to be in 3.17 and I doubt we have enough EP points on Napoleon to make it worthwhile. Since cossacks ignore walls/castles if we give them Flanking II the majority will survive.

I think ~30 cossacks should be more than enough to completely eliminate Nappy (or vassal him if we want). If he turns around and heads to Rifling we'll have to abort the war, though.

I agree with Norvin that the faster the war the better. I suppose we'll want to vassal Nappy in this case. I think our main force can go Bactria > Rheims > Paris > Lyons. These are his best cities and we get all of his wonders (a whopping two, Sistine in Bactria and Shwedagon Paya in Lyons). A smaller force can go for Chartres in the north. Grenoble would be nice to have since we wanted to settle that site ourselves but we probably shouldn't waste time with it. I am pretty sure that's enough to vassalize him, but if not we'll just take a few more. Of these cities only Lyons is on a hill, which is another plus.

Here's a crappy approximation:

On second thought it might be better to launch from the mine 1W of Magni's iron, then move the stack 1NW-1N, that would save us a turn of movement I guess.

We do need to track down Nappy's stack, if it comes anywhere near our borders when we're more or less ready we could declare right then and hopefully eradicate it in the field. Once that's gone resistance will be minimal. That, or wait until he loads up his fleet and sails towards Sury (agree with Norvin that he's the likely target). Most important is to attack before he gets rifles, though.

We have a GS, do we want to bulb Chemistry (on the way to Steel) or put down an academy somewhere? We don't have any academies yet but to be honest judging by the tech situation we are doing fine without them.

 

[Whosit]

Regarding spies and war, it should be noted that spending them to revolt costs EP. If we're planning to eliminate the target, that's no problem. If, for some reason we were not, then we lose a bunch of EP on the target.

I heartily agree with Norvin that we need a solid strategy in place. Even though Cossacks can probably take out a few cities while Napoleon's metaphorical pants are down, we'll want units to garrison our new holdings, and perhaps a traditional stack complete with siege. We have some catapults, but trebuchets are better at attacking cities. Cannons would be nice, but I don't want to wait that long. Once we get rifling, we can get riflemen. Though would probably be our Garrison.

I wonder: Would a switch to Nationalism be useful? We'll probably be building cossacks, but if we draft we get riflemen, right? Though I'm certain you can't draft while a city is in revolt, we could have a temporary garrison in conquered cities and then draft a few units when it's done, yeah? I don't think we want to draft from any of our own cities, though.

 

[Norvin_Green]

One other thing to consider is HC calling for a war stoppage through the AP. We should time our attack for right after a vote, huh?

 

[Glare Seethe]

We can't draft in a city that has less than 10% of our culture, so drafting in newly-captured cities is not possible. Cannons are not so far away, though, we can half-bulb Chemistry, finish it and start Steel immediately. A traditional stack as support can be useful, we can take Grenoble or Chartres with it while the cossacks move forward.

Counterattack won't be a problem anyway if we elminate his stack in the first turns of war, in that case we could also just leave 2-3 cossacks in a city.

 

[Glare Seethe]

One other thing to consider is HC calling for a war stoppage through the AP. We should time our attack for right after a votw, huh?

Yeah that's a good point. Maybe we should put up theatres in our cities in case we want to up the culture slider (assuming we defy the vote). That said the next pope is going to be us since Nappy will vote for us over HC, so hopefully that vote will come before the war starts.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Spoiler :

Not sure as I'm trying to view from Glare's attack set up but we should park our units on the hill UNLESS we can attack the city on the first turn. (I can't remember if cossacks have enough movement points)

 

[Glare Seethe]

Cossacks don't take defensive bonuses though... At least I am pretty sure they don't. Mounted units in general don't, aside from conquistadors (or another UU, could be confusing it). It's too bad there is no way to take Bactrian on the first turn of war, it'll take a cossack stack a full turn to get to the adjacent tile no matter where we launch from.

 

[Dave Hartwick]

Whew, glad there weren't a bunch of new posts with a bunch of new ideas. Finally got my set in, apologies for the delays.

Pregame

Send all siege to Karachev, spies to Mag. Raise sci rate to 70%. Hire specs in Karachev, Stalingrad, and Mezh. Cancel the uni queued in Mag. Cancelled banks in Elek (treb) and Svet (settler). At 50% sci rate, the bank in Svet would've brought in 1.5 gold/turn, Elek was better but still not good enough. I did mourn for the lost hammers, though. Decide Karachev is going to be the science city. Disband some axes, warriors, and chariots.

1535 Stalingrad market > grocer (Capitals, especially Bureaucratic capitals, are good places for markets and banks IMO. Most other places aren't.)
Novosbirsk forge > barracks
Werz forge > Moai
Academy in Karachev

1540 Karachev caravel > Oxford
Archangel market > barracks
Rostov granary > forge
Mag Cuir > cuir

1545 Rice to Zara for ivory.
Event: "prolific playwright" but I forget the town. Choices were culture or +1 gold for the theater, took the gold.
Wheat to Zara for 9/turn

1550 Moscow Cuir > Cuir
Mag same
Arch barracks > treb
Svet settler > cuir

1555 Rifling in, pick chemistry (no AI had it, it's on the way to steel)
Novosbirsk barracks > rifle
Mezh workboat > barracks
AP vote = us
Upgrade 4 CR maces to rifles. Hey, I recognize these guys, I'm pretty sure I built them. Anyway, the warchest is nearly empty right there.

1560 Mehz barracks > rifle
Elek treb > treb
We win the AP vote, thanks to Nappy.
Yekaterinberg founded, set for granary, hire an artist.
Move spies to Bactrian
Sci rate to 50%
Fire Karachev's specs.

1565 Mag cossack > cossack
Event "parrots" +1 commerce for inaccessible tile on Incan border

1570 Svet cos > cos

1575 Stalin grocer > cos
St Pete monastery > cos

1580 Moscow cos > cos
Mag cos > cos
GP St Peter born in Stalingrad, used to trigger golden age. Revolt to Nationalist Slaver's Theocratic party.
Whip most cities. Draft Archangel, Elek, Mag.
Declare on France, move stacks across border. On France's turn, Napoleon loses about 10 units attacking the southern stack.
Zara declares on us.

Army group south:

Spoiler :

Army group north:

Spoiler :

Not impressive, but... OK, so here's why I went to war. We have a tech advantage. That's big right now. But also, and I don't mean to be rude, but I was afraid that if I didn't get a war going we would delay it further. Last, well, if it all goes badly, I just threw in a hopefully-interesting complication into a game we were walking away with. I'm not a big warmonger, myself. And I made mistakes, because most of the wars I do have are naval given the kinds of maps I like.

1585 Stalingrad cos > cos
Novos rifle > cos
Arch treb > rifle
Mehz rifle > rifle
Elek treb > treb
Svet cos > cos
Novograd monastery > temple
Rostov forge > barracks
Kick off the revolt in Bactrician and send in cuirassiers with flank promotions to soften it up, but even the knights see action. Thank goodness it didn't get down to the horse archers.
Lose a couple in the counter attack.

1590 Werz Moai > barracks
Yaroslavl granary > temple
Upgrade a city defender xbow in Bact to rifle
Spies to Rheims
Start the bombardment of Chartres

1595 GG born
Chartres reduced
Draft Moscow, Karachev, Mag.

1600 Chem > Steel (for obvious reasons)
Werz barracks > stable
Suicide the cats after promoting to barrage
Treb get CR promotion, but dies at 80% odds.
Chartres captured. (It's weakly garrisoned but France's stack is by Bactrian and if Chartres falls in a counter attack we should be able to take it right back again.)
GG settled in Mag (I know there would have been debate on how to use him, especially for a medic unit, but we'll have another general soon.)

I reckon if we join the two army groups together on Rheims and take it, that may be enough to make the frogs say merci. Otherwise, have to take Paris. Dang civ doesn't have any wonders to grab, but Rheims is quite nice.

Screenie time!
Espionage (still plenty of points to make Rheims revolt, which is good considering our shocking lack of siege units.)

Spoiler :

Tech, but not much to see. I got several offers to trade for Astronomy but maybe we can squeeze it out of France.

Spoiler :

Huh, what do you know, we're actually close to some other civs in power.

Spoiler :

Haven't made a big dent yet in France's overall score:

Spoiler :

And demographics, where we've regressed:

Spoiler :

 

[Glare Seethe]

Got it. I can't play until Friday, though.

Haven't looked at the save for too long but I have a feeling the pre-turn is going to take me a good 15 minutes just to get up to speed on everything. I admit this is not the war I personally envisioned (I thought we'd be going mounted-only, then integrating siege into the next war, against Huayna) but we are doing well anyway with Nappy's power having taken a big drop, and it will take another once he suicides that stack on our Bactrian garrison. I imagine that's all the resistance we're going to face.

I'll take a few more cities then accept capitulation.