sc:01 Moddern war

[Mighty Dwaarf]

Major apologies guys but I'm going to have to jump ship.

We are going to be moving house later this year and I got the massive lecture from the missus yesterday about priorities and spending too much time playing on computer.
To keep the peace I'm going to have to cut down on the no. of civ games I've got going. Its been short but sweet and good luck with rest of game.

 

[Simon_c]

yes, it's going slower. Which is why I'm going to be hard on the skips until we're back up to speed.

Mighty Dwarf should be posting in the next 6 hours then you're up.

EDIT:
OK. I guess we've back to 4.
Silver, you're up.

@mighty no worries, these things happen. (Hint, learn to sacrifice sleep for civ, no chores. )

ROSTER
2: S.ilver ** Playing now
3: Madtown <-- Up on deck --
1: Simon_c
4: Quotey <-- Just Played --

 

[S.ilver]

Real Life does happen (happened to me when I was in a bunch of quality SGs a few years ago).

Ok, I've got it. Will play and post within the next 24 hours I suppose (sleep is for the weak ).

 

[S.ilver]

1816AD (418):

Preflight check. We're off on turns, because Quotey stopped to get everyone's opinion on the GE. Madtown hasn't chimed in yet, but myself and Simon think it would be best used on Three Gorges (in 20 or so turns when we get plastic). Going to send him on a walk down to Giza.

Our next GP will almost certainly be a scientist from Thebes, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that sadly. Maybe he can bulb something for us, or is there somewhere needing an Academy? One after that will be born in Pithom, which is currently lacking enough buildings for its specs and cannot employ merchants. A grocer is under construction, so we will be remedying that problem.

I peer around the map and do some minor adjustments to the cities, like switching tiles, firing priests when there are free engineer spots... etc. Everything looks pretty good, except for a few spots.

We've got Buto, which is at negative 4 health, building Public Transportation. Normally, this would make sense... except the city has no aqueduct, no harbor, and no grocer, all which finish faster and offer the same or more health boost. I dial up a 5 turn harbor for the 3 health bonus, and move a citizen in as an engineer, since the city would otherwise grow and become stagnant with a whopping 5 unhealthiness next turn. Slight starvation, but that will disappear in 5 turns.

Helio gets all its scientists reassigned as spies, because the yard is there, and there's no academy.

Alexandria is building a settler. I guess it's for the canal city up north?

Going to reroute the Exec going to Athens. He's now heading north to get on a boat to Athribis.

1818AD (419):

Destroyer done at Giza. It's polluting thanks to the Coal Plant, but there's nothing else we can do for it. Order an Artillery due to massive overflow. We can build Broadway for laughs, but it's otherwise pretty useless to us.

Memo from Quotey says mass troops in Elephantine, so that's what I start doing.

Mining Inc expands to Asyut.

Thebes dials a machine gun, while Memphis continues building Mining Inc Execs. Order up another Machine gun in Helio, and another transport in Elephantine.

Edfu's factory is done, and it's polluting everywhere, so go for an Aqueduct. We are lacking a barracks here to, so we'll need that before units.

Hit F5 and see we have no machine guns. I don't know about you guys, but machine guns are crucial towards most of my invasion plans. Get a half a dozen and stick the drill line on them, and they should be able to hold off the enemy rush. Drill line also unlocks pinch and formation, making machine guns pretty nasty stack defenders (just watch out for marines, but that's what pinch is for!).

We also lack artillery, while having a good amount of infantry.

Save the game here, because I need to be off for now.

---

Load up the game and hit enter.

1820AD (420):

Spoiler :

Dial up Industrialism. Health is beginning to become a problem in several places, so medicine and refrigeration are necessary soon too (refrigeration also lets our invaders get where they are going faster).

Expand Mining Inc to Athribis. Forge drops from 84 turns to 9 turns .

Dial up a round of artillery almost everywhere, except Abydos, which goes for a 1 turn Colleseum, because I wasn't watching it and it got unhappy. MM it to stop growth.

1822AD (421):

Expand Mining Inc to Pi-Ram. I notice that our gold drops, so the corp IS costing us money. That means I clearly screwed up in the math, so let me look at my previous calculations.

Uh, ok... it looks like the corp screen already takes into account the courthouse discount. So Pi-Ram is -10 gold. But that doesn't make much sense, because we should still be making 2 gold (12 extra gold at Memphis), but instead are losing 2 gold. Strange...

Another round of building units in the top production cities. Mostly artillery, but a few MGs. And a 1 turn carrier at Amsterdam.

Alexandria is in a bit of a food pickle because it's still unhealthy even with public transport. It's at one food growth no matter what I do, and it's also at the happy cap. So I dial up an airport to stagnant it once it finishes.

Same deal with Athens, but use a drydock because we are lacking one.

Abydos orders a barracks, because it doesn't have one yet .

1824AD (422):

A bunch of cities are celebrating "We love the prime minister" day this turn, saving us about 60 gold and putting us in the black for this turn. Yay.

I fortify the settler up north with some knights, because I really don't want to pay for extra city maintenance right now.

1826AD (423):

Liz wants Flight for free... Uh... no. She also completes Broadway this turn. In London. Definitely want to keep that city...

Pithom is done its grocer and needs a courthouse badly, bleeding 20 maintenance.

1828AD (424):

Izzy now wants Military Science. Again, no.

Cut science down to 60%, when I realize that it will cost almost 2 grand to upgrade our 4 CR3 units sitting in Giza...

Building more units...

1830AD (425):

More units...

1832AD (426):

Izzy wants open borders. Take it. Izzy is not the first target, more likely that Charlie is.

Infrastructure mostly in our smaller cities this turn...

1834AD (427):

Zzz...

1836AD (428):

Darius wants artillery and will give us peanuts. Take a hike.

Spoiler :

We've got 3 sources of Aluminum.

We have some choices for tech, none of which are particularly urgent except Medicine and Refrigeration. Supermarkets are cheaper than Hospitals, Refrigeration is cheaper than Medicine, and +1 naval movement is good. Refrigeration wins (up for debate and changeable).

Mining Inc makes money working in Bursis. Yay.

There are suddenly pissed off citizens everywhere, and I realize that Industrialism obsoletes Ivory .

Pithom courthouse is done, 4 more unassigned specs to go! Cheapest next building is a Jail for 2 more spy specs.

Some screens which I will leave everyone to think about.

Our Naval Stack

Spoiler :

Our Army

Spoiler :

Power Graph

Spoiler :

Relations

Spoiler :

Tech Situation

Spoiler :

Stopping here because I feel like I'll make more if I make up Quotey's 2 turns.

I think we have more than enough troops to begin taking out Charlie. I'm very concerned about our economic situation though, because Liz and Hammurabi are teching very well.

Note that Izzy has a defensive pact with Charlie, so she'll declare war on us as soon as we declare on Charlie (or Charlie declares on us if we declare on Izzy).

Liz and Darius will give us a DP for nothing, so I think we should take one or both, right before we land in HRE. Izzy should declare war on us, causing Darius and Liz to declare war on her (which will cause Charlie to declare war on both of them, and then Hammurabi will declare war on Charlie. Golden!).

I also think we need to start switching over to a cottage economy, because our tech rate is starting to slow in relation to the top teching AIs, and won't be helped when we declare war on them. Although, I'm not too well versed in this topic, so feel free to give me a good smack if that's the wrong idea.

Mass Razing also doesn't seem like a bad idea anymore. I don't think I want to retool those cities too much, and our continent has shown to have a huge production capacity, especially with Mining Inc (which adds enough to our upkeep as it is). We should, however, do some recon and find the cities which have wonders we want to keep.

ROSTER
2: S.ilver <-- Just Played --
3: Madtown ** Playing now **
1: Simon_c <-- Up on deck --
4: Quotey

 

[Simon_c]

1816AD (418):

Alexandria is building a settler. I guess it's for the canal city up north?

I've No idea on that one.

Do we need a city for the canal up there ? Maybe we do.

Hit F5 and see we have no machine guns. I don't know about you guys, but machine guns are crucial towards most of my invasion plans. Get a half a dozen and stick the drill line on them, and they should be able to hold off the enemy rush. Drill line also unlocks pinch and formation, making machine guns pretty nasty stack defenders (just watch out for marines, but that's what pinch is for!).

We also lack artillery, while having a good amount of infantry.

That sounds about right. I think the previous 2 turnsets were focused on getting the home garrison up and running.
The next set should be on the attacking forces.

Good to know about MGs. I guess they are strong due to no damage from segie units. I guess they are good until mech-infantary.

Liz and Darius will give us a DP for nothing, so I think we should take one or both, right before we land in HRE. Izzy should declare war on us, causing Darius and Liz to declare war on her (which will cause Charlie to declare war on both of them, and then Hammurabi will declare war on Charlie. Golden!).

Isn't a DP dissolved if either party starts a war ?

I also think we need to start switching over to a cottage economy, because our tech rate is starting to slow in relation to the top teching AIs, and won't be helped when we declare war on them. Although, I'm not too well versed in this topic, so feel free to give me a good smack if that's the wrong idea.

Interesting. I thought we were more or less in a cottage economy, with just a few specialists....

We've probably got a bunch of workers with not much to do now, so converting some cities to cottages shouldn't be a problem. Our income will go down as we declare war on people too I expect. And those maintenance costs.

Madtown, unless you've got definite plans, I propose a short (24hr ? ) pause to discuss invasion plans. It looks to me like we have enough troops to send the first batch over.
I'll try to look at the save this afternoon, and make more comments though.

 

[S.ilver]

Yes, a DP is dissolved if we declare war. Guess I should've checked first. Scratch that plan.

For our economy, we only really have 3 concentrations of cottages in the whole country. Thebes, Heliopolis, and Old Greece (Athens/Sparta area). I don't know if this sounds right, but I do know that it's kind of strange that we have only two cottages by Memphis, our Wall St. town.

From the tech screen, Charlie, Darius, and Izzy all lack massive tech on us, and they can't research anything we need. So that's one of our targets. I suggested Charlie first, because he has Versailles at Saxon, which we wanted to aim for first. If we avoid annoying anyone else, we can walk through England and take Saxon without too much difficulty (although there is a highly promoted CG3/Drill/Pinch Infantry guarding it). Charlie's core contains wine, which we will want to send back home to combat our disappearing luxuries (furs disappears with plastics ), but otherwise, his northern cities are pretty crappy, and should be burned. The only problem is we don't want to get into a protracted fight with either Charlie or Izzy, because they hold pretty lousy lands, and we won't be keeping a lot of it. Since we can SEE Izzy's cities, we should probably send a small expeditionary force there to burn her out if she sends troops to aid Charlie. Then we can either eliminate her, or sue for (temporary) peace.

 

[Madtown]

OK, I got it but I'm pretty busy right now with finals coming up so the extra 24 hr. delay will be appreciated.

That said though, I don't actually feel we are ready to launch the invasion. Sure, we could probably wipe out Izzy or seriously harm Charlie, but IMO we do not have the troops needed to march across the continent like we should.

I say "march across the continent" because I still think that mass razing is the best course. Seriously, why bother keeping cities that will likely cost us more than they make. For wine? For a few mostly worthless wonders? It's just not worth it IMO.

So, I think we need to take another turnset to build up a tank army. Infantry are nice, but a brigade of tanks can sweep across the continent much quicker and they won't need the artillery support either. Since Izzy and Charlie have a DP, we will have to take them both on at once. I propose we use the current infantry + artillery army for Izzy, and send the to-be-built tank army north to sweep south from Charlies lands. The two groups will converge on Liz and Darius in the middle. Raze everything except Aachen on the east coast and York or Susa on the west coast. London is a nice city and tempting, but it is landlocked and will not be as useful for territory-gaurding as coastal rally cities. If the team really wants it though, we could probably afford to keep that one as a 3rd city.

As for the economy, I think we have done swimmingly. We are exactly in the position we wanted -geared for maximum production while still making plenty of money to cover the troops. We are still #1 in GNP by a significant margin, so I'm not worried. By the time any of the AI can catch up, it will be too late for them.

Finally, I'm all for using the GE on 3 gorges wonder. To that point, let's please stop building any more coal plants. I never build these because they pollute too much and other cleaner sources of power are right around the corner.

 

[S.ilver]

You make some good points Madtown, and with the production I saw from our homeland cities during my turnset, I'm almost inclined to agree with you. Almost, but not quite.

My concern this round switched from manufacturing to economic problems. I saw that our mid-tier cities can still make 3 or 4 turn infantry, which is more than sufficient at Epic speed. Even our lousy cities can contribute a fighter or two every turnset, especially considering we put Mining Inc in them. We are fine when it comes to manufacturing. Actually, fine is the wrong word, we blow away the competition. All other civs combined cannot match our production.

But I heartily disagree that our economy is in good shape, and I'm fairly certain that that will become all too clear when we send our army off. We are at or past the happy cap in our good cities, and we lost 2 luxury resources due to obsolesce and are about to lose one more with plastics. We are importing wine from Charlie now, and spices from Darius, so if and when we invade, that's another two happy faces we lose. Couple that with war weariness, and our cities are sure to lose massive productivity, unless we go draconian with the civics, and install jails everywhere.

Now let's look at what we would gain if we kept some territory that we conquered instead of razing everything. Let's use Liz as an example, as her cities are closest to Versailles in Saxon (which I think we should be keeping no matter what).

We secure for ourselves 4 happiness resources (wine, incense, spices, and hit musicals in London). This is for a net of +2 happiness, because we are already importing two of those. We also gain 5 cities with mature cottages, which, if we don't go on a burning spree, are worth 7gpt to our flagging economy. We ourselves only have about 4 cities with mature cottages. So this would be a good injection to the economy when it's up and running (and we don't pay maintenance when it's rioting).

We also get 5 more resources for Mining Inc, which is 5 extra hammers in every city. Granted, this will increase maintenance, but it will also increase productivity.

This is all just from Liz's land. She's number 2 in both MFG and GNP, so that will raise those totals for us if we annex her lands. Darius' lands are also pretty good (with the possible exception of Ecbatana), and add even more mature cottages to our portfolio.

The gravy on top is that both leaders have piously spread Islam for us, so so long as we take the cities before researching computers and mass media, they get an extra little boost.

From what I see, if we hold those lands, we should increase our GNP by 50% easily, even after paying the maintenance. I can't see how that's a detrimental thing, and we will need more gold to field a larger army. The extra pop will also allow us to have more troops for free.

 

[Madtown]

In my experience, it doesn't add up that way. Once we go over 5 cities, the colony maintenance will cost more than any city's cottages can support, even with Versailles -we are talking 100's of gold per turn, per city.

On a different topic, does anyone remember where the Statue of zeus was built? That could likely determine where we attack first.

 

[S.ilver]

Hammurabi has the SoZ (I think... It's been a few turnsets.)

And I beg to differ about the colonial expenses. Quotey said that the colonial expenses were capped at 2x the palace distance, so I decided to do a WB test. Booted up a monarch game and seeded a score of size 20 cities on one continent, placing the capital and the FP at either end of the empire. Everything looked normal.

I then seeded a dozen size 20 cities on another continent, and placed Versailles in the northenmost one (similar to our proposed situation). The result is as Quotey suggested. The colonial expenses is exactly 2x as much as the distance expenses, with the Versailles city paying only the 6 gold for # of cities maintenance because it is a palace.

Ok, let's look at our game. The distance between Saxon and Persepolis is just a bit more than the distance between Navajo and Mendes. I'd estimate the distance maintenance to be a bit more that 4gpt. That means the colonial expenses are 8gpt. Build a courthouse, and it's negligible.

I can't find any argument for NOT keeping those mature cottage cities. I haven't been able to reproduce your anecdotes of 100s of gpt upkeep for colonies. (perhaps all the cities added up that I suggested we keep may equal 100gpt in colonial upkeep, but I doubt even that)

 

[Madtown]

I guess it is possible that the game I'm recalling was pre-Bhruic's patch or even pre-official patches. I can't say for sure.

If you tested it then I'll trust that over my memory.

At any rate, I still don't think we are prepared to go to war yet, unless someone has a briliiant strategy that I'm not aware of. As it is with our 20 infantry, 20 atry's, and handful of MG's, I see our invasion stalling very quickly.

I'm not going to be able to play until the 9th, so there's plenty of time for scheming.

 

[S.ilver]

Yeah, you're right about us not being ready for the invasion. What we have now is about sufficient to hold what is worth keeping. We need tanks and a lot of them, because this needs to be as done as fast as possible to cut down on WW (and the culture slider).

I THINK a turnset of tanks should be sufficient to start the invasion (as in grabbing Saxon and any other HRE cities that we want). We will obviously need to ship in reinforcements to take the fight to Liz. Izzy can probably be occupied by dropping a modest stack of machine guns and infantry into her territory, to provoke her units to attack them. Not sure what the best promotions would be for this sort of job though.

 

[Simon_c]

I think Versailles will let us keep the costs down, and silver's WB test would seem to indicate that too.

I think I've found one of my problems for modern war too. I don't have the production, and don't wait until I have the massed troops. I tend to go in when I've got a tech advantage and not a numbers advantage.......

 

[Simon_c]

Finally, a chance to look at the save....

Just glancing at the screen shows DeGaul is working on Fission, while Hamy is working on Steam Power


Now, we want to get saxon quickly, before we want to keep more than 3 cities. So that puts HRE as target #1.

Now, Liz doesn't like charli much, so we should be able to park some tanks in England south of Saxon. If we're doing that I'd say we put some east of Nottingham too. Plan to take/raise 3 cities on turn 1 of war

There's a large fleet in Augsberg too, so we need our fleet there stopping them putting to sea.
In fact, the more I look at this, the more a strange plan forms in my mind.
What would we need to take the HRE in one turn ?

Humm. It would look like we'd need too many ships to take down the city defences, but I think it's theoretically possible.
Isabelle doesn't have OB with Darius and no ships. So, I think it would be good enough to just ignore her. Maybe park some troops in Persia to slow her down if she comes north.

Interestingly, Charle will declare war on Darius or Hammurabi. Which will cause Izzy to drop her DP with Charle and keep her out of the first stage of the war. He wants a lot, but we'll be a non-entity within a couple of years. So the infantry and artillery can be used to take the max number of cities from Charle in turn 1 of the war.

 

[Quotey]

I'd love to one turn the HRE. I can't look at the save right now, but I think we could do it, perhaps sacraficing some artillery in lieu of dropping defences

 

[Madtown]

I'm on it, report in 6 hrs or less.

 

[Madtown]

Short report because I am pressed for time &#8211;I could only manage to play 7 turns.

I took good run through all of our cities, all look to be set up well. I replaced a few builds here and there, mostly slotted in tanks plus the occasional 1 turn theater/market.

One major issue we have though is that many cities still lack basic infrastructure like markets, theatres, libraries, and even barracks in some cases. Also, most of the cities lack jails. We should be able to slot most of that stuff in once we have launched the invasion fleet and are waiting for them to get into position.

After 7 turns I have a stack of 20 tanks sitting 1 N of elephantine, waiting to be loaded. I also built some more transports and battleships, most are in place or on goto to rally point.

I also took the liberty of promoting a few units. The carriers got navigation and sentry, one destroyer got medic I and II. As for upgrading tanks, most should get barrage I followed by CR promotions. A couple in each stack (deployed in 2 stacks initially) should get a mix of combat and drill to act as guards. IMO, the tank stacks should run alone to maximize the blitzkrieg effect. We have enough production to afford a few losses. Infantry can move in behind or on ships to garrison new acquisitions.

I suggest we send out the tanks plus a small contingent of infantry/MG garrison north to Charlie (don't forget the medic), and whatever is left can be loaded and head south for Izzy.

Sorry no pics, there isn&#8217;t much to show though. If someone has time they could post a shot of the production graph, it is pretty outrageous.

Simon is up now for 10 or 15 turns.

 

[S.ilver]

Things are looking good. I vote that Simon takes 15 turns and starts to plaster HRE.

One look at the power graph and MFG graph makes me wince. Again, our MFG is better than all other civs combined (that's pretty disgusting), and our power is twice as much as Hammurabi, who is the closest Civ in that regards.

I think we should land our invasion force, without actually declaring war yet. Borders are as such as we can walk all troops next to Saxon, wait until they're all in position, declare war and seize the city on the same turn. We will need probably a dozen units at least to hold it though, because the cultural borders there are pretty tough. I recommend a transport full each of tanks, artillery, and machine guns, as well as 2 transports of infantry, specifically for taking and holding Saxon. The rest of the troops should wait in the transports at sea on the east coast (either Aachen or Augsburg are good targets, ignore Pisa until we get some marines, we can take it last), and land after Charlie pulls troops towards Saxon. Troops could also wait in English territory near Mainz (which is quite raze worthy).

Note we have obsolete units sitting around. 2 Privateers in Athens, and the cats and phants in Giza (the melee units can be promoted to some very scary gunpowder units).

Finally, make sure you bring the spies for causing revolts so we don't have to waste time bombarding!

EDIT: Ignore Izzy. It seems that Izzy doesn't have open borders with Darius (they are not exactly on the best of terms). So Izzy can't harass us without declaring war on Darius (which would be a good thing for us). Just make sure we have ships to punk off Izzy's fleet (which is 2 ships).

 

[Madtown]

Might as well save the privateers in case we need to quick-upgrade them to destroyers at some point. The cats can probably go because we can pump out higher level arty's anyways now.

The battleships I built should help with bombarding cultural defenses in a resonable amount of time, at least for coastal cities.

 

[S.ilver]

I suppose... it's only 2 gpt... But then again, drydock cities can pump out fairly high level destroyers. And we don't exactly have a lot of gold to upgrade marginal ships (we don't even have enough to upgrade our CR3 metal units). There are also plenty of destroyers on the east coast already. Simon's call though. I suppose 2gpt is negligible...

Watch out though. Plastics comes in, and we end up with another unhappy face in every city as furs go obsolete.