sc:01 Moddern war

[Madtown]

Got it. That was some great warring S.ilver

I agree that we should press the attack and try to hurt Alex where it counts. Thus, I'll attempt to push towards Athens via mycenea and corinth (both should be razed for cash). A few more troops will probably be necessary as we incur losses.

We have about 700 EPs left, It's possible it wouldn't have been enough, but there's a discount for a stationary spy, up to 3 turns I think, so it might have been.

Spies get a stationary bonus up to 50% or 5 turns unmoved.

I'll try to play and report tonight, no promises though.

 

[Madtown]

Madtown reporting for war!

700 AD (IHT):

Load up the save and peruse the cities. Things look good, but I decide to finish the barracks at Navajo before the granary (both had 3 turns left). Also notice we may have gone a bit spear crazy, with 9 of them in Navajo.

715 AD:

Helio: Islamic temple --> axe (4) The city is also at the happy cap so I stagnate growth with a scientist specialist.

3 enemy units appear NE of Navajo - chariot, HA, and sword.

I notice that Amsterdam has a 1 turn phant in the queue so I set that up to pop now. I also insert a HA in the build list at Elephantine.

Our war stack (minus one severly wounded war elephant) will be healed in 1 turn.

730 AD:

Thebes: forge --> axe (2)
Amsterdam: elephant --> catapult (5)

The 3 enemy units retreat into the fog. A prophet pops in Amsterdam, I send him to Memphis to build a shrine. Our stack moves out for Mycenae.

745 AD:

Parthenon BIFAL.

Navajo: barracks --> cat (5)

GPT drops from -6 to -19 when our stack leaves our culture. I dial down the research to 0.

760 AD:

Shwedagon Paya BIFAL

Thebes: axe --> phant (5)
Memphis: forge --> colossus (8 turns!)

Great prophet builds the Islamic holy shrine in Memphis, nets 8 GPT - now at -6 over all.

775 AD:

Great artist is born in Athens (Alexander)

Helio: axe --> axe (to be built until 1 turn)
Alexandria: courthouse --> granary (7)

Our troops arrive at Mycenae and find this:

790 AD:

Elephantine: HA --> market

Mycenae is razed for 102 gold. Losses: 1 catapult (forgot to snap a pic).

Turn research back up to 10% @ -14 GPT.


805 AD:

Amsterdam: cat --> market

Take out a HA and chariot near Mycenae ruins with spears.


820 AD:

(IBT): our two lone spears are attacked, one wins (at 24% odds) the other loses. The winner is renamed Sgt. Sulla, because it’s better to be lucky than be dead… or something like that.

Also, our spy was caught while enroute to Sparta (cheapest city for tech stealing).

The defenders of Corinth:

The city falls at the cost of 2 cats, but most of our stack is wounded now.

835 AD:

Alexander completes the colossus in Athens. Which isn’t so bad actually; now we get gold and the wonder (eventually).

I kill a HA and settler that had moved onto the ruins of Mycenae. A Greek Phalanx will probably kill the spear next turn, but unfortunately we don’t have any appropriate units near enough to take him out.

850 AD:

We get 270 gold for the failed colossus build. Flush with cash, I crank up research.

Our stack sits SW of Athens, just outside Greece’s culture. It is still mostly wounded, and will take several turns to heal completely. The good news is that a set of reinforcements consisting of 1 phant, 2 axes, and 2 cats are 1 turns move from the war front. Also, our GG is one turn away from the stack, so we can merge him with McCoy next turn and heal up quick.

Alex still only offers aesthitics and some gold for peace, I say push on and take Athens.

Power graph:

 

[Madtown]

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[S.ilver]

Nice turns and city burning Madtown!

Shwedagon Paya BIFAL

Crap, that means that someone else has has Aesthetics for some time now (or has gold). What are our chances of getting SoZ? We've got a probable monopoly on Ivory, but I don't know how much the AI prioritizes that wonder.

I, too, noticed the mad amounts of spears we had sitting around, which is why I didn't build a single one during my turns. It looks like they may be helpful now though, because Alex is gearing up HAs. Although our Elephants are killers of mounted units, and can be retooled for other jobs easily through promotion.

I also read an article today that offhandedly mentioned that mounted units and recon units can't gain woodsman 3. So it may not be best to use our GG trying to make McCoy into a MASH unit he can't become. We'll have to choose a melee or gunpowder unit for that job.

IMO, take Athens and get Aesthetics from Alex. Maybe we have a shot at SoZ. We also need to gear back into infrastructure if we want to go after the GL.

 

[playshogi]

Another great turnset! I'd prefer to take Aesthetics now, so we can build SoZ and make a run for the Great Library. Alex is no longer a threat and we can resume the war in 10-20 turns after we've had a chance to build those two wonders. I can get literature in about 7 turns without breaking the bank. (I can put 5 merchants to work in Navajo). We need 1 more obelisk for SoZ, also. Memphis can get that in 1 turn thanks to overflow. Memphis could then build SoZ in about 9 turns. OTOH, Alex will have more units to kill if we wait, but maybe that just means we get another GG? I'll play tomorrow night.

As far as the medic unit, I think McCoy is good enough, Wood3 seems excessive because we also would need the 2-move promotion then as well.

 

[Simon_c]

Great turns Madtown !!
I'm just wondering if we really need SoZ.
Alex is going to fall soon.

Everyone else will be a cross continental war. There will probably be no problem holding them off until the modern age, and then we'll be on their territory. Do we really need SoZ ?
Aren't we better prepping for a run on Literature and the GLib ? and using the SoZ hammers to fund expansion ?

 

[Madtown]

I agree with Simon.

I know I was lobbying for SoZ myself earlier, but the problem is that most war weariness comes from fighting in the enemies' culture. After Alex is dead, we hopefully won't be fighting anyone inside our cultural borders as we will be sailing across the globe to conquer them. So, WW for them won't be an issue, and SoZ would be next to useless.

Glib is the wonder we want now. Feels a bit late to get it though, and we know that at least one AI (besides Alex) has had Aesthitics for awhile.

If we want G lib., I think we will need to take Athens and make peace for Aesthetics ASAP. Tech Literature and hurry the Glib anyway we can.

If we think it's too lat for the Glib, then lets just finish Alex off - no peace, no prisoners!

 

[playshogi]

IBT - I put a few idle workers to work building cottages. Made 5 science specialists in Navajo, but the city looks like it will still grow into unhappiness, anyway. Machinery is finishing in 9 turns.

T231 - The spearman dies as expected and I promote McCoy to be a Medic Unit. I attack a wounded sword in the field, with a healthy elephant at 91%+ odds and die.

T232 - An elephant kills a phalanx in the field. 1 more turn to completely heal the stack before moving onto Athens.

T234 - Athens is in view. There are only 4 defenders. I guess I'm used to the "Aggressive AI" option where there are more units to defeat.

T236 - AP vote again - I vote for us.

T237 - Athens is bombarded down to 3%, so I commence the catapult assault: 3 cats are sacrificed, before sending in other troops which eliminated the 7 defenders with no losses.

We can now get Aesthetics, Compass and 110g for 10 turns of peace. Seems like a good deal, so I take it. Even though Athens is in revolt for 6 turns, we still get the benefits of its 2 wonders immediately. I don't switch research to Literature, however, as the Great Library has
already been built-- 5 turns ago--guess where?

It must have been built in Sparta. Nice of Alex to declare war and build the Great Library for us at the same time.

T238 - MoM is BIFL.

T239 - Machinery discovered. Start Civil Service. A spy was built. May as well try to use him to steal Literature.

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[Madtown]

Man, what awesome luck!

No wonder this invasion has been cake, alex has been building wonders in his 2 largest cities the whole time. What a great neighbor to start next to.

 

[S.ilver]

LMAO. Alex is one funny guy. I guess we should roll right into Sparta after peace is up.

This is starting to remind me of a game where I kept getting beat to Wonders, so I just said screw it, and started conquering all the wonder building civs.

 

[Simon_c]

OK. I got it. I won't be playing until tomorrow night though.

 

[Madtown]

OK, it's a bit early for this, but seeing the signs in the southland made me want to draw up another dotmap (or four).

Spoiler :

Here we have the south, mapped out with red dot claiming the fishes. Personally, I don't think that the fish are worth the loss of the land tiles in the center (including 2 hills). Call this one "red 1."

Spoiler :

Here is how I would settle. Loses out on the fish but claims more workable land. Designated "red 2."

Spoiler :

Now for the east. Not so great of land over there but I did what I could to claim the most resouces with the most productive spots. Black dot is pretty much a junk filler city to claim the leftover fish and gold. Very low priority.

Spoiler :

Last one is filler stuff too. I prefer this orange dot to one north, as the latter only nets us some ocean tiles. Still, not a big difference between the two. White dot claims the wheat but loses a clams (I think). In order to get both resources we'd have to settle south of the wheat, creating significant overlap with the capital and losing some other workable land. Dark purple is complete filler for later in the game, probably post biology so that we can farm and still grow at a resonable pace.

 

[playshogi]

I agree with your choices, except for Red 1, that I prefer. Orange dot, where you put it picks up the lake, (3) that I didn't see. I think Red 1 would make a great site for Moai Statues and with the extra food we could put workshops on the few land tiles it has, for very nice production. We also should decide on the Heroic Epic city which should be coastal (we need a navy) and on a river (health, and levee), yet have lots of production. Also, are we planning the Forbidden palace on this continent or save it for another one. If we plan on using State Property, then we should build it on this continent (Navajo?), but then no corporations for us.

 

[Madtown]

I agree with your choices, except for Red 1, that I prefer. Orange dot, where you put it picks up the lake, (3) that I didn't see. I think Red 1 would make a great site for Moai Statues and with the extra food we could put workshops on the few land tiles it has, for very nice production. We also should decide on the Heroic Epic city which should be coastal (we need a navy) and on a river (health, and levee), yet have lots of production. Also, are we planning the Forbidden palace on this continent or save it for another one. If we plan on using State Property, then we should build it on this continent (Navajo?), but then no corporations for us.

Red 2 picks up a freshwater lake also, along with 2 grass hills and a forested hill. My problem with Red 1 is that it only has 4 land tiles, meaning that it basically needs Moai to be productive late game (when we can no longer be in slavery).

Speaking of the Moai Statues, my philosophy is to use them to make an already decent city into a third powerhouse, not to make a marginal water city worthwhile. As such, I would place it in either Elephantine or Alexandria. Both cities have good production potential with hills and grassland (elephantine being my 1st choice).

For our HE/west point city, I like Amsterdam. I know it's our GP farm currently, but we can gradually switch GP duties over to another city soon enough. Athens would be a good candidate for a GP farm with lots of food, FP to farm, and a few hills. Plus Athens has Glighthouse and Colossus, meaning we could probably pop some merchants (good for cash, some techbulbing, and Sushi corp if we want).

I'm no good at picking forbidden palace location. Never really figured out the mechanic - which cities does it help? How is the maintenance discount calculated? Is it based on trade routes, or just the closest cities by tiles? Is it best to put it in the furthest city from your capital, or in a city that is centered in a group of other ones?
I guess I'd say probably Navajo or Sparta

Lastly, I'm not sure how much intercontinental occupation we'll be doing. In my experience, after you capture about 4-5 cities on another continent the colony maintenance skyrockets (100's of gold). I've never been able to afford to keep a entire large continent, heck, even half of one since BTS. I did manage to keep an archepelago of cities in one SP game though; Several small chains with 2-3 cities on each. I recall that Civ jewelers co. helped me a lot in that one. So, we may end up vassalizing certain enemies, or creating a lot of colonies. In which case, better to just put FP on our native soil.


Edit:"Oh yeah, just one more thing" <Columbo voice>

I'm running out of colors so I give you... puke yellow dot and hot pink dot (or PYD and HPD for short).

Spoiler :

We could put HPD on the coast, but the spots that aren't food poor miss the iron. The solid dot fills the land a little better and we will have plenty of coastal cities, IMO.

For the last Greek cities, I say keep sparta (obviously), but raze the one on the marble and settle it 1W. Not sure about the others.

 

[Simon_c]

Finished, will post tomorrow morning.

 

[S.ilver]

I'm partial to red one myself. It eats the otherwise useless desert tile, and can definitely be helped by Maoi. Keep in mind that's a national wonder, so if we stick it in Elephantine or Alexandria, that's one less national wonder we could put there (which might be better served with 1-2 combos like HE/WP).

Also, red two only really gets us 3 more workable land tiles. The lake pales in comparison to losing the fish, and now we've also dumped the desert and both mountains in the city's fat cross. The overlap doesn't look too healthy either.

Even if we don't stick Maoi in red one, it'll still be good for hiring some specs and generating some commerce.

 

[Madtown]

Keep in mind that's a national wonder, so if we stick it in Elephantine or Alexandria, that's one less national wonder we could put there (which might be better served with 1-2 combos like HE/WP).

But Ele and Alexandria aren't good candidates for HE/WP or IW/red cross because they aren't on rivers (less health and no levees). Better to buff one of them with Moai, IMO.

 

[playshogi]

I think I'd rather have 2 solid, if not great, cities like R1 (w/Maoi) and Ele vs. a buffed Ele. and a marginal city like R2 (3 unusable tiles, overlap and leaving fish to rot). I think we'd get more total hammers in the long run, but I can't prove it. I, too, was thinking Amsterdam should be configured for production and heroic epic.

 

[Simon_c]

sc01-ts6

It turned out to be a fairly quiet turnset until the end. I probably should have furthered some of our builder goals, but I didn't really. Sorry guys.


Preflight. 950AD Turn0

We'd be breaking even at 40% sci, keep on 60% but we want to keep a couple hundred in the bank for random events.

There was some talk about if to build the hidden city on this continent or not. Well, we want to use corps, so we're probably better of planning for the hidden city here, and had off any oversees conquests to a colony.

Alex has 4 cities left.
And 7 turns left until we can declare on him again.

Plenty of troops in Athens ready to go for Sparta.
I guess we head for Knossos, Argos, then Ephesus, while stopping Alex getting any more cities.

Turn 1. 242/750 960AD

The Athenans want to be Greek. Yeh, sure we'll give Alex it back.....

Spoiler :

I set all the troops in Athens to sleep until we can declare on Alexa gain.

A quick skip through the cities too.
I see some health builds going on, that's a good idea. The Harbors will help the finances too.
There's a bit too much in the build queue in Alexandria too, but the clams will be +1 everywhere so that's good.

We seem to have dug Helio out of the Jungle. There's 8 workers, but I'm not sure what to do with them.
Some cottages around Navajo and Elephantine would probably be a good idea.

I send our Spy up to Alex's area.

turn 2: 970AD

Amsterdam finishes the forge. It seems a good production city. I build a crossbowman as that will be a good long term city defence unit. But, maybe we don't even need them until we have to scare off other AI.

A worker near Alexandria finishes building a cottage, it will be a while before it's worked, but we'll build another one.


I'm guessing we're not planning to keep Ephesus cos we can't afford it yet really, so I send the rest of the troops that are healing up in Navajo up that way. Not sure if it will be enough though...

Turn 3 980AD

Memphis finishes it's harbor. I think we need some more boats out to explore out coastline. We need a fort on the peninsula to let our boats through.

I send the workers who have just finished building a pig pasture over to road up to a new city location. I guess when Alex has gone, we want to get our costal cities out as soon as cos they should pay for themselves with the 3G sea squares + Islam.

Turn 4: 990AD
I sent a work party out building a new road from Thebes to Amsterdam so it's quicker moving troops around. Yeh, I'm not sure what to do with the workers at the moment.

Turn 5: 1000AD 246/750

1/3rd of the way through the game (in turns...)
I set Thebes to build a Colosseum as when bureaucracy is in, we want it to be as large as poss.
Amsterdam: Harbor for health and wealth.

Turn 6: 1010AD
Memphis: Crossbow to replace the warrior.
Elephantine: Monastery for the 2

Turn 7: 1020AD
Thebes: Missionary, cos we'll need them as soon as we get more cities out.
Athens is out of revolt. 43 turns for the courhouse !! But, it's breaking even.

I cancel the piece treaty with Alex too.
Ooo Look. !

Spoiler :

Alex has left some nice workers for us to grab That's nice of him.
Time for war again mate.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

I decide to send a horse archer to kick the archers guarding the copper. If it gets units out of Sparta, it's worth the loss of an HA I think.
Doh, he lost.
The chariot mops up though.

Spoiler :

sigh.
Alex has also spammed another town

Spoiler :

Turn 8 1030AD
I send the two defenders I left in Athens back to take the new city, and send back two of the attacking stack to look after Athens.


Grrr. We definalty need cats to take ephesus too. (30% chance of winning currently)


Turn 9: 1040AD
Amsterdam finishes the harbor, I set it onto a cat, a couple more at the front will help mop alex up quickly I think.
Elphantine: Colosseum should get rid of the

Oh look

Spoiler :

Alex has sent a HA into range of our spear.
It wins, without a scratch.

Spoiler :

I don't know why people say the AI is thick. This is exactly the sort of move I do.
er, hang on a sec.....

Turn10: 1050AD
Thebes is starving !
Set it to build a cat, more cats, quicker win, less starving. That's the theory.
SoZ BIFAL
Of course, when we decided not to go for it, I didn't think of the denial effect. I guess we have to make sure that civ is taken out quickly

Memphis for cat for the same reason.
The missionary is on a goto to Alexandria on the way to Athens

The new city of Alex's falls to our Axe

Spoiler :

Our spy can either steel Literature, or incite revolt.
We've got the Eps for both. If we incite revolt now, then send him back to another city before we take it, we can do both.

Spoiler :

cbt2 shock phant kills archer.
cbt2 shock phant (recently promoted) kills phalanx

Spear dies taking cat
CR3 sword kills HA
CR3 axe kills HA
HA kills cat
Sword kills last cat

Spoiler :

Sparta is ours


cats and escorts head to Knosos.
Wounded troops go to Sparta to heal .
Spears take a lone worker near the ruins of Alex's latest city.

And that's about it.

Remember, the spy has to get to Ephesus and steal literature before we finish Alex off, otherwise the Eps are wasted.
And we have a missionary on goto to Athens.

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2: S.ilver **UP NOW**
3: Madtown <-- On Deck --
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5: tiberion02 >>Skip<<

 

[S.ilver]

Got it.

Alright. So finish off Alex, but leave Ephesus till the end, so our spy has time to make the long ugly walk up from Thebes to steal the tech .

I was going to bring up the "get SoZ for denial" argument, but then thought "this is monarch and we don't have hammers to be throwing after denial".

Will wait a bit for input, probably play in 6 or so hours regardless. Probably lots of fighting, so I will hopefully not have to make any hard settling decisions.