SESN01 - The Poor Warmongering Fools

[microbe]

CVN: let's stick to the 24/48 hour rule.

Preturn: I switch Copenhagen and Grogningen to Cathedral. We are paying lux just for them.

We dont have FP built yet - hmm, I'll see what I can do about it.

MM around - there are quite some cities aren't using optimal tiles. For example, Reykjavik is using unmined mountains instead of mined/roaded grasslands. Also if you let Grogningen work costal tiles, people are happier and we can fire the taxman.

And some towns aren't growing without culture expansion - switch to library first.

We are making 90gpt now.

(1)860AD:
@Molde:
crusader 0/4 kills longbow.
elite archer 2/3 kills sword.
vet zerk 0/3 kills sword.

@Chalcedon: vet zerk 1/3 kills musket.

Establish embassy with Korea: size 7, 8spt, 4 musket/1 MDI and building a knight. It has 2 lux and a clown. This reveals that Inca/Korea has an MA against Iros.

IBT Two spears on the mountain are killed but we defeat a sword too.

(2)870AD:
vet zerk loses to redlined sword!
vet zerk 1/3 kills sword.
archer army 8/3 kills MDI.
elite injured zerk 0/3 kills spear.
elite injured archer 0/1 kills redlined archer.

IBT Abydos disposed to Egypt. We lost about 2 spears. Inca completes Sistine.

(3)880AD: 3 armies kill 6 musket, Thebes still hold.

Found Karasjok.

IBT knight retreats from our spear on mountain.

(4)890AD: We capture Thebes. ToA will give us a nice culture boost. But Egypt knows Education, so it will be obsoleted next turn.

Just found we have a stack of galley full of trebs next to Abydos..

IBT archer loses to spear on mountain and promotes it. We learn Education.

(5)900AD: We capture Abydos back. Inca has Astronomy.

IBT our spear on mountain fends off a longbow and a knight! Knight attacks Lisht but retreats from Zerk. Thebes disposes.

(6)910AD: Tromso is founded. Capture Thebes back.

I decide to get wines+4g from Zulu by Engineering. Drop lux to 0.

IBT knight kills our crusader. Knight attacks our elite spear on the mountain again, loses, and it generates a leader! Then another knight wins by 1-hp but kills the spear and the leader. Well, comes easy, goes easy.

(7)920AD: Amphibious attack against Chalcedon loses one and wins/promotes one zerk.
I send one army to pillage Egypt. Also move all armies out of Thebes to avoid flip.

IBT Thebes flips as expected. Two spears are killed and one redlined knight loses to 2-hp crusader.

(8)930AD: Capture back Thebes, but all 3 armies have hp below 5.
(9)940AD: I retreat all armies to next town. We'll get Thebes back after they are healed.

IBT we lose 2 spears but fends off a longbow. Lone spear in Thebes defeats an AC and a pike!

(10)950AD:

Establish the remaining embassies:
Iro: Salamanca is size 5 with a clown, 1 lux, 4 pike, 5spt, building longbow in 3 turns.
Inca: Cuzco is size 12, 3 lux, 7 musket+3MDI+2 settlers, 10spt building market. It has 10fpt. Still, the two continents don't know each other..

Pillage Egypt's ivory.

Note: let the zerk army keep pillaging. It could pillage two tiles per turn. Send it toward the iron and try to find the saltpeter if possible.

Thebes is defended by a lone spear but has a stack outside it. If it flips just bombard and capture it back.

If you capture any big cities, the first turn it won't flip. So put armies there to quell resistance. Then the next turn immediately move army out and only put one defender inside.

Raze all cities that don't have wonders. We have a couple settlers. Maybe you want to build more.

One thing I'm not sure is FP. We need to get it built asap. I'm building it in Stavenger.

Note: we need to hold the two mountains east to Lisht. There is a zerk/spear pair that entered Egypt territory. Use spear to pillage the road and retreat zerk back to mountain. This way Egypt won't be able to attack us in one turn unless it uses knight - which it can no longer build. So if it sends longbow to us, we can bombard before it reaches us.

I'm also building Pentagon in our capital. We don't really need it - we'd better not load the 4th unit into our armies otherwise we wouldn't be able to transport it to other continent before combustion. So if we get Astronomy or Music Theory we could switch to other wonders.

Tech pace is extremely slow. We probably will even get Chemistry first.
There is a suspicious Egytian galley sailing along the coast in the south. I have a zerk fortified next to Amsterdam. Use it to follow the galley.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Nice turns Microbe. It didn't even occur to me that Cleo would probably leave a pillaging army alone. Tough break on that leader though. The odds are what, 1 in 32 to get a leader on defense? Figures.

This is two games I've been sloppy on the MM on. I'm really gonna have to pay more attention to that.

BTW - I did mention the trebs in my recap notes.

As for the order, I'm not even sure where we stand now. Is CVN still planning on picking it up? Are we going to revert back to the order since she's up soon anyhow? Unless you guys think otherwise, I'll give her a chance to pick it up first since she has been lingering and just missed it a couple times.

SesnOfWthr
Microbe - Just played
Cuivienen - On the clock
Bede - on deck (probably has to catch up with four or five other SG's anyhow)
grs - patiently lurking
M60A3TTS - ditto

 

[M60A3TTS]

At this point while we wait to see if CVN picks up, I'd mention a couple things. First, think about what are our immediate objective(s) vs Egypt. Are we going for a knockout? Doesn't seem likely given their size. If it is to knock them down a few notches, what is the quickest way to facilitate that? I thought about going for that iron tile too, but now don't see a need for 3 reasons. (1) Without the horse @ Thebes, she can't build knights. Don't know she can even trade the Zulu for a horse, and she doesn't know about the other continent. (2) With saltpeter, she won't build pikes, and there's a lot of fog in her lands, so it may be a while before we spot the salt. (3) We're too far from IA at the moment to worry about railroads. So I'm thinking the value of iron to her at the moment is almost nil. Once the armies heal, if we can capture and/or raze perhaps Memphis and Elephantine, that should put her production level well below ours. Starve Thebes out, then pump up the pop with our own workers/settlers, that should reduce the flip risk a lot. Then there's the matter of the other continent. We may want to get a settler in a galley, and float around Iroquois for a while in case an empty patch of land develops. That would give us an opportunity to at least establish a presence there. IMHO what we should avoid is getting so fixated on Egypt that we let the Incas get too dominant a position there as the IA comes around.

 

[grs]

I think it's Memphis, Alexandria, Heliopolis and she is done for now. In my game there is no city named "Elephantine". Otherwise I agree with you M60A3TTS .

 

[M60A3TTS]

Now THAT'S bizarre. She was building KT there, then flipped it to something else when we got it. OK, who bulldozed the city and didn't tell us? Or maybe I should ask where Sun's got built? Without an SGL Thebes couldn't have built Leo's in 8 turns during SESN's round.

 

[M60A3TTS]

Oh, I know what it is. The only cities you see on the F4 screen are those you actually can see on the map, if that is what you're going by. It's still in the fog. Elephantine's there somewhere, although what I meant to say was get 2-3 major cities by Thebes. I just assume it's part of the core, again still in the fog.

 

[microbe]

I'd like to completely take out Egypt. As there is no WW, we should continue the war, no matter how long it takes.

Counter attack has already been diminishing. With more pillaging Egypt will be toasted. The only threat is its high culture, so if we want to keep the cities, we have to destroy it.

Note we may start building some libraries for the culture and also prepare for self-research in the future.

There are some Egyptian cities on an island. We should start taking them as it takes time to get there..

 

[M60A3TTS]

I'm fine with continuing the war for a while. As to the island, I'd let it go for the moment. Any troops we send takes away from our effort on the mainland, for cities of lesser value. As long as she keeps losing the larger cities, any culture edge she may have will disappear in time.

 

[SesnOfWthr]

Unless we're going to raze and replace any more cities we capture, I say keep up the pressure too. The cities will be useful only when A) she's gone or B) when we starve them down and pump them back up to adequate size. Personally, I'd rather take the cities at size, and just eliminate her.

 

[microbe]

I think we still need to raze cities which we don't want to keep (i.e., without wonders).

 

[SesnOfWthr]

So you don't think its worth the effort to continually retake the cities, as they will undoubtedly keep flipping? That's fine too, will net us some more workers to improve this lunar landscape we've been saddled with.

 

[microbe]

Yes. We only need to do that for wonder cities that we want to keep (like Sun Tzu's or Sisteine Chapel), but not all of them.

 

[M60A3TTS]

We can probably file this one under personal preference. Seems if speed is the objective, then raze and keep the army moving. Then you don't keep adding a garrison to captured places, and an adjacent zerk to account for flipping. Personally, I tend to raze most cities and accept the bloodthirsty reputation, unless I can quickly starve them out or another AI settler is near where I don't have one of my own at hand. Or when close to wiping out the opponent means only a couple turns of risk.

 

[Cuivienen]

Normally, I would say that I prefer razing -- but we are the Vikings. We have Berserks. A Berserk outside of each conquest can easily retake the city from the Spear that appears in the city the turn it flips. Egypt doesn't have very many cities left, anyway.

Got it.

 

[microbe]

Normally, I would say that I prefer razing -- but we are the Vikings. We have Berserks. A Berserk outside of each conquest can easily retake the city from the Spear that appears in the city the turn it flips. Egypt doesn't have very many cities left, anyway.

Got it.

A few notes:
1. They have musketmen, not spear. zerk against musketmen, especially in big cities, isn't guarenteed win.
2. Flip will lose our defender. Unless we have a lot of spear to spare, it isnt worth and will lengthen the conquest.
3. If you do not put defender in the city at all, each time they capture it back we'll lose money.

 

[Cuivienen]

Memphis and Alexandria are both definite keeper cities, but I think we should try to banish Cleo from the continent. I'll raze some, keep some, I think, just to lower her culture. Anyway:

950 AD (IT) --

Looks good.

960 AD (1) --

No Egyptian counters.

Bergen: Berserk --> Berserk
Lisht: Worker --> Worker

There is disease in Oslo.

Army pillages near Pi-Ramesses, heading towards the Iron. We need to also find and cut off her Saltpeter, wherever it may lie. Stack heads towards Alexandria, leaving a Berserk near Thebes.

~ We almost lose a Berserk to my stupidity.

970 AD (2) --

Oh surprise of surprises! Thebes flips.

Knights Templar spits out a Crusader.
Oslo: Berserk --> Berserk

Err... Oops. Thebes got a Musketman rather than a Spearman. Guess we'll be retreating now.

Our three Berserk Armies that were healing are now ready for action, Giza is ready to fall.

~ The Iroquois and Inca sign Peace. They were at war?

980 AD (3) --

The Inca are building Corpenicus'

Amsterdam: Aqueduct --> Courthouse
The Hague: Worker --> Courthouse

Giza is captured and razed. We get three slaves. We also discover Egypt's Saltpeter near Asyut.

Chalcedon is also captured and razed, along with a large number of Workers, 6 in total.

Egypt's Iron is pillaged!

We retake Thebes.

990 AD (4) --

Alesund: Trebuchet --> Trebuchet

Egypt's Saltpeter is pillaged. We are now playing on a level field.

Lots of troop movements. An Army approaches Heliopolis while the other two heal. The pillaging Army pillages near Memphis.

1000 AD (5) --

Thebes flips... Again. This time, however, all it gets is an easily-dealt-with Spearman.

Vadso founded on the ruins of Giza.

Armies attack Heliopolis and Asyut, but both cities are well-garrisoned.

1010 AD (6) --

A surprise counterattack by Egypt takes most of our Trebuchets and kills all but a single Spear and Berserk pair in Thebes. We killed all but a single Knight, however, so their attack is over.

Trondheim: Marketplace --> Library (post-war use and culture)
Hareid: Aqueduct --> Berserk

We take and keep relatively low-culture Asyut.
The attack on Heliopolis also succeeds and we raze the city.

We kill a Settler pair near Heliopolis.

We rush a settler in Lisht.

1020 AD (7) --

Bergen: Berserk --> Berserk
Oslo: Berserk --> Berserk
Stockholm: Berserk --> Berserk
Lisht: Settler --> Worker

Mostly a healing turn.

1030 AD (8) --

Smyrna: Worker --> Worker
Molde: Trebuchet --> Trebuchet

Troops approach Pi-Ramesses.

1040 AD (9) --

Adrianople: Harbor --> Courthouse

Avaris, deep in our territory, flips. We retake the city and raze it to lower Egyptian culture and teach the Avarins a lesson.

Rush a Settler in Alesund to replace Avaris.

1050 AD (10) --

A Longbowman attacks and kills our healing Army near Asyut.

Lisht: Worker --> Worker
Alesund: Settler --> Trebuchet

We take and raze Pi-Ramesses. Egyptian culture is on a steep decline on the Culture graph.

I'll stop here with some troops still unmoved.

>>SAVE<<

 

[Bede]

Will pick up later tonight.

Nice piece of Egyptian hammering by the bearskin clad, axe wielding Viking leadership. Who needs muskets we got 'zerks!

 

[microbe]

Nice turns.

You surprised Thebes flipped? It did so at least twice in my turns.

I think we need to keep the entire world at war. Never make peace with Egypt.

The other continent has also been in war in centuries. If they make peace, maybe we can bribe them back into war (better against Inca the lead)?

 

[SesnOfWthr]

A shame about the army and trebs, but we didn't really expect to take no losses, right?

I would agree that the longer there are wars, the more it benefits us. I'm not looking forward to zerks vs infantry.

 

[microbe]

SESN, we are following the route with your choice of Monarchy.

Note we need to start planning for the war against the other continent. As you said we cannot afford to fight infantry or even cavalry and I very much like to finish this game before then.