SGFN-08: Random AWM Succession Game

[GamezRule]

Hey, aren't the Greeks and Persians supposed to be fighting each other at "Thermopylae," instead of us?

 

[Lanzelot]

Hey, aren't the Greeks and Persians supposed to be fighting each other at "Thermopylae," instead of us?

Yep, right. Just checking whether everyone is still awake...

 

[Lanzelot]

We really really need iron. There is an unclaimed source on the south tip of our continent (basically due south from Groningen)--I wonder if an excursion with a settler + worker (for a colony) would be worth it for even a few turns of iron. Probably not, but...

Difficult question. At the moment I tend towards finishing Gunpowder at a "reasonable pace". Then we don't need any iron at all:

• In fact, Longbows are as good as Medieval Infantry. (Even better: they have defensive bombard, so inside towns covered by spears, they defend better than MI.) So no need for iron here.
• The chokepoint is well covered by the Spear Army. No need for pikes (or even spears) here! (I don't think any enemy units will break through the choke from now on, you have consolidated that area pretty well by now. All units will have to move around our Army once or twice (hopefully getting hit by the ZOC once or twice), getting 1-2 shots from our cats, and then archers can pick up the red-lined units. So iron isn't urgently needed here either.
• Pike would be good for protecting our beachead, once we cross over to Greece. However, with a bit of luck we'll have saltpeter within reach, and then we can even use muskets!

I think that at the moment we start getting a little tech lead on the AI. They have been building units, units and nothing but units for like 50 turns now. We on the other hand have set up a small but reasonably productive core. The AI (in particular Persia and Greece) has a huge number of towns, but I think it is mostly under-developed size-1 towns. With Longbows and Muskets we would already have superior weapons, so we should try and finally make some progress towards Athens, before the AI has closed the gap again. Going to Scandinavia for iron would distract us too much and too long. The juicy target is still Greece.

Lanzelot

 

[DWetzel]

Unfortunately we're looking at 20+ turns for Gunpowder as our reasonable pace, even counting for growth. This is due to our fairly large unit support cost (which I did nothing to bring down--stuff happens). Next player should resume full time settlers from Leipzig to fill the Dutch lands for unit support, and try to devote some towns to aqueducts (to get to size 7).

And I don't want to count on saltpeter, even if it seems like we "should" have some. What I'd like to ideally see is for us to get the situation fully under control in the south, and use longbows the horse army (not the spear army, which will be needed elsewhere) to hold a well-defined chokepoint there. Use the spear army, the longbow army (right now do not fill with more than 1 longbow) and a bunch of horses + longbows to assault Greece or Persia. Persia seems to have most of the iron; not sure if Greece does, they've been sending hoplites plus horses. If Greece has no iron, I'm afraid that I have to say that going for Persia instead is vital. We can't wait another 50-60 turns to get a real assault going.

 

[Lanzelot]

Captain, it's your turn...!

 

[TheOverseer714]

Shirking my responsibilities, I am. I guess I will take the save and play it this week, bit by bit.

 

[Lanzelot]

Perhaps we should make up our mind, whether we want to continue for Gunpowder?
I think we should. Finding out for sure, whether we have saltpeter or not, would once and for all settle the question if it makes sense to research on (Cavalry in the not too distant future would solve all our problems... ), or if we rather let the GLib do it's thing.

Other than that, there are no immediate questions, I guess. Hold the south and keep building settlers, infrastructure as well as an invasion force... (And while you are at it: finish the space ship, will'ya? My stomach tells me that would end all our troubles as well... )

 

[DWetzel]

The "good" news is that because there's no good way to expand right now, we can (somewhat) afford to consolidate the peninsula and not worry about expanding beyond that.

Edit: I wonder if it might not be more economical to just min-run Gunpowder (my money says that we won't get it from the GLib within 50 turns anyway), and use the cash to infrastructure up and build our flagging economy.

 

[Sparthage]

I musk say that agree on min-research towards gunpowder. We can adjust this if anything comes up.

 

[DWetzel]

Further random thought--if we are going to invade Greece, and for that matter even if we aren't, I'd consider moving our ships away from where they are and around to our east coast. If their placement was intended to be a blockade, it isn't working (and in fact I'd rather they attack at Konigsberg than somewhere else, since getting our whale walked on was a major pain in the ass.)

 

[splunge the 2nd]

I agree to building up some cash (min research to gunpowder)

 

[TheOverseer714]

I'd probably do a max sustainable on Gunpowder, can we afford to wait 50 turns? If we research too slow, our enemies will be so far ahead that we will lose. As it is, our units are already struggling with what we are facing, how will they do against superior foes?

 

[DWetzel]

I'd probably do a max sustainable on Gunpowder, can we afford to wait 50 turns? If we research too slow, our enemies will be so far ahead that we will lose. As it is, our units are already struggling with what we are facing, how will they do against superior foes?

Look at it this way, gunpowder, as far as offense is concerned, is only useful on the way to cavalry. Which is four techs away.

We can either min-run gunpowder and save a boatload of cash, and max-run the other three when we have more libraries/etc., or we can slog along at 20 turns per tech at break-even cash. I'm pretty sure we get to cav in about the same time either way, except that if something crucial comes up, we get to have cash on hand.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I'll do the min run, just saying its a bit of a risk. Our unit support will improve with new settlements and core growth and might make research reasonable again. Lots of money won't do squat vs riflemen. Our opponents can trade freely and several are scientific.

 

[DWetzel]

Nobody has so much as gotten Theology yet, I'm not too terribly worried about riflemen.

One thought that has occurred to me, which may be stupid: do we want to try to time a Knights Templar build for when we can get Chivalry from the Great Library? Risky as heck but the firepower would be very nice.

 

[Lanzelot]

One thought that has occurred to me, which may be stupid: do we want to try to time a Knights Templar build for when we can get Chivalry from the Great Library? Risky as heck but the firepower would be very nice.

How about a compromise: not exactly a prebuild, but let's always have one city working on some expensive project, like a marketplace. If we happen to get Chivalry, we just switch that city to KT and have a head start of like 5-10 turns. Otherwise we just get the marketplace and at least don't loose any shields. And: once we see the first civ with Chivalry, we could switch the current marketplace to a prebuild proper.

Ok, min run to gunpowder then! But we don't use up all our cash right away. We can short-rush a few improvements and upgrade some units, but we should keep a fat bank account, so that when gunpowder comes in and we do see that saltpeter is within reach, we can then run deficit research for a long time and that way make up the lost turns.

 

[Aabraxan]

lurker's comment: As we all know, while muskets don't do diddly for offense, they'd be a huge defensive improvement over spears. I sure hope you guys get saltpeter. The lack of iron has been a real pain in the butt for you. Good luck.

 

[madviking]

lurker's comment: Muskets do get a offensive boost from pikemen, though. But I don't know how effective the two attack is. But if you were France, read Bamspeedy's "Beyond Sid" game. He fought most of the game with Musketeers, (3.4.1) even against rifles.

 

[TheOverseer714]

A musket is a very expensive Archer... OTOH, they are perfect to guard longbows and trebuchets...

 

[vmxa]

Lurkers Comment:

In C3C a musketeer is a better unit. It has bombardment like a LB, 5 defense like a rifle. Much better than a musket. Bamspeedy played in PTW or Civ3, I forget which.