SGFN-08: Random AWM Succession Game

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Looked at the save briefly. Dumb question, but where exactly is Athens? I'd guess somewhere east of Corinth. Am I missing something obvious? Can we build embassies while at war?

edit:

I expect Athens will turn up behind Corinth.

Nevermind

 

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What do we want Berlin to work on? Do we need muskets, longbows at present? Is it worth cranking out settlers to drive down the population if we are planning to let the Vikings take it?

 

[vmxa]

Lurkers Comment:

You cannot make an embassy, while at war. That is why you cannot steal techs, till you get a spy in AW.

 

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What are we doing with the horse army past the choke point? Is it just pillaging for mischief/scouting or do we have an objective?
What do we want our new Barborossa to do-army I assume back at Dortmond, but fill with what?
Lanzelot, re the spices at Marathon-were you thinking of taking the city, taking/wasting then building a new city? I know we need to start conquering, but holding a town just past our funnel seems a challenge.
Also basic game mechanic question-you mention letting the horses stacked with the army near Corinth heal. Do non-army units heal in neutral territory? I thought the need to be in a city or at least on friendly turf.

 

[GamezRule]

I don't know about a horse army, but the Spear army is off to disconnect the Persians resources. Mainly Horses (cause they only got one source), then Iron.

 

[vmxa]

Also basic game mechanic question-you mention letting the horses stacked with the army near Corinth heal. Do non-army units heal in neutral territory? I thought the need to be in a city or at least on friendly turf.

All units heal in neutral borders.

 

[Lanzelot]

One kink in our plans, how will we prevent Berlin from just flipping back to us?

When a town wants to flip to you, you get a popup asking what to do. You can simply refuse the town and then it remains with its current owner.

What are we doing with the horse army past the choke point? Is it just pillaging for mischief/scouting or do we have an objective?
What do we want our new Barborossa to do-army I assume back at Dortmond, but fill with what?
Lanzelot, re the spices at Marathon-were you thinking of taking the city, taking/wasting then building a new city? I know we need to start conquering, but holding a town just past our funnel seems a challenge.

The Horse Army is at its current location because of the following: I had sent a stack of workers last turn to build a road towards Marathon (trebuchets can't go through swamp/jungle, they need a road). In the interturn a Greek longbow appeared on the tile where the Horse Army now is. I let the worker stack build the road, moved two trebs on that road to bombard the longbow, and then sent the Army to take it out. Then I sent two spears as protection for the Army. Next turn they will all return to the chokepoint mountain.
Barbarossa should not go back to Dortmund, too dangerous. I kept him with the stack, and he can form a new 4-longbow Army in Corinth.

You are right, I think we can't take (and hold) Marathon at the moment. But as a medium term plan we should keep it in mind. Within the next 10 turns or so, we should have 2 muskets down at the chokepoint, and then we can risk sending the 6 workers on the jungle square adjacent to the coast, let them build the road, roll all our trebs on that square and take the town next turn. With muskets we should be able to hold it. (And also the road will allow easy reinforcement.) By that time Athens should have fallen, so the walls at Marathon will no longer be there, when we attack.
(But after we take it, they will reappear, easing our defense... )

I don't know about a horse army, but the Spear army is off to disconnect the Persians resources. Mainly Horses (cause they only got one source), then Iron.

Don't forget the saltpeter!! It's almost on the way to the horses, and at the moment it's even more important! The Persians have started to man all their towns with muskets already! I don't want them to get too many of those...

 

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Got it.

 

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Here's my progress so far at 2 1/2 turns.

Spoiler :

Preflight:
IBT: Greek and Persians move towards choke point.
Greek longbow kills archer exposed near Dortmond
Greek galley on our West coast, Viking galley on our

east.

Turn 1
Dotmond walls>barracks
Berlin musket>musket
Leipzig warrior>worker
HAmburg LB>musket
Nurnberg LB>LB
Bonn Aqueduct>Musket

Dortmund tries to trebuchet the road from Herekleia and

misses all three times.
Ship 2 LB across to Dortmund. Empty Berlin to see if the

Viking galley will drop an invasion force. Hopefully we

can play a shell game shifting empty cities to get them

running around (hopefully not snagging workers) till we

can set up for the palace jump. Make a couple of beaker

heads to compensate for loss of MP.
Vet horse at Dortmund kills LB and promotes.
Units in Greek mainland move up towards Corint. Stack of

workers near choke point move back to the mountain.

IBT
Viking galley leaves without dropping any units (drat),

but another's approaching our coast.
Greek LB wounds exposed horse who retreats to Dortmund
Persia has galley off southeast coast near undefended

cities. (Light blue looked like medium blue). Hope it's

unloaded.

Turn 2
Leipzig worker>warrior
Utrecht galley>treb (no barracks there)
Hanover musket>musket
Stutgart LB>LB
Woodstock settler>settler (?)
Bombard Persian units to 1 HP at the choke point.
Mediocre bombard at Corinth. Load 3 LB's into Hegst army

and kill full health Hoplite losing 1 health to defensive

bombardment. Kill second Hoplite with 2 health lost but

promotes. Horsa army kills 2 health hoplite. Vet LB

kills remaining LB and Corinth is ours. As it won't flip

this turn, I move in Barbarosa to make army-maybe we can

get a new leader at the choke. Move horse to hill SW of

Corinth. No units in sight and no Atehns visible.
2 elite LB's kill Persians at choke. Horse army kills

remaining immortal losing 2 health and retreating to the

mountain.
Shift forces to cover Rock Am Ring and Heidelberg 3 from

nearby Greek and Persian galleys.
Tempting fate, I kill the wounded LB by Dortmond with a

vet horse losing nothing.
Matalurgy in 2. Back down science to 40% to net +44 GPT.

Treasury is at 21 gold.

IBT:
Said vet horse it attacked by LB, loses 2 but promotes!
Greek, Viking and Persian Galleys sail on without

dropping landing parties.
More Persian knight enter our choke point.

Turn 3
Leipzig warrior to worker
Starvation at Corinth.
Darn it disorder in Eindoven-where did that come from?

Move in vet horse from choke point mountain.
Bombard then kill Persian knight with horse army that

retreats to mountain.
Move exposed horse near Corinth from hill top to hill top

spotting Athens 5 tiles SE of Corinth. Move LB/Crusader

army to protect horse. Athens is size 8, and has at

least 4 tiles of its cultural borders desert.
Leave Corinth empty and move SOD slowly towards Athens.

I wanted to get input as tomorrow when I play, I'll likely take Athens. We have size 8 cities ourselves, so barring capturing slaves and joining them to newly captured Athens, a Palace jump won't work. Athens does have lots of room to be productive, but is heavily desert. Additionally, we've got no takers at my empty Berlin. Several galleys are off the coast but no invasion forces yet. We're 1 turn from metalurgy, so having the Great Wall won't help us, but will keep it out of the AI's hands.

I'm tempted to take Athens then waste it and then start taking over Greeek cities now left wall-less. Our GL gambit I don't think will synch with taking Athens but may work out if the Vikings/Greeks/Persians land someone.

As an aside, the Greek region has unconnected iron. If we can effectively passify the Greeks, we'll need to tie it in.
Any opinions?

 

[TheOverseer714]

Cavalry beats having free walls, so keep researching. As far as the palace jump, send a couple settlers over to pump the city up.

 

[DWetzel]

I suggest getting another leader in the next turn or two. We can use that to rush the palace.

Failing that... I dunno. I honestly don't think this palace jump/Great Library Elevator razzamatazz is all that necessary at this point, but whatever.

 

[Lanzelot]

Good work! Let's see a screenshot of the Greek core. A few desert tiles are not crucial, if the rest of the area is productive. (Two full rings of cities around the capital will more than compensate for a few weak tiles in the capital.)

Berlin: I don't think it is necessary to empty it yet, as long as no enemy units have landed yet. It was set up to produce 20spt, which is the magic number for both, longbows (40 shields) and muskets (60 shields). With 1-2 scientists, it is probably running at only 16-18 spt, wasting a lot of shields!

For a palace jump, you not only need a big city and lots of units inside, you also need to surround that city by lots of your own towns. So rather than adding settlers to Athens, you should already found the first couple of core towns (and capture more enemy towns around Athens) in order to make it the jump target.
(And certainly don't join slave workers. I don't recall the details at the moment, but I think the palace jump algorithm does not count foreign citizens, only native ones. In any case, joining slaves will increase the flip risk. Rather starve it down a bit by producing workers.) And perhaps Corinth is better suited as capital? We'll first need to check the entire Greek core area.

However, all this will take time, so perhaps DWetzel is right and we need a leader for rushing the palace. We can still try the GLib stuff later, if someone lands a unit in Germany before we get Education. After that it no longer matters.

 

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Here's the Greek core. There's a lot in shadow.View attachment 258537

 

[Lanzelot]

The land is not bad, lot's of floodplain for fast growth of many towns, and the hills can be mined for the necessary production.

However, the Greek city placement is completely nuts, isn't it? Looks like the next-closest town is 5 tiles away from Athens!! They have wasted all that nice space...

I would plant a new town somewhere between Corinth and Athens and make that the capital. Corinth and Athens can then be "reused" as first-ring towns, while other existing towns like Delphi or the ones in the west would make nice second-ring towns.
(But first we get that land under control, then we worry about how to organize it in the best way... )

 

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I agree. It looks like they're avoiding iron! Persia is settled oddly too? I wonder if they're covering resources not yet visible.

 

[GamezRule]

I agree with Lanzelot. I would put our new capitol 1E of the Saltpeter.

 

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OK. It's still int eh future-we've got a lot of pacification to do first. That would be on flood plains, CxxC to Corinth and CxC to Athens.

Do we keep Athens or raze it when I take it in the next 2 turns?

By the way, I hope I'm not leaving too much to committee here with my posting, but I'm in this to learn.

 

[DWetzel]

My own personal opinion is that if we want to put a new capital down over there, and not use another city, then we should burn Athens, because it'll flip repeatedly and with the Great Wall there we don't want that to happen.

I'd observe that flood plans + hills to sit on makes for really awesome science farm land and not completely awesome palace land, and so I'm not too hyped up about relocating the capital there.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I agree with DW, a palace jump there will delay our victory because building a new and productive core there will represent much work and time, meanwhile, our enemies get stronger. We should just burn Greece and make science farms there. If this were vanilla/PTW, where 2 cores are formed by the palance and the forbidden palace, I would do it. Crippling our original core and waiting for the new core to be productive will cause a long period of slow military production, which is a bad thing in an AW game. I think we should rethink the whole palace jump.

 

[Aabraxan]

lurker's comment: Nice progress, guys!