Sgotm 01 - C F R

[Obormot]

OK, so what is the plan for the following military campaigns? I guess the next player won't have any trouble capturing the remaining incan cities and we have to decide where to send our maces from Persia. We currently have about 15 maces and about 5 cats there.

I think we should not hurry and better discuss everything first thoroughfully.

I think that the units in Persia should go aftre Roosvelt next, to avoid unnecessary shuffling troops back and forth. But that means we should start prepairing some galleons for them right now. Perhaps save gold for upgrading galleys?

Roosvelt is more powerfull then us according to the power graph and that is a little scary. But given how good AI is at tactics we should be able to defeat him. But he has longbows and crossbows, so we need a steady supply of suicidal cats. We have a lot of maces already, so I think that Persian cities should produce enough reinforcements for the emrican campaign.

Newly built units on our home island should be used to attack the incas. They will also require lots of catapults. Our forces should then meet in Arabia. I think empty islands and gaps in captured land should be settled shortly before the end.

BTW, anyone want to write our first spoiler? It looks like we met all the AIs already.

 

[Dynamic]

Tomorrow I will make screenshots of several Arabs and American sities. I doubt we can fight on 2 fronts... at least Americans is too strong. May be we could attack arabs first and use 1 tile island near them for accumulating first wave, because we haven't enough money for mass upgrade Galleys... I didn't send last Maces to Persia and I think we can stay Persia alive with his last city (Bactra). We can capture it later if needed.

 

[Lexad]

Great!

Warning: Capac has guilds and Saladin has ivory. Need maybe spears. Engineering is beyond question currently.

Let's drop some workers from mainland to Persia to chop chouses. And Eastern ports could start producing ships instead of land units. Culture bomb might be needed in Susa, let's transfer artist there. If we don't need it in the ned, we lose nothing.

Edit: Let's build Heroic Epic in e.g. Memphis. It'll take 10 turns and allow us to produce units there twice as fast - and it is our main unit producer.

We haven't decided how to develop Moscow. How about turning it into GP (merchant) factory, if even we get 1 GMerchant, we can send him to India and get ~2K cash. Also they will generate cash themselves. Even now we can set 3 merchants there, irrigate 1 grass and still have +4 food. With pop increasing we can also increase # of merchants.

And we should move units stationed in Moscow towards future battle locations, i.e. Incan shore. Unrest is low now.

Also an MM note: ther's a healer mace in Tarsus, let's bring him to front.

 

[Lexad]

And another note: as our mainland is currently building units and newly conquered lands build chouses, we might as well convert to buddhism to reap the effects of Organized religion and religious pacification.
Edit: and exta +1 culture for state religion.

Edit: and another note on uninhabited islands - we can put a settler (2 ar the southern one) and constantly monitor the islands. If we see an indian settler landng we immediately found a city (or 2). As they cannot settle withing 2 ties from existing city, they have to leave, and in the meanwhile we do not bear costs for extra [useless] city.

 

[Obormot]

Ok, I think attacking Saladin does make sense because we are short of galleons and most of our coastal cities are on the west coast. I still don't like landing the troops on the one-tile island, we need to be carefull of course, but we also don't want to overestimate the AI. From my experience if you land a stack of fully healed units on hill somewhere they will do nothing, so we can get some cats & maces and start hammering on their defenses while our galeons return to bring more units. I think most of their units are longbows, axes and horse archers even if they know more advanced techs.

I guess we need to think of a more or less detailed military campaign before we proceed. We need to decide where to build galeons and how to move troops for maximum efficency. Do we want to upgrade the galleys before researching guilds? Or maybe we don't even need guilds at all?

There is also a question of civics. Currently Org. Religion is costing us a lot for no real benefit. We should either switch to Buddhism now to build stuff in Persia sooner as Lexad sais or revolt to Theocracy for the XP. I like the second option more. We can even switch to no religious civic to save money, but I think Theocracy is better.

I think we need to build the Heroic Epic in Thebes, we still need a lot of fighting and it will surely pay off.

I don't agree about using the culture bomb against India, it will only gain us maybe 5-10 tiles. I think the best use of it is to detonate it on the last turns of the game when we have several cities in resistance where the effect will be huge and will allow us to push over the limit like 10 turns earlier. In Persia we still have a lot of time and we can try to push indian culture with buiuldings and hiring artists.

 

[Ptitsa Consul]

One remark please. It's my turn now, but no Witan's (he wrote me about) but...

a) I agree, that our war politics must be discussed well,
b) I have a little time for play (The Real Life ). Thats why I can do my turns only tomorrow or morning of day after tomorrow

 

[Lexad]

Concerning Obormot's message:

The hill island base - good point. With his current borders Saladin even can't see it from the land.

The Galeons - I think the eastern cities (Helio, Rostov, Novgorod) can be used. In 12 turns we will have 4 galeons if we switch right away. Upgrading 1 galley costs 155 gold = 3 turns of whole economy working 100% money - might be too much.

Guilds - we do not desperately need knights, if only against mass xbows - but any mass can be demolished by mass suicide catas. Knights are immune to first strike - but don't have City Raider which maces have. And in power they are close. Guilds could be an option, we should discuss it. And there seem to be little great land distances to cover fast, so our galleon delivery with its +1 mvt would work just fine to quickly destroy enemy shoreline. Need more intelligence on enemy cities location, though.

Edit: however, now the only real alternative to guilds is engineering for pikes to fight elephants and knights and etc. Knights can do all this and also we get grocer for gold and health in our main cash-chuckers. Theology we get from Cyrus' almost dead hands.

Heroic Epic - Thebes is fine too, but Memphis has slightly more base production and is a generic unit producer, much less a commerce city.

Culture bomb against India should be used only as extreme measure - when some captured cities are on the brink of fleeing to India. For such occasion we could store he pal nearby if we find we can't cope with ordinary measures.

Now some addition:
It always seemed to me that higher-level AI upgrades his troops extremely fast, so we possibly cannot expect much courtesy at this point from Saladin or Huyana. Prepare for the worst and get some new maces +10% combat upgrade so that they will retaliate first, not the valuable City Raiders II and III.
Edit: no, even better idea! Get 1-2 xbows in stack to protect from enemy xbows and 1-2 spears with Combat II (need Theocracy) to fight against knights and elephants - they have the strength of 8,8 vs 8 for ordinary mace. Promote all maces as city raiders only when siege is resolved and they will let spears do the fighting!

It takes only 3 turns for galeon from Helio shores to reach Sarmatian in Arabia. When we decide to start war, getting supplies by galeon chain will be fast.

Edit: to Ptitsa Consul - noone is inna hurry here, pal, don't worry. On the contrary, major strategic decisions should be thoroughly though of and discussed.

 

[Lexad]

Some merchant notes - let's trade with Roosevelt - he has 8 gold and loads of health/happiness resources. We can sell him sugar, gems, rice and even useless now stone. Our major cities are choking for health - so give them. Also get cash. And FDR will be less willing to help his friend Sally if war starts.
Edit: just don't take crabs as we'll have our own in 5 turns.

Edit 2: also if we decide to research another tech or 2, it will be better to set commerce on money 2 turns later, when we have market in Thebes.

 

[Ptitsa Consul]

I think that things:
a) We must research Engeneering now for Pikeman. 2 turn movement of Knights is so small against Galleons movement (and enemies have less chances for intecept they). IMHO in Civ IV foot units with City Raider are usefull when mounted (except Pangea-form map)
b) Heroic Epic (I agree with Lexad) we must build in Memphis.
c) About some commercial buildings - I don't no? I not read great agruments for it or against it here

 

[Obormot]

I don't think we really need pikemen that much, but engineering may be usefull for the movement bonus. I agree that we don't need knights, there are no weak targets for us and we have to use cats everywhere, so maces are better.

It looks like it is tough decision time again, so please don't hurry. Someone willing to make up a plan of our invasion?

 

[Obormot]

I had a closer look at the save, so here are my thoughts:

1. The 3 galleys down in Persia must be upgraded to galeons ASAP. We have many units there and if we don't upgrade the galleys they will get stuck there doing nothing which should not happen in military games. We will be able a galley once in 2 turns.

2. We have some more galleys up north, but since we cannot upgrade them all quickly we should upgrade only the southern ones and hand-build galeons in the north. We can switch several coastal towns to build galeons relatively quickly. The only exception is galley near Novgorod, I think we should also upgrade it because Novgorod takes 12 turns to build a galeon.

3. We should land directly in Arabia, I don't think that collecting units on an islands first is a good idea. There is a nice forested hill there, but we can also land somewhere else.. Just make sure that there are some cats in the first landing so that we can start destroying the defenses immidiately.

As for the Heroic Epic, I agree about Memphis, I just thought for some reason that Thebes has higher production. We can also build it in Moscow, if we take 1 more hill from the city SW of it we can get it to 20spt base production.

We also need to decide what to do once our galleys are upgraded. Guilds? Engineering? None? I don't think we really need anything, cause we won't get it sooner then about 20 turns from now...

 

[akots]

Well, we actually do not have to capture cities from Inca, for example. They are apparently on an island and without contact with other AIs. So, if most of their cities are razed, this will allow us to build settlers there later when we are ready to go over Domination limit. While other AIs do not have Astronomy yet, they cannot settle on the Incan island.

The idea of trading with Roosevelt is not a good idea IMHO. He is already as strong as he is, no need to make him stronger by trading. On the contrary, we should try to make him weaker. Which might mean to try and bring him into war either against Arabs (very unlikely) or against us (more likely). Since we can reach him and strike at our choosing, I would either declare on him now and pillage a few of his fishing nets with a wondering caravel of ours and then, when we are ready to strike Arabia, we can make peace with him on our terms and this peace will be secure (he will be unable to break it) for the 10 turns which we need to fight against Arabia. This will slow down Roosevelt's research and will switch him into building some offensive units instead of defensive units.

Meanwhile, we can still try to research either guilds or Engineering but I'd like Engineering more mostly because of movement and pikemen as well. If we would be facing knights, pikemen will be able to make our stacks almost invincible.

 

[Lexad]

Incan cities are few and close, we might leave them and also use to build units. Roosevelt already has contacts wth Incas, btw.

I agree, we should not trade with Roosevelt excessively - only as much as we need. Why not sell stone - get money and/or health.

Galeon in Nvgorod - I still think we should build it there. Galeon in Rostov takes 6 turns, in Helio - 9, so after 12 turns we get 4 galeons - and we need quite of them to create a galeon chain towards Arabia and trabsport troops along its coast. Also, it means the city will be producing 155/12 = about 13 coins per turn which we save on galley upgrade.

We should not hurry with galley upgrade as there are not much troops in our homeland for invasion (except Moscow regiment). And we should build an xbow for xbow protection.

 

[Obormot]

Upgrading several galleys near the Persian coast is a must nomatter whom we decide to attack, otherwise we loose too many turns doing nothing which is unacceptable.

I also thought about attacking Roosvelt first, but if you look at the map you'll see that most of our costal cities are on the east coast and also our unupgraded galleys are all in the east, which means that attacking arabs first is much more optimal due to logistics. Also we won't really get many troops in the first wave, so it is safer to attack the weaker AI first. By the time we can attack incas or americans we'll have a great number of troops over there.

 

[Cat Behemoth]

I prefer to attack Incas first. As we have troubles with scientific research it could be some problems if they become more advanced (for example if they'll reach cavalry).

 

[Dynamic]

Sorry about cities screenshots... Because of install/uninstall rusification I missed autosave interval so I haven't all autosaves...

P.S. I prefer Arabs first...

 

[Dynamic]

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Philadelphia_860AD.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Sarmatian_875AD.jpg

 

[Witan]

We haven't decided how to develop Moscow. How about turning it into GP (merchant) factory, if even we get 1 GMerchant, we can send him to India and get ~2K cash. Also they will generate cash themselves. Even now we can set 3 merchants there, irrigate 1 grass and still have +4 food. With pop increasing we can also increase # of merchants.

I think, that we need only Great Artist now. Money we will get from capturing cities and from taxes, because science program is near finishing. So lets start GA factory!

 

[Lexad]

Ndaaa... And they have units to upgrade once they have money.

However, Americans have spear and longbow in Seattle, so it might be not that bad overall. But we need to constantly monitor their defences in locations whre we gonna attack.

I'm indifferent between Arabs and Capac as they are close from the point of location to our other enemies and evenly distanced from us - even our Persian army will get exactly the same time to arrive at Sarmatian or at Tiwanaku or at Cuzco. Capac has higher production and GNP than Salad and is more developed, but doesn't have feudalism yet (and no friends to trade techs with) - why not try to use this weakness? But we have to act quickly then - build/upgrade 2-3 galeons, stuff them with troops and attack.

Obormot, speaking of no galley upgrading i was referring to mainland, not Persia - agree with you there. By the way, it would take the same time to sail from India east coast to Capac East and West coasts (and to Saladin). We can launch attack from different flanks simultaneously.

Edit: Witan, I have little to no experience of GA domination so will accept any decision of the team.

 

[Obormot]

I don't think we really need another artist and the GP price is quite high already. I would like to keep a high spt city like Moscow building units and not things like national epic. It will gain us more turns.

I didn't know that incas don't have Feudalism. But he does have crossbows IIRC and will propably get Feudalism very soon.