Sgotm 01 - C F R

[Obormot]

Pacifism is actually a bad idea because it would increase our military costs greatly, i forgot about that. We can use it if we won't be able to get an artist in time by normal means, but it may be quite dangerous. And we should be able to produce at least one artist normally though.

After some thought I think we should return Moscow to producing untis and set up Persepolis to make a great artist. It will take about 50 turns for Moscow to make an artist without pacifism and we should win by that time.

 

[Lexad]

If we set both cities to Artist, Persepolis can sustain (and grow quickly to the size required) 10 Artisits (not even counting lake +1) working just 5 food tiles while Moscow if it works all its grassland as farms - 8. If we build NatEpic (and I do suggest we chop it),the ratio will be 20 vs 8. We might never see an artist from Moscow in this short game.

We'd better not trade Astronomy to Gandhi until we get settlers on small islands. Rushing Engineering was not that urgent.

Important note: we've just made peace with Saladin, yet no treaty in active list. And we cannot declare war. Which way is it bugged?

Edit: If we finished off Persia, it's culture would start helping us instead of Indians. No way can you get an 8% revolt chance in your city when it has just 3 tiles of enemy land neighbouring it. Send a cultural mission with maces.

 

[akots]

...
Important note: we've just made peace with Saladin, yet no treaty in active list. And we cannot declare war. Which way is it bugged?
...

Yes, I'd like to know as well what is going on. Wanted to play today but I guess we have to wait for Witan's report.

 

[Witan]

My mother say: don't play at work!

So, about my game:

I captured 2 Arab cities with loss 4 Cat and no maces. When my army health, Salladin come with 2 Elephants, 1Sword and 1 HorseArcher. So I make case fire (not peace) with him.

My mistake is, that i send 5 Cats and 1 Archer to Incas, so I cant't to capture Incas cities (note, that now 2 macs and 1 WC are there). Why I start second front? I think, that we can finished Arabian and Incas in one moment (Incas has no big Army). And later, 2 stacs can quikly captured American cities.

All cities build Cats, some Maces and Courthoses (but I think, that Arabian cities must buid some Cats). 2 Cities (Moscow and Persepolis) are near GA factory. I can't to calculate win date, so try to play liberal.

Now I planed to calculate territory, may be it very useful to build some cities on neutral islands - caravel discovered some new.

 

[Lexad]

Everyone seems to agree on settlers - good news

Logistics: as we're now locked in peace with Saladin for 6-7 turns, we should move most ships and new forces to Inca front. The stacks extant in Arabia seem to me enough for wiping out Salad. Sea desant at Najran (ready to fire as I see) would be a good opening move.

We should destroy Cyrus now if we want to keep Gordium. Then we inherit his culture and would not be pressed by India so much.

 

[Lekdevil.NL]

Lurker's comment:
You have declared a cease fire with Saladin, not signed a peace treaty. That means that both sides can redeclare war at any point in time...

 

[Lexad]

Oops, really. Thank you, kind visitor, my bad.
For some reason, I cannot declare war on Saladin in diplomacy dialogue, but can do this by <alt>-clicking his name.

 

[akots]

Yes, indeed, logistics seems to be the most difficult problem here. Delivering troops to the battleground is painful and slow.

It seems, we would have to continue with some courthouses, otherwise, even with plunder money, we will not be able to get through.

Inca has guilds, I'm not so sure if they have horses, but in any case, attacks from knights can be a huge setback on the Incan front. And these knights can come any time.

 

[Lexad]

They have horses near Tiwanaku at least. But we have Elephants and pikes so we should not be afraid of occasional Knights. Just produce and deliver. I'd vote for Elephants.

 

[akots]

I'm sorry but I don't have time to play before Tuesday or Wednesday, so I must ask for a skip.

This means Obormot is UP

 

[Obormot]

OK, I got it. Will play tonight.

 

[Obormot]

1142 (0)
- Micromanage everything for no growth, no working small cottages, etc - just the short term stuff. Persepolis will produce GA sooner then Moscow, so I put Moscow's citizens back to work.
- Prepair to attack Arabia next turn (most of the setup was already done nicely by Witan ).

1148 (1)
- Suicide 2 cats at Tiwanaku (incan) and take the city loosing one more cat (triing to kill a wounded incan cat with more then 90% chance, wanted to promote our cat with accuracy).
- Declare war on Saldin and move units into Arabia from all sides.

IBT
- The arabs threaten Baghdad with a SOD of 2 jumbos, 4 horse archers, 1 sword and 2 cats.

1154 (2)
- Destroy the arab stack after suiciding 2 cats to inflict mass damage. Loose on more mace attacking a wounded WE.
- Southern stack in Arabis bombards Najran to reduce the defense down to 22%.

1160 (3)
- Incan stack (mostly cats for now) reaches Cuzco.
- Northern arabian stack will reach Medina next turn.
- Central stack has to stop to get healed, but the cats covered by an uninjured mace advance further.
- Southern stack takes Najran's defense down to 4%.

1166 (4)
- Kill 3 defenders in Najran after suiciding 3 cats (on of them retreated). One wouded axe left, should take it next turn.
- Central stack in Arabia reaches Mecca.
- Northern stack in Arabia reaches Medina.
- Cuzco defenses are down to 0% in one turn , but will have to wait for more maces to come before attacking it.

1172 (5)
- Damn, they pulled an LB into Najran, it is quite risky now. I attack them anyway, kill the LB with a mace after loosing a crossbow and then loose with another mace against wounded axe. So it will be our damaged mace against the damaged axe next turn.
- Central arabian stack bombards Mecca down to 0%, but waiting for maces.
- Medina is being bombarded slowly, only 1 cat in that stack.

1178 (6)
- Finally take Najran.
- Suicide 4 cats at Cuzco (2 retreat) and takle the city without further losses.
- Start building settlers in 2 russian cities for the southern island.

1184 (7)
- Arabian revolt in Khurasan, but no flip. Not a big problem since we should take Mecca next turn and push their culture back.
- War weariness starts biting. Most of our cities remain happy, but the artist factory in Persepolis is messed up. Will chop a theater there and maybe a temple.
- Good news is that the flip risk in Gordium is gone now with more culture and more units garrizoned there.

1190 (8)
- We take Mecca loosing 3 cats and a mace.
- The incan stack splits into 2 to attack 2 lesser incan towns at once.

1196 (9)
- The WW get ugly requiring a 20% culture rate. So I take Medina loosing a mace and make cease fire with Salsdin. The arabs have 1 city left on a small island that we can capture anytime we want. Persepolis has 5 artists now making 15 GPP per turn, but we may very well win before the GA is born.
- The situation on the incan island is worse though. I have underestimated them and they still have a massive defense in one of their cities and also have at least one knight which has just killed our mace during the IT.

1202 (10)
- We take Corihuarachina, a small incan city.

- The stack near Machu Pichu is threatened by the incan knight, our WE that I built for cover is near Cori, so we will propably loose another mace or 2 to that knight
- The war in Arabia was quite fierce and we don't have many cats left there, so we propably won't be able to start the american campaign that soon. There are 3 cats in a galeon that are sailing from the incan island to arabia, and we will propably need some more from home.
- There is also a small force sailing to the only Persian city left, it is not urgent of course, but I started setting up the attack when the flip chances in Gordium were still very high.
- 2 settlers are being built in Russia and there is a galeon waiting for them to sail south and claim that island. We will propably need many more settlers though to claim the other island and to fill gaps between captured cities. Also since we might be late with our culture bomb, we may try to use several settlers instead of the culture bomb. Then we raze the last cities instead of capturing them and settle ours instead to fill the land with culture quickly.
- The galeons are arranged in a ship chain now that is extended up to the eastern tip of the incan island. The ship chain is not as fast as in civ3 though, requiring 2 turns to transport units.
- Also remember that we can switch to slavery and poprush once we feel that unit and settlers produced normally won't reach the front. This will wreckj our economy of course, but we still have a positive cash flow and more then 1000$ in the treasury from capturing cities.
- We are at 36% land currently and will claim more after resistance is over and borders expand.

Arabian/American continent:

Incan island:

 

[akots]

Got it, will try to play today or tomorrow. Priority seems to go to finishing the Inca and preparing for a war against America as well as delivering and positioning settlers. I think just leaving them standing unescorted on these islands might be good enough unless Gandhi shows up with his own settlers. But we will have an option to build cities there before India, so no big deal here.

 

[Obormot]

We need to micromanage the logisticks carefully in these last turns. The settlers for all the small islands and for all the culture gaps should arrive in time (we also need to raze several last cities we capture and settle our cities instead so that we can expand the borders without waiting for the resistance to end (since we propably won't make the culture bomb in time). All the border expansions should happen before we win. This is a quite annoying stage of a domination game where all the small detailes should be calculated carefully.

 

[Dynamic]

Note, only earth tiles are calculated for Domination. Second - for first border expantion we need Caste System and 4 turns (4*Artist(4)), so we must found cities in 4 turns from expected victory and don't forget about right civic!

 

[Obormot]

We need only 3 turns because we are creative.

 

[Dynamic]

We need only 3 turns because we are creative.

Yes, you are right.

 

[Lexad]

I feel like land does not go directly into score the same turn it's covered by our borders, by rather several turns later. If anyone knows whether it is the same true for land for percentage domination limit?

 

[akots]

... This is a quite annoying stage of a domination game where all the small detailes should be calculated carefully.

Yes, indeed, and I'm not good at that but I will try. It seems, just by looking at the save, that we need to take a few American cities but I'm not certain how many we need.

Also, I don't think we can finish very soon. May be 30 turns at least. But this is before I played, will tell more after playing.

 

[Lexad]

Watched the save. Warfare and settling excellent! One but - our stack at Machu Pichu can easily be destroyed. Need to retreat or protect fast. Drop a unit NW from Tiwanaku territory to pillage enemy horses and eliminate knights. Might as well pillage Iron NE from Cuzco.

I think if we chop library and most of NatEpic in Persepolis, we can get even 2 GAs in these remaining 30+ turns.

This might prevent the necessity of American war as we do not have units for it now. I'm scared by the stack in Washington. However, we do not really need to kill all Americans for the win - just 2-3 borderline cities to spread our culture - and this can be done by desant attacks.

Minor notes:

I'd also suggest setting Tiwanaku at some food to prevent starvation. We don't need that much culture that fast

We need Gandhi's pigs no longer and can get 1 more gpt for our resource.