SGOTM 01 - Fifth Element

Dolphan · May 25, 2006

Only one chariot down! Excellent!

How many have we got and what odds do they get against Moscow? Rostov is a decent city site - if we keep it and Moscow we have a nice little base of operations, with plenty of resources and a coastal city (I'm guessing this isn't a Pangea type set-up).

If we decide we can't take Moscow, pillage those mines. We want to cripple its production capacity and hopefully lure archers away from the city.

Perugia · May 25, 2006

1) Writing (Libraries) as were gonna need to catch up in techs. I don't see any benefit to Archery (archers) - there's no other civ likely to attack our cities soon and we can use chariots/axes/swords deal with any barbs that show up before they get to pillage our improvements. Then fishing (workboats) > sailing (galleys) > alphabet(tech trade. This will speed the growth of our new cities plus bring in some water commerce allow us to trade along the coast and hopefully find the other civs and trade tech with them to catch up on the religious ones.

2) Rostov is not ideally placed as it has no bonus food, loads of water tiles and will therefore take a long time to get up and running. When working the iron mine it will grow very slowly and there will be 3 unused grasslands between Thebes and Rostov. We could place a city of our own 1S of the rice to use these grasslands which could alternate with Rostov to use the iron mine.

A better solution would be to raze Rostov and a city 1SE of the iron. This can work both the iron and rice which nicely balance bonus food and production (Thebes won't need the rice once we cottage more of its flood plains).

I'd also like a city on the grass 3N 1W of Rostov this can work the cows, the small river and borrow the iron or copper as necessary.

3) I would connect the iron as an extension of the rice road ie 1S, 1SW, 1W, 1SE from Thebes.

4) I agree we need to work out if Moscow is takeable. If it isn't we should do whatever it takes to get iron in our borders and build 4 swords which have a base attack 32% better than chariots and can take city attack promotions instead of combat.

Dolphan · May 25, 2006

@Perugia #222

Those two sites would have a lot of overlap, but I can see what you mean. They'd be limited in size by each other, but I don't know how much of a handicap that is as I rarely overlap cities.

Doom Train · May 25, 2006

For tech i recommend fishing --->sailing--->writing--->alphabet. But writing can be before fishing if we gonna build library.

Just raze Rostov after taking Moscow.

gskur · May 25, 2006

Thise are my thought on what we can do, and how.

Alternative 1
Choke Moscow
Pillaging the mines and the pasture around Moscow is a good option. But I think we have enough military to do the following. Take three groups of two chariots each. One sits on the mine 2W of M, another on the mine 1N of M (this one might need to be three-strong!) and the third group splits to occupy the pasture and the mine, 2E and 2E1S of M respectively. We will keep the improvements for the future and deny Cathy these resources.

Rostov needs to be razed ASAP! It will be likely defended by two archers, as St. Pete was, but we can count on opposite of the incredible luck we had there. Four chariots might turn out not to be enough :mad:

. Bring the healthy (or even nearly healthy) chariots, pull the one out of Thebes… don’t be afraid to “overdo” it: it should be quick and ASSURED. After this, let’s work on choking Moscow.

The IRON CITY:
We want a city that will be very much viable in the future: with extra food resources and good hammer potential, just like Thebes and Memphis are. Following the same arguments that lead us to the choise of Memphis’ location, I think it would be best to put our third city 3N of where Rostov is (not for long now). Here we have cows and three (!) irrigateable tiles to support future mines on a few double-hammer hills, and (YES!) an immediate access to iron. We need to start building settler in Thebes NOW. It will take ten (10) turns. In the meantime, build roads from rice to iron, per Perugia #222 item 3. The settler will settle on turn 13, and we will mine the iron starting the same turn with all three workers and be done in 14 turns from now. Turn 15 comes, we can start building swords as rapidly as 5 turns in Thebes and 6 turns in Memphis per swordsman. In another, say, 15 turns from then we take Moscow. That’s about 30 turns from now.

Alternative 2
I think that if Moscow is takeable with chariots, it will take a stack of, say 20 chariots. Do not laugh: forget our luck at St. Pete! (I once wasted 8 horse archers, 2 axes and 4 swords—all with promos—on a hilly capital with walls, defended by 4 archers with combat I promos, with 3 archers incredibly surviving the attack: bad-bad-bad luck it was—yes, it was on Monarch—so I am easily spooked now). Our current production rates of chariots are about 1/3turns in Thebes and 2/7 turns in Memphis. In, say, 14-15 turns we will have another nine (9) chariots built. If, in the meantime, we take out Rostov and choke Moscow (see above)—forget the third city for now!—then we will take Moscow in about 19-20 turns from now, and disband the excess of chariots. It is 10 turns faster than the first plan but our overall development will be much ********. These 10 turns is what it takes to build a settler, but what a difference it makes!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
Whatever we decide, we are short on money. This is why it makes no difference what we want to research now (Writing is what we need, actually), because we should not reasearch AT ALL!. I'd turn the slider to 0% until Moscow is taken. We'll catch up later and cheaper.

Dolphan · May 25, 2006

@Gskur #225

20 chariots is pushing it. It doesn't have walls and the archers are unpromoted. We can do it with ~15.

Goodenuf · May 25, 2006

One point to note: we have up to 10 chariots available for attacking Moscow, and only around 6 of these are at full health. This is not nearly enough for taking Moscow at this point. We are at least 3 turns away from executing an attack on Moscow.

I like gskur's idea in #225 that we take some of our attack force chariots and choke off her resources. This will take up to 8 of our chariots (if we go with 2 per site x 4 sites). We can then take our remaining forces (some of which are in the build queue) and take out Rostov.

I would suggest we finish our current chariots in Thebes and Memphis, then start a settler in Thebes and continue with chariots in Memphis. We then use our remaining forces to go after Rostov. The arguments to raze it versus keeping it are sound; its not that good of a location.

Both alternatives for locations discussed have merit. 1SE of iron is a coastal city with pretty good balance of resources. 1NW is also very good, but is not a coastal city. Indications are that we're on an island with Russia, so I would think that doing the coastal city would be paramount importance in the long term. We dont need to decide this for sure until the settler is ready; as long as we agree that Rostov should be razed.

As far as 0% research for cash; that's a possibility, but outright cash isn't an issue; it's cash flow that's more important now. I'm not big on falling behind in the tech race, and cash won't buy units. I would consider moving it down to 40% (or whatever it will be) to maintain a +ve cash flow might be a good idea, though.

Unless I hear otherwise... this is what I'll do for the final 4 turns:

1) Take some frontline chariots and cover the Moscow resources with 1 to 2 (maybe 3) chariots. This is to choke the Moscow economy. We won't pillage them so we can use them once Moscow is taken (presume we don't raze it).

2) Use remaining forces to move towards Rostov. It is unlikely that I will attack it in the 4 turns left.

3) Task Leonardo to hook up road to rice, and then continue road to Iron.

4) After current chariot build in Thebes, switch to settler build.

5) Keep research at 100% until cash is out, then set %% to positive cash flow level.

6) Initiate research on Writing... but we'd better build some libs right away when we get it. Fishing/Sailing is important, but we have no cities that need the workboats yet.

Keep the comments coming; I'll be back at this tonight to (finally) finish this set of turns.

gskur · May 25, 2006

@Goodenuf #227
I am warried about unit support costs (all those extra chariots in the foreign land) leading to taking Moscow. I'd hate seeing our military auto-disbanded at the footsteps of Moscow for the reason of insufficient funds...

Also, is Moscow a costal city?

Perugia · May 25, 2006

I've done some calculations based on the Combat Explained thread. To take out Moscow we need 3 full strength chariots per defending archer plus a warrior or wounded chariot. So with 5 archers there at present we need 20 units.

The first chariot to attack each defender should remove on average about 37HP from the archer before taking 4 hits and dying or withdrawing as long as the defender strength is no more then 8.7 (assuming 5.5 for our chariots). We were facing 7.35 at StP. This should reduce the damage dome by the archer in future to less than 25 HP so it needs 5 wins to defeat our second chariot as at StP. This boosts our second attacker's chance of winning to such an extent it is likely to remove most of the remaining archer HPs allowing our third unit an easy victory.

However the defender can be lucky on the first combat because it only needs 4 hits to kill our chariot. It could be only slightly damaged or not at all damaged and this would mean it will be able to kill our second attacker with only 4 hits again. We would then be in trouble if we only had 3 attackers and is why we need a fourth attacker as insurance.

gskur · May 25, 2006

@Perugia #229

Wow! I do not know how you do the calculations on this. I was just guessing based on some playing experience. Still, it's kind of spooky... :woohoo:

Goodenuf · May 25, 2006

@gskur #228
Unit costs are an issue for sure. We can be at 30% with positive cash flow, though, so it's not dire yet. More units, though = more maintenance, so there may be a potential problem.

It appears that Moscow is not a coastal city. Some areas S of Moscow are still hidden, but it doesn't look good. There is a small lake to the SE, but that's it.

@Perugia #229
Thx for the analysis; very helpful! They have 5 archers now; what will they have 10 turns from now when we can finally show up with 20 chariots?

To me it supports a push for Rostov, raze, build city, get the iron, and have some swords help us out with Moscow and whatever else is south of it.

Merum · May 25, 2006

I'm good with the plan as outlined in Goodenuf 227. However, My choice for the coastal city would be next to the river W of Thebes.

That said, I kind of suck at city placement sometimes, so take that with a grain of salt.

Goodenuf · May 25, 2006

@Merum #232: That is fine for a future location, but we'll need to get Iron right away; not having to wait for border expansion is a significant advantage. So, placing somewhere next to the iron is important. If we eventually want to build where you suggest, then we should build 1SE of Iron so your suggested location is not overlapped.

However, I would think your suggestion is also at best 3rd on the list of future sites since we want to build a canal city N of where StPetes was razed. This location may affect the effectiveness of your suggestion.

We'll see how it plays out.

Merum · May 25, 2006

Oh, you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say... we definitely need to settle on the iron ASAP. I was just saying that if coastal is a part of the decision, my choice for coastal would be up there, later on.

BrianS · May 25, 2006

@gskur #225:

Take three groups of two chariots each. One sits on the mine 2W of M, another on the mine 1N of M (this one might need to be three-strong!) and the third group splits to occupy the pasture and the mine, 2E and 2E1S of M respectively. We will keep the improvements for the future and deny Cathy these resources.

This is a new concept for me. Do you mean that if we just park a military unit on an improved resource, Catherine will not get the benefit of the resource? Does it mean she cannot even work that tile?

Merum · May 25, 2006

BrianS said:
@gskur #225:
This is a new concept for me. Do you mean that if we just park a military unit on an improved resource, Catherine will not get the benefit of the resource? Does it mean she cannot even work that tile?

That's right. You can't work a tile occupied by an enemy, and you can't use a resource that's on it.

Goodenuf · May 25, 2006

RE: #235

I did the same thing around StPetes while waiting for supporting units. Probably kept them from building an extra archer. I concentrated on tiles that were hammer rich.

This can be a very effective strategy.

gskur · May 25, 2006

@Goodenuf #231
I do not know how to predict the increase in troop support expenses. I know they can escalate very fast. I would prefer to accumulate some money for this now. By just keeping the minimal positive cashflow for now, we might come short on funds later, even by dropping research to 0% then. I lost some good troops and workers like this, and its a true pisser to go through. So I want to do it right away for it smells like it should be done so.

Edit 01:
There are many places where to locate costal cities (it's a pity if Moscow is not--let's find out!). The place bridging the two "oceans" does not have to be a great location, just functional, so we can always have a city placed there, N of former St.Pete's. We could have more costal cities in addition with really strong naval production capacity if need be. But this is in the future.

Edit 02:
Let's keep in mind that the Russians might have yet another city in the South, behind Moscow. :wallbash:

Groin_Apologist · May 25, 2006

I like the idea of posting the chariots outside of Moscow while we build a few more. Hopefully it prevents them from building more archers, and maybe will draw a few out like at St. Pete's.
As far as research, since we are on the warpath (and Russia is the only other civ on our landmass) archery doesn't help us out much. Having said that, nothing really helps us out much until we've taken out Catherine. I'd start with the fishing-sailing path since we know that's job #1 once we rid ourselves of the Russian menace.

Goodenuf · May 26, 2006

Final 4 turns here, and game uploaded. NEXT! (oh, and good luck!).

Spoiler :

Current direction:
1) We have at least 7 chariots of various health around Moscow covering her main resources. Moscow has 5 archers and a worker, and 40% cultural defense. It is quite obviously not a coastal city. It doesn't appear that there is any more cities to the south, but I can't be sure yet. I do believe there is one E-SE; I can see a cultural border extending that way, so yes, there is another city over there. There is copper to the South of moscow, but it is not being worked yet.

2) Research is very low, but we have some cash. We may need to stay this way until we take out Moscow. This can be discussed and decided, of course.

Game has now been uploaded, and can be found at
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm1/Fifth_Element_SG001_BC0925_01.Civ4SavedGame

Here is the turn log:

Spoiler :

And a screenie of the situation around Moscow.

Good luck taking down Moscow. That will be a challenge.

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