SGOTM 01 - Memphis Blues

[Frederiksberg]

I'm off to Sweden. Bike is packed and rain has stopped . My suggestions in summary:

Tech: Metal Casting -> Writing -> Code of Law / Sailing

War: Go for early kill in St. P. We need 2 times as many attackers as defenders + 1 in reserve if we should get unlucky.

Production: WC's

Metal Casting enables forge which gives +2 happyness with silver and gems. Also we could build the Colossus and get more gold from the water tiles.

Good luck Drogear. Kick some russian ass

 

[Mad Professor]

The sooner we get copper, the sooner we can pump axemen...

And we'll get copper if we take St.P and hook up the copper nearby. The sooner we get the 2units to 1 +1 ratio there the better.

The WC is a nice UU isn't it - excpet that it's useful life is kinda short! Enter Spearmen and Axemen, exit WC...

 

[Drogear]

I'm off to Sweden. Bike is packed and rain has stopped . My suggestions in summary:

Tech: Metal Casting -> Writing -> Code of Law / Sailing

War: Go for early kill in St. P. We need 2 times as many attackers as defenders + 1 in reserve if we should get unlucky.

Production: WC's

Metal Casting enables forge which gives +2 happyness with silver and gems. Also we could build the Colossus and get more gold from the water tiles

Good luck Drogear. Kick some russian ass

Welcome to Sweden!

I’ll play the turn when I get home from "work" today. I’m shooting for the suggestion you mentioned if no one objects?

I’ll be happy to conquer the first (?) insurgent city! We’ll bring peace and happiness to the barbarians!

BTW: Is the save named "Memphis blues? I understand that Ill upload it from that special SGOTM page.

 

[Mad Professor]

BTW: Is the save named "Memphis blues? I understand that Ill upload it from that special SGOTM page.

I used the link in the first post in this thread which was put there by the moderator. It takes you to the results and progress page. I clicked on the date by our tam name, and that got me the game file.

I don't know if there was another way I was supposed to do it, but that worked for me!

 

[BSouder]

That appears to be the way to do it. The "Memphis Blues" link on the progress page brings you here. The date link on the same page is the most recent save.

 

[Drogear]

Ok here is the report.

I did´nt dare to attack St.P without overwhelming forces so I attacked with 7 WC vs 2 Archers.
Took em both out without any losses and St.P is ours!

Stood before an dilema about attacking Moscow or Rostov, scouted Moscow and sw 4 archers (2 with city def trait)
Rostov had 2 Archers so I took that town instead, lost one WC but took the city.

I found a new city 2 tilts from Moscow, Yekatinburg was it names and in ashes its now! (lvl 1 city)

Lured out and killed a few units on deep russian territories and pillaged all resources and most roads.

All in all the Russians lost 10 Archers, 1 Scout, 1 Axeman, 1 Worker, Rostov, St.P and Yekaterinburg got sacked by me!
My losses did rise at the end due to the spearman. Totaly 6 WC did die.

Research: The forge/colossus tech was to expensive (65 turns), whent for writing (11 turns) then Iron works.

Thebe had to change focus so I got it granary and a library, did not loose to mych WC but gained alot more
in other areas. Building a settler now, but only 1-2 turns in so it can be changed.

But I lost the WC guarding the far copper spot and the damn ruskies manages to work it, to my knowlage they hav build
1 spearman and 2 axeman. I killed 1 axeman but the spearman wrecked havoc and killed 3 WC! had to take a chance
to kill it with a lone WC with a 48% odds, but my gamle did not work... Anyways, I have 2 WC ontop of the copper to
be pillages next turn! And 3 WC 2 tilts away. My streatgy is to take the 2 less defended cities before Moscow that cant
be taken at this point.

 

[Drogear]

One tip, rater basic one so dont get mad if its obvius.

Al cities have a minimi amounth of defender that thr Ai will not move. For ex Moscow at their current size will garrison 4 archers. If you see 5 of them that meens that the 5th is about to be moved/used. What I do is to place a WC on the Hill/forest right at Moscow to "force" the AI to waist that 5th Archer on a lost battle for him.

 

[Drogear]

We need to start using the spots for settler expansion sune! I know this initially hurts the economy but to a minimum we should build a city that makes use of the floodplains/cottaged, its just a terible waist not to us it.

BTW copper is now connected and we just finished a road network they way to St.P

 

[Syntherio]

Could you please add some screenies. I found it easier to think about strategies and the current situation, when I can see it

 

[BSouder]

Here's a few screenshots"

Overview 1

Overview 2

Overview 3

Overview 4

 

[Drogear]

I hope people dont get to mad about the Thebe build order. Im sure the russians will get submitted anyways, specially since we sune can swordsman. If we keep pillagin and occupiing the good enemy ground he will not be abel to build//reseearch to much at all.

All the WC we could max muster will not take Moscow, well need swordsmen. But the remaining WC can take those 2 other cities and crippel russia.

Btw got a bunch of WC now with dubble promotins to help the comming swordsmen in the final battle for moscow

 

[Mad Professor]

There's more to our "island than we - or at lesat *I* thought. I wonder if this map will produce a whole series of one tile land necks, and we find other civilisations witthout taking to boats?

It would still be nice to know what is beyond the mountains tin the east though, all the same.

 

[Mad Professor]

We seem to be making good progress in the right direction. Not quite as fast as some other teams who have probably managed to crunch Russia faster, but we can only guess.

Are our cities still defended by just the one warrior? I'm a little nervous about seeing barbarian axemen in that case. How can we deal with barbarian axemen without expending two or three WC's in the process? Or maybe, being barbarian, we might knock him over with one or two WC's. We don't have any forested hills to try and draw him towards with a couple of warriors sitting on it...

 

[Mad Professor]

May we do see all of our island now, but it's difficult to tell. I see the edge of some land across the water to the south west of Moscow.

Anyhow, we want to down Russia as fast as we can - at least the three cities we can get to by land. As Drogear points out, 4 archers in Moscow, most with garrison promotions will be difficult to deal with with WC's especially when there are Russian axemen wandering around to hassle us.

Should we make Moscow our next target, or knock over Yaroslavl and Novgorod first? Should we wait for iron and Swordsmen, or keep pumping as many WC"s in there as possible?

Whichever way we go on these, we should do all we can to keep that copper out of Catherine's hands. Those axemen are nasty for WC's.

 

[BSouder]

By the way, the current turn order is:

Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
KingdomBrunel
BSouder
Drogear (Just Played)
radiopill (Up Next)
Syntherio

 

[Frederiksberg]

I hope people dont get to mad about the Thebe build order. Im sure the russians will get submitted anyways, specially since we sune can swordsman. If we keep pillagin and occupiing the good enemy ground he will not be abel to build//reseearch to much at all.

All the WC we could max muster will not take Moscow, well need swordsmen. But the remaining WC can take those 2 other cities and crippel russia.

Btw got a bunch of WC now with dubble promotins to help the comming swordsmen in the final battle for moscow

I don't think anybody will get mad - after all it's just a game. I am, however, dissapointed with your turnset. Mainly because you did not follow the strategic goals outlined in the discussion prior to the turnset. And you did not participate in this discussion either. For me it takes the fun out of playing in a team if someone starts playing according to his own plan without involving the team! You even stated in your last posting before playing that you would follow the suggestions mentioned in the pre-turnset discussion. This makes it even harder for me to understand why you changed both production in Thebes and tech path. The arguments in your very short turn log are very weak and most important they come too late! You had every opportunity to post these ideas before you played, but you chose not to and just played according to your own ideas. I don't even want to go into the numerous mistakes you - in my view - made, because the point is that we should play as a team and stick to the strategy outlined by the pre-turnset discussion even if it may not be the best play. Of course there should be some room for modifying the strategy in the course of events, but I think the changes you made goes far beyond that.

Now that I got this off my chest I guess it's time to consider what to do next. We still might have enough forces to the south to capture Novgorod or maybe even Yaroslavl depending on how fast the Spearman regains his strength. After this we should probably make peace or cease fire with the Russians since we do not have the necessary forces to continue the attack (unless we start attacking with our Granaries or maybe give them a good spanking with some books from the Library ). War weariness is also beginning to show. We need to be aware of the barb axeman near Rostov, he must be dealt with by the nearby WC. Maybe we should wait until he gets closer so that we can finish him off with a warrior if the WC fails to kill him.
Regarding tech I think we should finish what has been started (IW) since this will open up the possibility of clearing the jungle on the gems tile near St. P. After that we could go for Metal Casting or Sailing. Swordsmen will be good against archers and not very good against axemen so we should remember to also build some axes before we go for Moscow. If we have some spare WC's when peace breaks out we could consider placing them in our big cities and switching to Hereditary Rule for extra happyness.

May we do see all of our island now, but it's difficult to tell. I see the edge of some land across the water to the south west of Moscow.

I see this too! Probably another island.

Whichever way we go on these, we should do all we can to keep that copper out of Catherine's hands. Those axemen are nasty for WC's.

Maybe you are right. Downside is that we already see war weariness and it will only get worse. We might be able to combat this with Police State though. Actually it is the spearman that is the problem for the WC's the axeman is more of a problem for the swordsmen.

 

[Drogear]

"And you did not participate in this discussion either"

WTH is that supposed tho mean? I´ll been logged on most of the times since we started and Im sure I got more post that most people here. Im most active on ETA "office" hours, and there just seems not to be much activitiy that hour so how the hell do you expect me to spend more than 8 hour/day writing on the forums?

And I did not want to reserach for a 65 turn tech specially sine the strategy is to cripple the economy totalt by over pushin WC = no research. WTH is the ide of reseahring a 65 turn tech when gold/prod is only going down? Writing was 11 turns and that makes alot more sence to get.

We have russia under total control and Its WISE not to take it all at one point cu if we suddenyl sit on to many cities we cripple uor economy.

Its a hammer loss to trowh WC after WC against a lost cose, vs 4 city def archers (loss due to the mantainace cost and hammer output) And conrolling russia is way better and waiting for axeman/swordmen and focusing on librarys and other contructions is not a bad strategy.

 

[Drogear]

"I don't even want to go into the numerous mistakes you - in my view - made"
Well let the arguments fly genius! If the strategy is so Uber good why arent we at the lead vs other teams? It aint like I spolied all the turn before mine, right? So please explain why your uber tactic hasnt payed off?

I got 3 russian cities and Im veyr confident that the russian will never rise to puse a treath, I think its a stupied ide to overrunn the whole nation in one time.

I dont understand why librarys can be bad in a spot like Thebe, and why I dont agree on overrunning russia all in once has been explained to. All your WC tactic would do is to futher sink the economy.

BTW sorry for my bad spelling, im just somewhat uppset of federiskbergs attack on me to care for spellchecks.

 

[Frederiksberg]

"And you did not participate in this discussion either" WTH? I´ll been logged on most of the times since we started and Im sure I got more post that most people here (in the tread).

What I meant was that you did not participate in the discussion before your own turn set. But maybe you didn't think you needed to.

And I did not want to reserach for a 65 turn tech specially sine the strategy is to cripple the economy totalt by over pushin WC = no research. WTH is the ide of reseahring a 65 turn tech when gold/prod is only going down? Writing was 11 turns and that makes alot more sence to get.

Actually it was 56 turns, not 65. If we later could see that the war would end soon we could always switch to writing in order to be able to build libraries. As long as our production capacity was in use for producing military units there was no need for writing. This is what I would have argued if you had bothered to post your intentions before the turnset.

We have russia under total control and Its WISE not to take it all at one point cu if we suddenyl sit on to many cities we cripple uor economy.

If we don't need more cities then why have you started building a settler? Sounds like you are making a virtue out of necessity.

Its a hammer loss to trowh WC after WC against a lost cose, vs 4 city def archers (loss due to the mantainace cost and hammer output) And conrolling russia is way better and waiting for axeman/swordmen and focusing on librarys and other contructions is not a bad strategy.

If you have read the discussion you should know that the strategy was to build axemen before capturing Moscow

"I don't even want to go into the numerous mistakes you - in my view - made"
Well let the arguments fly genius!

Since you ask. The worst mistake was failing to prevent the russians from rebuilding the copper mine near Rostov. This was the cornerstone of our offensive strategy. It's hard to determine from your turn log how this happened, but it is clear that the russians had plenty of time not only to rebuild the mine but also settle a new city next to the copper and build two axemen and one spearman. Second mistake was to start building a Granary in Thebes in the middle of war effectively reducing the WC production by 50%. Since Thebes is at the happyness limit the Granary contributes with absolutely nothing rigth now while the extra WC's would have been essential to shortening the war. Third mistake was to build a library. We need to focus on winning the war - there will be plenty of time for building libraries when the war is over. I also belive that researching writing first was a little inaccurate since it wouldn't do us any good in a situation where all hammers should go to military units and not libraries.

If the strategy is so Uber good why arnet we at the lead vs other teams?

I never claimed that our strategy was better than the other teams. Some of the competing teams are very strong and I would be happy if we finished in the middle of the field. My point is that we should have a common strategy even if it may not be the best.

 

[Drogear]

"If we don't need more cities then why have you started building a settler? Sounds like you are making a virtue out of necessity."

Having a settler is not the same as settling with it, not a valid point!

"If you have read the discussion you should know that the strategy was to build axemen before capturing Moscow"

And I followed that stategy. So please explain why this is one of the "numerous" mistakes? not a valid point!
I finished my turn by connectin copper as sune as a could, so what are you complaing about?

"Actually it was 56 turns, not 65. If we later could see that the war would end soon we could always switch to writing in order to be able to build libraries. As long as our production capacity was in use for producing military units there was no need for writing. This is what I would have argued if you had bothered to post your intentions before the turnset."

So 56 turns, hm thats very speedy indead... my point stands!

"The worst mistake was failing to prevent the russians from rebuilding the copper mine near Rostov."

I already admited to have failed there. Still waiting for the numerous mistakes you refered to (valid ones!). So please stop from stearing salt in to wounds, its unfittning for adults.

"Second mistake was to start building a Granary in Thebes in the middle of war effectively reducing the WC production by 50%."

More WC only crippels the economy, and I had enuff WC to manage the war if a mowsoc assult was out of the question. Granary gives +1 health, diff give -2 and flood more - health, granary is needed to be build, and now was the perfect turn.

As you mentioned we need axmen for Moscow so what the does one more WC do when we allready got anuff to take all the other cities?

"Third mistake was to build a library. We need to focus on winning the war "

The war is won, and as I stated taking all off russia at once is a bad option, thus a library/cottage is well worth the very small effort, we are talking about 2 1/2 WC for a library.


So the attack of my play was based on only 1 valid point, a point I admited in my posts, vary classy of you to attack a guy that is admiting a foul. If you wanted to discusse Im happy to do so, but to start pointing fingers seems conterproductive and attack me or any other teamplayers isnt making for a good discussion climate. So for one you want to discusse and on the other hand you do that by attacking teamplayers without proper backing and arguments (that is posted only after you get a reaction)