SGOTM 02 - Memphis Blues

BSouder · Aug 15, 2006

Well, it might be a bit of a gamble but I would not be opposed to declaring war earlier than we are ready to attack for real if it means nabbing a worker. I really doubt that Izzy has the soldiers already to provide much of a threat, especially since she will be dealing with the same barbarian situation that we are. I'd be willing to take that gamble anyway. I would like to get see if we can spare 1 archer to go spy on the copper until we can produce an axe and send him over there.

Switching subjects back to our settler, I agree that settling another city now might have a disasterous affect on our economy with the coming war. But, at the same time I am not sure how long I would be willing to delay our scouting to the north. I am really curious if there is another civilization up there that she is blocking us from. From what I see she has us cut off from being able to determine that via land exploration unless we accept open borders and keep them for an extended period. The only other choice is to explore by sea which we won't be able to do until we settle on a coast. If we did settle on the coast now we could minimize the economic hit by not keeping any Spanish cities we conquer. We could always send a settler out later if we conquer a great spot. The gamble there is that we would be taking known decent city spot over a possible great city spot to be found later.

This might be a completely whacky thought for a conquest game but we might also consider not declaring on Izzy for a while. With this game setup it might be beneficial to have a neighbor for a bit if we can befriend her to help with researching and more importantly fog busting. My fear is that with one city, even in as good a location as Kyoto, we are going to get overwhelmed trying to fight a war and fend off the barb axemen that are going to be showing up soon. I would like to build up a bit more fog busting forces before the axes show up.

Frederiksberg · Aug 15, 2006

BSouder said:
Switching subjects back to our settler, I agree that settling another city now might have a disasterous affect on our economy with the coming war. But, at the same time I am not sure how long I would be willing to delay our scouting to the north. I am really curious if there is another civilization up there that she is blocking us from. From what I see she has us cut off from being able to determine that via land exploration unless we accept open borders and keep them for an extended period. The only other choice is to explore by sea which we won't be able to do until we settle on a coast. If we did settle on the coast now we could minimize the economic hit by not keeping any Spanish cities we conquer. We could always send a settler out later if we conquer a great spot. The gamble there is that we would be taking known decent city spot over a possible great city spot to be found later.

When we declare war we can simply march north with an archer. If he stays in the forrest and jungles he will be hard to kill. There is no guarantee that a galley or workboat can move north without either war or open borders - the cultural borders of the Spanish cities could easily block off the coast as well. Scouting on land will also give us much more information. If we capture a nice city it would be a shame not to keep it - particularly Madrid which is probably the holy city of Budhism!

BSouder said:
This might be a completely whacky thought for a conquest game but we might also consider not declaring on Izzy for a while. With this game setup it might be beneficial to have a neighbor for a bit if we can befriend her to help with researching and more importantly fog busting. My fear is that with one city, even in as good a location as Kyoto, we are going to get overwhelmed trying to fight a war and fend off the barb axemen that are going to be showing up soon. I would like to build up a bit more fog busting forces before the axes show up.

I think you have a point. It may not be in our best interest to remove Izzy entirely from the map. But crippling her and denying her acces to metals would make life easier later when we decide to finish her off. Even if we declare war now we can probably bail out later and sue for peace if the barbs become too menacing. So much more reason to send an archer scout north - if we know what ressources the spanish cities have it will be much easier to determine if we can go for an intermediate peace.

ShannonCT · Aug 15, 2006

Frederiksberg said:
I think you have a point. It may not be in our best interest to remove Izzy entirely from the map. But crippling her and denying her acces to metals would make life easier later when we decide to finish her off. Even if we declare war now we can probably bail out later and sue for peace if the barbs become too menacing. So much more reason to send an archer scout north - if we know what ressources the spanish cities have it will be much easier to determine if we can go for an intermediate peace.

I'm not sure I see the benefit of keeping Issy around if we can knock her out of the game. If we dont have alphabet by the time we are ready to offer peace, I can't see how we're going to get any techs from her. If destroying that last worthless city means more fog, we can bust it with a useless unit. It looks like there is a land bridge up north and leaving Issy around is just going to impede our march against other rivals.

Frederiksberg · Aug 15, 2006

ShannonCT said:
I'm not sure I see the benefit of keeping Issy around if we can knock her out of the game. If we dont have alphabet by the time we are ready to offer peace, I can't see how we're going to get any techs from her. If destroying that last worthless city means more fog, we can bust it with a useless unit. It looks like there is a land bridge up north and leaving Issy around is just going to impede our march against other rivals.

I don't think I mentioned anything about techs? All I'm saying is that we need not necessarily take all the Spanish cities at once. Finishing Izzy in two wars is also an option depending on our military strength and ability to fogbust and handle the barb threats in general. There is also the question of the Mahabodhi. It would be nice if Izzy would be so kind as to build this in her holy city since it will be quite difficult for us to get a Great Prophet. But when could we expect this to happen? She probably has a temple in her holy city since they are half price in hammers for her. Budhism was founded approximately 70 turns ago during my turn set. If she researched Priesthood immediately after that - lets say in 10 turns - and then used about 10 turns to build the temple she has now had the opportunity to have a priest in the holy city for about 50 turns or exactly the number of turns needed to get a Great Prophet. Let's hope we get the good news soon - and if not lets discuss later if we want to give her some time to build it before we capture the holy city.

By the way: I noticed on one of the pics from my turn set that the rice and sugar tiles on the northern part of our continent were not spanish at that time. This means that this spanish city was founded later and can't be the capital (Perhaps its Barcelona). This also means that Madrid is further north and it is probably also the budhist holy city. But why has Izzy founded all her cities south of her capital? Is there no land to the north? Or maybe another civ blocking her expansion?

Mad Professor · Aug 15, 2006

I think it is very important to deny Izzy metals, and to cripple her at least. I think the decision whether or not to finish her in one war can be made with more knowledge later.

I would suggest we send a scout to see what she's doing with that copper. At the latest, when a mine is built, declare war and nab the worker before he finishes the road and disappears. If she has no worker there, then we might have a little time. If the city is defended by just the one archer, we might be able to nab it with an axman and the archer we use to nab the worker. (Assuming the nabbing is succesful, and defeats the other archer she would probably have defending it.) That settler came south with two archers, ShannonCT said.

I agree that it would be nice to scout north too. This all takes units, and the barbs aren't going to get less for a little while yet. The military machine in OSaka really needs to swing into top gear now, to supply all our needs and wants here!

I had a look at the power graph in the file and I see that Izzy is about equal with us in power right now. We need to remember though that she has several cities on this continent in which to produce military units, and we have only one. Our other two cities will not help us militarily in this war. I think the longer we wait, the more behind her in power we will go, especially if she is allowed to use that metal. Cutting her production capacity (which can be used 100% for military against us) has got to be a priority for us I think. This means declaring sooner rather than later.

Regarding tech, I think CoL is going to become very important for us. I would like to save us the trouble of building lots of settlers, by keeping Spanish cities if they are in good positions, but to do that, we'll need to move the palace and build courthouses in Kyoto and Tokyo, or our economy will crumble.

ShannonCT · Aug 15, 2006

Frederiksberg said:
I don't think I mentioned anything about techs? All I'm saying is that we need not necessarily take all the Spanish cities at once. Finishing Izzy in two wars is also an option depending on our military strength and ability to fogbust and handle the barb threats in general. There is also the question of the Mahabodhi. It would be nice if Izzy would be so kind as to build this in her holy city since it will be quite difficult for us to get a Great Prophet. But when could we expect this to happen? She probably has a temple in her holy city since they are half price in hammers for her. Budhism was founded approximately 70 turns ago during my turn set. If she researched Priesthood immediately after that - lets say in 10 turns - and then used about 10 turns to build the temple she has now had the opportunity to have a priest in the holy city for about 50 turns or exactly the number of turns needed to get a Great Prophet. Let's hope we get the good news soon - and if not lets discuss later if we want to give her some time to build it before we capture the holy city.

By the way: I noticed on one of the pics from my turn set that the rice and sugar tiles on the northern part of our continent were not spanish at that time. This means that this spanish city was founded later and can't be the capital (Perhaps its Barcelona). This also means that Madrid is further north and it is probably also the budhist holy city. But why has Izzy founded all her cities south of her capital? Is there no land to the north? Or maybe another civ blocking her expansion?

Good observation about Barcelona. Madrid must be that city north of the land bridge. That means that Madrid will probably be the last city we attack. If Issy went for the Great Prophet as you suggest, she'll have at least 30 more turns to get the Mahabodhi for us. But if we have the chance to take Madrid and she has still not built the shrine yet, I dont think we can pass up an otherwise prime city. I dont think having the shrine is going to make a big difference in how fast we conquer the world.

Mad Professor said:
I agree that it would be nice to scout north too. This all takes units, and the barbs aren't going to get less for a little while yet. The military machine in OSaka really needs to swing into top gear now, to supply all our needs and wants here!

I had a look at the power graph in the file and I see that Izzy is about equal with us in power right now. We need to remember though that she has several cities on this continent in which to produce military units, and we have only one. Our other two cities will not help us militarily in this war. I think the longer we wait, the more behind her in power we will go, especially if she is allowed to use that metal. Cutting her production capacity (which can be used 100% for military against us) has got to be a priority for us I think. This means declaring sooner rather than later.

Working the iron and gold mines can give us 10 hammers per turn (while losing 1 food per turn). This will give us axemen every 5-6 turns, swordsmen every 6 turns, and archers every 3-4 turns. Unless Issy already has axemen, 1 swordsman and our archer-killer archer should be able to capture Issy's Copper city. A few more cheap units from Osaka and Copper city and we can defog most of the continent.
I bet all of Issy's power is in archers. If our power graphs are equal, she should be easy to beat. She'll just spread out her archers as her cities fall. Neither of her two southern cities appears to be on a hill. No hill, and a swordsman will tear right through them and get some nice upgrades to take Barcelona and Madrid.

Mad Professor · Aug 16, 2006

I've been playing with the world builder again. Barbarian axemen seem to appear by 700BC, sometimes a little earlier and I found it quite a challenge to conduct a war against another civ while still fending off barbarians. I noticed also that barbarian cities sometimes start to appear around about the same time as the axemen.

It seems to me that for us, this means if I was playing the next turnset, I'd be a little conservative about unleashing full scale war against Isabella until I had some axes hanging around to defend against barb axemen. Fortified hill defense archers usually win against barb axemen, but not always, and when one doesn't, that proves quite difficult unless you have another unit handy to finish off the badly wounded barbarian. Having said, that, I wouldn't want Izzy using that copper, so I'd still be sending a unit over there to keep an eye on her development of that tile to prevent her hooking it up, declaring war to steal the worker, or toplunder the copper mine, even if it means running away again until I have enough units to deal with barbarians as well as attack Izzy.

I guess it boils down again to pumping as much out of the Osaka war machine as possible!

A thought on barbarian cities. If we are lucky enough for the barbs to put one in a good spot, we could use that to our advantage, and take it. CoL and palace shifts become important though if we settle/capture more than a couple of cities on the Osaka continent.

Another little thing I noticed was that when you have a barracks putting out axes and swords with 4 xp (plus the free combat I for aggressive), having them run into a barbarian soon after is very nice, because they get the second promotion, and when it's a warrior they are lucky enough to bump into, they get the promotion with little or no damage received.

Frederiksberg · Aug 16, 2006

ShannonCT said:
Unless Issy already has axemen, 1 swordsman and our archer-killer archer should be able to capture Issy's Copper city.

It will be much faster with two swordsmen. The archer-killer will have difficulties handling a fortified city defender archer and if the swordsman is injured in his first attack he must wait several turns to destroy the remaining archer. Of course we could hope that one of the archers are guarding the worker out in the open. In that case we may take them with the archer-killer taking out the worker guard and the swordsman attacking the city. But we still need some luck - particularly if Izzy's archers have many promotions - they have battled barbs too!

Mad Professor said:
It seems to me that for us, this means if I was playing the next turnset, I'd be a little conservative about unleashing full scale war against Isabella until I had some axes hanging around to defend against barb axemen. Fortified hill defense archers usually win against barb axemen, but not always, and when one doesn't, that proves quite difficult unless you have another unit handy to finish off the badly wounded barbarian. Having said, that, I wouldn't want Izzy using that copper, so I'd still be sending a unit over there to keep an eye on her development of that tile to prevent her hooking it up, declaring war to steal the worker, or toplunder the copper mine, even if it means running away again until I have enough units to deal with barbarians as well as attack Izzy.

If we can manage to build axes/swords every 5-6 turns there would always be an axe or sword within 2-3 turns from the city - either one already built that can return or one that is going to be built. I think that should be sufficient to handle the barb axe threat.

Another issue is which cities do we keep? The first idea that comes to my mind is to raze the two small spanish cities i.e. the copper city and the one on the east coast to avoid increased maintenance. Barcelona we keep and when it is captured we start chopping the Palace in Osaka while preparing to attack Madrid. Ideally we get CoL, Palace and Madrid around the same time and whip the courthouses in Kyoto and Tokyo. Then we use our settler and found the 6th city.

Frederiksberg · Aug 16, 2006

Some more thoughts for the coming turn set. Of course we would want to rebuild the gems mine and after this is done the worker (workers if we manage to steal one) may have some free time that could be used to pre-chop the forrests around Osaka so that they are ready for fast chopping when we need to move the palace. Remember to check the worker(s) at the beginning of every turn so as to cancel chop orders immediately when there is only one turn of chopping left and be aware that if all units are fortified you won't be able to stop the chop when 1 turn is left. Remember to make a note in the turn log of any pre-chopped forrests so that we will know later.

ShannonCT · Aug 16, 2006

Frederiksberg said:
It will be much faster with two swordsmen. The archer-killer will have difficulties handling a fortified city defender archer and if the swordsman is injured in his first attack he must wait several turns to destroy the remaining archer. Of course we could hope that one of the archers are guarding the worker out in the open. In that case we may take them with the archer-killer taking out the worker guard and the swordsman attacking the city. But we still need some luck - particularly if Izzy's archers have many promotions - they have battled barbs too!

If we can manage to build axes/swords every 5-6 turns there would always be an axe or sword within 2-3 turns from the city - either one already built that can return or one that is going to be built. I think that should be sufficient to handle the barb axe threat.

Another issue is which cities do we keep? The first idea that comes to my mind is to raze the two small spanish cities i.e. the copper city and the one on the east coast to avoid increased maintenance. Barcelona we keep and when it is captured we start chopping the Palace in Osaka while preparing to attack Madrid. Ideally we get CoL, Palace and Madrid around the same time and whip the courthouses in Kyoto and Tokyo. Then we use our settler and found the 6th city.

Issy's east coast city looks pretty worthless ... no production. I agree burn it. The copper city might be better. See the map:

Issy's settling party came into view on the tile marked "I" (if I recall correctly) while our archer and worker were on the tile marked "M". If she had settled in place the next turn, I would have seen the borders, and I didn't. She didn't settle anywhere west of the copper because we would see the border from Osaka. And I don't think she settled 1 tile east of the "I" because she could have gotten to that tile 1 turn sooner if she wanted to settle there. Then there are three places she most likely settled marked 1, 2, and 3 on the map. If she settled on 1, its a much better city with 1 FP in the initial borders and 2 FPs and three other river tiles in the fat cross. At site 1, the city could produce 7 hammers at pop3. And at site 1, the city could grow to pop2 in 11 turns, which means it would actually be capturable when we got there. Sites 2 and 3 trade those nice river tiles for some plains and grassland. It seems like a city at site 1 might be worth keeping.

radiopill · Aug 16, 2006

BSouder said:
Switching subjects back to our settler, I agree that settling another city now might have a disasterous affect on our economy with the coming war. But, at the same time I am not sure how long I would be willing to delay our scouting to the north. I am really curious if there is another civilization up there that she is blocking us from. From what I see she has us cut off from being able to determine that via land exploration unless we accept open borders and keep them for an extended period. The only other choice is to explore by sea which we won't be able to do until we settle on a coast. If we did settle on the coast now we could minimize the economic hit by not keeping any Spanish cities we conquer. We could always send a settler out later if we conquer a great spot. The gamble there is that we would be taking known decent city spot over a possible great city spot to be found later.

Yes, we must wait until the palace is almost done before settling another city, and this one could be on the south of osaka on the coast (8S1W or 8S2W), so we can at last send 2 workboat for scouting each side of our continent.

BSouder said:
My fear is that with one city, even in as good a location as Kyoto, we are going to get overwhelmed trying to fight a war and fend off the barb axemen that are going to be showing up soon. I would like to build up a bit more fog busting forces before the axes show up.

Don't forget to build some cheap warrior for low-risk fogbusting position...

Fredericksberg said:
If we can manage to build axes/swords every 5-6 turns there would always be an axe or sword within 2-3 turns from the city - either one already built that can return or one that is going to be built. I think that should be sufficient to handle the barb axe threat.

We should give the promotion shock to one or two axemen so we get a little advantage over the barbs axemen.

Fredericksberg said:
Another issue is which cities do we keep? The first idea that comes to my mind is to raze the two small spanish cities i.e. the copper city and the one on the east coast to avoid increased maintenance. Barcelona we keep and when it is captured we start chopping the Palace in Osaka while preparing to attack Madrid. Ideally we get CoL, Palace and Madrid around the same time and whip the courthouses in Kyoto and Tokyo. Then we use our settler and found the 6th city.

Sounds like a good plan, let's hope the timing is going that way...

ShannonCT · Aug 16, 2006

radiopill said:
Don't forget to build some cheap warrior for low-risk fogbusting position...

One warrior is 2 turns away and 1 more could be build before the iron is connected and warriors are replaced by spearmen (which we dont want).

radiopill said:
We should give the promotion shock to one or two axemen so we get a little advantage over the barbs axemen.

Having one axeman with the Shock and Cover promotions by the end of the next turnset should be able to protect Osaka quite nicely from anything that slips through the cracks.

BSouder · Aug 16, 2006

I'll play my turns in about 7 hours.

My current plans based on the discussion will be:

- Build 1 more warrior after the 1 queued up for fog busting
- Send an existing archer a bit east to get an eye on the copper. This is the part I see as risky right now although we need to do it, but it's going to leave us a touch thinner in Osaka than I like.
- Get an axe or a sword built and to the copper ASAP. A sword would be better in the long run against Izzy, but an axe won't be much worse against a non-hill city and is more versatile (defending against barb axes) and cheaper. I am leaning toward an axe first but we'll see how the hammer overflow leaves the turns to build both.
- Capture a worker from Izzy if possible
- Finish hooking up the iron with our worker and pre-chop some trees, also re-mine our gems.
- Build a new archer to send north to scout Izzy once war is declared. I really don't think we can spare any more of Osaka's defense for this.
- Start building a mix of axes and swords for defense and attack.
- Maybe capture / raze the copper city if I have a good opportunity. I am leaning towards raze. If the city is at the "1" spot on Shannon's map I might consider keeping it but not at spot 2 or 3 (unless of course there is some amazing resource in that black spot). If we keep it, it will slow down our advance building troops to fogbust / defend around it.

Frederiksberg · Aug 16, 2006

ShannonCT said:
Issy's settling party came into view on the tile marked "I" (if I recall correctly) while our archer and worker were on the tile marked "M". If she had settled in place the next turn, I would have seen the borders, and I didn't. She didn't settle anywhere west of the copper because we would see the border from Osaka. And I don't think she settled 1 tile east of the "I" because she could have gotten to that tile 1 turn sooner if she wanted to settle there. Then there are three places she most likely settled marked 1, 2, and 3 on the map. If she settled on 1, its a much better city with 1 FP in the initial borders and 2 FPs and three other river tiles in the fat cross. At site 1, the city could produce 7 hammers at pop3. And at site 1, the city could grow to pop2 in 11 turns, which means it would actually be capturable when we got there. Sites 2 and 3 trade those nice river tiles for some plains and grassland. It seems like a city at site 1 might be worth keeping.

But how is the timing? Won't the war be over before this city has grown enough to be of any real help in producing axes or swords? How long time before we have CoL? We have iron 6 turns from now and will be able to build approximately 4 axes or swords within the following 22 or so turns. Assuming that we raze the copper city I would like to attack Barcelona when CoL is ready so that we can build the palace and whip Courthouses almost simultaneously. The troops can heal and we should be ready to go for Madrid shortly after the palace has been moved. I think this is the best scenario in terms of fast research rate and we may very well need this to get to Astronomy fast. The fact that Isabella has only settled south of Madrid makes me think that there is no more land north of her capital so we might be isolated on this continent.

EDIT: Just saw the previous post. Remember to use the cover promoted archer to spy on the copper - he may have a chance against a spanish archer if we need to move on them before our first axe is ready. Good luck!

ShannonCT · Aug 16, 2006

Frederiksberg said:
But how is the timing? Won't the war be over before this city has grown enough to be of any real help in producing axes or swords? How long time before we have CoL? We have iron 6 turns from now and will be able to build approximately 4 axes or swords within the following 22 or so turns. Assuming that we raze the copper city I would like to attack Barcelona when CoL is ready so that we can build the palace and whip Courthouses almost simultaneously. The troops can heal and we should be ready to go for Madrid shortly after the palace has been moved. I think this is the best scenario in terms of fast research rate and we may very well need this to get to Astronomy fast. The fact that Isabella has only settled south of Madrid makes me think that there is no more land north of her capital so we might be isolated on this continent.

I hope we can answer the astronomy question soon, as this will affect how we emphasize research vs. conquest in the middle of the game. If most of our rivals are reachable without astronomy, then we should focus on getting the most useful military units like cats and later, samurai, even if that means burning a great scientist on a cheaper tech like math or machinery and shutting down research after astronomy. If most of the conquering comes after astronomy, we will need to watch our expenses more closely and get the construction/civil service/machinery/astronomy quartet sooner, and then be able to keep going toward a unit like the grenadier. We should have that settler ready to settle when the palace is moved so we can build some boats for scouting.

We can probably attack Barcelona as soon as we can hope to win there if CoL is within 10 turns. The money from pillaging will allow us to increase our research rate while it is in revolt and finish up CoL.

ShannonCT · Aug 16, 2006

BSouder said:
I'll play my turns in about 7 hours.

My current plans based on the discussion will be:

- Build 1 more warrior after the 1 queued up for fog busting
- Send an existing archer a bit east to get an eye on the copper. This is the part I see as risky right now although we need to do it, but it's going to leave us a touch thinner in Osaka than I like.
- Get an axe or a sword built and to the copper ASAP. A sword would be better in the long run against Izzy, but an axe won't be much worse against a non-hill city and is more versatile (defending against barb axes) and cheaper. I am leaning toward an axe first but we'll see how the hammer overflow leaves the turns to build both.
- Capture a worker from Izzy if possible
- Finish hooking up the iron with our worker and pre-chop some trees, also re-mine our gems.
- Build a new archer to send north to scout Izzy once war is declared. I really don't think we can spare any more of Osaka's defense for this.
- Start building a mix of axes and swords for defense and attack.
- Maybe capture / raze the copper city if I have a good opportunity. I am leaning towards raze. If the city is at the "1" spot on Shannon's map I might consider keeping it but not at spot 2 or 3 (unless of course there is some amazing resource in that black spot). If we keep it, it will slow down our advance building troops to fogbust / defend around it.

Another idea would be to build a scout at some point before the iron is hooked up. He's cheap, he could get to Madrid faster than anything else with open borders, and he could later bust fog somewhere where he wont have to face any barbs.

BSouder · Aug 16, 2006

Turns are done.

1 - 1000BC - Barb warrior attacks our medic archer in the forest and dies easily. I move our cover promoted archer (was guarding our gold) east toward the copper, move the medic to the gold. Kyoto grows and become unhappy by 1, it will grow again in 11 turns but by then 1 of the whips should be over.

2 - 985 - Surprise another Barb warrior SE of Osaka. Our newly created warrior gets promoted to combat 2 and moves to the oasis to invite an attack. I want to stockpile food from that oasis before finishing the iron mine and don't want that barb taking it away for a turn.

3 - 970 - Oh, now this is interesting. Izzy didn't settle with the copper in her borders! From the borders it looks like she picked a really crappy spot in the middle of nowhere. I'll keep that archer headed there to check things out anyway.

Iron mine finished, road and current warrior in Osaka both due in 2 turns.

4 - 955 - Nothing much

5 - 940 - Well crap, the game switched the warrior to a spear before completeing the warrior so now we have half a spear built.

It's 3 turns to a spear we don't want or 6 turns to either a sword or an axe. I queue up a sword in front of the spear, we'll have to let him finish eventually but not yet.

6 - 925 - Nothing much

7 - 910 - Forest north of Osaka pre-chopped and marked as such, start on a road there so we can chop it for real later. Decided since Osaka won't be growing for a bit to not bother with the gem mine for a while. Other than that just continue scouting and fog busting. Oh, did start on Preisthood.

Also, there's a Barb city well SW of Osaka now.

8 - 895 - Son of a... a combat 2 warrior on a hill lost to a barb warrior while defending. I think my record is 4-1 so far though, although another warrior is looking pretty haggard right now.

9 - 880 - Nothing much

10 - 865 - Not a lot, but Priesthood next turn.

11 - 850 - Sword created, start on an axe. Priesthood finished, start on CoL (31 turns). With Priesthood done, pop rush a granary in Kyoto with the overflow going toward the Oracle. I think that was the final concensus from our wonder overflow discussion, if not...oops.

12 - 835 - Nothing much

13 - 820 - Hmm, seems I got beat to the Oracle in 850 before a single hammer could be registered, the overflowed overflow goes into the Parthenon instead, but have to wait 1 more turn for those hammers to register there.

14 - 790 - Nothing much, barbs still crawling out of the woodwork. I'd really like to extend our fogbusting range, but the troops get injured and have to retreat or die.

15 - 775 - More dead barbs

16 - 760 - More dead barbs. Our first axe rolls off the line, I am sending him south where most of the barbs are coming from. He is unpromoted at the moment, but I am planning on giving him both cover and shock. I decide to let the spear also finish since it's down to 2 turns. He can guard our gold while that archer moves off somewhere else maybe.

17 - 745 - There was a major celebration in Osaka since it was the first year in history without a Barbarian sighting!!!

18 - 730 - The celebration ends abruptly as the first barbarian axe is spotted west of Osaka. Sadly it was spotted by our axe as he stepped onto a hill in mostly the opposite direction he needs to go to intercept. Have a second axe being built in Osaka which is due in 5 turns. Also in 5 turns Osaka will starve down a population, meaning we soon have to switch off one of the mines. I have the worker back to the gems next turn to mine it again, one turn later than I had planned sicne he got disrupted chopping by a barbarian.

19 - 715 - Chasing the barb axe, but he is headed away from our axe and toward our iron...I really hope we don't get amazingly unlucky.

20 - 700 - Good news and bad news. The good news is that the barb axe didn't head toward our iron, but toward our gold and the warrior and spear combo I will now call Toast Sr, and Toast Jr. The REALLY good news is that our great scientist was born in Kyoto. The bad news is that a second barb axe was spotted SE of Osaka.

Spoiler :

In hindsight, I really should have made an open border aggreement with Izzy when I saw that she didn't have the copper in her boundaries on my 3rd turn. The reality is though that our scouting archer ran into barbs and had to rest and is just now up to her borders, so it didn't really matter much.

At least I extended our fog busting border a bit in my late turns, but we will likely lose that ground with archers out in the wilds against axes now. But we have a cover promoted sword with 5/5 xp ready to be promoted again and a shock promoted axe...oh and a great spear who I gave a shock promotion in hopes that he at least injures the axe about to kill him.

Mad Professor · Aug 16, 2006

Why on earth did Izzy no settle next to that copper? I can only guess that the AI was looking at the fat cross, and wanted both the wheat and the copper in it, and has settled so it gets both once the first cultural expansion happens.

Looks like fighting off barb axemen will slow the march against Izzy. Hopefully that spear gets real lucky against the barb axe, but it's not likely to be that lucky. The onslaught will be difficult for a while I think!

All our discussion of the move against Izzy assumed that she had settled next to the copper. The fact that she has not changes things a little. If you still can't see any Spanish axes, it could be that she really doesn't have any metal yet. That might give us a little time to fight off some barbs and produce some more swords and axes before hitting Izzy, while still getting to fight her minus metal.

Mad Professor · Aug 16, 2006

Here's the playing roster now:

Mad Professor (Up next)
Frederiksberg
Radiopill
KingdomBrunel
ShannonCT
BSouder (Just played)

We've each played one turnset now. Do we want to continue at 20 turns per turnset, or should we reduce it now? Can we each play 10 or 15 turns for this next round?

Mad Professor · Aug 16, 2006

I've just been looking at the file. Some thoughts:

1. The scout up north sees more Spanish archers moving south, not accompanying settlers. It seems archers is the best Izzy can do for military now. I really think she doesn't yet have metal.

2. The barb axe near Osaka could possibly attack the city and has a small chance of winning. I feel nervous allowing that even as a small possibility when a warrior could be moved in to prevent it in the very unlucky event that the archer should lose. The barb axe will much more likely go for the gold hill, not the city since it has a much bigger chance of winning that battle, but not as big as I first thought. I figure the following:

Spear str 4 +25% for hill, +10% combat I, +25% vs melee = 6.4 strength
Archer in Osaka str 3 + 50% garr II, +25% hill natural, +25% hill, +25% fortify bonus, +50% city bonus = 8.25 strength

Both would be significantly better than 50/50 against the barbarian axe, would they not?

3. CoL is 20 turns away at current rate, but that doesn't count any academy
4. The GS in Kyoto could start an academy?

Some questions for discussion:

1. What's the war strategy now?
2. Whipping strategy in Kyoto and Tokyo?

I have the file, but will not play for a couple of days. Even if I could, I want to leave time for good discussion here. When I decide on a time to play, I'll post it here, but not wihtout first allowing time for lots of comments.

SGOTM 02 - Memphis Blues

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Tyrant

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