SGOTM 04 - Geezers

[Harbourboy]

Oh dear. Things are never simple. How would you sum up our current position then?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Oh dear. Things are never simple. How would you sum up our current position then?

Khan building Keshiks means the planned attack will not be quite so easy as hoped. The Keshiks mean we are more at risk of pillaging especially in El Do and Uppsala. Ghandhi's attack means we'll have to leave enough forces to defend against him, certainly in El Do but maybe also in Yayoi and IronSheep, as well as against Khan. This will impact on the amount of military we need and hence how soon we move against Khan

 

[Jenarie]

Is the plan still to declare on Khan? I'm not big on war but I have no good reasons in this case so have just been quiet until I could think of something worthwhile to say which never happened.

Am I up or Mark did you want to go next? Not sure if you were swapping us since people were talking about Sam building you an army but maybe plan was for me to defend vs Gandhi while continuing to build your Khan army and you do the attack? I really prefer not to declare in my turn which is good cause I don't think we are ready anyway.

Will look over everything more carefully later just wanted to check on Khan so I have the overal plan in mind when looking at the save.

 

[Harbourboy]

I did not expect harmless little peace loving Gandhi to attack us so soon, but then again, I have never played him under permanent war conditions before.

 

[Harbourboy]

Oh dear. Looks like the Real Ms Beyond encounter some sort of military difficulties as well. Look at the big dip in their power graph.

 

[Htadus]

It is not bad as I thought it was going to be. Good save at ElDo Sam , it could have been worst . Is that a new galley there or typical AI galley still waiting?

Well seeing another Keshick is not that bad. Our Spears are 8 vs 6 against them and if promoted with shock it is 8 vs 7.5 in our favor. They do not get any defense bonus'. so a spear can attack them on a forested/jungle hill and still get the same odds.

Cities
Upsala need to be mm to either grow in 4 and finish spear in 5 or grow in 6 and finish spear in 4. It is not using its best tiles.

We should mm Cap as a 20 hpt city and still grow. If anything we should build a UB there, but for the moment I am ok if they pillage the seafood. We only loose 2 food. I would wait on the trireme. But I take silly risks.

Yayoui should be mm to grow in 9 turns and the grainary rushed with 2 pop when it grows and let the next build benefit from it. However, if we let it grow as is and rush it in 11 turns, the next build will get alot more hammers. Either way is good.

Workers:
North need a pasture and cottage for Iron-Sheep and a farm and a mine for Yayoui
Cap and Upps need another mine each. Maybe chop the 3 hammer hill and build a settler with it.

War:

1. We should let Jenarie build more units and defend as need for the next ten turns. Set up Mark to DoW.
2. We are going to need to place a spear and another unit just south of the mntn by Upps for defense.
3. A few turns before we dow, we should raze roads outside of Kahns cultural borders to limit horse access just for 4 cities just in case they want to rush keshicks. Especially Old Sarai.
4. Attack with at least 2 teams. One on New Sarai and another on the cap or Turfan. If we can build a road, send a team to those Gem cities. We already have enough for 2 teams. My biggest concern is if he build cats. So we should use more than one tile when attacking cap or Turfan since it will take a few turns to drop the culture defense.
5. We need to remember to promote one of the units with medic 1 of needed.

Captured Cities:
We should Raze New Sarai, Chechils and Samarkahnd and place a new city to work the gems immidiately.
Perhaps we can keep the capital and cities to east of the capital. They have enough income as it is to be a too much of a burden. But Karakurum have very little production capacity.
We all know this but lets not forget and pillage villages. Happened to me recently trying to pillage a road.

 

[markh]

Good set, Sam

@Jenarie : you are up.

Sooner or later Gandhi would have landed. Maybe we should try to get 1 or 2 triremes there to sink the galleys before they can drop units.

Have to check the save tonight.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Is that a new galley there or typical AI galley still waiting?

That's the galley that brought Ghandhi's force. It's just been sitting there ever since. Ghandhi still has that wretched trireme sitting further south and of course there's the trireme on the eastern side that's bound to pillage our resources by Nidaros. We'll need to do something about Ghandhi's navy.

 

[Thrallia]

Good job taking out Gandhi's offensive, Sam!

His navy is frustrating...it keeps us from continuing our explorations and is distracting us from the more immediate goal.

Khan should be dealt with before we deal with Gandhi's navy. We only have 1 sea resource and as Htadus says, we can live without it for awhile. It is more important to gather our forces for a strike on Khan before he can go from building Keshiks, which we can fairly easy deal with, to Longbows or metal-based troops.

For now, I think we should concentrate on building Swords, Cats, and protective Spears.

on a side note: my internet at home is down again stupid ISP...I'm not sure how long it will be, if it isn't up again on its own in another day or two I'll call in a technician. Luckily I have the school internet during the week, but if it doesn't get fixed fast I'll be MIA this weekend again.

 

[Harbourboy]

It all adds to the excitement. Hope Jenarie is looking forward to more thrills and spills!

 

[Jenarie]

Looking at the save right now. It is unusual for me to not have archers in my cities - makes it harder to determine which troops are homeguard and which are for the offensive. Just a thought... since we traded for archery and have it now what if we make archers and used all our current troops for Khan? Archers are much cheaper to make then what we have guarding the cities and in production.

Still looking in detail and re-reading over thread but curious what people think about that.

Edit: Not "all" our current troops - when defending with archers I usually also leave behind a couple mobile troops to defend vs pillagers.

Edit2: Was the plan to use spears as homeguard? It will work great for Khan but I'm a little nervous about that as they aren't so great vs swords and Gandhi can land more troops at any time.

Edit3: Doesn't look like we can disconnect many of his cities to horses before declaring... most of his cities are connected via river as well as roads. Can get Old Sarai and Ning-hsia but I think the NW 3 are all connected via that river.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Looking at the save right now. It is unusual for me to not have archers in my cities - makes it harder to determine which troops are homeguard and which are for the offensive. Just a thought... since we traded for archery and have it now what if we make archers and used all our current troops for Khan? Archers are much cheaper to make then what we have guarding the cities and in production.

Still looking in detail and re-reading over thread but curious what people think about that.

Edit: Not "all" our current troops - when defending with archers I usually also leave behind a couple mobile troops to defend vs pillagers.

What's the differential in build costs? Bear in mind that we want a reasonable amount of troops around El Do, both to deter Ghandhi from landing any further troops on our mines and also to defend against any attacks/pillaging by Khan's keshiks. Also bear in mind that Ghandhi, unlike Khan, has swords. I should point out that IronSheep and Yayoi aren't particularly well defended anyway.

Nidaros has fairly reasonable production so I think it should continue producing swords, spears etc. Perhaps archers might be better in Uppsala and El Do.

 

[Jenarie]

Oops crossposted with Sam x2. Will stop editing the old post and start new.

Build costs for current possible military units:

60 - Catapult & Sword
52 - Axeman & Spearman
37 - Archer & Chariot

I still think we need more swords and catapults but was thinking that one archer per city is cheap defense and would let us take more of our current troops with us on the offensive. With the permanant war with Gandhi I'd more likely use 2 per but not sure how you guys feel about archers so maybe one per plus one of something else would be good too.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Build costs for current possible military units:

60 - Catapult & Sword
52 - Axeman & Spearman
37 - Archer & Chariot

I phrased my question badly. Hammers is normally a good way to express it but I was more interested in how many turns it would take to build to see how many extra units would be available within your 10 turns.

I still think we need more swords and catapults but was thinking that one archer per city is cheap defense and would let us take more of our current troops with us on the offensive. With the permanant war with Gandhi I'd more likely use 2 per but not sure how you guys feel about archers so maybe one per plus one of something else would be good too.

Personally I would prefer to see at least a spear & axe in El Do with at least an archer on each of the mines. This mean Ghandhi can't land right next to El Do as he did last time and also means that any of Khan's keshiks will be injured trying to pillage our mines and easier to kill. A spear on the corn would be nice as well although that's pushing it. Perhaps I'm being ultra safe but I feel we really want El Do and the mines protected.

 

[Jenarie]

That is a different way of defending then I'm used to but might be needed with Gandhi so close and able to land any time.

I usually make sure that I have roads on everything I want to defend then I can leave the defending troops in the city and be able to move them out to attack and then back into the city to heal in one turn. Axes are usually what I chose for this as they have the best chance vs axes and swords and then I keep a couple horse troops somewhere closeby to move around as needed and take care of anything out of one turn range of city troops.

Not to say that is the best way to do it... just what I'm used to but I know I have a lot to learn so totally willing to do it differently just wanted to let people know what I'd do instinctively so that it isn't asumed I'd do something else that you all may take for granted.

 

[Harbourboy]

At this point in the game, the AI's main focus is usually pillaging. So our defenses need to be focussed on anti-pillage troops, rather than city defence. I would like to think that we would not have to deal with too much actual city assault. I'd like to be able to neutralise enemy forces before they reached our cities.

Therefore archers would only really be a priority for the defense of hilltop resources like gold.

What is our gut feel (based on past experience) of what Gandhi is likely to do next? Doesn't he usually devote most of his resources to wonder building?

 

[Jenarie]

@Mark - seems like from comments you are the war guy

Please let me know if you can what troops you'd like where and I'll try to get that done as much as possible in my turns so you are ready or almost ready to declare when you take over.


I can't remember the last time I had a city of mine taken and I very rarely get pillaged (if I do its when I'm practicing on raging barbs) so I think I can mostly do ok on the defensive end but my tendancy is to be TOO defensive and I don't want to build us up defensively too much and not have what we need.

Unless someone objects I'll likely build some archers. I'm not comfortable with what we have now in several of the cities although I wasn't aware that the AI had a preference for pillaging. I thought they would pillage on the way in but that the target was still the cities? I have noticed that when I have a war ally he just pillages all the land of the cities I'm taking which is really annoying so I stopped inviting people to my wars.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

That is a different way of defending then I'm used to but might be needed with Gandhi so close and able to land any time.

By no means do I claim that my suggestion is the best or the only way.

I usually make sure that I have roads on everything I want to defend then I can leave the defending troops in the city and be able to move them out to attack and then back into the city to heal in one turn. Axes are usually what I chose for this as they have the best chance vs axes and swords and then I keep a couple horse troops somewhere closeby to move around as needed and take care of anything out of one turn range of city troops.

Roads are certainly good but there were so many other high priority things for the workers to do that I didn't have time to build those roads. (Btw the worker by IronSheep was heading towards the sheep) The point about the troops on the mines, whatever they are, was to make it less possible for Ghandhi to land right next to El Do and to inflict damage on either Ghandhi's or Khan's units that attempted to move onto the mines. Attacking enemy units on hills is quite expensive. Both my swords lost the majority of their power doing just that (5.8 & 5.7 respectively) and they had at least combat 1. The keshik I saw heading towards Tabriz and possibly beyond was combat 2 so would probably be worse to take out.

Not to say that is the best way to do it... just what I'm used to but I know I have a lot to learn so totally willing to do it differently just wanted to let people know what I'd do instinctively so that it isn't asumed I'd do something else that you all may take for granted.

I think the key point is that there is no one way that is always the best way. The way I've suggested is based on my experience with Ghandhi's last landing, and my subsequent attack against his force, as well as the fact that we may well have a keshik attack/pillage to counter. You, or others, may well come up with a more successful way.

 

[Harbourboy]

Defending the hills would usually be a more cost-effective defense mechanism than rushing the pillager and trying to attack them, especially given that we would be attacking with mostly single move Spearman (for Keshiks) or Axemen (for Swordsmen).

But Jenarie has the right idea to check with markh what he wants to have on hand for his turns.

I think it is now clear why we need to nail Khan. Having to worry about both him and Gandhi at the same time is so distracting that we need to neutralise his threat ASAP so we can concentrate on the main objective of getting that ungrateful Indian into space.

 

[Htadus]

Jenarie. Archer is a very good defender but archers time is gone at the moment and we need offensive units. Let see the numbers.

Archer fortified on a hill city with Garrison 1: 3 + 3 * (45%[tile + Promo defense]+50%[city D]+25%[fortify]+25% [hill])/100 =7.75

Axe Fortified on a hill city with Combat 1: 5 + 5 * (10%[Promo]+25%[fortify]+25% [hill])/100 = 8

As you can see even defending an Axe is better than the Archer and we can also use it to attack.

I have rarely built Archers unless there are raging barbs around and I have no copper.

But the First thing we need to establish is what cities we want to keep. Please team, lets establish this first, then we can determine the path of attack. Got to go my son is making a ruckus.