SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[remconius]

No worries, I could play the lost turns as I am up next anyway.

Then Pigswill can post his report.
Followed by my partial report from 1040-1055.

After some discussion I can then play the rest and report on part 2.

 

[cabert]

No worries, I could play the lost turns as I am up next anyway.

Then Pigswill can post his report.
Followed by my partial report from 1040-1055.

After some discussion I can then play the rest and report on part 2.

go remco
anyone cares to post a roster?

 

[pigswill]

This is the standard roster:

Pigswill
Remconius
Stuge
Cam_H
Cabert
MrMahk
Patagonia

15 turns per set.

There have been a few anomolies due to real life and stuff; thus Cam-H played only 5 turns and patagonia skipped altogether.
What about if we went:
remconius (15 turns)
Cam_H (10 turns)
patagonia (15 turns)
stuge (15 turns)
Cam_H (15 turns)
Cabert (15 turns)
MrMahk (15 turns)
Patagonia (15 turns)

Then by the end of this round we'd all have played the same number of turns.

Or if you all think this is too complicated we could just stick with original roster and if people miss out then they wait till they're up next.

 

[cabert]

remconius (15 turns)
Cam_H (10 turns)
patagonia (15 turns)
stuge (15 turns)
Cam_H (15 turns)
Cabert (15 turns)
MrMahk (15 turns)
Patagonia (15 turns)

So Remco is up, and cam's on deck (or better said, he'll be on deck when he's back from his little journey). That gives me 5 days (assuming 1 turnset per day) to play WotM 7 .

 

[FeedBack]

lurker's comment: Hey guys! Your mouthful and annoying lurker checking in.

This is only let you know I'm here, lurking again. If you need some not-so-trustworthy maths, just give me a call! It'll greatly help my day at work to go faster.

 

[remconius]

Turns 1040 and 1055 uploaded.

Go ahead post your report, Pigswill.

 

[cabert]

I checked the save
So, we own karakorum, and it's great Library!
And we have another GG
.

We're a bit low on berserkers IMHO.
Since we cannot settle the GG for a good use, I suggest joining him to an axeman. This way (or a warrior ) we gain a low cost berserker, with good promotions.

Glad to see us on tracks again .

 

[remconius]

Only lost one cat on Karakorum.

Moved units to not attack across river.
Two other cats retreated and all units won good to be lucky.

 

[pigswill]

We got the GG a few turns back. I was thinking that we could save him for an instructor. An idea I've been considering is combining drydocks, westpoint and instructor for Lvl4 naval units, add in HE and TP and we'd be looking at a very powerful navy (from one city!). When Gandhi gets round to capturing the continent we can destroy any potential invaders at sea.

 

[pigswill]

830
Looking at the save I noticed we were in builder rather than warmonger mode. Are we Gandhi or are we Vikings ?
Changed builds to military, stayed in OR for missionaries. Started to consolidate our southern forces at Samarkand while bombarding Old Sarai.

845.
Whip JM in Avar.
Whip LB in Birka
Whip galleon in Nidaros
Whip cat in Uppsala
Whip LB in Phrygia
Whip sword in Haithalu
Trade optics and 230g to Isabella for CS.
Trade horse to Mehmed for 6gpt
Trade corn to Brennus for 7gpt
Bombard Old Sarai

860
Capture Old Sarai, lose 2 cats. Our Warlords picks up a promotion (medic 3).

875
What's this? A Mongol Warlord?

No. Its a dead Mongol Warlord

890.
Kashi Vishwani bidl.
Nidaros builds a galleon, starts a galleon.

905
Harmony is lacking overseas.

We've got enough wars already thank you.
A jewish missionary sets sail to war torn Celtia.

920 zzz

935 zzz

950
Islam is founded in Tiflis.
A stack heads south from Samarkand.

965
A jewish missionary sets sail for war torn Spain.

980
A galleon gets sunk attacking an Indian trireme (98% not good enough odds ).

995.
First battle of Karakoram. Lose 2 swords, 2 axes (to cats and keshiks) and 3 cats to defenders. Reduce Karakoram to one injured defender. A Great General is born in Nidaros.

1010.
Mongolia pours reinforcements into Karakoram. Our follow up force is a couple of turns away. Our battered troops are healing.

1025.
Getting closer...

1040.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

Decide to let remconius have the glory of capturing Karakoram D )

We were pretty skint at one point. Even with 100% cash we were only making 45gpt so cities not building cats were building money. We've got a bit in the bank now so maybe building berserks is an idea for the next set.

Gandhi has stayed firmly in place despite his military build-up:

He doesn't seem to be winning friends and influencing people:

Tech trades meanwhile are building up:

 

[Cam_H]

Checking in, and why do I get 10 turns rather than 25?

Looking forward to Remco's report! Only one Cat?

And I hardly understand those fangled 'mod' tables!

Thanks for the updates. Cabert ... could you please outline the details of your trades in future rounds? .... and congratulations on beating Pigswill on the "blah blah" race! Was there ever any real doubt?

(Apologies to the good people of the Netherlands ... enough said ...

... couldn't find a Jewish Indian site )

 

[remconius]

I only played two turns so far, so I can be short about the report. I took a screenshot of a captured Karakorum, but I am at work now so I cannot post it.

Basically picking Pigs' turn after he positioned all units north of Karakorum (Thank you for that) I spent one turn bombarding and moving units to the east of Karakorum. The next turn I moved a cat in which was destroyed. The next two cats retreated I then attacked with Berserkers and swordsmen they all won. Lowest had 67% chance, so not unexpected but still quite lucky.

Apart from that I looked around the game, moved some boats, decided which city to pick on next. My idea was moving west from Karakorum and the east to finish him off. There are quite a few replacement cats available and we have a number of swords/axes to upgrade to beserkers...

Let's decide what to do with the GG.
One plan is add to Nidaros for Uber navy and the other plan is to add him to a few units for extra XP.

I think we should group a warrior (cheap upgrade) and 3-4 units that do not have CR3 yet. Give them xp to upgrade them to CR3. We need an attack force for GK and in the future. Super boats are not so necessary IMO.

Dont worry Cam, about the cricket, the good people of the Netherlands dont know the worldcup is on. Except for a few cricket fans like me.

 

[cabert]

About the GG, we don't want him to simply give 2 XP to a handful of units, do we?
If we want a ubership, we must :
- put the gg in a galleon
- move the galleon 1 tile into sea
- use the GG
this way, we have a 20 xp ship. It's the best we can hope for.
I don't think this makes any difference, so I'd rather have a warrior or a axe promote to berserker for free, with a bunch of promotions.

About tech trade, we're in no hurry.
Astro is often researched late, and we have nothing else to sell right now.
What we could do is sue for peace with GK, if he gives us something good. I'd like engineering of course, but even drama can be good enough.
I know, we're supposed to kill him, but he may as well be of some use, don't you think?

edit :
I checked the save (noticce I did not go all the way through trades, this would be replaying = forbidden, so I can't tell for sure what diplomatic results it would have, and what WFYABTA effect it would have).
GK doesn't want to talk yet. After a few more turns beating him down it'll be easier to get more techs so no big deal.
I checked the trades we can do, and we certainly can be tech leader in 2 turns except that isabella doesn't want to paper.
If we want those techs badly (which I don't think is useful) we could probably get all of them by trading astro to hannibal for philo and guild :

then to brennus for engineering + theology + drama

We could then trade for music with mehmed, or isa, but that a bit wasting.
I'd trade with hannibal first because being the tech leader, he wouldn't trad it away, letting us wait one more turn before getting music for it = allowing us to check for deeper tech trades (banking?).

we could also try it differently, to make astro an "almost monopoly" tech.

 

[Cam_H]

I like the idea of the City Raider IIs going to City Raider IIIs.

As before I am also attracted to the super-retreater unit, with Tactics + Flanking I and II (shame that you can't stick Flanking on a Berserker) ... but, again, happy to go with the roster's decision.

Forge on young man!

On Genghis ... dare I raise the issue of Vassalage? I'd suggest that it's a non-issue, but I wouldn't mind a clear position on it (and later-game Vassals).

 

[remconius]

About the GG, we don't want him to simply give 2 XP to a handful of units, do we?

GG gives 20 xp total. If you give it to 4 units, they get 5 xp each which is enough to give them a promotion each, sometimes 2. We have several CR2 units which could be promoted to CR3. We can then add in one warrior (if we have one) and promote him for free to Berserker with 5xp = CR2.
Or we could give the XP to 3 units meaning 6-7 each.

 

[remconius]

Vassalage, I dont think we want any vassals. They add maintenance costs and not much benefit.

If GK were to become a vassal of Gandhi it would be fine I guess. Not sure if we can avoid or stimulate this.

 

[pigswill]

Cam_H are you complaining about getting a (10 turn) bonus set after you disappeared on us for a few days?

Chances are that by the time we've polished off GK and occupied America we'll have got ourselves another GG so my naval masterplan can wait. If we use a GG to give experience to several units do they all become warlords (and entitled to free upgrades)? If so then generalising existing swords and axes is worth doing. If not then we have to pay for the upgrades (costing c. 600gp for 4 units) so we could equally well build four berserks and promote them to CR3 with GG.

The biggest obstacle to our masterplan at this point is not GK's resistance but Gandhi's reluctance to invade us. I tried moving a chariot onto his territory with no effect. Maybe we should make a faux invasion (1 galleon, 3 chariots) to annoy him and pillage a couple of farms while leaving northern cities undefended to see if that lures him out. I'm open to other and better solutions.

Edit: Crossed posts. Unless needed for specific purposes I'm beginning to not enthuse about vassals. If GK were going to vassalise to anyone its better that he vassalises to us (and be at war with Gandhi automatically ) so Gandhi can pick up a couple of his cities while we swan off overseas.

 

[remconius]

XP is split across units in the same tile, but only one selectable unit is made warlord and upgradable for free...

In that sense we could build 3 berserkers and give them an additional 6-7 xp to start with. Or upgrade cats to CR2-3

 

[pigswill]

Had a quick look at the save. Around Karakoram we've got 6xp sword, 7xp sword, 7xp spear, 7xp axe and 6xp cat. Thus GG could give these five units 4xp each and one of them (eg axeman) would become a warlord?

 

[cabert]

Had a quick look at the save. Around Karakoram we've got 6xp sword, 7xp sword, 7xp spear, 7xp axe and 6xp cat. Thus GG could give these five units 4xp each and one of them (eg axeman) would become a warlord?

sounds good

about gandhi invading, I think if we leave our coastal city, right next to his boat, undefended, he should come for us.
That is another reason to try to sue for peace : we would be safe from GK but not from gandhi.

Right now, GK could become gandhi's vassal freely.
Doen't seem very likely, knowing that GK is the toughest to vassalize amongst all AIs.