SGOTM 05 - Fistful of Dynamite

xatsmann · Sep 24, 2007

Ralph,

There are at least 3 galleys under production--we have the army and the production to keep pumping out units...the problem is we lack a large navy.

I would also like to propose to the team that we get Compass ASAP so we can build ocean-going vessels. I see this as our biggest handicap in conquering Greece and Japan. As long as we have to go only through coastal areas we are going to have difficulty bring our production to bear at the edges of our holdings. For example moving cats from Mecca and Medina to fight Greece takes about 7 turns because the galleys have to stick close to the shore line.

Xats

Ralph_Jackson · Sep 24, 2007

Well a few thoughts / information..

We will be facing longbows when we invade the mainland so it will be no walk in the park. We will need sacrifice catapults to do this so they need to be high priority builds CG Longbows will take some defeating.

Silver town is now size 2 so wont autoraze and I will keep it. Our economy will be tight but with the extra workable tiles from Police State we should be Ok and we aren't going to really research anything useful as unfortunately Xatsmann getting through to optics will take a while and would only enhance defending our navy as troops would still have to go by Galley. This game should hopefully be over before Astronomy is in play..

I think Police state is better than Monarchy as the -50% WW is equal to 2 happy faces in most cities and it means our hammers are allocated to building offensive troops and doubled by the civic. With Silver a sugar island + police state we should be ok and this maximizes our offensive potential.

When we get round to tackling the AI after Toku the Barbs may well help as they have a fair few Swordsmen allocated to Attack which will be unleashed, though they could hinder us by suiciding and promoting the AI's defenders if we are not careful

Is there a part built settler somewhere for Sugar Island??

Munro · Sep 24, 2007

Sheesh... what is it with IE? There goes my reply and thoughts for the next turnset... :badcomp:

Munro · Sep 24, 2007

second attempt: (written in notepad this time

)

- agree with Ralph re: catapults, police state, keeping silver town, building sugar town and everything else he said
- nice work manic on the dye; suggest we hook up the other one as well and gift it to cyrus or izzie for a bit of goodwill in the bank; they both share a religion with toka, and it would be sad if they attacked us or stopped sharing gems with us while we were in the middle of our war;
- hook up the wine! (not sure about the bananas though; does anyone want them for trade? we don't need the :health:

anyway)
- our catapult placement makes me nervous... :eek:

HA get +50% attack against them; let's move that fella back with his sword toting buddies
- let's specialize our cities; cottages, marketplace and library in our commerce cities; mines, barracks in our unit spam cities; even in full-on war or peace mode, we generally want to squeeze as much out of both as we can get, and visa versa is inefficient
- the partial built settler is in Turfan
- hard luck on the galleys xatsmann! looks like one psycho greek captain we had on our hands there
- we will need quite a few more units yet to take athens...

Munro · Sep 24, 2007

random thoughts and questions:

Alex wasn't prepared to give us any techs (or cash?) for peace? Why did we make peace with him (aside from the teleporting

)? Was the extra WW much of a problem?

Was there any possibility of trading Nara back to Toka for peace? (Too late now but might have been a nice break - and who know where our troops might have gone next... :lol:

)

Why do we have a fort?

xatsmann · Sep 24, 2007

Settler is in Turfan.

--Agree on the specialization. I was going to do that myself but ran into issues of economy that forced me to build more city improvements than I wanted early in my turn to avoid having excess military units (and upkeep).

--Sorry about the wine...I didn't see that. I did hook up the bananas and was clearing out lots of jungle to help speed production and boost our health.

--I agree with police state as well. I assume we go for that once we get the pyrmaids from alex.

--I also think we should start building more markets. I didn't get a chance to use it as it didn't come until late in my turn.

--What are we planning on researching since Astronomy will take too long? Is there anything we can research at all? If not then do we need to keep building libraries?

Munro · Sep 24, 2007

Also - a couple of spears would be sensible so we can keep one in each stack (at least one with a medic promotion if possible). Shock seems like a bit of a waste though.

PS Don't tell Ralph but someone switched away from the gold again in Turfan. This is a bit of a waste - for example, we can work both the rice and the gold instead of these two cottaged grasslands and immediately get the same food and commerce plus three extra hammers (and we wouldn't have had to wait 40 turns for the cottages and villages to grow in the meantime).

Anyway - looking forward to reading about the next turnset and getting back to the frontline in a short while. Should be around most of this week and the weekend, saturday excepted, to play my turnset after Ralph.

Munro · Sep 25, 2007

xatsmann said:
--What are we planning on researching since Astronomy will take too long? Is there anything we can research at all? If not then do we need to keep building libraries?

We are currently on track for metal casting, which will give a nice

boost from the gold, silver and gems (all +1

with a forge) plus some extra hammers in our big :hammers:

unit producing cities.

Code of laws is also key, for reducing maintenance costs in the short term, along with forbidden palace on the main continent and caste system for the final 4 turns (when we setter spam for the domination land limit, and run an artist in each city to pop the cultural borders).

Other than that - there a bunch of WIBNIs (theology for theocracy; engineering for +1 road movement; literacy for heroic epic etc) that we may or may not be able to tech - but more likely we will get these from the battlefield as you mentioned. (Oooh, for me? Why thank you Toka, you're too kind, and what a lovely mustache you have... see you in 10 turns etc

).

Ralph_Jackson · Sep 25, 2007

Munro said:
.

PS Don't tell Ralph but someone switched away from the gold again in Turfan. .

Don't worry I have spotted that a wee bit of MM is needed :mischief:

Ralph

Ralph_Jackson · Sep 25, 2007

Well a short report as it was mainly about building troops escorting them to the Greek Front and then attacking Athens.

But we cant do a report without a wee complaint (having played with Greyfox & Sirian this is nothing compared to what they would give you for poor MM)

So talk me through what on earth is that Fort doing there??

Anyway a few highlights

Turn 1 Alex kindly attacks our swordsmen outside Athens pure AI :smoke:

Turn2 Alex gets his revenge sinking our Galley just after it landed two swordsmen

1214AD Metal Casting in quickly followed by COL. Dial down research and set on Machinery as the most useful tech we are not Barb Researching

1226AD Gift Spare Die to Cyrus for relations

1250 Ah Ha revenge is sweet as we win a 50/50 Galley battle versus Alex

Umm Cyrus is settling close to us

1280 AD Athens falls which means time to handover the save.

More thoughts tomorrow but top of mind is

Alex wont give anything worthwhile for peace so I think we should finish him

And conveniently he has built a settler :eek:

in Delphi and the two conveniently placed Axes should be able to take him down

Beware of Qins caravel which has reappeared and is chasing an empty Galley of ours on our E Coast

We have the military to consider going straight after Toku, but his Power Graph is scary.

My initial thinking is use the Anarchy period in Athens (when military builds dont get the Police State Hammer boost) for much needed infrastructure (forges / markets / even courthouses?) whilst using our healed army to take a peek at Toku (maybe able to raze a city or two) then back on to full military. But I am tired so please air views

There is a settler built for sugar island but hard to get him there while Qin is lurking.
Here is your Session Turn Log from 1196 AD to 1280 AD:

Spoiler :

A careful count should show we traded a galley each then for the loss of 1 Swordsmen we killed 10 Archers, 2 Phalanx and a Horse Archer :cool:

Da Save

xatsmann · Sep 26, 2007

Munro said:
PS Don't tell Ralph but someone switched away from the gold again in Turfan. This is a bit of a waste - for example, we can work both the rice and the gold instead of these two cottaged grasslands and immediately get the same food and commerce plus three extra hammers (and we wouldn't have had to wait 40 turns for the cottages and villages to grow in the meantime).

Sorry that was me--it was that or starve, so I had to switch back to the rice to maintain the population.

xatsmann · Sep 26, 2007

re: the fort...I cleared out the area of the jungle as I said earlier to get the hammers for producing cats...the fort was already there when I went to clear out the jungle...I'll check my old save...maybe I put there, if I did so, it was an accident and not on purpose...I did have about 5-7 workers up there clearing out jungles...

xatsmann · Sep 26, 2007

Good move Ralph, it seems we're not very lucky on the high seas are we? You took Athens faster than I thought we would--great job there, sorry I couldn't leave you more galleys. I should have started producing them sooner, my bad.

My thoughts: I believe we should maintain our war economy since there are so many techs we need to acquire and not enough to time to research them ourselves. Combine this with the AI general refusal to trade with us and I don't see any choice but to go for a conquest victory.

For strategic purposes this means that, given the high cost of maintaining a our military and the fact that we are always at war due to our barbarian nature, we should attack wherever and whenever possible to maximize the value of our military. Due to our hight military production, we must keep losing units in battle if we are to keep uniits in our production pipeline. If we don't keep fighting and losing units, we could easily be overwhelmed by excess military units should peace break out.

As a corollary of this we should avoid building many more settlers. We should acquire our cities via conquest only to avoid wasting paying for city upkeep as the city grows. Let the AI build the cities and pay for the upkeep and we take them from the AI.

I agree on finishing off Alex. His territory will provide us with a base to attack the Japanese on their main island. Alex is one of the most aggressive and irrational AIs so it is unlikely that he will give us more tech. This also means, despite our clearly superior army, he will continue to attack us until Greece has no units left. We might as well plan on taking him to so as to minimize the amount of time and casualties that the campaign will cause.

I wouldn't worry too much about the Toko's power graph--I've found they often don't mean too much in many of the strategy articles of I've read. Players are often kicking ass and taking names while being way down on the power graph according the scoring system.

Finally on a personal note, I am having a friend come visit me from out of town this weekend so I will be unavailable Saturday or Sunday. I am willing to do a move this week--up to and including Friday night. Let me know if you want me to move up or wait until next week. Because I went out of turn I'm not sure of the turn order--can someone post it for me? Thanks.

Munro · Sep 26, 2007

Ok - I am up next I believe so this is my 'got it' for the save.

Looks like we are making good progress. Nice turnset Ralph.

At work, so will keep it brief, but in general here are my thoughts:
- primary focus right now should be on hitting Toka before he gets any more powerful; everyone else can wait
- Alex: from Ralph's screenshot, it like he is willing to give us Machinery and Literature for peace; suggest we take this; Toka can't be that far from maces and without crossbowmen to defend out stacks we'll be screwed
- Alex: has two cities still, so suggest we take Silver Town for the +1

(can't get enough of that right now) and then sue for peace + techs leaving him the one city on the mainland; we'll be far enough ahead in power he won't bother us after that
- Toka: use the troops we already have to take his first city (Nara) and then use it as a stronghold for him to suicide against while we build up enough force to take the next city and just take him down one city at a time
- will want a good mix of spears, axes and archers AND v. important, a hindu missionary to defend Nara (for the 20% defence bonus)
- lots cats will be essential for attack now Toka has longbowmen; other than that, we want to avoid losing any units at all in the war if possible; we have to use every advantage we can get (shouldn't be too hard - vanilla AI have weak military tactics)
- Qin: now has 3 caravals prowling our island; what a pain; teching (via battlefield) towards optics may be necessary for defence there; other short term measures may need to include building a city on the SW of our island (where we had planned it work the clams) to provide refuge for galleys workign the ferry crossing to Medina / Mecca, which are key :hammers:

cities for the war effort
- Sugar City: IMHO the extra +1

will be worth the extra maintenance; just need a chance to get the galley across there.

That's it for now - will hopefully play tonight unless anyone has any more input on the above plan?

Munro · Sep 26, 2007

xatsmann said:
My thoughts: I believe we should maintain our war economy since there are so many techs we need to acquire and not enough to time to research them ourselves. Combine this with the AI general refusal to trade with us and I don't see any choice but to go for a conquest victory.

Yep - agree, although a domination victory here should be faster than conquest, because conquest would require us to take out Qin as well.

For strategic purposes this means that, given the high cost of maintaning a our military and the fact that we are always at war due to our barbarian nature, we should attack wherever and whenever possible to maximize the value of our military. Due to our hight military production, we must keep losing units in battle if we are to keep uniits in our production pipeline. If we don't keep fighting and losing units, we could easily be overwhelmed by excess military units should peace break out.

Sort of agree. Agree that we will be more or less permanently at war for the remainder of the game. Don't agree that we should attempt to lose units in battle! If we start to run out of cash, we will just have to slowly shift over from :hammers:

tiles to

tiles, build plenty of courthouses, and then eventually the Forbidden Palace on the big island (maybe even Nara). I think we will be ok though now that we have CoL. Just save our money for funding the war.

As a corollary of this we should avoid building many more settlers. We should acquire our cities via conquest only to avoid wasting paying for city upkeep as the city grows. Let the AI build the cities and pay for the upkeep and we take them from the AI.

Yes - agree in general, that we should expand via military conquest rather than settler based expansion; however, I think we probably still want the 2 specific cities mentioned in my post above for strategic reasons.

I agree on finishing off Alex. His territory will provide us with a base to attack the Japanese on their main island. Alex is one of the most aggressive and irrational AIs so it is unlikely that he will give us more tech. This also means, despite our clearly superior army, he will continue to attack us until Greece has no units left. We might as well plan on taking him to so as to minimize the amount of time and casualties that the campaign will cause.

If Alex is offering us 2 techs, we'll need to leave him 1 city rather than wiping him out, to get them. Suggest we leave the big island city, so we can get the silver frmo silver island. I don't think he'll bother us with one city.

I wouldn't worry too much about the Toko's power graph--I've found they often don't mean too much in many of the strategy articles of I've read. Players are often kicking ass and taking names while being way down on the power graph according the scoring system.

Finally on a personal note, I am having a friend come visit me from out of town this weekend so I will be unavailable Saturday or Sunday. I am willing to do a move this week--up to and including Friday night. Let me know if you want me to move up or wait until next week. Because I went out of turn I'm not sure of the turn order--can someone post it for me? Thanks.

Suggest we stick with the most recent order, i.e.
- Munro (up now)
- Manic (up next)
- Xatsmann
- Ralph

Ralph_Jackson · Sep 26, 2007

xatsmann said:
re: the fort...I cleared out the area of the jungle

No worries Xatsmann I shall label tthem Mayan Ruins next set

and I see what you mean about not starving gold town.

Munro re peace for 2 techs that is a very good spot :cool:

hadn't realised it was telling us he has a city other than Delphi. So after Taking Silver town we should try and get Machinery off him (we have nearly barb researched literature so its not a great gain) aT the moment as the Screenie shows he wont give us both but post Delphi who knows?

Too tired to really look at proposed plans but they seem consistent and good :goodjob:

xatsmann · Sep 26, 2007

I don't know if I want to make peace with Alex--I'd have to look at the save first in a couple of hours when I get home.

Two quick questions to consider till then:

One, will making peace cut us off from attacking? Remember we don't have the ability to cross open water so if we don't have access to the Japanese or Chinese we can't attack withl at peace with Alex. Before we agree to peace where are our forces and can we still use them? If not then let's not make peace as we'll soon be overwhelmed with excess military units...

Second, how good are the two techs Alex is offering? I consider Literature to be a cheap throw away tech that isn't worth much. Machinery is much more useful to a militarist economy like our since it allows for crossbows which we can use to help take out Toko and it is preq for Optics which I think we'll need to build up our navy. With Qin pumping out Carvels I don't think we have any choice but to match him. I'm not saying we should make peace to get machinery but it something we should consider....I plan to do more research on Machinery tonight at home as well and post later...

Update: I would take the peace offer to get machinery but I don't care about lit so see if we get peace treaty with Alex. I would then go after Toko ASAP.

Munro · Sep 27, 2007

Ok - here's the save from my turnset.

Here's the turnset log:

Spoiler :

xatsmann said:
Update: I would take the peace offer to get machinery but I don't care about lit so see if we get peace treaty with Alex. I would then go after Toko ASAP.

Yes, I agree with this. Alex didn't want to offer Machinery at first, but I teched literature (3 turns at 20%) while getting ready to take Delphi, and once we had that, he was willing to offer the more expensive Machinery tech instead (which I took for peace after capturing Delphi).

View attachment 161151

Munro · Sep 27, 2007

Overview of my turnset:

1. Started by capturing Delphi as noted above and sued for peace + Machinery. Hooked up the Silver for +1

everywhere, and building in a courthouse in this otherwise useless city to help keep its maintenance costs down.

2. Moved on to attack Nara. Two longbowmen (including 1 CG3!) and a spear.

View attachment 161154

Landed on the forest adjacent with archer, axe, spear and cat, and took down the cultural defence. Swords arrived in the meantime and we took Nara at cost of 1 cat (0.4%) and 1 veteran sword (20.4%). After that, it was alll 90%+ in our favour, and we took Nara with no further losses.

View attachment 161153

We are currently stacked in Nara with veterans from the Greek War. Toka was prowling with crossbowmen, so I have upgraded the archer there as well (179 :gold:

), to provide some cover for all our melee units there. However, he has not yet sent any forces to attack.

View attachment 161152

Munro · Sep 27, 2007

3. Qin's caravels have contined to patrol our waters, mostly between Samarqand and Silver Island, and I have been able to move very few of our troops off the homeland.

View attachment 161155

Qin also became the first to circumnavigate the globe :eek:

- so his caravels are all now 4 :move:

which is making life harder. However, the AI gets a hidden +3 visibility bonus for all its units, so with Optics, Qin's caravels have visibility 5. The AI is also not very bright, which makes it possible to manipulate Qin by moving our galleys out of port to 5 squares away from his caravels (in the direction we him to go). Qin sends his caravels chasing after the galley (which we will safely move back into port the following turn), and we sneak out in another direction.

This allowed me to sneak some extra troops over to the mainland (the AI Island) when Qin wasn't looking, and also sneak a settler up to Sugar Island. Note the northern most galley is now safely out of Qin's range (in the screenshot).

View attachment 161156

Unfortunately another (new) Caravel then appeared out of the fog from the north 2 turns later and sank our galley, but not before we unloaded the settler + a catapult for city garrison duty (mainly to prevent 'we demand military protection' penalty there) . I wasn't able to get a worker onto the galley as well (none were near enough), so settled straight on the sugar to get the +1

everywhere immediately.

4. I switched to Police State (-50% WW :mad:

) and Org Religion at the beginning of the turnset, so we now have +25% :hammers:

for both military units, and buildings. And no more :mad:

worries.

Note there is/was no need to wait for the end of anarchy in Athens - we can use the effect of the pyramids the same turn we capture the city, even while it is still in revolt. (Same with all wonders).

SGOTM 05 - Fistful of Dynamite

Warlord

Emperor

Deity

Deity

Deity

Warlord

Deity

Deity

Emperor

Emperor

Warlord

Warlord

Warlord

Deity

Deity

Emperor

Warlord

Deity

Deity

Deity

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