SGOTM 05 - Fistful of Dynamite

Munro · Sep 27, 2007

5. Qin was also patrolling the Mecca ferry crossing for a while, so I built some infrastructure there in the meantime - forges for Mecca and Medina, plus Heroic Epic in Medina (our #1 :hammers:

city). I made good use of the whip here and chopped a couple of unused plains forests around Medina.

However, given the +150% bonus we will get now in Medina for building units, I strongly suggest we leave the remaining grasslands forest, and farm the grasslands village we have there so we can work an extra mine. (The extra :commerce:

from the village is not doing much - note the library there has no effect anyway at anything below 70-80% science, so we aren't getting any :commerce:

bonus in this city).

Also - currently building marketplace in Mecca. We should whip this as soon as we are able to (probably in a turn or two). I didn't spot we needed this until late in the turnset, but Mecca is pulling in a healthy 15 :gold:

or so from the shrine, so a m/place here is a priority.

6. City specialization. I used the following plan:

unit producing cities
- Mecca, Medina, Samarqand, all Silver Island cities, Athens, Nara
- tile improvements emphasise :hammers:

- produce barracks + units only; no marketplaces, libraries, granaries etc
- exception is the market place in Mecca to make use of shrine
- unit producing cities also responsible for missionaries (for shrine :gold:

+ expanding cultural boundaries and 20% cultural defence in captured cities)

commerce cities
- everything else (Sugar City + all homeland cities except Samarqand)
- marketplaces then courthouses (maybe via forge for the

and

boost)
- note we have no problem with :mad:

any more thanks to silver and sugar, and (especially) Police State
- tile improvements emphaise :commerce:

Munro · Sep 27, 2007

Thoughts / objectives for next turnset:

1. We probably have enough units in Nara to take another of Toka's cities, and hold it with reinforcements currently being built in Athens and Silver Island. Should probably go for the presumed city that Toka has SW of Nara, to ensure we are not overreaching ourselves at this stage

2. We need to get Qin out of our face so we can get back to shipping troops across from Samarqand. We currently have 4 galleys in the region, which might be enough to hold out his 2 caravels, but he has more nearby, and they would probably just be replaced.

Another option would be to whip a galley in New Sarai, and use the Qin-is-too-stupid-to-live technique (aka galley baiting) to lure him up to New Sarai for a turn, then move the galley back into port and let him move back to his current position, then repeat ad infinitum (while we ship a shed load of troops over from Samarqand to Sugar Island and onwards).

This has the benefit of not costing us any galleys, and being rather amusing to boot. Note though that with the current location, and Qin's 4 :move:

circumnavigation bonus, we can't make it down to Sugar Island in time without losing the galley currently in Samarquand - so watch out for that.

3. Note we are currently losing :gold:

at 0% research (having taken on board 3 more cities: silver city, sugar city and Nara) but I don't think we need be too concerned, as our cottage cities can grow freely now (no more happiness cap) and should soon take up the slack with cottage and population growth, plus marketplaces and courthouses which are already being built.

The barbs are also pulling some serious weight with research. We're due to get Compass in 13 turns, just from their contribution (real :science:

- not just the free stuff). Check out Delhi: quite a powerhouse.

View attachment 161158

4. May also worth adding one Keshik to our mainland stack if we get the chance, just to take advantage of any unprotected AI catapults that cross our path during the war. (From experience, this is likely to happen at least once or twice).

5. Note - peace with Qin would still be useful (damn Caravels!) but still unlikely. No longer any compelling reason to get peace from Toka though, unless he offers us enough techs to make the pause worthwhile. We have more than enough

in our city for now.

Munro · Sep 27, 2007

One final mention. Let's be careful with our units everyone in the war against Toka. The AI is dumb but powerful right now. If we protect our units carefully, we will eventually wear them down and overrun - using terrain bonuses when advancing across open ground, stick to large stacks with balance of unit types, always have a medic, make sure we have enough troops to be certain of victory when attacking a city etc.

We're in good shape, but a failed assault woudl be very costly right now, if we leave AI units alive to heal, promote and fight again.

Manic - I think you're up next, then Xatsmann (if his turnset comes up before the weekend) or Ralph over the weekend otherwise.

Enjoy!

xatsmann · Sep 27, 2007

My thoughts on the turn:

We need to get the ability to build Carvels ASAP--without them we are attempting to go for a domination/conquest victory with one hand tied behind our back. I realize the team disagrees with me on this but I think once our barb cousin give us compass we should seriously think of making a run at optics at that point. In the meantime let's save our money.

We'll have to use your Qin-is-too-stupid-too-live Carvel baiting idea for now--we don't have the technology to fight a straight up military campaign at sea against Qin. We'd have to our number him at least 5:1 and I don't think we can afford that right now.

If we are starting to run short of money then let's get our units out their pillaging--we can always use our extra workers to clean up the mess once we take the cities tiles we pillage. Actually we should do this even if we are not running out of money to weaken Toko and to have our military pay for their upkeep.

I like the cities idea Munro proposed although I think we might consider throwing in some aqueducts to help our cities grow past 5-6 to 7-9 pop levels.

One other question I thought of last night, is it ever worth it to raze a city and use a settler to avoid waiting for the cities resistance to die out? (I realize we can not to do this with cities that have items like wonders or other buildings that we wish to capture) Just a thought....

Confirming Turn order:

Manic--UP NOW
Xatsmann--on deck (if Mania finishes before Friday night, if not Ralph can jump in this weekend or I'll can wait for Monday night)
Ralph--waiting in the wings
Munro--just went

Manic_ · Sep 27, 2007

Got it - playing tonight will look after dinner - looks good though

Manic_ · Sep 27, 2007

Ok - Plan of attack:

We need 64% Land for dom win (and 45% pop but thats never an issue).
We have 20 something at the moment - looking at the map if we take japan, spain

and persia's lands on the mainland we will get to the 64% (already worked out but

i think in need of another mention). Also remember Barb lands count to our total.

So what to do, what to do.

Basically from here on in i think our plan is to continue to pump out units and

attack cities. Starting obviously with Japan - then moving to cyrus and finally

isa.
That order because i feel cyrus will be more threat and so better to hit first.
I agree with Xats about pillaging some land - cottages anyway - as they give the

best gold.
But bearing in mind we want to leave a few so perhaps pillage all but the 2 best

GPT cottaged tiles in a cities fat cross.

Going back to the domination army status - we need lots more units. And the best

was is to get more cities - especially on the mainland where we are attack -less

time to get to the front line - so i proppose an immidiate attack on the japanese

city that we can't yet see 1W of the wine below Nara.

Manic_ · Sep 27, 2007

Moved an attack force down from mecca - leaving 4 units there for defence.
Looked over the cities - and changed 2 tiles so that growth happens faster, I think now as we have PS and Silver hooked we can grow cities and work more tiles - and hopefully we can get our GPT up again.
Also pillaging and city capture should help in that matter.

Moving down to the Japanese city - it is protected by 2x longbows and 1 spearman.

+++

Quins caravals stay put - moving a galley from Mecca to try and lure it away.
I think we can take the caravals with 4 galleys - probably having 2 survive. But that is a bad waste. Not sure what to do :s

+++

Moved Galley with cats down towards silver island - we can offload them to the island so wont waste them if quin sees them - he has not moved yet in 2 turns.

Weakened Japanese city - can attack at 60% but will wait 1 turn to get it over 70%.

We are now -4GPT after a few city size increases.

+++

moving the galley did lure the Caravals - have offloaded the cat's and now 2 galleys defending the tile. Have 1 in support ready to attack also.

Toku moves a galley with settler and longbow out of the city - go for a 64% attack on lb with a axe vs spear after and another sword left to finish the LB if it wins.

Attacked and lost a Swordsman (unpromoted) but took the size 6 city - can now see Japans Navy and he is looking like he invaids.

+++

Quin attacks - first galley wins - second loses.
Whipped X-bow in Athens as toku may be headed that way.

We are now +2GPT

We get a few more cats and swords over to the mainland and then we can move to the next Japanese City (Suggest one on coast to eliminate navy capability).

+++

Quin moves away - Toku looks like he will land near the newly taken city..

Toku Lands near Athens - whip sword just incase he pillages first - but may not be able to hold onto the city. :S

+++

Athens Falls - this is annoying - i think we will need to garrison a few units there when we retake as its a vital link for us.

+++

Japan has samurai - so obviously CS - we could really do with that as maces are a lot better than swords/axes. Perhaps a run to CS may be in order after we retake athens.

+++

We only really need 1 galley between Mecca and mainland - the units can walk rest which is just as fast - well almost - and it leaves othes where they are needed over in the athens area.

Manic_ · Sep 27, 2007

Save

Spoiler :

Manic_ · Sep 27, 2007

Sorry about only playing 8 turns - but loosing Athens and Toku getting Samurai really is a pain - i think we can take the 3rd Mainland Japanese city next / turn after next - but then we are spread thin - also Nara looks vunerable.

i think we need to get to eithe feud (we are over 50% there) for a LB in all cities so we won't need to worry about defence - or CS for Maces to compete with samurai.
Now i know xbows combat samurai but they are nut much use elsewhere. Perhaps move the one is the Southern city to Nara for protection from the samurai up there.

AS our econ has grown (and is growing) a lot - we could possibly afford aim to research CS / eng / feud or find ways of getting them from the AI.

Munro · Sep 28, 2007

Good move to stop and post the save, Manic. With the loss Athens and the arrival of Samurai, some further discussion is sensible.

I think we are overstretched trying to take the 3rd city, Kagoshima. With a Samurai in city defence, our swords are useless (currently < 0.1% chance of success). Enough cats will take him down, but 2 cats is not nearly enough.

Meanwhile, we need to retake Athens. Note that without the pyramids, we are now back to Despotism so have lost of +25% military :hammers:

.

I think we should pull the troops back from Kagoshima (may need to retake Nara on the way back to the coast as it looks like it may fall next turn) and converge on Athens to meet the cats, sword and axe that are on their way down from Samarqand. This should give us enough to retake Athens and rebuild.

Then I think we have two options to help strengthen our hand in the war going forwards:

i) tech to theology for theocracy and an extra +2 XP for all our new units. Used well, the extra promotion could make a real difference - esp. crossbow garrison units which would get CG2, a significant step up from CG1.

ii) switch to Judaism, and try to trade with Izzie for ivory + War Elephants (we have quite at least 5 surplus resources which we might be able to tempt her with), and Machinery with Cyrus for Civil Service (they're worth about the same, but he won't currently becuase he doesn't like us enough); judaism would also sooner give our mainland cities a useful +20% defence boost from the culture, which would partially make up for the lost +25% CG2 bonus; note we don't need the religion

bonus in any of our cities right now either, (even without Police State)

I would be tempted to do both - starting with (ii) and if it doesn't get us anything useful we can always tech Theology anyway and switch back to hinduism for the +2 XP.

(Although I do see we recently picked up a -1 'you wouldn't accept our state religion' from izzie; Manic - something you already decided against)?

Munro · Sep 28, 2007

Or, as an alternative to theology, we can also get Fedualism in 3 turns at 80% science. This would allow us to both switch to judaism, and get an extra promotion for our units (esp. defensive units) from Vassalage.

Worth going for both I suspect - we need to find ways to strengthen our hand at this point.

Ralph_Jackson · Sep 28, 2007

Feudalism/ Juidaism in 3 turns sounds good as we also get more free units (unit support costs) from Feudalism which will be useful with the large army we are running, we can return to Theology later if necessary but I would prioritise macemen post researching Feudalism.

Ralph

Manic_ · Sep 28, 2007

Munro said:
(Although I do see we recently picked up a -1 'you wouldn't accept our state religion' from izzie; Manic - something you already decided against)?

Yeah sorry i forgot to mention that - i didn't feel the anarchy was at the correct time i was going to press on for japans lands and we had a few units 1/2 turns from completion.

I think now however the switch is a very good move - getting CS before theo as we will still be in Judaism.

Agree that taking units back to nara and then athens would be wise.

I can play the rest of my turns tomorrow unless xats posts got it tonight

xatsmann · Sep 28, 2007

I just looked over the save and I see a number of problems.

First, we have 15 cities of which 14 are capable of production--one is still in lockdown, aka revolt, having just been taken and cannot produce anything yet. We are only producing one military unit, a swordsman in Mecca, this is means we have to stop losing any units until we bring some production back on line.

If we are going to go for a domination victory we must keep at least a one-third (peacetime) to one-half or more (wartime) of our cities producing military units.

We must get back to producing military units ASAP, especially while conducting military campaigns that will entail significant losses. We need the production to maintain our combat power and protect our conquest.

Second, we (read: I) should have taken the threat to Athens more seriously and warned Manic about it. As Munro points out the loss of production due to the loss of Athens is unacceptable and we must take it back, regardless of the cost and it must be an absolute priority. All other attacks that may drain resources from it must cease until we have Athens back.

We should upgrade all of our archers to crossbowmen. Delphi and Sparta have no military garrison. We should rectify that and give them at least a crossbowmen or a spearmen.

We can draft the market in Krakorum and the forge in Samarqand to finish them immediate and we should do so. We can then have them turn out military units--macemen and catapults, respectively.

We are also producing a worker in Tabriz--we already have 9 workers...let's move a few over there to chop down that jungle and build improvements. We can then use the hammers produced by the to build more galleys. I'd rather not produce land units on an island if we can help it since they will need to be transported off by a naval unit.

If we convert to Judism we will lose the 25% bonus production we are getting from Hinduism as our state religion--is everyon okay with that?

Munro · Sep 28, 2007

xatsmann said:
If we are going to go for a domination victory we must keep at least a one-third (peacetime) to one-half or more (wartime) of our cities producing military units.

I think we have enough dedicated unit producing cities already:

- Mecca (once the market is finished - essential for complementing the shrine)
- Medina* (has heroic epic)
- Samarqand (finishing forge)
- Sparta
- Thermoplyae
- Athens (before it was captured)
- Nara (once it finishes courthouse)

In general, many of our captured cities wil be best used for more units (given proximity to the front line, and possible scarcity of developed cottages & marketplaces). So having a solid cottage-base now isn't necessarily a bad thing. The key to succeeding will be using our resources efficiently, so I don't think we want to start switching cottage-cities that should be building marketplaces and focusing on growth, to building barracks and units.

Agree we should focus on protecting our units and cities though!

We are also producing a worker in Tabriz--we already have 9 workers...let's move a few over there to chop down that jungle and build improvements. We can then use the hammers produced by the to build more galleys. I'd rather not produce land units on an island if we can help it since they will need to be transported off by a naval unit.

Yes - good plan to move some workers over here. This will be a good :commerce:

city once properly improved.

Let's just be careful Qin doesn't have any Caravels around though (the reason I started a worker there in the first place; getting another galley there wasn't possible at the time).

I don't think it is sensibly trying to produce units there though - this is prime cottage land, and we would be better using the few hammers we will get on a marketplace, courthouse, granary and any

buildings required to grow and work all the grassland tiles.

If we convert to Judism we will lose the 25% bonus production we are getting from Hinduism as our state religion--is everyon okay with that?

I certainly am - if it nets us free techs from trading (or avoids a war with Izzie) it'll be well worth it.

Munro · Sep 28, 2007

xatsmann said:
We can draft the market in Krakorum and the forge in Samarqand to finish them immediate and we should do so. We can then have them turn out military units--macemen and catapults, respectively.

Agree in principle, but I don't think it makes sense to do this until after our 80% run to vassalage, since the marketplace won't help us at 20% gold, and we'll lose more :commerce:

than the marketplace would give us back.

Karakorum is never going to be a big unit producing city, but it already has a barracks, so does makes sense to churn out a few units after that.

xatsmann · Oct 1, 2007

I have the save and will do it tonight.

Update: I didn't get to it tonight, Monday...I kind of over did it at the gym. I will definately do it tonight (Tuesday).

xatsmann · Oct 2, 2007

The save:

Spoiler :

I did my turns--I only did 8 turns from 1424 (turn 0) to 1472 (turn 8).

The good news is we have theology and feudalism. We have converted to Judism and Izzie is now only cautious toward us--she was annoyed.

The bad news: we lost our Japanese expeditionary force. We are being slowly strangled as Toko also has carvels.

We are also in Anarchy right now--one turn away from getting monarchy/vasselage/serfdom.

Once we get vassalage we'll get 10 free units and serfdom will increase our production. I took monarchy but that was a mistake as I realize now we don't need. I just got greedy there--sorry guys.

We should probably research either civil service to get macemen or guilds to get the knight. We currently only have 48 gold and are generating +5 a turn.

My narrative:

Spoiler :

The turn log:

Spoiler :

Finally my screen shots:

xatsmann · Oct 2, 2007

more screen shots--at start production and finances.

Munro · Oct 3, 2007

Not a good turnset for us.... the loss of Nara and our expeditionary force in particular is quite a setback.

Xats - must admit I am surprised by your decision to press on with the offensive at Kagoshima (and esp. to attack at <25% before reducing defences, or even using cats to soften up the defenders first) when there seemed to be a consensus to fall back to retake Nara / Athens instead?

Also - why tech Fedualism AND Theology when we are going to switch to Judaism anyway? Theocracy is completed wasted on us at the moment (and we were getting it for free via barb research anyway).

Anyway, from here, I would think still focus on retaking Athens and eventually restarting the offensive but it is going to get tougher - we need to be much more careful with our galleys and units!!!

Other thoughts:

1. Now that Toka has samurai and xbows (+50 v. melee), swords are going to be useless; for now; suggest we build xbows and cats instead (and xbows instead of longbows).

2. War Elephants would also be a signifcant boon; can we try cancelling relevant resource deals with Cyrus to see if we have anything else to tempt Izzie for Ivory?

3. We are not going to make much further progress with :beaker: techs at this point - suggest we work libraries in Mecca instead for great scientist (give Optics) plus priest and merchant for accelerated :gp:

production (or CS / Guilds if popped instead).

4. City management is in need of attention again:
- work farm in Medina for extra pop and increased Heroic Epic hammers
- work villages in New Sarai and Ning-Hsia
- work the mines in Samarqand, Thermoplylae and Old Sarai (for marketplace)
- move worker to improve sugar in Tabriz and build marketplace
- work Iron Mine in Besh!!

(Xats?????)

We are starting to look in some trouble though... will need some careful play from here to turn things around.

SGOTM 05 - Fistful of Dynamite

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