SGOTM 05 - Misfits

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

Okay... Got it.

I spotted on of the frigs to the west of Athens, but the other is lost in the mist. I'll be wary. We seem to be getting some awesome bleed from the barbs, so we might want to follow a straight line of research.

Also, the other AI probably aren't so navy oriented... we might get after them that way later on.

Just some thoguhts.

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

Athens has fallen, but it took a bit longer than I thought. He had several rifles and cav in the city, looking like they were ready to ship out. Bad timing, I guess. I have one more turn, I'll play it tonight. Troops are headed for his other island that is not as well defended.

My concern is that he tries to take back Athens, so I'm going to head some frigs that way. He's close enough to get around them, but as bad as it was to lose some troops taking Athens, he lost 3 frigs and 4 galleons in port!

He also has two frigs up around Qinland pillaging workboats, but we can put a stop to that very soon as I have frigs coming...

More tonight! I'll make sure I get the save up, I'm going to be gone for 3 days.

Mf

 

[Piko]

aye with those frigates and galleys in that city, they must have been on their way to battle cyrus. We just did cyrus a favour lol. ohwell, means alex will die easier.

i don't know how worthwhile the cities on his other island are, if one is any good and is big enough to not be a financial burden, i guess keep one, but last time i looked i think it was rather poor land?

Lets hope cyrus is appreciative and doesnt turn on us later.

I assume we may need state property to save our economy? should this make communism a high priority tech?

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

Save is up!

I actually had 3 turns to play, it took a bit longer... I took another city, too.

Okay, first off, we have a GS now. He's with the GE in Turfan. Golden Age? Probably not. I'd use the GS to put an academy in turfan. The GE will discover RP, but we'll get it on the bleed in 10 turns... about the same time as steel. Maybe shoot straight for combustion?

Persia has no iron. Thoughts?

I lost the fleet (2 frigs) up by Qinland... but we have a couple of our own up there. There are no ships in Knossos (but tons of riflemen!), I have a couple frigs north of Athens to check the other cities.

9 turns to steel... and don't forget lumbermills once we get RP!

Mf

 

[cnwjr]

Maro, I think you are up now.

I think we took Alex's only horses, so no more cavalry against us, as the only trade he has is with Toku, who has no horses of his own.

Asoka has steel (canons).

We need to =really= concentrate on building troops, not buildings. I noticed that of 16 cities, only 4 are building combat units and two more are building ships.

I consider the National Epic to be a waste of resources this late in the game.

I suggest using the GE to build either the pentagon (my preference) or the ironworks when we get steel.

We need to take the other large city on the island (Sparta) or we will lose Thermopylae to culture. It would also be nice to take the large coastal cities on the mainland, but that will take several turns to build enough units.

Next research needs to be Replaceable Parts and Rifling.

The fleet units need to be more concentrated. There is survival in numbers.

Turfan and the city north of it should probably ignore growth and concentrate on building (troops). They have a significantly better production that way.

 

[cnwjr]

As a quick way to build a bit of culture and happiness, we need to build some missionaries for our captured cities. These should be considered a part of the invasion fleet.

Remember to build defenders for our captured cities so as to let the offensive troops (cats/cannons & cav) continue the conquest.

The larger cities (9+ population?) can also whip a courthouse when they come out of revolt. Otherwise, most will merely waste (starve) away the excess population or lose it to unhappiness.

After taking at least one more city (Sparta) start to see what (if anything) Alex will give us for peace. We can always use a 10-turn building phase as we are so low on troops. Note that the building is for build troops, not buildings.

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

So no Oxford? Aren't we going to fall way behind in tech? I was alternating between troops and libraries for more beakers. By the way, we should get RP (and constitution) about the same time as steel by my calculations. Rifling will be about 10 turns after that with the bleed.

After rifling, I'd like to go steam/rr/combustion and get destroyers out there!

Also, we could use some drydocks with steel. I think we're going to need a real strong navy to win this thing. Control the seas, then control the air... Bomb Asoka back to the stone age!

I don't think Asoka has cannons because he doesn't seem to have iron.

I'm okay with the GE getting Pentagon, but he's only going to deliver 990 hammers, and the wonder costs more than that.

What about the GS? Use him for scientific method (partially) or build a academy in Turfan?

 

[cnwjr]

Well, at this point, any additional techs we go after will take forever. Even a few additional libraries and universities will do little to help. We must attack, attack, attack. The only way to do that is with units. We will have reached a critical breakpoint with the completion of steel. We will have canons, grenadiers, and cavalry. Those three will take care of anything until infantry. If the computer reaches infantry with their superior research, we have lost.

You would also need to add Scientific Method to reveal Oil. That's four techs at 30+ turns each. The only way to really go faster is to get more cities and gold from them allowing us to research instead of gold. This means more units to kill/take opponent's cities.

If we wait until we have the techs for bombers, Asoka will have armor or worse. We would need the above listed 4 techs plus physics and flight. Maybe more. He already has uranium for those things that work with either oil or uranium.

If Asoka has no iron, then he shouldn't have cav or canons. There is a lot of iron on the map, however, and he is trading with Cyrus who might have it to give. Be wary.

As I recall (not at game computer) Pentagon is around 1000-1200 cost, so a short construction period might be necessary.

Academy in Turfan might work if it is the next best base research city. Check that on the city screen.

I thin we need to be building units in the approximate ratio of 5 canons to 3 cavalry to 2-3 grenadiers. This should let us get to, reduce defenses, and then damage enough units to take a city in no more than two turns. The grenadiers are to take out the riflemen and then stay to defend.

 

[cnwjr]

Another option we can do to increase our research (to the tune of around 50-100 beakers/turn) is to change civics to Representation.

Personally, I prefer to get our gold from pillage & conquest at this point in the game and keep the research slider high.

If we have the units, we should be getting 200-300 gold/turn from pillage/conquest/razing.

 

[Piko]

aye so do we tech communism for state property? if nothing else is worthy? or i am overestimating any potential boost?

 

[marowaker]

Looks like I am up again. Fortunatly, I have time on my hands so I will be able to do it.

At the moment, it seems that we are going for domination without getting rid of Asoka. I agree with cnwjr that we should be warring, not building. State Property should be a high priority since we have cities everywhere.

The tech path I am thinking of is Communism for state property(and spies) then Combustion so we can rule the seas.

I will do the save in about 6 hours.

EDIT:Looked at the save, when shall we get rid of the spanish? Since they only have 1 city it isn't really a high priority but just mentioning it.
If we want domination, we need to make sure Asoka doesn't get any more land(Unlikely due to cultural borders) otherwise we need to declare war on him to get the land percentage. How about a backdoor domination win?

 

[cnwjr]

Communism is a possibility. It is three techs away. Scientific Method and Liberalism are needed first.

I wouldn't rule out taking out Asoka, but domination is more likely first. To achieve that, we need to keep cities instead of razing them. We also need to settle everywhere we haven't already to get the land area under our control. Qinland & southern Arabia, for example.

Either way, we need troops. Lots of troops and keep them moving either pillaging areas we won't get to for some time, or taking cities in areas we can reach.

I need to take the time to see where the strategic resources are. If we can, we should send strong pillage & hold teams to any extra horses and/or iron. Those two will cause the most problems. Same with oil when we finally can see where it is.

We will also need to consider constitution/democracy somewhere along the way, especially if we stay at war. Either that, or find more happiness somewhere.


Go ahead and take out Izzy if you feel the need. That is a decent back door route to Izzy's old territory which can probably be pillaged easily.

 

[marowaker]

OK, I have done 11 turns(had so much fun I couldn't count)

When I begun, I noticed that we have too many ships and not enough troops. Because of that, I made peace. So it was mainly a building round of troops and galleons. The next player can have fun with them at their leisure. I got steel and constitution(haven't started ironworks yet) By the way, Toku got the statue of Liberty.

However, there is some bad news. Our Grenadier and Pikeman on the main island got free of the cultural hole they got stuck in. Since we have OB with cyrus, they got pushed over there so they were "mini" spies against cyrus. Guess what I found?(tell me what you think is in your post)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/101359/Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG

My thoughts:

Spoiler :

Yep, Asoka has SAM infantry. Which means he has rocketry, which means he could be working on the Apollo program as we speak .
Not as bad as infantry for defence but worse for the tech situation

 

[cnwjr]

Well, that is only a couple of techs. Artillery and rocketry.

More worrisome, is that Asoka DOES have iron. We will need to get seriously into a pillage and conquest campaign.

What did we get for peace?

I will get the save and look at it this afternoon.

 

[Piko]

so we need units units units. crush kill inhabit, then hit asoka last with all we have?

or atleast control his oil supply? so we need scientific method anyhow? and yes we do need democracy aswell, i guess we should analyse bleed projections and see how many unhappy we can support as is.

with liberalism we can go free religion, we have a few available, with our ship movements it could be viable? we could spread religion as needed, though that could not be very efficient perhaps?

 

[cnwjr]

My bad. Artillery does not need iron. We are in deep doo now.

As I see it, our only chance to take out Asoka before he builds a spaceship on us is to massively build units (perhaps the cheaper the better?) and go on a pillage spree on all of his towns, mines and strategic resources, especially happiness. If we find some poorly defended cities, take them, or more likely, raze them.

As we are behind in production, population, research, and almost anything else, all we can do is try to distract Asoka from building the expensive spaceship parts.

The only other chance we have is to wipe out Cyrus, Alex, and Toku and hope we get enough population and land to win by domination first. If we choose this path, we simply must build units and more units and nothing but units until we have achieved this goal or we give up.

We just have to hope that the computer is stupid enough to not build tons of units on its own.

Either that, or simply give up.

In any case, we will pretty much have to choose one and only one research path for most of the remainder of the game. The time it takes to get a tech for is in around 10-30 turns and several will usually take 50-100 turns. There are only about 200 turns left.

Make some comments and choices quickly, guys. Unless something comes up, I will play this tomorrow. (about 30 hours from now).

 

[cnwjr]

Just got home to get the save and check it out. Unfortunately, there is no new save.

Maro? Forget a step?

 

[marowaker]

Just got home to get the save and check it out. Unfortunately, there is no new save.

Maro? Forget a step?

Heh,Heh,heh, whoops

Sorry about that. New save up

 

[cnwjr]

Okay, I now have the save.

I see I have a lot to do before me.

It is turn 467 of 660. 193 remaining.

There was a comment about Asoka having no iron. He has at least three iron within his borders. Two horses. Unlikely we will be able to deny those to him. Also, artillery doesn't seem to require iron.

We are 4 turns from finishing Scientific Method. I have to play a turn to see the barb bleed, but we are almost to RP. We also have points towards several other techs.

Where should we try to head?
Democracy?
Liberalism, Communism?
Rifling?
Rifling, Physics, Artillery?
Steam Power, Railroad, Combustion, Physics, Flight?

Also, I notice I kept saying Pentagon when I meant West Point.

 

[marowaker]

Also, I notice I kept saying Pentagon when I meant West Point.

Ah, now that makes sense. I was wondering when we would go for Assembly Line but anyway...

In my mind, the best thing to do is to go for tanks, however the game will be over before we get there. Some military tech will have to do.

I am not sure how we can stop Asoka before he gets in space. That is the ONLY thing to do unless we want to lose. He doesn't have aluminium yet so it should take some 30-40 turns for the apollo program then some 75-100 turns to get all the parts. Do we even stand a chance?

Tech wise, keep going for Communism. Spies will help us out A LOT given the situation we are in.