SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

[BLubmuz]

CoL + Mon for construction? I thought CoL was enough.
Now we need calendar.
Walls in 2? yes, but with stone, and with 2 LBs on it we loose it in 1 turn.
Better an archer, we can build walls when we have our stone back.

Do you can see some war activity by the spanish side?
It does not seem Wash is concerned by this new enemy.

I think we must revolt after next archer is ready.

Again, since not much answers on this: i'm in favour for an OB with Izzy.
Vote, please.

 

[greatbeyond]

Here is the latest save, start of turn. I have done some mm trying to see how production would work out.

 

[BLubmuz]

I'm writing this with the save open.
MC is known by 3 civs, and Fred shows "we fear you're becoming too advanced" in his diplo screen.
also Asoka shows this, and Lizzy just "we don't trade yet"
There's a GS in NY, probably Wash will pop an academy there. He's under cultural pressure also by Asoka and Lizzy.
That damn english icy town now shows 0% english: what is it waiting to autoraze?
The furs are still under pressure by America.

The archer can be done in 1 turn moving to work the hills.
But since we don't need it desperately (for now), let the things as is, next one will come faster thanks to the overflow.

Izzy can reach Wash only passing India, she's not much loved around (Fred excluded, of course).
She needs at least 5 turns to begin threatening Wash (the city).
Both Izzy and Toku should be boxed to 1 city, but nor Alex and nor KK show cities in the diplo. I suppose it's 'cause we didn't scouted their land.

 

[WastinTime]

We've had calendar for a while now.

OB with Izzy? What do we gain? Once the war is over, Wash will ask us to cancel deals.

Walls are 50% (not 25) and, no, let's not build them. It's too late for that.

HR is ready now. Revolt this turn for 3 more people and a 4th on the next turn. EDIT: We also lose gold next turn, so revolt is needed.

 

[BLubmuz]

Yes, i forgot we already have calendar.
Agreed about walls, pity do not have built soon, now it's late.
Proposal:
If we've nothing better to build, from now on we'll build cats.
When we'll have some 8-10 we'll go after Wash and we'll wipe him.
Soon or later we'll find Rifles or Grens at our doorstep, better wipe him before this.
No peace with him if we have our land free from invaders.
Relations? we'll work out in some way.
And if we manage to fight him without declare, relations will not suffer.

I'm even more convinced that Izzy can be our PA, Asoka is too strong.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Why is it too late for walls? We're still facing medievals - with classicals, mind you, and guns are still a ways off, cannon quite a bit further - with cats still to come!. Walls are just 2 turns and would increase the chances of our meagre forces staying alive. My 2

Sorry, for being a little inactive, but I'm in the process of moving and I can seeing it getting worse for a couple of weeks, so I apologise in advance. On this, would someone be willing to sub for me in a couple of pbems I am in, if necessary?

 

[Merum]

I can sub for you sweets. You've got my info.

 

[greatbeyond]

As planned we revolted to HR and our happy problem has disappeared .

The 2 LBs on our Stone and the 1 LB on our Marble pillaged them. 1 LB is now on the Fur. 2 LBs are on the Cow. There are 7 LBs in NY and 5 LBs 1SW of NY.
That is a possible attacking force of 16 LBs if he leaves 2 in NY. I would suspect we have no more than 3 turns before they attack.

We now have 4Archers, 3 Axes, 1 Spear in our city. we can produce 1 Archer per turn, or 1 Cat or Axe in 2 turns. It seems the most economical unit at this point is the Archer. We could probably build at most, 2 to 3 Cats before they attack.

Our Pop will grow to 10 next turn.

Washington will not talk and no one else is interested in a MA. The only thing anyone is willing to trade is HBR which doesn't help us at all.

Paper still due in 2T.
I will quit for the night and probably play in about 10 hours or so.

 

[greatbeyond]

.....
Sorry, for being a little inactive, but I'm in the process of moving and I can seeing it getting worse for a couple of weeks, so I apologise in advance.....

Are you moving from Io to Europa?

 

[Merum]

Build cats. Archers are good for defense only, and I'd like to try to start building up some offensive capability. We should discuss the possibility of blunting GW's attack and then going after NY. This will serve two purposes: We can make a nice wad of gold from razing it, and open our borders to further cultural expansion, as well as making GW functionally irrelevant for the rest of the game, or as long as he survives. We're getting to the point where we'll be able to rapidly crank out military, let's plan to use it. I don't want to spend the next war cowering in our city while the enemy pillages our tiles.

 

[WastinTime]

I'm way on the other side of the fence. No cats. They are useless for defense and also not much offense against LB. We have only around 12 turns?...I didn't look...until Edu is done. I don't see us wiping out 15 LB, fortified, in cities, with a small stack of cats. We need an AI involved...not just at war like Izzy...really involved, if we expect to have any cities change hands. We need to make peace and re-build.

Those archers will be LB some day and they can protect the marble.

I wish he'd just get his big attack in so we can build a worker and end it.

I do usually like 2 cats for bombarding, but that's all. And since we aren't planning a counterattack, we don't need them...yet. Wait for the C-K-N or macemen.

 

[Merum]

First, I think the MA with Izzy was ill-considered and a waste. We've strengthened her, while pissing off others who we didn't necessarily want to piss off, in order to bring her into a phony war in which she'll contribute nothing. I don't want to be in that position again.

So what will we do next, burn more trading opportunities to bring in another war ally that we don't need? Or should we concentrate on finishing this war and making ourselves strong enough so that we don't have to cringe and wring our hands when the next threat comes?

How many times can we afford to "make peace and rebuild" before we're holding a pair of wooden spoons? Guns, then butter. Part of the reason we're in this position now is because we neglected our military.

Edit: In vanilla and warlords, cats are devastating. I don't fully understand your resistance to using these cheap, disposable, and highly effective units which can damage entire stacks and even kill in this version of the game. A fat cat stack is a gamebreaker, imo. Two cats are not nearly sufficient enough to wage any sort of warfare, not even enough for simple city bombardment. I don't want to have a stack mired outside an enemy city for four turns waiting for two cats to grind down the defenses, so the enemy can reinforce, or plink away at my stack with their own siege weaponry.

 

[MacBalt]

Maybe we split the difference -- no new war allies and only more archers with maybe 1 or 2 cats for now. I don't see us going on the offensive any time soon, but I'm not in favor of trying to get anyone else involved in this now either. We need to hold out and get peace for now. We can thump George later if our culture doesn't overwhelm him (or at least NY) first.

Hey, where the heck is "Io" anyway... surely not the one next door to Jupiter???

 

[WastinTime]

People keep talking about an MA, like we signed something like a Def. Pact or PA. We have no arrangement with Izzy and none of the others are pissed at us.

Having Izzy in the war is good for so many reasons (already mentioned, several times.) The only bad thing is an extra -1 with Wash. What else is bad?

We have 10 times more trading opportunities than we need, so we haven't burned enough to have any effect. We're just waiting for the AI to catch up. We should be giving *more* away. We failed to get Wash to Pleased with tech. That was "the big mistake". He chose us, nobody bribed him into war. The odds of war go down a lot if he's Pleased instead of Cautious.

Building the Lighthouse/Monastery was the 2nd mistake. Like you wrote, we should have done 4-6 archers and fortified some on the marble.

 

[Merum]

The "so many reasons" listed advocating a MA with Spain against GW amount to:

1. Hoping that Izzy becomes GW's worst enemy, ostensibly to keep him from attacking us. We have absolutely no control over this in the long term and to use this as logic for a MA is questionable at best.
2. Possibility of a future PA with Izzy. A PA with a civ that is almost as far down on the scoreboard as we are. I question the utility of such a relationship. It would also most likely require us to convert to Buddhism, which nobody is in favor of for the obvious reason that it will alienate us from the actually powerful civs on our land mass. Finally, If a PA with Spain is the goal, then not opening borders is also directly contradictory.
3. Assist us in the war vs. GW. She's too far away to be a factor in this war, and likely wouldn't send any troops anyway.

So what did we accomplish? how does this benefit us? In return for a big bag of nothing, we've traded with potentially the worst enemy of several powerful civs (- diplo), and gained -1 with GW that if we're going to leave him alive (and we have little choice in this matter currently) we could have done without.

This just seems like random flailing to me.

 

[MacBalt]

In return for a big bag of nothing, we've traded with potentially the worst enemy of several powerful civs (- diplo)

I'm not convinced that this -1 didn't come from trading with Alex. Alex was already at war with one of Asoka's buddies when we did the deal, Izzy was still on the sidelines. It is a good point though. I'd rather not burn any points with either Asoka or Liz if we can help it, because I still see those two as our best potential PA partners for later. I know the PA is a long time in the future, but I still think it is important not to let the negatives build up now.

 

[Merum]

Maybe we did get it from the Alex trades rather than dealing with Iz. The MA was a team decision, and that's that. However, I think we need to think hard about these things before we take these actions in the future.

 

[BLubmuz]

I adviced that Izzy can have accepted to join our war, but that it can be phony, and that CS was too much for that.
Unfortunately we can't verify what she's doing, but as i posted before, she needs 5 turns to move her troops to Washington.

I posted a proposal here Merum seems to agree with it, WT less, but it's what i still think.

We must decide what road we take: 2 more archers are mandatory, then cats if we decide to follow my proposal.
The Academy Wash is popping in NY will not help our control over the furs, precious for our research.
NY is in flat terrain, and i noticed Wash's LBs are promoted to C1.
If he's got 6 LB in NY, with 10 cats and 3 axes we can raze it in 2 turns, and without exit our territory.
No need to declare, we'll stay at war if we survive.

So vote please:
1) peaceful strategy, passing the game to hoping and fear
2) aggressive strategy, so the AIs learn the lesson

My vote is for 2

 

[dutchfire]

1) please

 

[Merum]

I'm in favor of a blend of 1 and 2. We need to pursue our peaceful goals, but we need to have a strong military. I don't think more archers are useful or necessary here. By building cats, we can grind down the attacking forces and hold them off with less units. Upgrades are expensive, and I'd rather just build longbows instead of buying them.

With regard to Astronomy, how are we going to pick up the prereqs for it without losing the race to liberalism, and what are we going to do with it once we get it? If our goal is only to discover other civs, we can accomplish that with optics. For any other purpose other than the obvious benefit of an observatory, we'll need military to put on the boats.

Edit: For now, I think we need to kick GW's ass.