SGOTM 07 - Xteam

[Mad Professor]

I've now uploaded the save to the progress page.

Our score graphs might leave some in doubt as to whether a PA has been signed. The slope does not increase by much.

The power graph tells a story though. Our power has nearly doubled during my turnset despite us taking such a hammering from Liz in the last few turns. I think some might wonder what happened with a jump like that...

 

[Frederiksberg]

Sounds like a rough ride, MP. On the positive side we can note that York is captured, Artillery is not far away and that we probably have time to eliminate Elisabeth before she gets redcoats.

Since we are close to Artillery we probably need to discuss if we reduce research when we reach it. I find it tempting to convert Beijing to a production city transforming all towns and villages into work shops and adopting State Property to keep food level even. It would mean that the production capacity of Beijing is more than doubled. Then we can build the Globe and start whipping away the unhealth and get even more hammers from speedy regrowth. We should be able to build 7-8 artillery units every 10 turns with this setup.

 

[rrau]

Good job in a bad situation. Will look at the save once I'm home tonight

 

[Cactus Pete]

Well, looks like we've encountered a bit of adversity. For discussion:

Next build a caravel to upgrade to frigate (not to attack with but for protection of sea resources and have available in the future). Probably should move our frigate home and out of harms way. Can we bombard once before weighing anchor?

If we move culture slider to 10%, it does not delay artillery and gives two additional happiness. That, plus getting ivory from Asoka when needed, will allow us to upgrade two more archers (after moving two tiles toward England) to badly needed grens (can get gold from Asoka and via trade).

Attack wounded English unit adjacent to York with 4/5 gren and promote to gunpowder.

 

[leif erikson]

Nice work MP!

Lizzie isn't going down easy, but she is still going down...
EDIT - Should have offered her some Cooper's?

Roster:
Gator - UP
rrau - On Deck
leif
ShannonCT
Jimmy Thunder
Cactus Pete
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor - Just played!

Mistfit -

@rrau - As Gator will be out of town until the end of the week, if you have the time this week, please post and we can swap you if you wish to play around 10 turns? If you do not, that is fine as well.

The power graph tells a story though. Our power has nearly doubled during my turnset despite us taking such a hammering from Liz in the last few turns. I think some might wonder what happened with a jump like that...

Let them wonder. I enjoyed the graph's curve!

Since we are close to Artillery we probably need to discuss if we reduce research when we reach it. I find it tempting to convert Beijing to a production city transforming all towns and villages into work shops and adopting State Property to keep food level even. It would mean that the production capacity of Beijing is more than doubled. Then we can build the Globe and start whipping away the unhealth and get even more hammers from speedy regrowth. We should be able to build 7-8 artillery units every 10 turns with this setup.

This will be an interesting discussion! As Lizzie has gotten to Chemistry (Fred also has Chemistry and Julius is looking to be a bit more formidable?), do we need to head for Assembly Line and Infantry to ensure a speedy win, or perhaps that is overkill? Artillery will sure take the starch out of their shirts...

Next build a caravel to upgrade to frigate (not to attack with but for protection of sea resources and have available in the future). Probably should move our frigate home and out of harms way. Can we bombard once before weighing anchor?

Yes, we can bombard before we move. I think we will probably need another Frigate. What we really need are about 4 Rifles and our Cannon healed.

If we move culture slider to 10%, it does not delay artillery and gives two additional happiness. That, plus getting ivory from Asoka when needed, will allow us to upgrade two more archers (after moving two tiles toward England) to badly needed grens (can get gold from Asoka and via trade).

Yes, that will work. As there are no horses around, Asoka doesn't really need War Elephants.

Attack wounded English unit adjacent to York with 4/5 gren and promote to gunpowder.

There is a 7/5 waiting to be promoted. I agree that pinch is the best promotion now. There is alos a 4/2 that we can promote to CBT1 and, after he wins, to Pinch, should he survive the counter by the English Gren on the Marble Hill. Perhaps he won't attack?

EDIT2 - I think our next objective should be London! Lizzie seems to be weakened enough. If we can get London, that may end the threat to our sea resources.

 

[ShannonCT]

Good work MP. Deity isn't supposed to be easy. Lizzy's back is broken now. With only 1 city able to produce substantial units, we should be able to finish her off when our stack is healed and we bring in a few new units. She's spent all of her seige weapons.

One thing that may help to reduce some unit loss in the future is to promote our seige units up the Combat line. Much of the fighting may be done in the field.

I think our frigate should move back to our fish nets straight away. Any closer to London and it will be within range of 3 English frigates. We should consider building a frigate this turn by MMing Beijing. If Lizzy gets to our crabs, Beijing will be in big trouble. Time for a little risk management.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Some tough battles in there, but good going MP!

Do we need to meet with Asoka and ask him to attack London?

 

[Cactus Pete]

What about sending a worker one tile ahead of our advance on London to entice some units, including any new cats, out into the open?

Perhaps rrau should play until a decsion on research after Artillery is needed and then pause.

 

[Mad Professor]

Next build a caravel to upgrade to frigate (not to attack with but for protection of sea resources and have available in the future). Probably should move our frigate home and out of harms way. Can we bombard once before weighing anchor?

Another frigate is important I think. Liz with three frigates is a very different proposition than Liz with a galley and two caravels. Hopefully she leaves those frigates at home, but given her previous performance with that galley, I'm not sure she will. The AI seems much less chicken at Diety...!

As for bombarding, that just takes up a movement point, so the frigate couls still move 4 tiles afterwards.

Attack wounded English unit adjacent to York with 4/5 gren and promote to gunpowder.

It would be nice to get rid of that wounded lbow before Liz conceives a desire to upgrade it. The problem is withdrawing the attacking unit afterwards. Will the gren on the marble hill stay there, or move to wipe out our attacking unit? We can't afford to lose too many more units in a hurry.

Good work MP. Deity isn't supposed to be easy. Lizzy's back is broken now. With only 1 city able to produce substantial units, we should be able to finish her off when our stack is healed and we bring in a few new units. She's spent all of her seige weapons.

Yes, she spent all her cats alright. And with a bit of luck she's now trying to build a couple more instead of pumping out grens. "Deity isn't supposed to be easy" Right. Even at merely mortal levels like emperor which I'm more used to playing, the AI will try and Wipe out stacks like that if it has the chance and in particular enough seige weapons, but Liz was nerely human there in that attempt. A human might have tried even harder and thrown a couple more units at that stack, but not much. It was the fact she had 6 cats in London and 2 in York all available for an 8 cat dogpile that really hurt us. After that she was more or less just picking us off. I just wish I'd managed to get Asoka to take York a turn earlier - that would have saved us three canons.

We need Atillery absolutely as fast as we can get it now that chemistry is out there. Canons can no longer just walk over defending units. Attacking to do collateral damage becomes a suicide mission for canons against fortified grens.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Some input for the production city transformation idea:

Beijing as a production city:

Spoiler :

The picture shows Beijing after the transformation to a production city. It can build 8.4 artillery units in 10 turns (and Globe in 3). If we rely on cash rushing we can only build 5 artillery in 10 turns because we need to do 1 turn of building before we can rush in order to avoid the penalty. Using the whip doesn't give many extra hammers because there is a cap on the hammer overflow.

As you can see our tech rate is reduced but not so low that we can't do some research if the need is there. One alternative option to researching Assembly Line is to go for Rocketry. This is cheaper, it doesn't obsolete the GLHouse and it will enable Asoka and us to upgrade our foot soldiers to SAM Infantry (only strength 18 though). Asoka will continue research anyway so we might as well direct him there even if we choose to shut down our own research entirely.

What about sending a worker one tile ahead of our advance on London to entice some units, including any new cats, out into the open?

In order to do the transformation of Beijing we need all 3 workers for the next 8 turns.

Perhaps rrau should play until a decision on research after Artillery is needed and then pause.

Yes, we should pause there for a final decision. In the meantime (next 8 turns) I think we should prepare for the transformation of Beijing to a production city - this can't wait.

I notice that Kublai has been eliminated by Caesar so maybe we should bribe Fred into attacking HC? He will do this for Divine Right and will even give us some gold too. Caesar can also be bribed into attacking HC but the price seems a little high. He's last on our list so we don't want him to get too advanced.

 

[Mad Professor]

Some input for the production city transformation idea:

The picture shows Beijing after the transformation to a production city. It can build 8.4 artillery units in 10 turns (and Globe in 3). If we rely on cash rushing we can only build 5 artillery in 10 turns because we need to do 1 turn of building before we can rush in order to avoid the penalty. Using the whip doesn't give many extra hammers because there is a cap on the hammer overflow.

As you can see our tech rate is reduced but not so low that we can't do some research if the need is there. One alternative option to researching Assembly Line is to go for Rocketry. This is cheaper, it doesn't obsolete the GLHouse and it will enable Asoka and us to upgrade our foot soldiers to SAM Infantry (only strength 18 though). Asoka will continue research anyway so we might as well direct him there even if we choose to shut down our own research entirely.

In order to do the transformation of Beijing we need all 3 workers for the next 8 turns.

What I wonder is whether we're going to need infantry, and how fast we'll need to get there. This is the only major consideration I can think of after getting Artillery, which simply must be ASAP. Artillery will give us the tech edge again over civs with chem, but when rifling becomes more common, infantry could be handy - I'm not sure. Caesar is late on our list but is a bit behind tech wise at the moment. With a couple of extra cities though he could really get rolling. I think we'll be right there though because by the time we get to him, Asoka will be a juggernaut. This is what I noticed in the test game - the PA partner once he gets big is quite unstoppable - it's these early turns of the war that are harder because both he and us have more limited armies. Tokugawa and Capac likewise are not likely to create problems for us because they are smaller and hampered already. Frederick on the other hand might create a challenge for us. He has expanded after taking Madrid, already has chemistry and economics, and may well have rifling before we start on him. He has more cities and therefore a bigger production base, and will take longer to overcome.

The question I'm getting to (Eventualy!) is which is going to help us more against the likes of him? Being more advanced techwise or having more hammers in Beijing?

Yes, we should pause there for a final decision. In the meantime (next 8 turns) I think we should prepare for the transformation of Beijing to a production city - this can't wait.

I don't think we can lose by pre-building workshops. The workers are not going to be very busy otherwise anyhow. There's no downside to that, even if we decide not to go that way at all.

I'm a bit concerned my list of progress so far on that task that I posted near the end of my post 920 will be lost. I wanted to stick messages in the save to label these tiles, but didn't know how to do it. At the very least, anyone ordering workers to do anything near Beijing must be aware of this list, or read the turns remaining to complete workshops by hovering the mouse over the button before pressing it!!

 

[rrau]

OK. I need some input. I was thinking of trading/asking for all the gold available and then upgrading 3 archers to grenadiers while building a frigate and sending them to join the healing units in York and hopefully arrive about the time the stack's ready to go again, BUT we're at the happiness limit and can't spare the mp's. I'm worried about the war stalling while we wait to build a frigate and then start building grenadiers and cannon again. Lizzie looks vulnerable in London right now and I'd like to press on before she can build good units again, but doing so would mean sending Beijing into unhappiness----and necessitating even further delay with market or globe.

I'm also, thinking about taking out the English longbow with our only healed cannon and then covering him with our only healed grenadier (strength promoted). That would leave York vulnerable to Lizzie's wounded cr2 grenadier and we'd have to rely on Asoka's grenadiers to hold the town until next turn when I could move them back into the stack. (That's assuming there's nothing in the FOW to come get our units that have ventured out)

workers progress from post 921:

Some comments about tiles near Beijing – I didn’t know how to mark this in the save:
1 north of Beijing has 1 turn to a workshop
2 west of Beijing has 1 turn to a workshop
1 east of Beijing has 2 turns to a workshop
1 southwest of Beijing has 2 turns to a workshop
1 north of silver hill has 4 turns to a workshop

.

 

[Mad Professor]

OK. I need some input. I was thinking of trading/asking for all the gold available and then upgrading 3 archers to grenadiers while building a frigate and sending them to join the healing units in York and hopefully arrive about the time the stack's ready to go again, BUT we're at the happiness limit and can't spare the mp's. I'm worried about the war stalling while we wait to build a frigate and then start building grenadiers and cannon again. Lizzie looks vulnerable in London right now and I'd like to press on before she can build good units again, but doing so would mean sending Beijing into unhappiness----and necessitating even further delay with market or globe.

Delay will play into Lizzies hands. You're right, now is the time to hit London, but we just can't right now. Asoka is bringing up a couple of rifles from further east and I think they are headed for garrison duties in York, which means in a couple of turns his grens will be willing to step out of York. In a couple of turns, our own stack wil lbe much better off too.

Bear in mind that Asoka has a fleet near Susas which is undoubtedly heading towards the English coast. London I wonder? Can it arrive safely? If it can arrive safely, and we can time the arrival of our own units near London at the same time, that might save that stack of Asoka's from getting crunched. But can we? We if step out too early, we might lose more units and we just can't afford to.

I think we do need to build another frigate now.

As for Beijing MP's, already removed 2 (After begging gold and upgrading archers to grens) and they just arrived in York last turn with a new canon. They are the 7/5 gren, the full strength gren and the new canon in York. WW is going to get worse and worse. We need to be prepared to use the culture slider and go light on removing MP's. Maybe we can remove another one or two. I know we can put the culture slider to 10% without slowing down Artillery. The other thing is that Asoka has cut his reserach to 80% for the moment, and I think that is a result of me begging money, and his own upgrades of lbows to rifles. He wants a cash cushion. We shouldn't be too eager to use up the cash cushion unless we really need it otherwise we'll slow his research too much. The next few turns to Artillery must be a fine tightrope walk of encouraging Asoka to tech fast while doing all we can to bolster our battered army.

I'm also, thinking about taking out the English longbow with our only healed cannon and then covering him with our only healed grenadier (strength promoted). That would leave York vulnerable to Lizzie's wounded cr2 grenadier and we'd have to rely on Asoka's grenadiers to hold the town until next turn when I could move them back into the stack. (That's assuming there's nothing in the FOW to come get our units that have ventured out)

I can't guarantee anything about the SW of England. There was quite a stack of English troops head into Greece the turn I DW on Liz - see post 920. If they died in Greece or continued south, we're OK. Athens won't have produced very much. If they turned around and headed back, there could be trouble in this area! I did notice a Greek mace in England south of York a couple of turns before Asoka took it which I forgot to mention in the report. Maybe Liz has been battling Greek units down there?

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I wanted to stick messages in the save to label these tiles, but didn't know how to do it.

(Alt + s) lets you put messages on tiles in the game.

 

[leif erikson]

To start off, we should be careful about building (or upgrading) too many Rifles as Grens have a +50% versus Rifles.

I would attack the LB with the Gren. The chances are greater than 99.9% without the CBT1 promo. A successful combat leads to another promo, which should be pinch, giving him a +25% versus Lizzie's Grens, plus a 10% for CBT1. Cover the Gren with the Cannon if we must?

I believe the key is still in the siege weapons. We have 6 Cannons and a Cat in York, looks like 4 turns to heal. I count 13 base Hammers for London. How much of a break does a Deity AI get in producing a Gren? Can she pump out one per turn?

We can MM Beijing to produce a Frigate in 1 turn, I think we should. Lizzie's are unpromoted. Then it is back to Cannons. With the culture slider set to 10%, we can still get Artillery in 8 turns and have two more smiling faces. Upgrade one Archer to Gren and then we'll need to try to head for London?

The power curves say that we have just slightly less power than Lizzie and she has no gold for upgrades. We need to try to find a way to visit her soon as we are healed, or mostly healed?

EDIT - Asoka has 338 Gold available to us for upgrades. If we need to go to the bank?

 

[Mad Professor]

To start off, we should be careful about building (or upgrading) too many Rifles as Grens have a +50% versus Rifles.

I agree. Rifles are not a whole lot of use to us at the moment. Seige weapons are. More canons! Rifling was simply on the road to artillery.

I would attack the LB with the Gren. The chances are greater than 99.9% without the CBT1 promo. A successful combat leads to another promo, which should be pinch, giving him a +25% versus Lizzie's Grens, plus a 10% for CBT1. Cover the Gren with the Cannon if we must?

Greater than 99.9% sounds good. I like. Sounds like a fair plan Leif... Liz's CR2 gren has no useful promotions vs a unit in the field

I believe the key is still in the siege weapons.

Hear ye, hear ye. Our noble team captain knows what he's talking about here!

We can MM Beijing to produce a Frigate in 1 turn, I think we should.

That's nice to know. Makes it less painful to produce one.

The power curves say that we have just slightly less power than Lizzie and she has no gold for upgrades. We need to try to find a way to visit her soon as we are healed, or mostly healed?

We should visit her absolutely as soon as we think we can get away with marching a stack out of York without getting it creamed. We should really try to make it quick.

EDIT - Asoka has 338 Gold available to us for upgrades. If we need to go to the bank?

Can we measure the effect of repeated visits to the bank on how fast Asoka techs? It could have been just co-incidence that he plundered in eastern England the turn after I asked for 250 gold instead of advancing on a depleated city - or it might not have been. And he had study at 100% for a little bit during my turnset too (with about negative 7 or 8 gpt) but dropped it after I withdrew funds. Is there some level of "spare" cash the AI is aiming at? How to find out?

 

[Frederiksberg]

What I wonder is whether we're going to need infantry, and how fast we'll need to get there. This is the only major consideration I can think of after getting Artillery, which simply must be ASAP. Artillery will give us the tech edge again over civs with chem, but when rifling becomes more common, infantry could be handy - I'm not sure. Caesar is late on our list but is a bit behind tech wise at the moment.

Grenadiers can do a decent job against rifles since they get 50% extra strength. And they are relatively cheap. If we find ourselves fighting lot's of rifles we can start building a mix of artillery and grens - in 10 turns it's possible to build 5 artillery and 5 grens in Beijing (after modification). So in the 20 turns it takes to reach Assembly Line we can build 10 artillery and 10 grens with a production modified city and half of that without modifying. That's the equivalent of having an extra 10 unit stack for attack. The SAM infantry have about the same strength against rifles which limits there usefulness but they will, of course be handy for attacking and defending against enemy grenadiers.

 

[leif erikson]

Grenadiers can do a decent job against rifles since they get 50% extra strength. And they are relatively cheap. If we find ourselves fighting lot's of rifles we can start building a mix of artillery and grens - in 10 turns it's possible to build 5 artillery and 5 grens in Beijing (after modification). So in the 20 turns it takes to reach Assembly Line we can build 10 artillery and 10 grens with a production modified city and less than half of that without modifying. That's the equivalent of having an extra 10 unit stack for attack. The SAM infantry have about the same strength against rifles which limits there usefulness but they will, of course be handy for attacking and defending against enemy grenadiers.

After sleeping on it, I agree with you on all of this. Our objective is fast domination, so the more Artillery we can get into the field, the quickest way possible, the faster I believe we will achieve our goal. Once Artillery is ours, we can guide Asoka to continue on the path to Rocketry while we build Artillery as fast as Beijing will allow.

I think we're going to have to suffer a bit of WW lag because I'm not sure it is worth taking the time to build any happiness buildings as we go down the stretch. Once we get to Julius, we could even whip away some of the unhappiness to keep units moving to the field. (unless it affects the population % required for domination?) The problem I see is with happiness issues affecting our ability to get to Artillery quickly due to Lizzie's resistance. Can we figure out what production rate she can maintain in Grens per turn or something like that? While we may lose some Cannons on the road to Artillery, we need to take Lizzie out as quickly as possible.

EDIT - And on Asoka's Gold, I think we should try taking 66% to 75% and see how it affects his tech rate. Do not want to delay Artillery if we can help it...

 

[Mad Professor]

EDIT - And on Asoka's Gold, I think we should try taking 66% to 75% and see how it affects his tech rate. Do not want to delay Artillery if we can help it...

I can't remember how much Asoka had when I asked for 250. It was over 300 - maybe 330-something? 250/330 is about 75% so when I asked for 250 I was asking for about 75%.

 

[Mad Professor]

Chokonuts have posted a 1100AD save and from the look of their score and power graphs, it's almost certain they signed a PA between 1000AD and 1100AD.

We're ahead of them by some, at least.