SGOTM 07 - Xteam

I think you are ready to go, leif :thumbsup:
Planning to finish up the turns this evening, starting in a couple of hours.

Been out all day to a meeting. Glad to be home... :)
 
Good luck! :goodjob: Don't forget the candle to the RNG gods and the haka :)
 
Thanks. Getting ready to go here.

Went to perform a haka! Its so hot here this evening that I might need to wait until tomorrow so I can locate some Coopers, for refreshment, of course.... :mischief:

:joke:
 
Completed the turn set. Asoka has been very slow in taking cities, although the next IBT could be a big one? :please:

<<<<The Save>>>>

The log:
Turn 187 &#8211; 1270 AD continued.
Give Louis 10 Gold for his Map. Hattie gives us hers because she thinks we&#8217;re so handsome&#8230; :mischief:
The maps confirm that Cyrus has Paris, now at pop = 11, and Cathy has Heliopolis, pop = 10. That puts Cyrus at 18.6% (victory screen says he is at 18% :hmm: )
Cyrus wants a tech to make peace with Louis, our choices are Communism, Physics and Biology. We certainly do not want him to have Biology nor Communism, so the choice is Physics. He will give us Economics, World Map and 190 Gold with it, but I decline the Economics and take the rest.
Visit Asoka and ask for Silks, which he gladly gives us.
Cancel the Crab deal with Cyrus, we lose the Sheep.

Begin moving LB back to Beijing.

Move units as agreed in the plan.
At Beshbalik.
Artillery attacks LB at 94.6% odds and kills him, now at 15.1/18.

At Rome.
Artillery attacks Grenadier at 97% and kills him, now at 10.8/18.
Artillery attacks LB at 99.9% and kills him, now at 15.8/18.
Remainder of units move to meet Galleons.

IBT
Roman units appear in some cities.
Beijing Artillery => Frigate.

Turn 188 &#8211; 1280 AD
All looks ready, so we declare on Fred.

Move units towards Fred&#8217;s cities.

At Rome, a LB appeared, so we attack him and (at 99.8%) and kill him.
At Beshbalik, a Musket and a Mace show up, in addition to the Pike. We attack with Artillery and kill the Musket and Mace.

Checking Beijing, we have an additional red face for attacking a brother and sister of faith in Fred, like we really needed that?

Visit Cyrus and trade Stone to him for Sheep plus 1 GPT.

IBT
Beijing Frigate => Artillery.

Turn 189 &#8211; 1290 AD
We bombard Hamburg&#8217;s culture to 0%.
Load units from Rome area onto Galleons and head north.

At Rome, Artillery kills a Pike, Cat remains in Rome.

At Antium, Artillery kills a LB and a second one kills a Xbow. Cat remains.

At Berlin, units move up next to the city.

IBT
Cathy would like our help against Hattie, I kindly refuse.
Beijing Artillery => Frigate.

Turn 190 &#8211; 1300 AD
Asoka has a Rifle next to Antium and he didn&#8217;t take the city. Try again I guess&#8230;

At Antium, Artillery attacks Musket and kills him, leaving only a 3.5/5 Cat. Come on Asoka!!

At Rome, Artillery attacks a Musket, at 99.7% and DIES!! Oh my, so much for a haka&#8230;
Second Artillery kills Musket.

At Berlin, bombard culture to 0%, attack with Artillery and kill two LB and a Mace. SAM attacks and kills a Pike. SAM attacks and kills a Cat, leaving a single Cat at 2.4/5. Where is Asoka?

At Hamburg, Artillery attack and the first withdraws from combat.
Artillery attacks at 75.7% and kills a Gren.
Artillery attacks at 89.1% and kills a Gren.
Artillery attacks at 98.1% and kills a LB.
Artillery attacks at 99.9% and kills a Musket.
Artillery attacks at 99.9% and kills a LB.

Frigates reach Tarsus and find 4 Rifles occupying the city, one with CBT1 and one with Guerilla1. The city is on ice. Set to heal.

We move an Artillery unit out of Beijing and have to increase the culture slider to 90%. We have 35 red faces and 36 smilies&#8230;

IBT
Beijing Frigate => Globe Theater.
Louis makes peace with Mansa.

Turn 191 &#8211; 1310 AD
WW increases to 38 red faces.
Visit Asoka and ask for Wine. He gives it to us.
Increase culture slider to 100%.

At Berlin, attack with Artillery and kill a Gren.
Artillery attacks a Cat and kills him, leaving a single Cat at 1.6/5.
Move extra units northeast towards Kyoto.

At Antium, Artillery kills a Pike, leaves a Cat at 3.6/5.
At Beshbalik, Artillery attacks a LB and kills him.

At Hamburg, Artillery attack LB and kills him.
Artillery attack LB and kills him.
Leaves a Xbow at 1.8/6.

At Rome, Artillery attacks a Mace and kills him, leaving a Cat at 1.6/5. And Asoka&#8217;s Artillery is still sitting next to the city.

Position Galleons to be able to land troops at either Kyoto or Tarsus.

After Action Report:
Asoka has units in position to take Hamburg, Rome and Antium during the IBT. So far he has not shown any desire to do so. Perhaps someone else&#8217;s Haka can persuade him?
We have two Frigates healing near Tarsus and we have two Galleons full of troops positioned to go after either Tarsus or Kyoto. There are two Frigates in the west, a turn apart, that are nearly within striking distance of Arbela.

All the German and Roman cities are prepared for Asoka. Began moving units from Berlin towards the Kyoto area, they are located 1 tile east of Berlin. Asoka tried to take Beshbalik but lost a Gren. Julius is before Asoka in the order. I hope Julius isn&#8217;t getting fresh troops before Asoka can attack?

Diplomatically, we are at war with both Julius and Fred. Cathy is still at war with Hattie but everyone else is living peacefully for the moment. Democracy is due next turn.

Beijing has Globe in the queue as a placeholder. However, I think it is time to build it! You will see for yourself. I&#8217;ve never seen a city in such straights before. :eek:
 
Roster:
ShannonCT - UP
Jimmy Thunder - On Deck
Cactus Pete
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
rrau
Gator
leif
- Just played, where is the Cooper's! Could have used some this set, or maybe Asoka could have used some???? :mischief:

Mistfit - :please:

EDIT - pitiful power graph improvements because Asoka wouldn't take any cities! Oh MY! :cringe:
 
Good work Leif.

I haven't looked at the save but I wonder if we can gift most of our artillery units to Asoka now that we have prep'd all the Roman/German cities. This power boost may increase his desire to attack.
 
Good work Leif.

I haven't looked at the save but I wonder if we can gift most of our artillery units to Asoka now that we have prep'd all the Roman/German cities. This power boost may increase his desire to attack.
:thanx:

We may yet have to visit the other continent. And we still have Toku to visit.

We could gift some, but he has units sitting next to some of the cities but they are pillaging. What the .... :dunno:
 
Seems like we've been down this road before. Maybe our mistake was to join forces with a pacifist culture again.

Might be worth a try to ask Asoka to take Hamburg.

No great advantage to reducing Cyrus until Asoka starts taking cities, so (presuming Asoka doesn't change his spots in the IBT) our units probably need to be disembarked near Kyoto rather than Tarsus. Perhaps the lack of cultural impact will make Asoka more willing to take that city and then proceed south.
 
Seems like we've been down this road before. Maybe our mistake was to join forces with a pacifist culture again.
During Gator's set, he seemed more than ready to take whatever Gator served up in front of him.

Might be worth a try to ask Asoka to take Hamburg.
I have a good feeling about Hamburg as there are several of Asoka's units surrounding it. Come on baby... :please:

At Rome, that darn Artillery unit has been roaming around pillaging for 10 stinking turns. Rome has been an open city for a long time, just do it!! :hammer:

And at Antium, Asoka has a unit right there. If he took all three in SCT's first turn, that would change the situation significantly.

No great advantage to reducing Cyrus until Asoka starts taking cities, so (presuming Asoka doesn't change his spots in the IBT) our units probably need to be disembarked near Kyoto rather than Tarsus. Perhaps the lack of cultural impact will make Asoka more willing to take that city and then proceed south.
This is true. In some ways, we might as well declare on Toku this turn before Asoka takes Hamburg and, believe it or not, Kyoto's culture snuggles up to Hamburg to allow Toku to attack. All we need would be to lose Hamburg to Toku. :cringe:

The problem is that we have cities starving because they can't get their borders expanded to reach food and his units sit drinking tea and eating crumpets. :rolleyes:
 
I wonder if Asoka is reluctant to take cities that are going to have few usable tiles because of other city's borders. Should we think about razing Berlin to make Hamburg and Antium more attractive cities? Asoka does have one settler in reserve.

If we razed Berlin and Asoka took Hamburg and Antium next turn, we could build our academies in those two cities to help them get two border expansions. I drew up a map of the area, posted below. I assumed that Madrid and Sparta would have 2 border expansions (they will soon). Tiwanaku had its second border expansion already and is on pace to get a third in 12 turns (but Asoka is hiring two artists there). The solid pink borders around Tiwanaku are for 2 border expansions and the dotted pink border is for a third. I gave Antium and Hamburg 2 border expansions (would take 9-10 turns with academies). As you can see, the unclaimed area left around a razed Berlin would be 6 tiles if Tiwanaku stays at 2 expansions and 3 tiles if it gets a third expansion. And of course Asoka may resettle the area and claim all of the tiles.

Razing Berlin would be a siginificant loss in population, but we know how to make up for that: reduce Persia's population. Razing Tarsus should put Persia at ~16%. Some aggressive pillaging and blockading of his sea tiles should reduce his population several % more. Saladin should have ~14% of the population, so without touching Sally, we can probably get the domination limit down to 39%.
 

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The shortcomings of the AI never cease to amaze :rolleyes:.

Jimmy Thunder said:
I haven't looked at the save but I wonder if we can gift most of our artillery units to Asoka now that we have prep'd all the Roman/German cities. This power boost may increase his desire to attack.

I think it would be a good idea to check if we can spare some artillery units and gift them to Asoka near the cities we want him to capture. This has to be balanced against our own needs for artillery and our time table. We probably have time enought to raze Tarsus while the Roman and German cities are in revolt and waiting for cultural expansion.

leif erikson said:
Beijing has Globe in the queue as a placeholder. However, I think it is time to build it! You will see for yourself. I’ve never seen a city in such straights before.

I guess this is OK to do now that we don't have any urgent need for more units. Tarsus should be easy to raze with the units we have in our galleons and it looks like we have Kyoto covered as well and we could use the units in the galleons for weakening Kyoto before sending them to Tarsus as CP suggests.
 
I guess this is OK to do now that we don't have any urgent need for more units. Tarsus should be easy to raze with the units we have in our galleons and it looks like we have Kyoto covered as well and we could use the units in the galleons for weakening Kyoto before sending them to Tarsus as CP suggests.

We dont have a need for more land units, but we do need more frigates. A better idea may be to build the Globe for 1 turn right now to eat up all of the overflow hammers that will be wasted if we keep building frigates (which cost 30 fewer hammers than we're producing). After building it for 1 turn, go back to building frigates for several turns to build up the overflow hammers again. Rinse and repeat.
 
ShannonCT said:
I wonder if Asoka is reluctant to take cities that are going to have few usable tiles because of other city's borders.

The events we have seen so far doesn't seem to support this theory. Asoka has captured Madrid even though it has very few workable tiles and he seems unvilling to capture Rome although it would have a decent number of workable tiles.

It would be great though, if we could device a strategy where we can save time by razing a city rather than waiting for Asoka to capture. But I guess we need to wait and see where Asoka wants to go next in order to determine which city we may raze (if any).
 
ShannonCT said:
We dont have a need for more land units, but we do need more frigates. A better idea may be to build the Globe for 1 turn right now to eat up all of the overflow hammers that will be wasted if we keep building frigates (which cost 30 fewer hammers than we're producing). After building it for 1 turn, go back to building frigates for several turns to build up the overflow hammers again. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, this seems like a good strategy. The important thing is that we have the ability to finish the Globe before Beijing begins to starve.
 
It would be great though, if we could device a strategy where we can save time by razing a city rather than waiting for Asoka to capture. But I guess we need to wait and see where Asoka wants to go next in order to determine which city we may raze (if any).

Maybe I should play one IBT turn tonight just to see what Asoka does. He has three cities he could capture this IBT. If he doesn't capture any, we're going to have to figure out how to motivate him.
 
ShannonCT said:
Maybe I should play one IBT turn tonight just to see what Asoka does. He has three cities he could capture this IBT. If he doesn't capture any, we're going to have to figure out how to motivate him.

Sounds like a good idea. Much will depend on the next IBT!
 
Maybe I should play one IBT turn tonight just to see what Asoka does. He has three cities he could capture this IBT. If he doesn't capture any, we're going to have to figure out how to motivate him.
I agree too. I was afraid to do it because I didn't want to sit up all night [pissed] if he failed to take any cities.... :rolleyes:

The only other question is whether we declare on Toku before we change turns or wait a bit longer?
 
I agree too. I was afraid to do it because I didn't want to sit up all night [pissed] if he failed to take any cities.... :rolleyes:

The only other question is whether we declare on Toku before we change turns or wait a bit longer?

I dont see any hurry with Toku, at least not based on taking more tiles. After Hamburg gets 1 border expansion, we'll have every Japanese tile in our hands except the rice. If Hamburg got 2 border expansions, we'd own every tile over there the same turn we captured Kyoto.

The question is: how will declaring on Toku affect Asoka's willlingness to capture other cities?
 
I think the thinking is if we capture Kyoto, it would relieve cultural pressure on german and roman cities and make Asoka more likely to capture cities.
 
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