SGOTM 08 - Fifth Element

[WastinTime]

I'm sorry berserks, I see you did suggest Viji. I'm on board with your assessment. Let's let some others chime in.

 

[BLubmuz]

Blub, I don't see unhappiness as an issue when I loaded up the save. Most (if not all) of our cities have at least 6 or 7 more pop to go before they reach happy cap.
You haven't see it during the war, there was 2-3 angry citizens in the bigger cities.

WT, that's why I suggested Viji first to wait for more help to take Delhi. I agree about Admedabad. I'll send 2 rifles to take the city and 1 mace to hold it after so the rifles can continue west to join the war front.
3 rifles, just to be safe, ok for the mace.

We should be watching what we build now. Markets, grocers, and banks should only be built in cities that have sufficient income to make them worth while. Universities and observatories only in cities generating sufficient beakers to make them worth while. Those cities that I suggested for them all match those criteria. The rest of the cities should concentrate on troops.
Agree for grocer, for markets no. See my previous post.

I'll keep a couple of rifles at Guimareas to hold off Joao. We can wait for a small contingent of fresh troops to wipe him out or just wait for him to leave Gandhi and capitulate to us. His remaining cities are useless to us.

Send the excess rifles to Guim, to finish off Joao, but keep always at least one rifle in 5th. We need cannons, or any city will be the same for us.
Now Guim is garrisoned by a WE and a mace, CR2 IIRC. Just upgrade him and we'll be safe until reinforcements will arrrive.

If we decide to go for Viniagara first, spare some troops to raze the horse-island city.

and build a settler after the market in Ulundi.

 

[BLubmuz]

Except for the fact that our frigates are snoozing somewhere and Delhi will fall before they get in the action. We also built a couple wimpy Privateers for 80 which cannot bombard. Instead of Frigates for 90. Since we have these Privateers, I hope we're planning to use them to attack friendly AI ships. That's their only real value. Let's keep them together and try to mess with Rome.

When i started build privateers i was thinking to carracks, and to the chance to gain some easy money with some blockade. Then i've seen the indian galleon and i thought it would be nice to sunk some, even at peace. But i moved the caravel west, to upgrade it. We need frigates, but we need to build them in former Portugal.

We can move the fort on the hill. After that we can lumbermill or workshop the present one.
Then, after we'll take J.'s last 2 cities, we can build another fort in the tile 3W of Faro.
This way We can have quick (?) frigates to the west also from our HE city.

 

[Mesix]

OK, change of plan. I know Delhi is tasty looking, but I think we've been blinded by it's greatness. There is no reason to take it first. Vijniagara is inland so we can't use frigates on it anyway. It's also on grass instead of a hill, and has less culture defense than Delhi. Finally, we only have 1/2 of our army on the boats. It's not large enough to take delhi and hold it. We'll take too many losses. Vijniagara will be far less defended. Then our frigates can catch up and we can bring the 2nd half of the army over.

Wake up those riflemen in Ulundi and send them west! We have at least 6 rifles and a mace waiting around to take out 2 horses.

Delhi has the Statue of Zues. It will make us have +100% war weariness from the time we DOW Ghandi until we take Dlehi.

Ghandi's economy is mostly provided by Delhi and Bombay. If those 2 cities fall quickly he will be crippled. If we delay taking the 2 core cities they will switch to building units and Ghandi will take longer to conquer.

Ghandi is probably building the Statue of Liberty in either Delhi or Bombay. If we waste time taking other cities then he may finish it and we will get +1 specialist in the worhtless cities that we are capturing on the other continent instead of +1 per city on the origional continent where they are more useful.

Delhi has 2 shrines and Bombay has 1. The income from those shrines will fund our war effort and fuel our research.

There are 4 good reasons to take Delhi first followed by Bombay.

 

[BLubmuz]

I agree with Mesix.
Dehli is the source of G.'s power.
Even if it will be a bloodbath, we need to take it.
Also, WW will be big problem for him, and owning the SoZ will deter the other AIs to be bribed.
We need too much time to build cannons and bring them to Dehli to soften.

Suicide 2 knights, 2 maces, then use all our CR3 rifles, it will fall.
with both our super medics defending and the (hopefully) remaining forces, he never took it again.

And remember, the AI will whip defenders, rarely they do it for attackers, they continue with their builds.

Go for Dehli!!!

 

[WastinTime]

You're arguments may total 4, but they are a bit weak. SoZ will have no effect if we get Delhi 2nd instead of 1st.

How does having his 2 "economy" cities switch to building units make sense as an argument? A good economy city is not a good builder city.

If we're so worried about the Statue, we probably shouldn't be giving Gandhi copper. Seriously, I don't think he'll build it that fast unless he uses a GE.

If we lose/weaken our stack trying to Delhi in the first wave, it could get wiped out by a counterattack. Game over.

Our troop movement needs to be more efficient than the past (although J's war was pretty good I think.) We can't necessarily take Bombay next just because of 1 shrine.

However, the best argument (which you didn't mention) is that our are Rifles are strong. And we have quite a few of them. So as long as there are not 5+ longbows, we should be OK. So here's what I propose. Sail to the tile 2 east of Delhi. From there you can see Delhi's units. Decide to unload either NW by Delhi, or NE.

It'd be a no brainer if we had 4 cats and/or Frigates. Poor planning, we have to adapt. We're going to bombard with that cat, correct? not suicide. And don't suicide too many knights (if any), those are almost cavalry.

God I hate vassals. The Joao thing is going to be a problem. All that unhappiness Blub was talking about on his TS will come back with the J war, cus weariness is still high. And it will be magnified by the loss of Dye, silk. The moment we declare war, try to get dye from HRE, he has a bunch. We need to kill J fast. Maybe we should wait a couple turns to get rfiles in place (at J's border) and get our frigates to Gandhi. Is there a fast way to get J?

Does anyone want to gamble 2 turns and get MilTrad for cavalry? then physics? We could run 90% research for a while. If we do end up taking Delhi, we will beat Gandhi to Physics I think.

 

[WastinTime]

Suicide 2 knights, 2 maces, then use all our CR3 rifles, it will fall.

I have to say it again. Please don't suicide unless absolutely necessary.

 

[WastinTime]

I analyzed the latest save and updated the list of World Wonders that have been built:

You should probably note that Rhodes (Greek) is the Islam Holy city. Another good reason to leave Perc alone until the shrine is built.

 

[BLubmuz]

I'm afraid that a gamble on Physics is risky.
But we can delay the Indian war 3 turns, to have troops in place: some for J, some for the city he planted W of Ulundi.
The frigate will have time to join the galleons and we can scout his defenses and decide what to do.

So i propose to delay the war 3 turns, it can be a good thing 'cause in 3 turns we'll build some more units, and we'll have more in place, or closest to the front.

This way we can also recall the galleon with the cat, upgrade it in port to cannon, then send it to the front.
If we decide to gamble, we can also upgrade our knights, and they will be unstoppable.

There's no reason to start a war without the necessary units.
I can bet those 3 turns will not delay the end of the war.

 

[WastinTime]

ok, so MilTrad, sail back home. Upgrade knights/cat, get another cannon on board? I guess we can't whip, so no? Can we get a boat over to Faro? That could save 5 turns of unhappy. Probably not worth it.

I think one boat has space for a unit.

I'm still not sure I like it. More delays.

 

[Mesix]

I can concede that Bombay might not need to go 2nd, but it is right there and does provide a good economic boost from the Christian shrine. Delhi should be first to fall though. Not only is it an economic center, but the number of wonders indicates that it is also likely a production powerhouse for Ghandi. As I stated in an earlier post, BTS AI is very weak at war once the capitol falls. Go for Delhi.

I agree with Blub that 3 turns (but not more) delay may improve the outcome. If we can get one or two cannons in the invasion force and upgrade the knights to cavalry then we will be in much better shape.

Hopefully Perecles builds the Islamic shrine quickly. It would be a shame to leave him for last especially with his position right next to Rome and the wonder being right on the border with India. The Spiral Miniot is quite a nice economic boost (once we switch to Pacificism) provided we have temples and cathedrials for our state religion built. We will have to carefully weigh the options as the war with Ghandi winds down and decide where to go next.

 

[WastinTime]

As I stated in an earlier post, BTS AI is very weak at war once the capitol falls.

Is there any substance to this? or is it a myth?

P.S. Please do not build cathedrals

 

[BLubmuz]

To resume, we all agree on the following?
1) gamble on Physics, that means finish MT in 2 turns, then Physics
2) use a rifle-loaded galleon to scout, call back the others
3) upgrade the cat, 3-4 knights and the less XP maces (until we have at least some 150g in bank)
4) send all the galleons back, move the rifles in Ulundi to raze the indian city on OUR continent
5) build a settler in Ulundi after market, settle 2W1S of copper (plains hill, f**k the fish - it has already a nice pasture there).

i do, more opinions needed

great risk, great reward (see my sig)

 

[WastinTime]

build a settler somewhere else. Ulundi must have something better to do (observatory?) We should probably settle the fish island north of our capitol too, just to fill in the space.

 

[WastinTime]

2) use a rifle-loaded galleon to scout, call back the others

So, If Delhi looks easy when the scout boat looks at it, do we not call back the others? and just declare war? That one boat of rifles would not be able to unload then.

Or is the war just going to be delayed no matter what?

 

[berserks01]

Too bad we upgraded our caravel. It could've scouted Gandhi's land without declaring.

 

[BLubmuz]

So, If Delhi looks easy when the scout boat looks at it, do we not call back the others? and just declare war? That one boat of rifles would not be able to unload then.

Or is the war just going to be delayed no matter what?

I meant scout and proposed to use a rifle's galleon 'cause they do not need to be upgraded.
But since you let me see this chance, if we like to scout then in case DoW, we can use the galleon with the less powerful units, or the one with only 2 units.

Surely after he'll loses Dehli his research will suffer, so our gamble on MT is not so risky.

I like this solution.

Too bad we upgraded our caravel. It could've scouted Gandhi's land without declaring.

Our caravel was around 5th.
I upgraded it when it has some 1 or 2 moves left, so it was too far from Dehli, in any case.

 

[Mesix]

Can't we get open borders with Ghandi to scout?

Or would an open borders treaty force 10 turns of peace?

 

[BLubmuz]

Can't we get open borders with Ghandi to scout?

Or would an open borders treaty force 10 turns of peace?

We already have OB with all the AI.
The problem is not to scout, is to scout *and* DoW:
The galleon which will scout, will automatically pushed off indian territory when we DoW.
But, since we have 7 galleons with 20 units in them, we can use the one with the less powerful units to scout.
Then if Dehli has too many defenders, maybe well promoted, we'll use plan A: recall the remaining galleons to upgrade some units, mainly knights to cavalry and sure the cat to cannon.
Otherwise, plan B: forget the scouting galleon, DoW, then unload the remaining 6 on the hill NE of Dehli, begin the bloodbath next turn.
There can be (but i doubt) a situation for a plan C: Dehli is garrisoned with a LB, a mace and a pike, plan C = amphibious attack. An AA can be started by a couple suicide knights or maces, then by our best XP rifles, they should win.

hört sich gut an, komrade?

build a settler somewhere else. Ulundi must have something better to do (observatory?) We should probably settle the fish island north of our capitol too, just to fill in the space.

IIRC, Ulundi has already an observatory. Then, is the most productive city for a settler, since it can start again to work the seafood.
Settle the island? maybe, just to avoid unwanted neighbours. But i guess we have time to decide.

 

[berserks01]

Sorry guys, I ran into a bit of RL problems. I will play this tomorrow night. If that's too late, then I'll settle for a swap or skip.