SGOTM 08 - Geezers

[markh]

Sounds good.

No objection from my side on you continuing until you took the city, but where are all our units ? Are these 2 axes and the spear all that is left ?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I would like to continue until uMung is ours - about 5/6 turns I think, after both cats arrive.

Looking at the save it looks like it will be 5 turns before the second cat can join the stack by uMung. I'm probably stating the obvious here but I suggest that the first cat waits on the hill until it joined on the hill by the second cat. The axe from Nobamba should move towards Ulundi this turn. Next turn the axe from Ulundi can join the two cats. It's place as MP in Ulundi is taken by the axe from Nobamba. On the turn after that the two cats and the axe escort move towards the stack.

I notice that you've queued up a sword (3 turns) in Nobamba. However it will take 6 turns to get to the hill by uMung after it is built. Although a sword will take 4 turns in Ulundi it can join the stack in 5 turns. Either way it is 9 turns before a sword can reinforce the stack. It might be overkill but is it worth building swords in both Ulundi & Nobamba? We really don't want the war with Shaka to drag on. He currently has six units and maybe might manage a seventh unit by the time we can attack in six turns. With the cat's axe escort we will have 8 units as cats can't kill units in BTS. Eight units against a possible seven is cutting it a bit fine although our cats should have weakened the defence.

 

[erikthecelt]

The sword in Nombamba was a place holder - I was checking build times. I have not decided what to do in Nombamba yet. A forge maybe to start Colossus? We WB's on the plan so I need to verify if we have as many as we need.

@Mark there is one stack of 3 units beside the city and one stack of 3 units 2N of the city, plus the chariot on the other hill.

Tha tactical situation is 3 axes, 3 spears, 3 cats and one chariot vs 6 archers. Shaka has been sending out units every time he gets more than 6 defenders. I've taken out both axes and 2 archers outside the walls. He has a galley and a settler in the city but they haven't departed yet, I'm hoping he doesn't sail away, I don't really want to have to chase him down.

I have blocked access to Ulundi, so the cats do not need an escort. Shaka has only archers left anyway and has no metal, so archers are the best he can build. I may attack before the third cat arrives, especially if his city is still in revolt.

@Sam - did you check how many cities Shaka had before the DOW? His power graph is fairly high. I think I have one cat on the border - 2 moves from the hill. I think you must be talking about the third one.

We are on turn 134 - so I will play to turn 140 unless something wierd happens.

Edit - Updated spreadsheet.
View attachment Wonders.rar

 

[Harbourboy]

I'm OK with you playing until turn 140 if you want.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

@Sam - did you check how many cities Shaka had before the DOW? His power graph is fairly high. I think I have one cat on the border - 2 moves from the hill. I think you must be talking about the third one.

I loaded up my save from just before I DoW'd Shaka. He had two cities and the other one is kwaDuzuka. Looks like we may need to build some galleys to finish off Shaka.

I was talking about the cats that are yet to join the attack force. So by the first cat I meant the cat on the hill just outside Shaka's lands whilst the second cat meant the one you are referring to as the third one. Simple really. Regardless of whether the cat(s) need an escort it might still be wise to send over the axe from Ulundi. Ulundi can probably survive a couple of turns without a MP.

Btw I noticed the settler seemed to be on it's way to stone island without an escort. Did you mean to do that?

I've updated post #3 with the link to your spreadsheet. We, as a team, need to update the plans shown post #3. Hint, hint.

 

[erikthecelt]

The galley with the settler is actually moving to try and meet the spear coming from Nobamba. Maybe I'll pick up the MP from Hari and shuffle, shuffle from Angkor Thom or Wat to shorten the time.

Ulundi is already unhappy - removing the MP will make it worse.

That's very bad news about Shaka. I guess we are going to need a peace agreement after we take uMung. It also means we need to build galleys and triremes in Ulundi.

Joao is our very best friend and has a ton of cities. He would be more useful as a runnung dog than as a target. He does not build wonders very often so he might make a really good partner that we don't have to attack.

 

[erikthecelt]

Well, I did not accomplish what I wanted to but there are too many decisions needing to be made for me to continue, so I'm handing over to HB.

The war with Shaka is pretty much a big mistake. We have our 3 cats, 4 axes, 3 spears and a chariot. Shaka has 8 archers. The culture defence is at 8%.

The building has gone well, we have our prophet and the Great Library. Joao is pleased but he's demanding good techs.

We need lots of build decisions.

Nobamba spear - forge
IBT – Shaka’s revolt ends

Turn 9 – 500 AD
Hari – WB spear (warrior is going to stone city)
IBT

Turn 10 – 520 AD
Angkor Thom Lighthouse – Granary
Angkor Wat Monastory - Library
IBT

Turn 11 – 540 AD
IBT

Turn 12 – 560 AD
Settle Nagara Jayasri by the stone - hire merchant until it expands – start lighthouse
IBT

Turn 13 – 580 AD
Joao demands currency – I agree
Great Library built
Zoroastor born in Yas
Calendar – Paper.

Over to you HB.

 

[AgedOne]

(I know I said I wouldn't be around much - but I just dropped by...)
I agree that we won't be able to take Shaka with the force we currently have there.
Can't we just leave him to rot, trapped in his corner or the continent?
Possibly, in a bit, when we've got Feudalism, he could be our vassal (if we want him).
Looks like time to step back to peacetime economy and contemplate the bigger strategy again.

 

[Harbourboy]

What's the plan then? What went wrong with our plans for Shaka?

 

[erikthecelt]

Didn't mean to sound like we can't take his city. Just that in hindsight we should have pillaged him to nothing before agreeing to the peace deal for techs. We made a mistake but it's not fatal. Next turn we can bombard to 0 and the following turn use the 3 cats (promote to cr1) and the axes to chop him up. It might take a following round with a few more suicide troops to finish him, but it can be done. Unfortunately he's got more cities so we are going to have to switch back to war mode to clean him off the map. Again, we should have checked to see igf he had expanded before the DOW. In hindsight we managed this badly. Another lesson learned

I think it's more to the point that we plan out our tech path. We have our prophet, Great Lib and Parthenon. If we add Colossus and Mausoleum we will rock.

 

[Misotu]

I'm not quite sure why we're in such despair about Shaka?

Surely we can simply pillage all the mines we're not standing on, pillage cows, surround the city, then send up a couple of swords plus 1 cat to finish him off? If we knock out a trireme after the courthouse in Ulundi and send it to sit on his fish, that will stop him dead in his tracks - the city will starve, no more whipping

Well, I'm no militarist so I'll leave it to you guys, but I definitely think we can have him. I think it's important to take that one city, because it's on our continent and will cause unhappiness in our captured cities. But after that, I think we just ignore him. He won't be doing anything we need to worry about It's certainly not worth hunting him down.

Here are my build suggestions (I've not said much about military, but I think that what we need we build in Ulundi, Angkor Wat & Nobamba, as they are the only ones with a) sufficient hammers and b) close enough for the units to arrive fairly quickly):

Ulundi: Finish courthouse (getting that forest chop in) then switch to military. I think trireme (which will hopefully build quickly due to chop carry-over) and then a cat. Then, assuming peace has broken out or is about to, build Museum of Maussollos followed by forge (or the other way round, depending on how soon we think that Wonder might go).

Nobamba: Switch from forge to sword, then back to forge.

Angkor Wat: Finish library (1 turn), then sword, then temple, then courthouse.

Angkor Thom: is currently steaming towards the happiness cap. No need, until we can address that. I suggest stop working cottage (it becomes a village shortly), let Yas take that over, and run a merchant. Otherwise, at least stop working 1 of the fish and run a merchant.

Yas: Start working cottage instead of 1f3h mine. Our economy now only -1/turn at 40%. Then build forge, followed by monument, then Statue of Zeus (we have ivory for double-speed build so even if you prefer another Wonder, we can have built the Statue before stone is on-line. All other available Wonders currently require stone save Museum of Mausollos which we'd probably be better off building in Ulundi).

Hari: Spear, then temple, then market

Worker actions: Worker at Yas finishes mine there then asap to quarry stone, followed by pasturing sheep etc.

By my reckoning, with this plan, we can attack Shaka with current army plus 2 swords and 1 extra cat in 8 turns. Once we've pillaged at least the cows & sorted the fish, that should be enough to take him I would have thought.

But you've got to play it HB - what do you think?

 

[Misotu]

Cross-post with erikthecelt.

The Colossus was built by the AI some time during your turn-set erik.

I'm suggesting we pillage, take out the fish, and build 3 more units to make absolutely certain of Shaka. We don't want this dragging on - we're already suffering war weariness. Once that city has gone, I'm not sure why we'd bother to hunt him down right now so I think we can come out of war mode in the next 10 turns or less.

According to the plan, the tech path is head for Liberalism, so we're certainly looking paper, education for now. I still think we can get a scientist together to bulb philosophy in the time frame too, but we'd have to plan for that now. If we run another scientist in Hari, we get a GS in 24 turns, but of course the Shrine will both pollute and speed that up. We'll still have a good chance for a scientist though.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I think one of the lessons for the future is not to be too stingy with units. A possible excess of units may cost more in the short term and may result in wasted but is likely to work out cheaper in the long run.

Pillaging the cows and one (maybe two) mines sounds good. If we move a couple of units from the main stack to the rightmost mine we don't need to pillage the mines we are sitting on. The current units on the rightmost mine can be our pillagers.

Essentially the problem is that we don't have enough units to kill Shaka's. I would skip the trireme in Ulundi (it will take too long to get round) and build a couple of swords after the courthouse. Switch Nobamba to a sword now and build a couple of swords there as well. Units in the east are likely to take too long to get there. At most build a sword in Yas. There's a limit to how quickly Shaka can whip archers in uMung ( two more maybe?) so our four swords should give us the edge.

I agree with making peace after uMung falls. . Unless Yas/Angkor Wat is likely to be making use of that mine any time soon I suggest the worker heads for stone island soonest.

On a personal note my Civ PC is playing up so I can no longer open the game. I have a horrible suspicion that it will need a new motherboard so I may find it simpler to buy another secondhand PC. I'm travelling for a day or so next week so I'll be out of contact.

 

[The-Hawk]

Surely we can simply pillage all the mines we're not standing on, pillage cows, surround the city, then send up a couple of swords plus 1 cat to finish him off? If we knock out a trireme after the courthouse in Ulundi and send it to sit on his fish, that will stop him dead in his tracks - the city will starve, no more whipping

Yes, we need to deny his mines for sure. I would not pillage the cows, we will want to work that tile once we capture the city. The stack with our super medic can pillage the mine it is on, then go sit on the cows to deny them from Shaka. The other stack can split up. One part pillages the current mine, then moves to a western mine (don't need to pillage, just sit on it). the other swings around to sit on the other mine.

I don't think we need a trireme, although having one around for barb galleys may not be a bad thing. We almost could finish Shaka as is, but a few more units will make it safer. I think 2 swords and a cat will be plenty.

I think it's important to take that one city, because it's on our continent and will cause unhappiness in our captured cities. But after that, I think we just ignore him. He won't be doing anything we need to worry about It's certainly not worth hunting him down.

I agree... we can clean him up later. Will also be nice to collect the workers. Something tells me his settler is about to bug out on the galley though.

Ulundi: Finish courthouse (getting that forest chop in) then switch to military. I think trireme (which will hopefully build quickly due to chop carry-over) and then a cat. Then, assuming peace has broken out or is about to, build Museum of Maussollos followed by forge (or the other way round, depending on how soon we think that Wonder might go).

I would follow CH with a sword and a cat. The sword should be one turn with the chop, correct? Cat should follow quickly.

Nobamba: Switch from forge to sword, then back to forge.

Yes

Angkor Wat: Finish library (1 turn), then sword, then temple, then courthouse.

I think this city skips the sword. He will be too far away. Let Ulundi build 2 units and Nobamba 1.

Why a temple so soon? I am not a big fan of temples, almost never build them. I would think CH is next?

Angkor Thom: is currently steaming towards the happiness cap. No need, until we can address that. I suggest stop working cottage (it becomes a village shortly), let Yas take that over, and run a merchant. Otherwise, at least stop working 1 of the fish and run a merchant.

Yes, A.T. should be a GP farm. It can work three specialists already. I'm not sure if we should be running merchants or scientists though. Depends on which GP we want next. I think scientists might be better this early. Extra GS's can be bulbed.

Yas: Start working cottage instead of 1f3h mine. Our economy now only -1/turn at 40%. Then build forge, followed by monument, then Statue of Zeus (we have ivory for double-speed build so even if you prefer another Wonder, we can have built the Statue before stone is on-line. All other available Wonders currently require stone save Museum of Mausollos which we'd probably be better off building in Ulundi).

I think your plan for Yas opens up a strategic discussion. As this point, do we build "crappy" wonders, or do we leave for AI's to build? Obviously, leaving them for AI's means more war later. But building them now will slow our growth rate down considerably which will extend the end date of the game. I think SoZ has no value and MoM has little.

I think we skip crappy wonders and plan on capturing later. I would build a forge, monestary, market. Also need a granary in this city and we should consider a baray too.

Hari: Spear, then temple, then market

I think we need to speed up the scientist or risk losing Philo to an AI. I would work three scientists (food deficit -1, but we will not starve).

Same question on temple. Not sure what value it adds? Also we need missionaries for our new cities. I would build spear, missionary, missionary.

Worker actions: Worker at Yas finishes mine there then asap to quarry stone, followed by pasturing sheep etc.

Agreed.

Some other comments:

• Need to turn off growth in Ulundi, it is at the cap.
• Nagara 1st build. I would put the citizen to work on the 1H stone and build an archer first. We need to get a fogbuster out. A single barb axe from the FOW would be a really bad thing. We might want to move the MP out of the city and let him go fogbust from the hill 1W of the hut. Not sure we should pop the hut yet, would suck if it was hostile. Once the archer is built (13 turns), we can work a specialist.
• Joao will trade us monarchy. Seems like a worthwhile pickup to me so we can go HR.
• Once we capture Shaka's city, we need to get a scout to the south of Nobamba. Might be some nice city sites, although I bet Joao settles them first.
• We also need to start discussing where we might build FP. I think Nobamba, especially if we find good sites to the south.

 

[Misotu]

OK, well The-Hawk is definitely a much better militarist than I am, so I'm going to go with what he suggests militarily, which is a hybrid plan and sounds good. The temples ... yeah, I know. They're expensive for what they give and I have also not taken into account war-weariness, which will disappear once we take that city and peace is declared. So I'm going to drop the temples and attempt a turn plan, based on a synthesis of the views so far, so that we can agree the plan before playing. I haven't used quotes, because it confuses the issue, but a lot of this is The-Hawk's:

Military: The stack with our super medic can pillage the mine it is on, then go sit on the cows to deny them from Shaka. The other stack can split up. One part pillages the current mine, then moves to a western mine (don't need to pillage, just sit on it). the other swings around to sit on the other mine.

Ulundi: Finish courthouse then switch to sword, followed by cat, followed by Mausoleum of Mausollos

Nobamba: Switch from forge to sword, then back to forge.

Angkor Wat: Finish library, then missionary, missionary, courthouse.

Angkor Thom: Stop working cottage, let Yas take that over, and run a scientist, plus convert the existing specialist to a scientist. When size 6 (4 turns) run a third scientist. Finish granary, then start library

Yas: Start working cottage instead of 1f3h mine. Continue with forge, then monument, then Statue of Zeus

Hari: Spear, then market, but work 3 scientists in Hari by running just the pig and the best cottage.

Nagara : Work the 1H stone and build an archer. When built, let him go fogbust from the hill 1W of the hut. Don't pop the hut yet. Once the archer is built (13 turns), we can work a specialist.

Worker actions: Worker at Yas finishes mine there (it's only one turn, Sam, and we will be able to use it) then asap to quarry stone, followed by pasturing sheep etc.

Work boats: To clams at Stone City and fish at Angkor Thom.

Trade: Joao will give us Monarchy + 25 gold for Code of Laws.

Once Shaka's last city on our land is taken, scout to the south.

Decisions:

The-Hawk is suggesting we build the 2 missionaries in Hari, but he's also saying we should generate the GS there. My plan says we build the missionaries in Angkor Wat (4 turns each). If we try to build the missionaries in Hari, they are 20 turns each and, in any event, we want the market there as soon as we can to capitalise on the income from the shrine.

WONDERS: Now this is really key. The-Hawk is saying:

I think your plan for Yas opens up a strategic discussion. As this point, do we build "crappy" wonders, or do we leave for AI's to build? Obviously, leaving them for AI's means more war later. But building them now will slow our growth rate down considerably which will extend the end date of the game. I think SoZ has no value and MoM has little.

I think we skip crappy wonders and plan on capturing later. I would build a forge, monestary, market. Also need a granary in this city and we should consider a baray too.

and this has merit. However, Yas is 4 turns away from the happiness cap, so baray/granary are not viable at the moment, since they just add food and health and we have no way of addressing the happiness issue, other than switching to monarchy and building units, which impacts our research rate. Once peace is declared, we can use the units we have left over from the war for extra happiness - and by that time, we will have built the Wonder in Yas.

I think we should build as many wonders ourselves as we can, because this will limit what we have to do at the end (which is why I've left them in the plan )

I know erikthecelt is strong on the Mausoleum. I just like the Statue of Zeus because we can build it in around 7 turns - bet we can't conquer it that quickly, especially if it's in the centre of a far-away AI empire.

Finally, as The-Hawk has mentioned, we need to start considering where we will build the Forbidden Palace. He is suggesting Nobamba, if there are good city sites to the south that Joao doesn't snap up.

Views please. Vote early, vote often, vote NOW

 

[Harbourboy]

Statue of Zeus , like Chichen Itza, are more difficult to conquer, because they make the AI tougher. I hate attacking the AI who has Statue of Zeus, because I get up to 1000 war weariness before I can get to the damned thing. So I am a fan of building that one.

My brain simply cannot cope with the level of micromanagement that you guys seem to have analysed out, so I am going to follow it carefully once we've agreed on it. The main thing I want to be clear on is what our general objectives for the next few turns are.

 

[AgedOne]

Like HB, I also can't follow very detailed discussions (like which tiles each city should be working) unless I have the game open in front of me and half an hour to spare.
Right now, as they say "We have enough on our hands".
So I'll stick to things I can see from a distance over a cup of tea.

The missionary - erm - situation
If we need to be running specialists in a city, then we are doing that for a purpose and we should not change that lightly. I would build them where there are more to spare - so AWat.

Wonders
I would plant my strategic flag here:

• If there's a wonder that we need to have for a strategic purpose, then we go for it and make any MM decisions, delay other builds etc to get it.
• If there's a wonder that we can build quickly without disturbing the status quo, then we build it.
• Everything else, we capture.

Shaka's future
Effectively, he's going nowhere. But he does have an annoying effect on our WW.
We can't vassalise him at this stage of the game.
Our army currently in position will (I think) fail to dislodge him if it makes a conventional assault.
So. Pillage. Squeeze him in to a useless box - just for 10 turns or so.
Bring up a handful of units and finish him.

Espionage note
We haven't mentioned it much, but in BTS you have an alternative way to get an opponent's cultural defence down to 0%. Spies.
Make sure you have enough espionage points against your opponent.
Send spies (2 or 3 to counter the chance of them being discovered)
Sleep the spies there (each turn decreases the espionage points needed for their eventual action).
When your army is outside - -
Use spies to send city into revolt. Down come the defences.
Use your cats for collateral and your army for attack.

You can save yourself several turns of bombardment at each city.
You do need preparation.
A lot of spies and a big haul of points against your victim.

Something to consider for our next victim, perhaps.

 

[Misotu]

@HB This is a good point on the Statue of Zeus - must admit, I was thinking about that this morning.

@AgedOne That's really interesting about the spies - I saw in the manual that the presence of a spy in the city decreases the cost of the operation but what it didn't say is that it's incremental over turns. That makes a huge difference ...

On the Mausoleum ... I think we should build it and here's why. erikthecelt is pointing out that, late-game, if we run the Nat Park in Ulundi, we can generate a lot of GPs there very quickly. Because he is so keen on it, I built it in my last HoF game - Space Colony victory - and I can see that it would work very well. I know we discussed the eventual victory briefly and thought perhaps domination/conquest or cultural, but actually I don't think cultural is on - we have to research way up to get the Space Elevator for example so we can't divert beakers to culture and we won't want to generate a load of artists. However, I do think the third possible is a space colony victory - it might actually be easier/quicker than dom/conquest depending on what happens. In that case, the Mausoleum would be very useful indeed for shaving off quite a lot of turns.

I've also been thinking again about the Wonders thing. I know I keep wanting to build them instinctively, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, so I tried to think it through logically:

• I'm not a great militarist, so I always try to minimise war where possible. This is simply prejudice on my part, so should be discounted.
• The game speed and the map suggest to me that we can only be really effective once we have a good military tech lead - and by then, we might have left ourselves too much to do, especially if the AI really starts trading techs and building up.
• Espionage. And this ties in with what AgedOne is saying, but to our detriment. I've noticed in my games that the AI uses espionage a lot, and generates a number of great spies. I'm just concerned that maybe once we capture cities, the AI will simply start flipping them back, meaning that we have to pretty much wipe out each civ, rather than striking surgically and taking those cities we need.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Pillaging mines is certainly a valid tactic although I do wonder how much of Shaka's recent military increase is due to working the mines as compared to the use of the ? If it's more of the latter then pillaging the cows is a more attractive option. I disagree with leaving units sitting on the cows to deny it to Shaka as they are then unavailable to attack uMung at the same time as the other units. It's not as though we have a vast surplus of units to attack.

I am unclear why we should build another cat. We already have three. They can only cause a max of 50% collateral damage and they can't kill units in BTS. I would build another sword instead. IIRC neither Ulundi or Nobamba have barracks so units built in those cities get no promotions. However a sword gets a 10% bonus on city attacks.

I still think that we should build two swords in Nobamba. We've already been burned by being too stingy on building military. We seem to be failing to learn this lesson.

The missionary - erm - situation

Good point about spies AgedOne and one to bear in mind for later. In this case however we switched all our EPs to Joao some time ago. Since we've been very nice to Joao on the tech front I wonder if it's worth asking him to gift us Monarchy?

EDIT: Cross post with Misotu.

 

[The-Hawk]

On the Mausoleum ... I think we should build it and here's why. erikthecelt is pointing out that, late-game, if we run the Nat Park in Ulundi, we can generate a lot of GPs there very quickly. Because he is so keen on it, I built it in my last HoF game - Space Colony victory - and I can see that it would work very well.

I must be missing something (admittedly, I've never built MoM). MoM extends a golden age, correct? Does this extension really have that large of an impact on GPP's? I've always discounted its value (since I rarely run GA's), maybe I should give it a try some time.

Anyhow, a couple of other considerations:

I am a firm believer that early "stuff" (commerce, GP's, buildings, research) is worth way more than late "stuff". Late stuff has less incremental impact because your civ is so well developed. An easy example is a GS bulb. Early in the game, bulbing can shave 20 turns off of researching a tech. Late in the game, it might only shave 1 turn off a tech. So, even if MoM can generate 3-4 extra GS's late in the game, their impact will be less than one early GS that we might give up because we are working a mine instead of a sci spec. (I realize this is a very oversimplified example... if we specialize cities correctly, we can probably have both.)

More important, early stuff gets you ahead of the AI so you can control the game. As with any Civ game (except axe rush), it is critical we establish a tech lead. I like to envision a "stuff curve". Conceptually, an amalgam of all of the commerce/GPPs/hammers/etc. we are producing, sort of a measure of our overall economic engine.

My goal in civ is to always increase the slope of this line faster than the AIs. If I can get onto a steeper sloped line very early in the game, then the gap between me and the AI grows quicker. Once I am on a steeper curve, I can reach key economic techs and buildings sooner, so the gap widens even faster. This opens up all of the overseas military options for us. If I wait until later to separate my economic engine from the AI, then it is hard to pull away from them, I've lost the cumulative effect. This makes distance war difficult. The only games where I make an exception to this is early warmongering. In early warmongering, I pick a target unit (e.g. axemen or cats) and make a bet that I can finish just with that unit... i.e. I stop growing my "stuff curve".

I am very concerned that if get too focused on diverting hammers to non-productive wonders, we will be foregoing our chance to control the game. We already know we are going to need to attack someone post-Astronomy, we will need a tech advantage to be successful.

The game speed and the map suggest to me that we can only be really effective once we have a good military tech lead ...snip... I'm just concerned that maybe once we capture cities, the AI will simply start flipping them back, meaning that we have to pretty much wipe out each civ, rather than striking surgically and taking those cities we need.

Yes, I've been thinking about this too. I suspect we will not be making surgical strikes, instead we will be conquering AI's. Especially if they are not cooperative and spread them all over. If this was Noble level, we might be able to win without much military (just build them all ourselves), but at this level, no way we can avoid mid-late game wars.

Our plan to try to encourage one or two AI's to build our wonders might help. On the other hand, by definition, those AI's will be advanced, therefore harder to conquer. This is really a neat GOTM scenario, lots on interesting strategic trade-offs.

I disagree with leaving units sitting on the cows to deny it to Shaka as they are then unavailable to attack uMung at the same time as the other units.

Cows are 1 tile from his city? We sit on them until the turn we attack. Same for the mines to the west, we can attack from those tiles. The only risk is splitting our stack... he might decide to try to attack one of the smaller stacks. However, I hope he does, seeing him kill off a bunch of defensive specialists (archers) trying to attack axemen would be wonderful.

I am unclear why we should build another cat. We already have three. They can only cause a max of 50% collateral damage and they can't kill units in BTS.

Yes, I am not sure about this either. My concern is he has 7 units (may have 8 by the time we attack). The collateral damage from the cats will not reach all 7-8. With only 3 cats, we might not inflict enough damage to all of them, which means our first few swords/axes may suicide as well (especially to his top archer which is double-hill-defense promoted). Then we don't have enough to finish him. My gut feel is 1 more cat, but that is really subjective.