SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

[Xcalibrator]

Me so happy! So, looks like you took the direct approach and attacked immediately. No cats used? No unit losses? Did Shaka's workboat not have time to net the clams, or just choose not to?

If I'm counting correctly, the southern group of 3 (?) axes and 1 phant hasn't moved yet and can get to the jungle East of the rice this turn--yes? Where is the axe medic? Did he go north toward Kwa to heal those units? Are the unmoved units by Kwa healthy and numerous enough to safely move them toward uMgung this turn? (I'm guessing that most should probably sit and heal this turn.) What's your plan for defending Kwa if we can't block the road from uMgung?

I'm sorry for interrupting. You were saying something about "to be continued"?

 

[r_rolo1]

We attacked in 2 phases as you can see in the posted log: first we killed all units except the archer and we killed the rest in next turn. 2 cats were used in 1st turn and one to milk XP in the second. We have suffered no losses. Shaka WB was a sissy and ran away

the southern group is the units that got behind to heal of the attack to shaka SoD ( our medic axe is there... and BTW our spear is now a medic I as well ). The idea is to join to the rest the units of the Kwa stacjk that haven't moved yet this turn in the tile 1 NE of rice. We have plenty of healthy units and because of that, we will advance to uM ASAP.

About defending Kwa... well, they say that the attack is the best defense

And this is only to be continued because that :
-unkle wanted to check the situation
-Niklas wants to start doing spreadsheets
-niklas is dining

If you're able to join IM now , there is still a place for you

 

[Xcalibrator]

Exxxxxcellent.

If you can afford to divide your stacks, you might want to put a couple units east of the rice in the jungle so none of those darned impis (or chariots or horse archers) try to sneak behind our lines in the south--axes would have good defense in the jungle, and with a phant they'd be safe from chariots. And speaking of horse archers, don't forget Shaka can build those now--they have +50% vs cats--don't leave them exposed.

Carry on. And hey, how are we doing on Great General points? And shall we shift our espionage points from Shaka, now that's he nearly toast? [Edit: Would we have enough Epoints by the time we get to Ulundi to steal a tech or bring down the defenses with a spy? Probably not, but trying to be thorough....]

 

[Renata]

We already shifted some of our points to Joao -- I don't think that we're anywhere near enough points to bring down defenses or do a tech steal, though I suppose they should check in-game to be sure.

I can't believe we got to keep Kwa! That's awesome.

 

[r_rolo1]

@ renata

Awnsering your question about EP: we have 472 EP on shaka now. Base cost of a city revolt for uM ( the cheapest one to revolt, because it has our state religion there ) is 643 EP. with the 50% it might even useful... but it would be a really close shot

 

[Xcalibrator]

Might think about building a farm north of the lake to grow Kwa faster to whip out a workboat. And with Civil Service we can do chain irrigation of other tiles. Yessir, we could whip out a lot of stuff in Kwa before cottage spamming (and maybe leave the forests for later production).

 

[Backwards Logic]

Why not after the catapult is finished in Hara build the workboat there? While I don't have the save loaded up, the Catapult will be done in 2 turns, the workboat done in 2 (may be 1, not sure on this) and the boat will take 3 turns to be on top of the clams for a total of 7 turns. By this point, KwaDukuza will be out of revolt (3 turns) and coupled with the creative trait and Taoism being present, will pop borders in 4 turns (1 from religion and 2 from creative), also being 7 turns. Yea, we delay a catapult which is nothing to sneeze at, but the getting the workboat up this way gives KwaDukuza a nice jump with the Iron already mined.

 

[Xcalibrator]

We'll have a good look at uM very soon, and assuming we can lose the war production in Pura, yeah, building the workboat there would be nice--we could whip a granary in Kwa instead. I still like doing some chain irrigation at first to get the pop up for whipping; there's not a ton of production there, even with the iron. Once we have some decent infrastructure we can concentrate on cottages. Actually, there's enough grassland around there we could cottage on the west and retain some farms on the east for when we want to grow faster. Oooh, and we can irrigate toward uM's rice, too. Yeah, Civil Service is going to be more useful than I thought.

 

[r_rolo1]

Another turn played.....

Nothing momentuous in military terms.

On other news:

Spoiler :

1 SW it is one C II axe

So I thinked this was a good place to stop.

Other thing that niklas asked me to include was a plea for discussion of the queue in Yo. Currently we have temple ( to whip as soon as we leave anarchy )-> WB ( for kwa )->axe ( 33/35 hammers now ). Niklas said that we can have temple, wb ,axe and monastery or catapult done in 4 turns if we manage overflow well and someone ( that is .... myself ) suggested to make HG ( or for the wonder of for leveraging the losers gold ( stone + beauro is a nice bonus ) ). What do you think?

 

[Renata]

No time to really think about anything, but woo, the Kong Miao! That's two shrines down.

 

[Backwards Logic]

I'm not sold on HG anywhere but in Hari, since the Pyramids are there. Plus, IMO the HG isn't a very good wonder other than for GE points, and considering we'll need a baray to build it, it also makes it rather expensive hammer-wise.

What I think is another possibility is building the Statue of Zeus in the capital. In our opening posts regarding strategy, the SoZ was one of those wonders we talked about building, simply to keep it out of AI hands. We have ivory, so that's +100% build speed, and running bureaucracy is another +50%. We could have it built extremely quickly in the capital.

There are two drawbacks to this. 1) it will spoil the GS pool with more GA points, and 2) it requires a certain number of monuments to unlock its construction. We would have to stop building units in Hari and Hara for a turn or two while we whip the monuments in, if we decide to in fact whip them. I know we'd all rather not divert resources away from the units, but we'd absolutely have to given this requirement.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Another thought I just had is having Yo produce a settler to go settle the northern grassland island, perhaps bringing one of our workers over with it. We could start turning it into a nice seaside cottage isle, which would help our commerce out. Also, it would be another off-continent city, which would help us leverage GLH futher.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Agggh. Had a long message written, but I can't make up my mind on what to do so deleted it. About all I'm firm on is that I'd like to wait on the settler idea until our northern galley comes back (assuming he fails in his quest to find new land).

I'd like to get another cat and phant and then see how we're doing after taking uM. If it looks good, I'd love to take a shot at at least one wonder.

 

[r_rolo1]

Just a reminder: we have a baray in yo

As it was pre-Beuro, HG would take 10 turns, probably 7 turns after Beauro ( or even less if we play with whip overflows ). As shaka is not giving too much of resistence, we could divert the yo prod for another wonder, especially if we don't want to finish it

 

[Xcalibrator]

The HG is very tempting. Since we don't have a baray in Hari, yeah, let's build it ASAP in Yo. Instead of the Statue of Zeus, I'd go for the Shwedagon Paya--it's more hammers but we don't have to mess with 3 otherwise useless monuments and it gives Great Prophet points instead of Great Artists. Both SP and SoZ are unlocked with Aesthetics, so let's face it, we're probably not going to get either one, but the hammer-to-gold conversion is better for SP (because of no "waste" on monuments). Hari has quite a few hammers so I'd try for it there.

I count 6 cats (plus 1 imminent in Pura), 4 phants, 5 axes, and 1 spear available for fighting. If Pura continues to build war units (and it has a whip opportunity coming up soon) we can afford the wonder diversion in the other cities, particularly since we'll probably get the "You can no longer continue building ..." messages soon and can get back to building units. If we farm around Kwa, the delayed workboat for Kwa won't hurt too much, and if the war goes really well, Pura could build one.

Yes, we'd be a little short on units to complete the mop-up operations after we take Ulundi and Nobamba, but I think we should offer peace then (in exchange for Currency ?). That way, we won't need more units right away and we'll avoid (more) war weariness. With 10 turns of peace, we'll be in an even stronger position to wipe out Shaka's two remaining cities (and it's OK if he's built another one for us in the meantime).

 

[r_rolo1]

On another note, I finally got a picture of Niklas:

Spoiler :

Seriously.... we should not kill shaka or joão will not trade with us ( suposing that we can't find any other AI around, a very likely suposition, given the lack on non-tao religions around ). leaving him holed in some hole , until we can kill joão or optics is the best bet IMHO.

 

[Niklas]

Grr, I should log in to that game under a different name just to remove mine. And someone should put that guy out of his misery.

Pura will finish its Catapult on turn 133 (we'll revolt this turn). After that it would take 3 turns to build a WB (136), and then another 2 to hook up the clams (138 at the earliest). Kwa's borders will expand to level 1 on 134 and level 2 on 138, so a perfect fit. Good thinking there, BL!

I agree with rolo that Shaka isn't putting up much of a fight. I would like to keep Hari, our by far best producer, on military duty and use Yo in particular for some improvements. We (me and rolo) decided to switch in a temple for whipping, and we will want to complete the axe there (at 33/35 now), and we might want a Monastery. But I too am intrigued by the HG idea, and a monetary boost wouldn't be bad in the worst case. The extra health and pop will be very very valuable too, even if we don't have that many towns yet.

We could whip the temple next turn, then overflow 33 hammers into the HG, and complete the HG on turn 138, 7 turns from now. I think we should try. It would pollute the gene pool at Yo, but IMO in a good way. Popping an "accidental" GE or two from there would definitely not hurt.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I agree - in the end, we're going to have as many great scientists as we want/need. A great engineer would not be a bad thing.

 

[r_rolo1]

We'll need a GE for mining corps eventually

 

[Xcalibrator]

I like the temple-->HG in Yo, and cat-->WB in Pura. I'd have Pura build the war units after that, though, and leave Hari free to build the wonders. According to our rough plan, we'd like to get a couple or three Great People out of Hari but none from Pura--makes more sense to build wonders in Hari, both because it doesn't have Great Artist contam and because it has more production. If we're afraid that ShwedPaya (or SoZ) will be a lost race, maybe we should go for Chichen Itza (500 hammers, stone bonus, Gt Prophet points, req. CoL) instead. Niklas argued in post1026 that we're probably late for the Apostolic Palace and Hagia Sophia (since Theology was discovered around turn 110, and we don't have it yet). We're not going to be able to get enough GPs out of Hari with just Engineers so we might as well pad it with the next best, Prophets.

I suggested in post1025 that we also try to put a bunch of Great Prophet wonders in Rockport, but its lack of food and production is going to make that hard unless we build the Moai there and grow the city, which will mean we can't run as many priests for quite awhile which will tend to counteract the benefits of building more wonders there. I'd say we should try to build most new wonders in Hari instead to balance against Yo's Great Scientist production, and count on just 1 Great Prophet from Rockport.

-------------------------
Rolo, why do you say that Joao won't trade with us if we wipe out Shaka? Is there a separate penalty for that, different from "You attacked our friend"?