SGOTM 08 - Trash Team

[remconius]

Our first objective is to have a victory...

If we go for diplo, space or culture we will not have a huge amount of wonders. The AI are bound to get many. Also these victories are not fast.

If we go for conquest/Domination, it is usually faster and gives us the opportunity to capture wonders and brings us to the second objective:

To have as many wonders as possible....

Close to the magic number of 42 in a fastish win, or close to 67 in a slow win. To achieve this we need to capture many wonder cities, many holy capital and build many national wonders.

For me this all leads to the same conclusion, we have to focus on military (advantage) to achieve a victory and have the most wonders.

If we focus on building wonders ourselves, we will not have a fast victory and we will not have the most wonders.

 

[KingMorgan]

Fair enough, conquest / domination it is.

I suggest that as blastiod hasn't posted since 25th Sept we skip to Sturge. If blastiod appears he can go before me if he wants.

What is the feeling on the next moves? A couple more cities whilst teching to HBR and Cons?

 

[remconius]

Go ahead, Stuge, pick up the game.

I agree next steps should include heading for Construction and HBR.

 

[chopster]

I also like the "crush Shaka before he decides to eat us" approach.

With regards to the blocking city suggested by KM, I'd prefer the city went 1N of the cows based on what we can see currently. It doesn't block as much, but will have two food sources and could either serve as a GP farm, or a fast growing cottage spam city that can whip infrastructure/units if required. Also with the cows and one grass hill it can slow build things too.

Although we're heading on the Construction HBR route, I'd suggest we tech Pottery, Math, (Masonry) Construction before we go to HBR. Our second city has one food source, and all other tiles we're likely to work are food negative, so a Granary would help it grow to a production powerhouse more quickly. At size 5 it can work pigs, two grass hills, one plains hill and the ivory to be food neutral until the jungle on the ivory is cleared. Also, pottery is only 5 turns at our current tech rate.

Math/Masonry allows the Baray as well, which can add another food per turn along with the health benefits.

 

[stuge]

PPP:

-Work the riverside grass hill in cap, shaving a turn off of IW.
-After the settler is complete, build library/lighthouse/axeman. We should start another settler when cap reaches the happy cap again.
-Settler goes cows/clams. I'll scout with the spear before deciding on the city site.
-Second city keeps working on the barracks. Granary afterwards. BTW who's in favor of re-naming our cities so that we don't have to resort to Harilahayalahwhatever in every report?
-Techs: IW-> pottery, as per chopster. If we find iron, I suggest that we skip HBR and use axes/swords/cats against Shaka.
-Galley and scouting warrior do their thing.

 

[ese-aSH]

@stuge :
*settler to be whipped in 1 turn (imho)
*city 2 should grow size 2 and then whip again a worker (jungle is 4 Wturn to cut down) - having (number of cities + 1) workers is nice
*settling cow/clams is an option, yet it will allow shaka to expand south, and he will.
*library - is it really required now ? when do we want our firsrt great prophet ? if its right now, better go for a temple, otherwise library.

 

[remconius]

@Stuge -
Agree to renaming cities...
You mention attacking with Swordsmen, not bad, but our unique unit the elephant is 8 instead of 6. Only a 3 promo sword (CR3) is stronger than a 3 promo elephant (combat 3) in city attack. Until then a jumbo kicks butt.

 

[cripp7]

libraries give the % boost
granaries are must for whiping, faster regrow
I agree on renaming the cities, Capital>Pig farm>etc..
go IW to see if iron close also to clear the jungle
question about the GProphet is what to do with him.

 

[KingMorgan]

Plains forest looks good for a city site.

 

[ese-aSH]

You mention attacking with Swordsmen, not bad, but our unique unit the elephant is 8 instead of 6. Only a 3 promo sword (CR3) is stronger than a 3 promo elephant (combat 3) in city attack. Until then a jumbo kicks butt.

yes !
but shaka UU is a 8 strenght 2 move unit with bonus defense against our UU.

our UU should take care of HA if he builds some (we have the ability to kill HA as soon as come close by), but swordmen will do best in all other cases

 

[ese-aSH]

libraries give the % boost
granaries are must for whiping, faster regrow
I agree on renaming the cities, Capital>Pig farm>etc..
go IW to see if iron close also to clear the jungle
question about the GProphet is what to do with him.

prophet --> shrine.

if all holy cities we have already get a shrine, keep great prophet until all shrines are built worldwide.

 

[KingMorgan]

You guys

Elephants Ballista or normal are Str 8.

Impis are Str 4.

A mixed Sword / Axe,'Phants,'Pults are our desired stack.

The only benefit of Ballistas are that they will attack mounted units first. IMO this is a counter attack unit, rather than an attacking unit. I doubt Shaka has access to horse let alone a stack of HA.

As for the Prophet i believe that he would be best to be settled in our capital. 2 hammers and 5 gold will allow us a huge early advantage. If can not run specialist in our capital then we shall pop another in 50 odd turns, this can then shrine Pigtown, we don;t have enough cities with Confu to justfiy a shrine. Worst case we will have to tune our GPP farm later for the Prophet.

 

[remconius]

Next city suggestion:
1N of of cows: This includes lake (3F) and grass hill.

Prophet should build shrine (also delivers gold and spreads religion), allows priests for more Great prophets which is in line with our ultimate goal. After CS we should build 4-6 farms around pigstown for more Gprophets.

 

[chopster]

I agree with renaming cities - Khmer names are hard.

As per my post above, I agree with that city location, unless stuge's scouting reveals something superior.

I also agree with a mixed stack approach, but axes, cats and elephants without too many swords. The only time the sword is superior to the Elephant really is vs the impi - where the axe is superior to the sword. The elephants are more expensive, but they are viable units for longer. Perhaps we should calculate 2 elephants vs 3 swords for damage done in a couple of situations. Of course this is all moot if we have no iron.

Also, I'm leaning towards a different site for a prophet farm - pigstown is a pretty nice production centre that will be on line very soon.

 

[pigswill]

If Shaka's got metal then elephants are not good because iirc impis get a bonus against mounted, effectively 8 vs 8 and impis are a lot cheaper to build.

Had a look at the save. There's no coastal route to the east. However I noticed the isthmus south of Shaka with some reasonable resources and possibly a canal city opening up the west. Of course if Shaka closes borders then a city there would be isolated.

The settler's due in 5 and IW in 7. Maybe stuge could post an update once IW is discovered....

 

[stuge]

Revised PPP:

-Whip settler and worker, as per ese-ash.
-I think I'll still build the library. I wasn't thinking of running scientists, but library is half-price for us and gives a nice research boost.
-Re: Swords. My point was that a sword/catapult attack gets off a lot faster than an elepult one. We can add elephants to the mix later of course, but I'd like to attack Shaka as soon as we have better offensive units than axemen.

 

[cripp7]

Revised PPP:

-Whip settler and worker, as per ese-ash.
-I think I'll still build the library. I wasn't thinking of running scientists, but library is half-price for us and gives a nice research boost.
-Re: Swords. My point was that a sword/catapult attack gets off a lot faster than an elepult one. We can add elephants to the mix later of course, but I'd like to attack Shaka as soon as we have better offensive units than axemen.

sounds good, all this assuming we get iron. no iron then Ele/axe/cats. But definitely get the settler/worker out.

 

[chopster]

Indeed Stuge, the sooner Shaka's land is ours, the safer we'll be.

 

[ese-aSH]

ok, so the plan is to attack shaka ASAP whatever the cost is.

the only issue is im afraid we get no iron, and phants+cats are very hammer-expensive units at that stage. (60h & 50h)
we wont get them fastly.

maybe we should consider only jumbo / axemen and use spies to put cities defenses down.

+ we should OB with shaka and scout his land now ! we need to evaluate how big he is and which resources he has access to.

edit : another consequence we must keep in mind is that those kind of classical war will bring us down in the tech race (we'll probably come back around education if the war goes fast). not a real issue, but this also means most of the wonders will be built somewhere else.

 

[cripp7]

maybe we should consider only jumbo / axemen and use spies to put cities defenses down.

+ we should OB with shaka and scout his land now ! we need to evaluate how big he is and which resources he has access to.

Yes, I forgot about spies.. OB would be great to find out exactly what we're up against.