SGOTM 10 - The A Team

[Obormot]

OK, i have played my turns.

The incas are gone and the mayans have 3 cities left. Next player can propably finish them off and then brong the troops back home to sail to the barb continent.

We control the Colossus and London can build Copernicus in 7 turns which will trigger our GA. The timing is nice, it will allow us to mas produce units just as we hit Navigation and at the same time reach MT sooner

We researched Education and are 4 turns away from Astronomy. We also got invention and some gold from the Byzantines for Theology. This gold allows us to research at 0% gold.

We had only 10 workers at the begining of my turnset, so i built 9 more. We still have a lot of work to do though, so I think we should continues building workers. I built them in corrupt towns and also peeld off a few in size 6 towns that couldn't grow.

 

[ThERat]

Obormot

now we got only 2 techs until navigation. Let's hope Byz will get gunpowder for us. So, do hold back astro or education until they get gunpowder. Then we should maybe gift them navigation (or sell) so that they can reach the barbs as well.
The aim is not to beat the other Civs but the barbs. So, if we can get Byz to help us out, that would be great.
Maybe we can get them to MT as well. Sumer looks not that capable, we might want to go after them if we are too free (and for leader fishing)

 

[hendrikszoon]

I had a look to all the units and there is something strange (at least for me): the Caravels have eight movement points. Also the Barbarian Continent should be not only a small island. So maybe it is possible to reach the Barbarian Continent without Navigation. At least we should test it.

I propose the following:
We should research Chivalry after getting Astronomy. In parallell we send two Caravels on an expedition, one starting from West Coast traveling West and the other one starting from the East Coast. I am not completely sure that we will have success. But there is only a little risk: In the worst case we will only lost two Caravels. To attacks the Barbarians we need in every case at least Knights. To send only Caravels without landing troops will help us only a little bit.

The Barbarian Guards are really terrible. If they would have only a defence value of eight it would be not such a problem. But they have also a Bombardement of nine with a Frequence and Range of three. To take them out you need at least Cavalry Armies and you need a lot of Cavalry Armies. Because the Barbarian Guards are so strong I don't believe there are so many of them waiting for us. I am sure the Barbarians can not build them - their cost is only 20 Shields, so if possible the Barbarians would build hundreds of them - und also I don't believe there is a Wonder producing them. So the Barbarians have a limited number of them.

And there is a high probability that most of them are only placed in the Barbarian Stronghold. The name "Barbarian Stronghold" of the Barbarian Capital makes only sense with a huge defence force.

I believe the game play of socralynnek was not such a catastrophy. At least now we have a Army. We can use the Army to attack some of our neighbors and later - when Galleons are available - we can ferry the Army to the Barbarian Continent. And after the first victory of this Army we can start Heroic Epic. Also I would not build Copernicus. In my eyes it is better to build Knights Templar. It is cheaper (300 Shield versus 400) and we get the strong Crusaders which we can use to conquer the Barbarian Continent. Also I believe now, the University I suggested for London is not necessary. Our main problem will be not the research pace, it will become the Barbarian Guards.

 

[Obormot]

I think you have a good plan. We cannot switch to KT now though because nobody knows chivalry, so we'll loose some shields. The barb continent should be reachable before Navigation you are right. That is because in SGOTM ships are modded to have more movement points, but the terrain is also modded so that coast requires 3 moves, sea requires 2 moves and ocean only 1 move. The average speed is the same, but crossing ocean becomes easier. But we'll se though.

 

[killercane]

Well I have been away for the weekend, and need to do some thread reading here. I will have it once I am done reading and will do it tonight.

 

[socralynnek]

Thanks, hendrikszoon for the nice words...

And nice to see that we should get a (useful) wonder which makes my mistake less bad.

At least I didn't ruin the whole game... at least we were in a better shape for the Mayan war when I left it...

 

[killercane]

At least I didn't ruin the whole game... at least we were in a better shape for the Mayan war when I left it...

Its all good. I almost went LKendter on you when I read that stuff but its not that big a deal really; hell its just a game and a team game at that. We can recover from it and have a nicely timed GA; I hope we can get chivalry asap and dont have to research it. If we have not distributed mono yet I will do so.

Lets not skimp on the discussion. Nice turns Obormot, way to right the ship.

 

[killercane]

We now have troops in the Barbarian Kingdom.

 

[killercane]

150- change library to aqueduct in former wonder city.

130- move units around to end the Maya, send some troops to galleys in the core.

110- get MGL against Longbow in the south. Send him to London to form an empty army to be filled with 2 knights hopefully. Dont fill it with 3, just a reminder. Turn empire over to mass scientists to shave a turn off astro.

70- rush caravels east and west. embassy with byz for rop to the last mayan city, which was silly since they want education for the rop and their dyes available. No deal.

30- find the barbs! they are off our west coast easily reachable with caravels.

10 bc- Start GA via copes. Chivalry in. Land 3 MDI at Teotihuacan in barb land; it is guarded by a spear on top but is size 8. I want to test their defenses.

10 ad- No attacks on the MDI, but they each die horribly against spears. The city is guarded by at least 4 of them.

30 ad- Hastings needs to switch back and forth between the mined desert and the wheat for 24 shields/turn with no starvation. Never mind I will add workers to it to alleviate hassle. Add some more workers around.

50 ad- Land the 2 knight army and the 3 MDI in barb lands. Byz get gundpowder this turn, we can trade for it or do whatever. I would like to turn off research but left it half way a bit for 2 turns to give the team leeway. Probably a mistake but there is not much to cash rush unless we use granaries to cash rush 2 turn knights.

The ship chain is almost complete with 2 boats apiece. The micromanagement is decent, but could use some optimization depending on what we want to go for, research or rush knights.

I saw a pike so expect pikes the further in we go. We will be facing muskets in the barb core + those stud defense units. Our caravels have been attacked twice.

We could have lux at 10% if it were not for London needing to use all tiles for 2 turn knights, maybe there is something I missed there. I am being rushed so next player please MM according to what we decide.

 

[killercane]

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/The_A_Team_SG010_AD0050_01.SAV

 

[ThERat]

having troops in barb land is great news. by the way, are the Mayans gone?

Now, we do have to make some decision. Do we raze all their cities or try and establish a foothold there?
And do we build HE by hand? It would help getting MGL's and ultimately Cav armies which we need to make faster progress.

As for techs, I know we beeline to MT, hopefully the AI will get us the other techs. Might want to sell some techs to get them on the right track.

waiting for input before playing tonight.

 

[killercane]

Mayans are NOT gone, only one city left, but it is impossible to get ROP with anyone to get to them. Maybe declare on the weak dutch and remove the Maya flip threat.

Dont think we want to build HE, its not worth it IMO; if we can get 10 cannon over there in an mdi stack we will generate many leaders. If we go MT we can rush armies for just a bit of gold and production with military academy. I dont want to overestimate these barbs but I think it makes most sense to head to MT fighting them all the way since they will have gunpowder when we get it by trade or research. They could have lots of free unit support in Barbarism government so we might face lots of troops; if I recall it was 4 per town but they could get a lot of free support to start with.

 

[killercane]

Upon further thought, Byzantines have Mausoleum of Mausolos, when I established the embassy they were 11 turns from Sun Tzus. We can gift them Colossus, and initiate their golden age. How could we best take advantage of that? We dont need banking really, but how likely are they to do Navigation?

The Dutch are largely useless and the army down there could take them down quite a bit since they are without their UU.

 

[ThERat]

do we really want to gift them Colossus? Maybe we should, it's a mere science city. Once we have Cav's the only other tech we might require is steam for RR

will hold off a while with playing until I get more input. Do we keep the barb cities? or do we just raze them all?

 

[Obormot]

I don't think gifting the Colossus is a good idea, we got pretty much all the techs that AI could provide us. Trade for gunpowder and beeline to MT.

I think it is better to keep their cities so that we can move the troops faster. Maybe bring some workers also to build roads. On that screenshot they don't have many roads built.

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
gift Chichen Itza to Byz, maybe their gpt goes up for trades anyway and we do not lose much here
also give them spices for 8gpt
MM a little, send out some knights, but the ship chain is not fully working yet

1. 70AD
can see that Dutch have their UU for defense, better don't attack now
attack Teotihuacan with 3 MDI's and we take the city

2. 90AD
well, we get gunpowder, but have no salt
Byz and Dutch (both have gun) don't have it as well
check but both still pay a lot for education

I see that Mayan's have salt...
establish embassy with Dutch, that city wouldn't be that easy to break

in order to get ROP, decide to trade education, the problem is that Dutch have GL, trade education with Dutch for RoP
then trade it with Byz (who would not give RoP unless huge discount) for 27gpt and 78gold (initial offer was 33gpt befoer trading with Dutch)

load army with 3rd knight and venture out, flip risk is huge in Teo

3.110AD
declare on Maya after selling them chivalry for 16gold, defeat 1 spear
defeat a barb LB, move army towards next city

4. 130AD
Barb stronghold finishes SunTzu, that's no good
destroy the Mayan's and now we have salt

raze a barb city after defeating 3 pikes wounding our army
discover a nice spot offshore with ivory, not claimed yet
rush a settler so we can claim that city

5.150AD
Byz finish Leo's and the cascade goed to barbs who build KT

now spot another source of saltpeter near our land

6. 170AD
army heals, 4 cats next to barb gem city

7. 190AD
3 LB's next to Teotihuacan
lose a knight but manage to take New Chanka which has gems
lose another knight but defeat 3 LB's that were near that town

army defeat a settler pair

8. 210AD
chemistry is in, next is metal of course
send out the army for some recon work and spot a knight

join some workers into Coventry

MM cities and metal due in 5

9. 230AD
Byz have some cash, we could trade horses to them
minor skirmishes, the odds of knights versus pikes and knight is low

10. 250AD
barbs land 2 units behind our city, take 2 knight to defeat them
we need cat support to take out cities here

found Brighton to improve income, we pay currently 40gpt for units

land settler pair on ivory Island and trebs pops a barb
we should rush a harbor there using the trebs disband

I have not been building muskets, but we should start some
it will be a tough a long war unless we can get more armies

also, don't forget that we can trade Byz horses for 20gpt, not too shabby

the front, we do have 4 cats and 1 trab there to go along

shipping chain works, we can ship over in 1 turn to both destinations

 

[socralynnek]

I also think keeping the cities is better, if Flip Risk is manageable.

We have to be careful when the Barbs get that Pirate Ship. We have to guard our transports with our UU then.

Them not having many roads means, they didn't spread their ressources (which they surely have) so we can expect Longbows and Spears in most cities.

Did we self-research Chivalry? I didn't see it in the log.

And I guess MT will be very helpful, we don't know how many of those guards they have and where. And self-building armies then will surely help.

Edit: cross-posted with rat.

I am thinking of another issue: We might want to change gov at some point. We can expect the Barbs to attack us steadily now that we have a foothold and we might get problems with War Weariness.

 

[ThERat]

I don't think keeping the cities is good, the flips risk is huge, just keep a few key cities such as this gem city.

we should get a ton of slaves (we already have 8 of them) from razing cities. They can help building colonies and roads. If we get RR, we should be ok.

WW hasn't been an issue yet, I think barbs do not cause WW, else we would be in trouble already by now.

 

[socralynnek]

According to http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/war_weariness.php

you only get War weariness when a) units are inside enemy lands
b) pillaging, bombing to1hp, attacking, losing cities and capturing units by the AI

So, by now we didn't get WW from the Barbs because none of the conditions was fulfilled, you don't get WW by being at war alone.

 

[Obormot]

I think we need to think of an effective campaign strategy. It seems like currently we are wasting too much time on movement and do little actual fighting which is not good. Those barbs have too few roads on their continent, I think we should transport some workers over to the other continent. We should also extend the ship chain so that we land units in a coastal city, so that we don't loose a turn. I don't think we need cats, once we get cavalry we should be able to overrun them quickly (except the barb guards). I think we need to stop research after MT and use connecting/disconnecting saltpeter to get more cavs quicly.

I would also start prebuilds for Military Academy and the Pentagon.