SGOTM 10 - Xteam

[Sir Bugsy]

Mist - Love the pics. Well done on the manuevers and tactics. As Scout said, dictating where the battles are fought, the terrain, who is attacked, with what unit will continue to help your kill ratio.

Taking the KT will help immensely. Oh, and I agree that the Mayans need to become history as soon as possible.

 

[Mistfit]

I will not be able to finish this til tonight or Sunday morn...

 

[leif erikson]

I will not be able to finish this til tonight or Sunday morn...

No problem, keep up the good work!!

 

[Mistfit]

OK... Pick up where I left off...

MM everyone to insure they are giving us all they can.

IT:
Lots of BYZ boats floating around heading towards the Barb island it seems
Having 2 armies in Copan ends the Resistance and it riots... this will make a nice scientist farm for now
The Mayans are trying to pull an end around with a galley... have to put an end to that
Byz Building Magellans
Barbs Building Bach

Turn 6 610AD

Attack of the lose troops that were in our territory

vMDI kills 4hp Crusader but is redlined did not save last turn log so will start anew with the counting (0/1/0)
Elite MDI kills 2 hp rLB flawlessly (0/2/0)
vMDI kills rWarrior on a hill -2hp (0/3/0)

Move towards Chichen Itza with my troops Move out my Armies
vMusket on top

Send one army south to look for the Salt

The scientist did not help the Metalurgy any so I turn them to taxist... Now +25 gpt

IT:
Red Privateers show up out of the fog to the west...
a couple of Muskets invade towards Copan

York MDI to MDI
Canterbury the same
New Castle Lib to Market
Liverpool Rax to Horse
Mayans and the Barbs building Bach

Oh yeah... I get a Crusader

Turn 2 620AD:
Not much just moving and working

Those red ships were a Caravel from the Barbs and 2 Pirate Ships... I guess we need to start defending our shores

IT:
4 more of those ships show up...
London Musket to MDi
Kish Lib to Harbor
Coventry Courthouse to Forbidden Palace... THis can of course be changed (Hero Epic might be nice as well)
Akshak Harbor to Galley (I figure we will need some of these)

Turn 3 630AD

2 Muskets on the loose...
vMDI kills rMusket flawlessly and Promotes (0/4/1)
eMDI kills rMusket -1 (0/5/1)

Move for the seige of Chichen Itza..

Move some troops to the NW for landing duties.

cant turn down science yet

IT
The Barbs drop off 2 MDI's and a Pike... between London and Canterbury

Turn 4 640 AD
vMDI kills Barb Pike -1hp (0/6/1)
vMDI kills Barb MDI -2 hp (0/7/1)

Cut off the roads to the Mayans in the south to try and limit their Muskets

Seige of CI:
hit six times and still a rMusket on top. I saw 3 vets and 3 regs...
Fully Healed Sword Army kills rMusket (0/8/1)
13 hp Sword Army kills 3hp vMusket with some damage (0/9/1)


Hurry Production of a MDI in Canturbury due to more barb ships showing up...

IT:
Lose a wounded MDI to counterattack from the Barbs (1/9/1)
My MDI army on Pilliaging duty gets attacked by a long bow and takes serious damage... I will move him out.

The other Barb boats retreat and head north... Maybe they will meet up with the Mayan boat up there
Dang the Mayans still have Salt...

Turn 5 650 AD
Kill off the Barb 2hp MDI lose 1hp (1/10/1)

Move wounded MDI army into BYZ territory he should be safe this turn.

Seige...
hit 5 or six times and got caught up in the moment and forgot to keep good track of everything...

I killed 5 Muskets losing a MDI and a swordsman... But I took the City.. (3/15/2)

Now have the Great Wall...Hanging Gardens... abnd some other stuff.. no Rax
a bunch of resistor included....

This is what we have on the War front... Kind of a mess I left you but... That is my job.

Keep and eye on the Barb ships in the Northwest as I do not know if they are the empty or full ones.

Have Fun... Next better player please...

I don't know about booting the Mayans completely at this point just because of the city to the south of Lagartero
would be difficult to fortify when attacking the BZyantines.

THink about it... anyway if we leave them one we can get techs from them.

If we start a bunch of horseman right now and turn off science after Metalurgy will they stay horseman for upgrade?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Myst - I think you are right about that city to the south. Better to have a consolidated front than to have that city. Yax and Palenque would be enough for now.

 

[leif erikson]

Nice work Mistfit!!

The only thing that worries me about allowing a Mayan city to survive is flip risk. I would rather raze, or lose, that city.

My wife just gave me the weekly schedule filled with end of school year activities for our children, so I have no evenings to play this week so can not complete the turns in 72 hours. So I'm skipping myself.

@Capt - I believe you said that you would be free come Monday. If so, please post a "got it". If nothing by Monday night, then Bugs is UP.

ROSTER:
Capt - UP
Leif - Skipped
Bugs - On Deck
Gator - Sipping wine until the until the 9th of June.
Scout
Mistfit - Just Played.

 

[Mistfit]

My concerns:

1.) we have no Navy to bring troops to the Barbs
2.) we have no horses to upgrade
3.) the Byz seem to be at least trying to attack the Barbs (should we stop them?)

What is the plan?

When do you guys see us attacking the Barbs? Soon? If so we need to do some team planning.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I don't think we need a navy at the moment. When we go across we need to go across with an armada. I don't see that happening until we have cavs and a navy. We might want to start building a few vessels, but we don't want to sail them anywhere near a barb. We will probably want some men o' war to escort our units and gain control of the seas. Our UU will be very valuable in this game.

We can build the cavs from scratch. As far as I'm concerned horses are a waste of shields at the moment.

If the Byz were farther away, I'd say let them fight, but they aren't landing more than one or two units and they really aren't helping our long term war effort.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

@Capt - I believe you said that you would be free come Monday. If so, please post a "got it". If nothing by Monday night, then Bugs is UP.

It's Pentecost Monday (which actually is a holiday in Norway), but I'm still working on the budget. I have to finish today cause that's our deadline. The way it looks now, today may become tonight or tomorrow before I get home, so I need another skip
After that, I'm afraid my wife expects me to get up to date on chores, not to mention socializing with her so I'm still in skip mode until Saturday when we celebrate my wife's 30th birthday.

 

[leif erikson]

Thanks Capt., I know how you feel.

Roster:
Bugs - UP
Gator - On the road until the 9th.
Scout - On Deck
Mistfit
Capt - skipped
Leif - skipped

As far as where we are:
We're not going to visit the Barb Nation until we have Caravels because of this rule:

- Galleys can never enter ocean tiles.

I tend to agree with Bugs that we can build a navy a little later.
We can also mass produce Cavs by butting the Salt and upgrading what we need. It works really well once we can capture Leo's.

So, it seems to me we need to decide a couple of things.
The first is whether we think the Byzantine Dromons are worth having around in quantity to help fight the Barb Nation shipping before we get our UU? If so, then we should target the Byzantines later, rather than earlier. There may be another advantage to this as they are scientific and we plan to exile them to some island somewhere, they should gain some more tech we can get through pointy stick.

To me, that means, after the Mayans, the Dutch look to be on the chopping block? If so, this also gives us the option later to attack the Byzantines from 2 directions? :yum:

Once we get Military Tradition, we can start building Cavs for use on our continent. Mass production of Cavs can start once we have control over our continent? Adrianople has Leo's built within, so it is a target.

Research, after Military Tradtion should be headed for Galleons and our UU?

What do you all think?

 

[Mistfit]

I think we can pointy stick our way to our UU.

I recomend we turn off science for now and start spamming Cavs. I'd like to not get education until we are done or almost done with expansion as the border expansions from the ToA are pretty nice...

Also I started our FP in this turnset. If you do not want it switch it now.

I'd also like a couple of partially filled Armies to take with us to the Barb island if you can manage it

 

[scoutsout]

@Mistfit: Nice turns!

I'd also like a couple of partially filled Armies to take with us to the Barb island if you can manage it

I think our odds of getting enough troops to the Barb Island are pretty slim without the Man-O-War as an escort...which means we'll have Galleons, and 3-unit-strong armies.

On another note, it'll seem strange to get this game back so quickly, but I'm up for it.

 

[scoutsout]

Sorry for the double-post... but I was thinking about this game over dinner. I think we should discuss some things; IMO, the nature of this game has changed.

• The Barbarians can now land troops on our shores, meaning we can no longer wage war on our continent unmolested.
• We are now forced to maintain a reserve of troops in the north.
• We absolutely must not allow the Barbarians to gain a settlement on our home continent.
• For emphasis: We absolutely must keep our home continent free of Barbarians.

I think we must consolidate our continent. While it would be nice for the Byzantine Dromons to protect our sea-lanes... and it would be nice if Barbarians would impale themselves on the spear-points of the Dutch Swiss Mercenary... we simply cannot count on our AI neighbors to be of any real help. It'll be tough enough to kick the Byzantines out of Constantinople.... I really don't want to have to kick the Barbarians out of Constantinople.

Though we all make fun of the AI for being ... less than intelligent, with enough troops the AI's seemingly random attacks can still be dangerous. Let's take stock of what we know about our enemy:

• The Barbarians have been allowed to develop their continent without any competition.
• The Barbarians have (a) wonder(s) that make their research mighty cheap.
• The Barbarians have a goverment that cannot use cash for rushing builds, only research and upgrading units.
• The Barbarians have some units that give them some tactical advantages in Sea Power at this stage of the game.

I do not think we should consider taking any troops to The Barbarian Continent before Magnetism. Truthfully, I'll be pleasantly surprised if we have a toehold before Replaceable Parts... but in any case... when we do land we will likely be outnumbered by a military that will be our technologial equal. I'ts going to be every bit as bad as invading a full-on runaway AI at Demi-God level. We're going to need to use sound tactics and strong play to win this thing... and we'll likely need to use a few tricks as well (combat settlers, pillaging Explorers under an infantry army... I hope it doesn't take a Funnel of Doom...)

For the time being...

I recomend we ...start spamming Cavs.

I like the sound of this. The AI do not really use speed well...and if there is one single unit that is most dangerous in the human players' hands, it's the Cavalry class units.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

All points well taken, I agree Scout. The game has changed dramtically.

I have it, if I can find the save.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

OK team. I can probably get a three for one tech deal. Chivalry, education and possibly navigation for chemistry. Do we want to pull the trigger on this deal?

I will wait 24 hours to have everyone weigh in before playing.

 

[leif erikson]

OK team. I can probably get a three for one tech deal. Chivalry, education and possibly navigation for chemistry. Do we want to pull the trigger on this deal?

I really don't see how we can pass it up as it shortens our time to Magnetism, and that is where we need to go! The Knights can also help with conquering the Dutch and Byzantines.

The only disadvantage I see is losing the power of The Temple of Artemis.

I think we must consolidate our continent.

Yes I agree and the sooner the better. That is why I proposed taking the Dutch first, eliminate them, and then go for the Byzantines. iirc, the Dutch have an offshore island city. It would be nice to get the Byzantines to take it and then they can reside on it, an alliance once we have the continental parts of Holland in our camp?

I like the sound of this. The AI do not really use speed well...and if there is one single unit that is most dangerous in the human players' hands, it's the Cavalry class units.

We have two main advantages over the AI.

The first is that we can pump out Cavs like mad using resource cutting and Leo's. 30 shields for a Horseman and 50 Gold to make a Cav. Klarius taught us this in the SGOTM where we played Rome. They AI had Rifles, and we defeated them by sheer quantity of Cavs, razing everything we took. Scorched earth was the name of the game. And we can use Armies to pillage everything, especially resources, we can find.

The second thing we have is ship chaining to move the Cavs rapidly, and in quantity, to the other continent. It will no doubt be tough going, but we will need to try to out produce them.

The judicious use of Bombardment will be important too. We may need to move the Cannon by sea. Also, I think we can use Man-o-War to bombard coastal cities.

I think a key will be trying to eat up their offensive units. Take away their initiative and force them to defend their cities, perhaps this will make them concentrate their production on defensive units. The cavs need to attack, smartly, everything they see and we can use Armies to heal units under as needed.

The Barbarians can now land troops on our shores, meaning we can no longer wage war on our continent unmolested.

I think this will be less of a problem once we have cavs as their speed will give us flexability and the opportunity to conduct a mobile defense with good hitting power. The Barb Nation units, without manuever, will be sitting ducks for our fast units with roads. There is an advatage to be gained here, promotion of units and, with some luck, Cav Armies through the destruction of Barb units. Also, we get to see what we'll be facing by what is landing, hopefully.

 

[Mistfit]

I would never give up the chance for a 3 or 4 to one. I think we should pull the trigger and get as far ahead as we can. The less we have to research ourselves the better IMHO. Although I will miss the Temple effect.

Has someone built Leo's?

Be a bummer if the Barbs do. it will give them somthing to spend that cash on.

Galleons can hold a 2 unit army right? The Army counts as one and then the 2 units...

I trust you fully Bugs... Have at er.

 

[leif erikson]

Has someone built Leo's?

Yes, The Byzantines have built it in Adrianople. Right friendly of them, no?

Galleons can hold a 2 unit army right? The Army counts as one and then the 2 units...

Galleons can hold 4, so an Army with three units should fit?

Just for discussion sake, The Barb Nation has the following Wonders:
The Great Library in Chanca
Sun Tzu's in Barbarian Stronghold (their capital?)
Magellan's Voyage in Anasazi
Copernicus' in Teoihuacan
J.S. Bach's in Chanca
The Mausoleum of Mausollos in Barbarian Stronghold
Technology Thieves in Barbarian Stronghold.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Very well. Playing now. Making deals, defending our homeland, raising hell across the countryside, in general being a very grumpy guy.

 

[leif erikson]

Very well. Playing now. Making deals, defending our homeland, raising hell across the countryside, in general being a very grumpy guy.

Sounds like the perfect mood, good luck!!