SGOTM 11 - klarius

[Northern Pike]

Oh, OK. The dancing banana isn't as obviously ironic as the wink.

I suppose the main argument against selling the Ottomans Metallurgy is that various domino effects could return us to war with them before we've collected much of their money. If we make peace with Korea to consolidate our gains from the stab then we'll be back at war with Arabia, and we'll have to stay out of their territory or we'll trigger their alliance with the Ottomans. More fundamentally, we don't want to be at peace with the Asian and the Middle Eastern blocs simultaneously, because then we won't be making enough progress. So if we think we can sustain the war in Asia for at least ten turns, and gain the Ottomans' gpt for that long, I'd sell Metallurgy; but if we think we're going to need to bail out of that war quickly via peace with Korea, I wouldn't.

 

[klarius]

I would say, make the deal, even if it may be only 5 turns of gpt.
But in the meantime we should then be able to finish MT 1-2 turns quicker and upgrade knights.
BTW, it's not sure we ever see sipahi. Ottomans don't have salt up to know and we already have 4 of the salt sources on the continent.

I just looked. They would give 366g + 95gpt, when taking wducation of the table.

 

[Offa]

Great then. I'll make the deal: I mainly wanted to check Klarius didn't have some deep reason to avoid it.

NP, That banana was ironic. What is the point of irony if it is too obvious?

 

[Offa]

I played this late Friday in the end but haven't had time to post until now.
I am not really very happy with how things went, but we do at least have a pretty solid military now, lots of cash and I had 2 leaders. I stuffed up in Germany by holding on to the captured town too long, making peace and then having the town flip. At least it was empty. In Japan, I waited endlessly for a clear chance to attack, but almost the whole Japanese and Indian armies slowly trudged through our almost undefended land around Hangchow. I didn't really fancy a one turn war as kyoto would surely flip.
I eventually attacked near the end of our turnset when I had some cavalry available to defend the eastern holdings, and after Arabia had declared against us. I captured Kyoto so we have the Pyramids, but I also tried against Tokyo which has been a dismal failure.
Back home I disconnected iron and have a rather excessive stack of workers on a saltpeter resource so this can be reconnected every turn. Production has been changed to horsemen, as we can currently afford to upgrade them at full price.

450ad
Decide to reposition for Kyoto, and Tokyo as secondary target.
There is Japanese worker blocking easy access to Tokyo but I move that way anyway.

Ottomans have cash. Sell them Metallurgy after consultation for 366g and 95gpt.
Increase science and mil trad is down to 5 turns.

Loads of micromanagement as always after Klarius; well I found 2 extra science beakers anyway.

Ibt
America building Bach. English and French are doing the same.
Lots of Japanese and Indian troops move north. I don’t want a war just yet.

460ad
Little of note.

Ibt
Scandinavia declares v England.
France v Eygpt.
Arab v Viking
German longbow kills an Impi (not a great start)
A lot of Indians and Japs move into our land near New Bapedi

470
4/5 knight avenges the Impi-killer. No leader. 4/4 knight kills another German longbowand promotes to 3/5.
4/4 knight kills a 2/4 german longbow on forest but redlines in the process.

End turn with a mouse click before I was expecting it. I had finished more or less though.

Ibt
More India and jap troops move in our land.
A knight kills an attacking Korean unit (longbow I think)
India v Ottoman
Japs v Ottoman

Vikings land a spear next to Tokay: no defenders within miles. We can recapture next turn but will lose our wine.

480
4/4 knight kills spear in Konisberg.
Treb takes a hitpoint off konisberg’s other defender and a longbow kills him to take the town.

Decide to increase lux to 20% in case of riots when we lose wine.
Ibt
Tokay captured by Viking: steal 7 gold.

Istanbul finishes Bach.

490
Recapture Tokay and kill a Viking galley that went in there together with the spear.

Still not safe to attack Japan with all of their ACs crawling over our land.
German longbow kills our archer and captures treb

Ibt
Korea v Eygypt
India v Egypt
Japs v Egypt

7 berserks are converging on Hastings: doesn’t look good for the poms.

500
Recapture treb and kill German longbow.
Learn Mil trad.
That’s it for learning so reassign the scientists.
Up to 286gpt

Upgrade 8 knights.
There are 5 vet knights stranded in Japan. The rest are in armies or are elite.

Elite knight in Germany kills another longbow.

Ibt
Jap want to swap metallurgy for Education: NO.
France and Arabs at peace.
Arabs declare v us!
Egypt and Vikings peace
Egypt and German peace.
Egypt and France peace.

French knight kills our longbow in Germany.

510
Kill French knight with elite knight and get a leader.
The German expedition has run its course for now. The knights there need to return for an upgrade and the French are liable to overrun our position

The French have mil trad as well.

Make peace with France for 14gpt.
Make peace with England and give mil trad for 163g and 31gpt.

Discover there is a trade route to the other continent. America will trade wool.

Ibt
Leipzig is deposed. It was empty but this is annoying as I just made peace and the settler is ready in place.I could have got there earlier with the settler as well, but his journey got interrupted when I diverted the galley he was in north to help deal with the Viking attacking Tokay.

520.
Not much. Leader makes a cav army back home.

Ibt
England and ottoman ally v japs.

530

540
I can bear it no more. It looks like it will never be a good time to attack the Japs.
Declare v China, but first an embassy.

Kill a Chinese musket with a cav and the Indians and Japa declare against me.
Cav dies attacking a jap sword (on jungle outside Hangchow).
Cav kills jap sword.

Kill Indian archer x 3
Kill jap pike and sword on hill outside Hangchow with cav army.
Cav kills another jap sword on hill outside hangchow. The place was crawling with japs. This is the lightest the infestation has been.

Kyoto:
Knight army falls to 7/13 v samurai.
Second army falls to 9/14 v next Samurai. This isn’t easy.
9/14 army kills third Samurai and drops to 6/14. Exposes a pike.
7/13 army falls to 5/14 killing the pike and exposes another one.
Elite knight kills the pike and gives a leader, exposes a reg pike.
Vet knight (trying to spare elites) redlines attacking the pike which falls to 2/3.
Vet knight takes the city and promotes to elite.

Leader enters Kyoto and builds empty army.

Attack Tokyo:
Elite knight kills samurai exposing vet pike.
Waste a knight attacking the pike. He inflicts only 1hp damage and there aren’t enough backups to finish the job.

Kill pike in Nara exposing another and an AC right next to it: retreat to mountain.

Ibt
Cav on a mountain next to Nara just survives attack from AC.
Lose a cav to an elephant.
A knight survives an elephant attack.

China v England
We lose furs.

550
Kill Indian archer.
Kill 2 4/5 ACs on a hill near Spiceburgh.

V Tokyo
Elite knight retreat v pike
Elite pike dies v samurai (why not on top)
Elite knight retreats from pike
Vet knight retreat from reg pike which is untouched.
Yuk: no kills in 5 attacks.

Kill 2 more vet ACs on a hill outside Hangchow.

There are a lot of troops in Kyoto who need to be moved out unless you feel lucky. The retreating knights outside Tokyo are sitting ducks for a counterattack. There is an empty army in Kyoto: clearly it wants at least one cav loaded up, but how?

The German flip is annoying as were the losses in that campaign. I had made peace there for fear of being overrun by the French, but that seems pointless now, so we probably could redeclare and invade with cavalry.

I think we are very close to being able to sweep quickly over our continent.
Unfortunately mil trad is known to the AI: the French seem to have learnt it themselves and then I sold it to England.

We can trade lux with the other continent: presumably as they have the required tech.

 

[klarius]

Well, looks like a lot of missed opportunities .
The attack on Japan had to come much earlier, even at the risk of losing a couple of villages.
Trying Tokyo with just some knights instead of Osaka where it would be easy to reinforce from Kyoto wasn't that smart either.
We always had the safety belt of peace with Korea, so there was no real big risk.
In Germany we should have made every effort to get and hold a good foothold to collect reinforcements not go for a useless town.
Nearly everybody has navigation (they can and will trade maps), but we haven't acquired any maps, when we sold MT pretty cheap.
We should do it now. First a bunch of territory maps, then look to trade up to world maps. Also we should look to get a few more luxes and use MT to get some more gold (no use to hold back if somebody has money).
Keeping Leipzig when making peace was really not good and we should also give up Königsberg immediately (rush a settler at zero food surplus, but don't use it in Germany or maybe just a worker).
Build a city 1 se of Königsberg (it's outside of German culture even if we give up Königsberg). Rush a temple there and hope it doesn't flip in the first 5 turns. After culture expansion it's save. Then we should get up a ship chain to there (RoP with Bismarck for that). No hot war on the other continent before we have an army there.
A general remark:
I don't like that people always take trebuchets to attacks. They are nice for home defense and attacking boats, but pretty useless on attacks, if not used in large numbers and I don't want large numbers as this type of war is much to slow.

 

[Offa]

Klarius, I am not happy about your comments, justified as some them may be.

 

[klarius]

Well, Offa, less than half of the post is rant. That's not so much for me. I've seen much worse turn sets and I don't see a big problem to continue from here.
There is also something positive to say. You nicely started the cav production by horses.
I'm just a bit concerned that you lost a little bit your tactical prowess.

 

[Northern Pike]

What is the point of irony if it is too obvious?

An admirably English sentiment.

I've got it.

I'll trade for maps, move our city in Germany, and so on. The proposed replacement city SE of Konigsberg will not be 100% safe in the simple sense of having no cultural overlap after an expansion, but I assume you knew that, Klarius.

I would expect to use any further Leaders for more armies, not for the Pentagon or the Military Academy.

I'll try to expand out of the Kyoto enclave as seems possible, and to unite our fronts by striking SE through India. With so many cav in the pipeline this might be possible.

I don't expect to resume operations in Germany on my round.

 

[klarius]

One idea:
Kyoto will be a problem for a long time and can cost us several units with flips (even if empty we might lose units on retaking).
We could take a moderate big risk now (16%), to get the rest down faster.
That would be:

• Peace with Korea (and by that all the rest)
• RoP with Japan and India again.
• let the filled army (not the empty and the one outside) in the city in order to heal completely
• upgrade 2 knights to cav in the city (it has barracks and is then connected to our homeland)
• if it doesn't flip the city will be out of resistance. Every unit quells a resister in peace.
• we can rush settlers and the city can be left empty
• reposition troops in Japan and maybe also India and again declaration via China.

So 1-2 turns of peace for healing, repositioning and upgrading.

If they should make peace with the other bloc in the next two turns try to get some alliances against Arabia before redeclaring. Even if it says they would never do it, 150-200 gpt frequently still do it.

 

[Northern Pike]

Just a preview:





I hope to post within twenty-four hours. I'll probably stop just before we capture Leonardo and the Great Library in Beijing, so that the team can discuss the issues involved there.

 

[Ronald]

Looks like great progress: 2 down a few more to go

 

[Northern Pike]

630 AD, end of turn

 

[Northern Pike]

550 (0): Various deals bring us most of the world map, 145 gold, and three new luxuries. Cutting the luxury rate to zero is worth another 25 gpt.

I implement Klarius's Great Gamble--that's definitely its official title, in case it doesn't work. Peace with Korea (we gain 16 gold, 6 gpt, and their WM), RoP with Japan and India, upgrades in Kyoto, etc.

The wars between the Middle Eastern bloc and the East Asians end.

Kyoto doesn't flip, and comes out of resistance.

The Vikings are building Magellan.

The Americans go to war with the Indians.


560 (1): We found Nicht Konigsberg one tile SE of Konigsberg, abandoned via a rushed settler.


570 (2)-580 (3): We get into position for the next stab. This requires a RoP with China as well, so we'll return to war via Korea, and we have a cav in position for this.


590 (4): We get the Chinese to declare war on Arabia for 250 gpt, although the Koreans won't do it.

We declare war on Korea, pillage a tile outside Pyongyang, and we're at war with East Asia.

We take Osaka, held by three Samurai, a pikeman, and an LB, with our cav armies doing most of the work (5-0).

We found the tactical town of Takadanobaba between Kyoto and Tokyo.

We take Tokyo, held by three pikemen, with a knight army leading the attack (8-0).

We take Edo, held by two pikemen (10-0).

We take Kagoshima, but the town is very stubbornly held by two pikemen and we lose two knights (12-2).

We storm Satsuma, held by two pikemen (14-2).

We storm Nara, held by a pikeman and a spearman, and eliminate the Japanese (16-2). Eleven Japanese combat units (that we can see) come off the map.

We take Calcutta, held by two spearmen (18-2).

We smite two Indian archers near Neu Hlobane (20-2).

Our of our cav units narrowly repels the attack of a Jumbo (21-2).


600 (5): We take Bombay, held by two musketmen, and capture a worker (23-2).

We take Madras, held by a musketman and a spearman, though we lose a cav (25-3).

We take Nanking, held by a single musketman (26-3).

We ride down a Chinese LB (27-3).

We shoot down a Jumbo (28-3).

Delhi hasn't upgraded to musketmen, so we take it a turn earlier than planned (three spearmen; 31-3).


610 (6): We capture Bangalore, losing one knight to defeat the garrison of two spearmen, and eliminate the Indians (33-4).

We slay three Arab archers, within our borders (36-4).

We found Kabukicho in our Japanese lands.

We destroy one musketman in Chengdu, but don't attempt anything further there (37-4).


620 (7): We take Chengdu from the remaining garrison of one musketman (38-4).

I'll stop upgrading horsemen at the full cost now, to save gold for when we hold Leonardo (Beijing).

We capture Xinjian, held by three musketmen, for the loss of a cav (41-5).

We seize Shanghai, held by three musketmen and three LB, though we lose two cav (47-7).

We pick off three Chinese LB (50-7).

The volcano next to Tokyo erupts.


630 (8): We take Canton, held by two musketmen and a spearman (53-7). We capture two workers.

We trample five Chinese LB around Shanghai, and a Korean LB farther west (59-7).

We move powerful forces adjacent to Beijing. These units should almost certainly be able to take Tientsin as well next turn.

Twelve elite victories this round didn't produce a Great Leader.

 

[Northern Pike]

We've reached the point where we can easily overrun our continent with cavalry, as Offa predicted. We should be able to finish the job in the next two rounds. So it's time to start sending cav over to Germany, which won't be a quick process. The cav units we'll get from upgrades in our homeland while we hold Leonardo should go to Germany.

We may well suffer some flips, particularly in Xinjian, before we reach Tatung (beyond Korea) and eliminate the Chinese. But it's nothing we can't deal with in this strong position, and much better than losing population to razing.

I haven't seen any fast units from the Chinese or Koreans, which is why we're leaving flip-prone Chinese cities open.

Our First Knight Army near Beijing is there due a mis-click, although it's a good enough position, and it may attempt to move one tile north (onto the hill) on its own initiative next turn.

We have eight horsemen at the moment, and another seven will complete this interturn. Next turn we should have enough gold to upgrade fourteen of them while we hold Leonardo, or all fifteen if we're willing to starve Shanghai and Xinjian down with taxmen rather than clowns.

Our 95 gpt from the Ottomans will expire in two turns, after which the math of getting our cav units from upgrades won't work nearly as well, unless we're able to re-take Leonardo fairly regularly.

I don't have any strong opinion as to which rival civ should receive Beijing when we gift it away, but I'm fairly certain we'll find the most treacherous option.

Given that we've stopped research, do we care about keeping the (scientific) Koreans alive until they've received their free IA tech? I would assume not.

I've pillaged Delhi into isolation because the town sits on saltpetre.

I don't recall ever seeing a volcano erupt right next to a city I controlled, so I haven't tried to do anything about the impending disaster in Tokyo. Should we sell all the town's improvements?

Joanie is sitting on 1126 gold, and Lizzie has 175. All our other rivals are basically broke.

Oops, I've pulled the garrison out of Bombay while there's still a resistor, so a nearby knight should spend an interturn there.

Finally, these points are obvious, but I'll take the liberty of summarizing them so that we're all on the same page:

We mustn't acquire Education, which kills the ToA.

Therefore we can hold Beijing in the middle of a turn, to get the benefit of Leonardo, but we can't hold it at the end, or the Great Library will give us Education.

We're still at war with the Arabs, but not with the rest of the Middle East. So we musn't enter Arabian territory unless we want to return to war with the other members of that bloc.

 

[Northern Pike]

Under the volcano:

 

[klarius]

Looks nice .

We should for sure not waste money anymore by upgrading w/o Leonardo. In fact we need some money in the next few turns to rush some settlers. The big cities we got in war, have to go down in pop some, so they can feed taxmen. And we need the settlers to get more good land for the cities and more troop allowance.

Upgrade money now should be no problem. We should sell unnecessary improvements.
Barracks away from the front in former Japan and India. Marketplace in Edo (will never be big) and Delhi (not connected and should probably be removed over time anyway).
But we should build a market in Zimbabwe. It's never nice to need a specialist in the capital and the money we gain would also be useful.

For now I would gift Beijing to one of the northern alliance. I assume we will be at war with them in the next turn-set anyway, so we can retake it at a convenient time.

Scientific civs should get priority in being eliminated (or at least reduced to one town). We hopefully are not interested in any IA techs in this game.

How's the roster doing ?
Ronald, are you available for a turn set in the next few days (no big hurry), or should I take it ?

 

[Northern Pike]

For now I would gift Beijing to one of the northern alliance. I assume we will be at war with them in the next turn-set anyway, so we can retake it at a convenient time.

Just to remove any ambiguity, I assume that by this you mean northern on our continent, i.e. the Middle Eastern bloc?

 

[Ronald]

Just got back from Berlin, will have a look at the file and could play wednesday evening and then the next few days as well. Klarius, if you want to play the next turns, that's OK with me. According to our roster you are up anyway.

 

[klarius]

Well, I also will not have free time until wednesday.
With our low number of players, I would like to everybody take a turn in every round whenever possible.
So you playing is fine with me.

 

[Ronald]

I got it and will play on wednesday