SGOTM 11 - klarius

[Ronald]

RL is messing up my game play. I can't play today or tomorrow. I can play friday evening. If anybody wants to go ahead, please feel free.

 

[Ronald]

I am 2/3 of my turns, things are looking OK, I will finish and post in a few hours.

A Teaser:

 

[Ronald]

I'm almost finished. Here is a second teaser:

 

[Ronald]

turn 0 (630 AD): switch all entertainer to taxmen

interturn: Cav defeats 1st Korean longbow, 2nd Korean longbow kills cav

turn 1 (640 AD): elite cav creates GL, make 3rd cav army; take Beijing with no loss; take tientsin with no loss; upgrade horsemen; gift Beijing to Ottomans

interturn: not much

turn 2 (650 AD): Take Tsingtao for no losses; take Pusan for no loss;

interturn: nothing

turn 3 (660 AD): Take Seoul, Hyangsan, Pyongyang and Wonsan no losses; destroy the weak Koreans! Get 2 GL in this turn. I only fill them with 1 cav and plan to ship them to Germany

interturn: nothing

turn 4 (670 AD): Take Tatung, no losses destroy Chineese; kill arabian archer in their territory, so Egypt, Russia and Ottomans declare war.

interturn: some egypt knights are showing up at our borders

turn 5 (680 AD): Take Kufah, 1 loss; take Baghdad, no loss; elite knight defeats knight -> GL; Take Mecca, no loss

interturn: some Russian Cossacks come close; 1 Cossack captures two workers

turn 6 (690 AD): Take Beijing, upgrade horsemen; gift beijing to America; Take Cheju 1, loss;

interturn: not much

turn 7 (700 AD): Take Yarkutsk

interturn: lots of egyptian and russian troops at our doorsteps

turn 8 (710 AD): defensive wars, kill several knights and cossacks

interurn: more egyptian knighst are coming our way

turn 9 (720 AD): Take St. Petersburg, Damaskus, Thebes, 5 losses, 1 GL

interturn: not much

turn 10 (730 AD) Take Damaskus, another GL

interurn: America declare war on us

turn 11 (740 AD) Take El-Armana no Loss, 1 GL

So I stop now, we have enough troops inclusive 3 cav armies ready to start war in Germany. We also should retake this turn or next turn Beijing, but then also Scandinavia will be at war with us.
When we start war with Germany, we will trigger also war with France (England and America are already at war with us.
The GL is in El-Armana, the 2 empty armies are in Rostov and Mecca
We have 3 armies in St. Petersburg. 1 fully healed knight army and 2 halve healed cav armies. I don't know if St. Petersburg is in danger of flipping, just be careful.
There are some Ottoman troops near Rostov easy to dispatch.
The healed troops should get out of Thebes, it might flip.

 

[Northern Pike]

I haven't looked at the save yet, but that sounds great.

 

[Ronald]

I think the game could be over within the next 40 turns, so we might want to stop rushing horsemen to cavs after the next rush and instead rushing settlers and temples.
The temple of Artemis is in an awkward spot. I'm not sure if we get there untill we reached the domination limit.

 

[klarius]

Ok, I got it.
I will look to get us some more cities and territory. We really have to look after that more urgent than killing civs IMO.

 

[Ronald]

I don't know what you think about getting territory and not fight AIs: we have 7 settlers ready and more than 30 in production.
That should fill our continent once we conquer the rest of the AI cities there.
With 6 armies for the other continent right now, we should be able to take Trondheim for the temple of artemis whenever we want to and with 59 cavs at the moment and 16 horsemen ready to upgrade we should be in good shape to fight the war on our continent and on the other without too much troubles.

 

[klarius]

A small mid term report:

Well, Ronald, I'm not talking about not fighting.
Just organising the land-grab in time. There were large unclaimed areas on our home island.

I'm at turn 7 and have killed Arabs, Ottomans and Russians.
But on the other continent the progress is slow.
The German home land was no problem, but then France counterattacked in force and the offense stalled.
I did also grab a village in Scandinavia, but don't know if I can hold it.
I have given up on getting ToA in time to make a difference. Trondheim is still far and then it would still be 5 turns for the first expansions (if it doesn't flip in the meantime).
I will keep Beijing now and ride the tech elevator hopefully to magnetism.

We are at 55% land currently and I think we'll get another maybe 10% on our home continent. The rest should be possible on the other continent w/o the need to wait for culture expansion.

I want to finish my turns in the evening and hope to give a position from which the next driver will finish the game.

 

[Offa]

Wouldn't we have been better off to forget about germany (with the strong French right next to them) and just go straight for the Vikings instead? With a longer ship chain it wouldn't have been any slower.

 

[klarius]

Well, the troops were already in Germany (armies filled so no galley transport).
And ship chaining to Vikings would have meant more galleys and a long set up.
Differential movement is biting hard here, as there is a lot movement through coast.
Taking another 7-8 turns to set up for Vikings was just to long for me .
That would have to be setup earlier, but nobody told Ronald to do so, so he rightly put the troops in our foothold.
I nevertheless hoped to get to Vikings pretty fast, but there is quite a bit more resistance than I expected.
It's not only France, but also England with muskets and cavs. America showing a few crusaders and assorted garbage and Vikings coming with some zerks.

 

[Offa]

Well, going after the Vikings preferentially, if it was to to work well, would have had to be planned 40 turns or so ago.

Our position is a bit behind where we would like. Could we have had cavalry sooner? The territory chart looks bad too, but this appears to be due to rivals capturing the TOA on the home continent rather than conquering faster.

 

[Northern Pike]

Our position is a bit behind where we would like. Could we have had cavalry sooner?

Yes, with the Republic slingshot. Team Shaka hit the slingshot, and their graphs look a lot like ours, but 10-15 turns ahead.

 

[Ronald]

It still will be a close race. We had some luck with lots of GLs. So our armies could make a difference in getting the required territory fast.

 

[klarius]

Played. The save.

Summary:
Destroyed Arabs, Ottomans, Russians and English.
Took the tech elevator and got magnetism.
We have now lots of troops and armies on the other continent.
We should now grab the land we need with more rushed settlers.

Turn log:
Turn 0 740:
I use the leader to build military academy in Wonsan.
I want the academy for the improvement to armies and don't want to risk it in a flip risky city.
Take Beijing and upgrade horses and elite* knights.
Gift Beijing to Vikings to be able to declare via them on Germany and France when needed.
Make embassy with France and make RoP.
I then decide to invest 1 turn of gpt to get France on England. 107gpt and a bunch of luxes does it.
In tend war next turn and want France to get troops a bit away IBT.
I do a similar deal with Germany, so we will ahve one turn of not much gpt.
Distribute our forces in Germany.

Capture Izmit. Capture Elephantine. Capture Alexandria.

MM and sell improvements in corrupt towns.

IBT:
An Egypt knight and an Eglish MDI land next to Kyoto. No troops near.
Vikings declare on England.

Turn 1 750:
Solve the Egypt problem. Capture Heliopolis and Byblos (redlining two armies) and Egypt is gone.
Cannot do anything about England. Gift Kyoto to Vikings.
Ally France against Russia and Ottomans for over 300gpt. Declare on Vikings and pillage near Beijing.
Take 4 German and French city.
Capture Edrine.

IBT:
Large counterattacks by France. Lose several cavs.

Turn 2 760:
Capture Heidelburg. Germany is banished to it's southern island.
Capture Iznik.

IBT:
A lot french action. Nearly lost an army.
Yakutsk flips.

Turn 3 770:
Retake Yakutsk.Capture Najran and Arabia is gone.
Have to fight a lot French. Would rather take on others.

IBT:
The usual french stuff. We really have trouble making progress with all these counters.
A few riots - probably war weariness.

Turn 4 780:
Capture Istanbul. Capture Bursa.
Try Uskudar with a badly wounded army (to finish Ottaman) and fail. Lose army.
Fail retaking Kyoto from 2 spears . Take Beijing, upgrade 10 horses.
Make peace with Russia and gift them Beijing.
Notice that Joan is industrial.
Capture Chartres.

Turn 5 790:
Finally recapture Kyoto from English.
Capture Nottingham (France). San Francisco (Viking).
Gift Chartres to Russia - the flip risk is extreme.
Redeclare on Ottomans, capture Uskudar and they are destroyed.

IBT:
France recaptures Nottingham

Turn 6 800:
Raze Nottingham and Chartres. I rather try to secure our other holdings against the culture monster.
Capture Moscow and Yekaterinburg.

Turn 7 810:
Capture Novgorod and Yaroslavl.
Capture Houston.
I decide then that the ToA is still so far away that I don't think this will give us much.
The problem is really France. I cannot go in force for Scandinavia, because Joan is countering all the time.
I rather capture Beijing hoping to get magnetism so we can ship armies.
I also cannot make peace with anybody and want to get rid of Russians.
Capture Beijing and Russians are gone.

IBT:
French capture empty Frankfurt.
Learn a lot techs including Magnetism. Upgrade some galleys immediately.

Turn 8 820:
Retake Frankfurt. Capture Hastings.
Lose a fully healed cav army on a musketeer .

Turn 9 830:
Capture York.

IBT:
Vikings capture a village with a zerk.

Turn 10 840:
Capture Warwick. Recapture village.

Turn 11 850:
Capture Canterbury, Newcastle and Coventry. England destroyed.
Capture London (France).

We are over 63% territory now. There are still some holes to fill on the home continent.
On the other continent the English towns should soon be out of resistance.
Then we should rush settlers for more land.
Together with gains in America and Scandinavia domination (even at 75%) shouldn't take very long now.

 

[Ronald]

Hi klarius,

Great progress.
We should be able to win within the next 10 turns. Wonderful job!

 

[Offa]

I have it, but I haven't looked at the save yet.

 

[Offa]

I had a look at the save. Clearly this shouldn't take long but it isn't quite the walk in the park I had expected. We still need 285 tiles (I think). That would be 32 9 tile towns: not a trivial number. It would be nice to get culture expansions to do a lot of this, but temples unless rushed this turn (for which we have no cash) may be a bit too slow and libraries are probably too expensive. So settlers will have to do to fill gaps I think. We are losing out to the teams who found the TOA on the home continent therefore.

Clearly I will aim to capture plenty of american and viking towns too, but it doesn't look easy just to sweep through them as a lot of cavalry are tied up on garrison duty and will probably have to defend against the French. We have a lot of cavalry but not an overwhelming number so it still seems best to spend our cash on upgrading horses rather than rushing culture buildings. With our ships the cavalry should still be able to reach the action.

Any thoughts?

 

[Northern Pike]

By my count we can claim another 74 tiles on our continent (largely coastal tiles, of course) by founding twelve more cities. Then we could gain another ten by rushing temples in Neu Mpondo, Edo, and Tientsin; this would have to be done next turn if we're going to do it at all. But I'm not sure that would be cost-effective, so I'll leave those ten tiles out of these calculations.

On the other continent, founding seven cities in territory we already more or less control should be worth 73 tiles. As long as things go well on Oxford Island, that'll be 18 more tiles.

That leaves about 120 tiles that we'll have to gain by further conquests on the other continent. Taking the eight core Viking cities, Viking-held Boston, Miami, Atlanta, and Seattle should do it, without cultural expansions or new foundations in that part of the map. So, the somewhat discouraging conclusion is that we have to take pretty well everything not held by the French. We can at least avoid Washington, or leave it for last, as a capital on a hill which doesn't lead to much extra land.

We need to be aware of the area north of Novgorod, where a foundation would gain a lot of extra tiles, by the standards of our home continent. Novgorod itself won't be able to rush a settler in time, for lack of food, so either the settler will have to come from elsewhere or we'll have to merge a worker into Novgorod.

Three spots where we definitely need to found cities are 4 NE of Hastings, 4 SW of Frankfurt, and 4 SE of Canterbury.

 

[klarius]

Clearly settlers is the way to go to grab land.
The rest on the home island should be easy, there are plenty settlers around or under way.
These should be used even if they grab only one extra tile.

I would not rush any temples on the home continent. That is very inefficient as there are only few coastal tiles to gain on top of what we can gain by settlers. The most effective expansions are already in place and in fact we could sell now the temples.
We should also sell the libraries in the core and markets and barracks in corrupt towns.

I would use money mainly to rush settlers in English towns as long as they have pop. Then maybe merge workers to rush more settlers. In the pretty open land on the other continent you should always find a place, where a settler can provide quite a few tiles.

In the last few turns we should also think of rushing settlers in resisting towns by disbanding troops.
Redlined cavs and also spare galleons can go then.

The only places I would have liked culture on the other continent is towards French to hamper their cav incursions, but maybe it's even too late for that.

Another thing, I should probably have done already (but only recently we have enough armies around), would be to send one army to pillage roads in and around France to stop their troop movements.