SGOTM 11 - Team Newbie

[PaperBeetle]

So they are adding about 50% to our beaker cost (cost when no-one else has it, indeed) when selling to us. Harsh. We could hit that gpt if we doubled our population - possible, but several turnsets away. We could be well on our way to self-researching it by then, or even completing it as a min run.
I have started roading the second gem by the way, and we are nearly done building a harbour, so over the next couple of centuries we may actually get a trade route with the rest of the world. Throwing gems into the deal could take the edge off the gpt we need to to raise. Oh and if anyone doesn't have iron or horses, we could trade those too - even the ones we are using. After all, we aren't talking about a real deal.
Still, it's not sounding like a solid strategy yet, is it?

 

[archphoenix]

I think we will need some catas to assist our swordmans.

 

[PaperBeetle]

I'd agree with that if we are going to have to defend the chokepoint: artillery support is great for leader farming (because when a unit goes elite, it becomes incapable of beating anything with more than 1hp ).
And I do want to leader-farm the choke, but it doesn't seem to support our goals. Surely we are better off just heading out to the AI empires and trashing them? At least that's what I think the other teams have done...
Anyway, if we want catapults, then we know where to get them eh? Japan!

Taking artillery on offensive campaigns is traditionally frowned on at this stage in the game. I'll try and think of a mathematical argument supporting this. But perhaps we should really be discussing whether we want swords or horses? Indeed, no one has yet put forward a decent estimate of what tech we will need to take down these eight local civs: horses, maces, knights or cavalries?

 

[PaperBeetle]

The Hit List: who we kill, when.

China and Arabia have two of the most powerful UUs in the game, and they will get them relatively soon, so it would be nice to move against these guys before that happens. Handily, they are the nearest two civs overland, with both having towns in the area of the northern choke.
Japan's UU is not as good, but is very demoralising to fight against. We could move against Japan on the grounds that (a) we are already at war with them (and have an alliance to that effect), (b) they are easy to kill early in the game, because Toku tend not to build spears or culture, spending all his resources on catapults and archers instead .
Egypt is nearby if we go by sea, and may build Zeus, although I don't think they have started it yet (it is hard to say who will get which wonder, as many will fall in Oracle cascades).
To me it seems like we should concentrate on China and Japan to start with, and possibly India at the same time (in C3C, the elephant is almost as annoying as the samurai, and can't be shut down with resource denial). We don't have to wipe these guys out, just make them too weak to be a threat. Then we turn on Arabia and Egypt before they get ansar production online.

 

[Bucephalus]

I suspect that the other teams have probably gone with a horse/Impi combination; it's a common tactic to use as the Zulu, since the Impi is the only defensive U/U that can keep pace with horses, and on this map makes logistical sense. But we must act soon to do this.

 

[PaperBeetle]

But isn't the main weakness of the horse that it dies on the attack, rather than being killed on the counterattack? If we were to send impi to war we would probably be comitting ourselves to a despotic golden age. We could try to use a golden age to self-research Feudalism of course.
Anyway, if we are going to switch to horses, I agree we need to move quickly. The swords and archers can secure the area around the northern choke, and the coast south of there (i.e. India). Meanwhile, we bring horses up in the next wave and feed them south to Japan and east to China. Japan at least should be easy for horses to deal with if Toku is following his usual strategy.
So far nobody has mentioned the FP. Should we start a core prebuild for it now, or use a leader later on to put it in some AI capital? Personally I usually use the core prebuild, as I want all my leaders for army duty. Sheep town might be a suitable spot.

 

[Bucephalus]

To be honest, I don't think I am suggesting this strategy, merely trying to explain what the others may have done; I think we've probably missed that window of opportunity, especially if Feudalism is out.

Maybe we should concentrate on settling our own lands, and laying down some infastructure, then think about war from a position of strength. Perhaps we are being a bit obsessive about early conquest.

There would be no reason why we couldn't continue to play-off one bloc against another.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Well we are sort of in a position of strength. At least the military advisor thinks so, and he should be considered a conservative in such matters .
I agree with Taxpayer that our first priority should be to get the barbs under control. I don't know how many there are in the far north and south of our subcontinent, but once the uprising barbs are dealt with, a couple of impi guards in these areas should keep them secure.
But we have a good number of swords and archers, many of them elite, who are itching to get into a real fight. We don't want these units to go stale on us, so they should get moving before the AI gets Feudalism. I would like to see them go through the Japanese blocker and perhaps the Chinese junk town, and take Delhi. Hopefully by that time our alliance with Arabia will have expired and we can give the Orientals peace.

As for settling our subcontinent, we could put the oyster town on settler duties: it doesn't have a barracks, and with the harbour it will get +3fpt.
It might be worth checking whether it is efficient to whip a granary up here. We also have a good number of workers ready to get the grasslands mined. The fact that many of them are currently engaged roading the isthmus is just a happy coincidence between getting this important job done, and their need to hide from the barb uprisings.

 

[PaperBeetle]

@Taxpayer
If you do decide to go through the Japanese blocker, don't forget to buy everything the other Orientals have, for gpt, before you attack.

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Won't this ruin our rep?

 

[socralynnek]

No, we are already at war with Japan and then they declare war against us, so no rep hit.

Otherwise: Settle our lands, build up military and prepare for bigger attacks.

 

[socralynnek]

Taxpayer'sMoney, you are up, any news, when you find the time to play?

Or do you have any open questions.

Don't be too shy to play, just play careful and concentrated and you can come back here to ask when something is unclear in your turnset.

 

[Wardancer]

TaxPayers' - would you mind swapping with me for this turnset? I'm going to be in France Wednesday to Sunday this week.

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Sorry guys. I had a busy weekend - no time to play. I was gonna play tonight but I'll happily step aside for Wardancer 'cause those barbs look tricky. But on one condition: you start killing some AI!

Good luck Wardancer, and sorry for the delay team.

 

[Wardancer]

Thanks for being flexible TaxPayers'.

I have generously awarded myself an early finish from work today and am going to try to play through my turns now.

 

[socralynnek]

Wardancer, any news?
We get overtaken by many teams, so i guess we should try to play a little faster.

 

[PaperBeetle]

The latest news from the graphs page: team klarius is building culture! FP? Zeus? Lighthouse? Temples? It's more than just an extra 2cpt, and it starts after they have their revolution (in the 90-100 turnset).
No other teams have yet built extra culture.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to renew my call to start building the FP in sheep town. Even if we later decide to use a leader to put it somewhere else, it's always handy to have a prebuild going for something like those wonders I mentioned already.

 

[Wardancer]

Wardancer reporting in.

First of all. My turns are played and the save is uploaded.

Here is a detailed write up for those of you that are interested - (PaperBeetle).

View attachment Date.doc

Here is a picture of things as they stand



For those of you that aren't interested then here is a summary of where we are......

Empire production
This is still very weak. The empire manages an effective 17-21 food*, 28-29 shields and 30-34 trade on each turn. Approximately 13-15 of the trade is spent on entertainment and maintenance.

*I double the capitals food surplus as it has a granary.

The capital is still responsible for a very significant proportion of this (6-8 food, 10 shields and 7-12 commerce).

Out of our current 30 or so shields approximately half are put into military units. We get on average 1 new sword / horse every 2 turns.

As our trade is weak I have been running the empire on min science. Since Feudalism costs so much (1000 I think) even at 100% science it would still take over 50 turns to research by hand (at current rates).

Military
Our military currently consists of 9 swords, 1 horse, 4 archers and 2 impi which is quite reasonable (we are strong to everyone). However, it is also, unfortunately currently a little bit spread out as I have been fighting barbs (I lost 3 units to barbs which was annoying - 2 to bad RNG luck).

The road across the Isthmus has reached the outskirts of the Chinese Empire and the majority of the units are now making their way towards or along this road.

If we can bring it together, our current military is enough of a stack of death to take early towns (and even capitals). Unfortunately the towns we can currently get to will either autoraze or will add little value to our empire.

There is also, according to our military advisor, a barb camp to the South of Isandlwana, I propose we deal with this using the horse impi combination. The swords should, from now on, be focused on our enemies.

Tech
As mentioned above, the current research goal is Feudalism. This is a key tech for us as we will receive a dramatic increase in productivity when we change government.

Unfortunately, the productive power of our empire is no where near good enough to research this ourselves. Our best hope is that one of the AI gets it. Unfortunately, the AI are in a similar position to ourselves in terms of development so are also unlikely to research it in the near future.

We do have one hope though. The Ottomans are a scientific civ and have not yet reached the middle ages (n.b. the other two scientific civs - Korea and Russia both drew Engineering). If we bring the Ottomans forward we may be able to buy Feudalism from them. B

By the end of the current turn, we should have 26 citizens and 9 towns. Therefore, using the two gems, we ought to be able to muster 67 gpt. We are able to buy Engineering from Korea using a combination of our GPT and our gold. With Engineering, our GPT and gold I am sure we could buy Feudalism from the Ottomans were they to draw it.

I am currently moving units in place to start wars with allies of Korea and the Ottomans. Once these units are in place I suggest we gift the Ottomans forward buy the techs for GPT and then DOW their allies to cancel the payments.

Exploration
Nothing significant to report. We have our first galley who is to move North to Egypt and then suicide West into the sea in hope of finding the other continent.

Geopolitics
Whilst it is difficult to tell when we only have a few embassies it does appear that the two alliances are at war with each other again. My scout near Egypt sees a regular wave or swords ambling towards Korea.

 

[Wardancer]

The next steps

1) Feudalism gambit
The scout must move to a position where it can move and pillage and Egyptian improvement in one turn.

The SOD must move to where it can hit China.

We convert everyone of our citizens in tax men (other than 2 in the capital which work the gems). We also set our tax rate to 100%

We buy Engineering from Korea for gpt.

We DOW China and attack them so that Korea are forced to DOW us. This removes the sizable gpt debt.

We gift Otto into the MA and hope he draws Feudalism. If he draws Feudalism we buy it from him for GPT, Engineering and cash (if necessary).

We dow Egypt and pillage one of their improvements. Now Otto is forced to DOW us and again this removes the sizable GPT debt.

We put our empire back to the way it was and call a revolt.

2) Military attack

I think a good first target is India. They are weak and their capital is building the Pyramids - which under Feudalism is just an unbelievably powerful wonder.

Our attack should focus on Delhi. However, there are a couple of size two towns on the way which we should also attack. We shouldn't waste our time attacking size one towns with no cultural expansion as these will autoraze.

We shouldn't begin our attack until our SOD is reasonably well put together. We should however, make sure that the road building gang keep pushing forward so that the road continues to build at the rate of one square every 2 turns. We should also consider adding an extra stack of 3 workers to increase the speed of the gang to one tile every turn.

3) Empire management
We need to drastically improve our micro in the core. I don't really think there is anything drastic that we are doing wrong. However, we do need to be a little bit more careful and think ahead a little bit more.

Firstly, we need to make sure that the settler factory runs correctly every turn. You can see comparing the number of towns we have to the number that we should have per PaperBeetle's spreadsheet that we were two short at 1000BC. One of these was due to the barbarian incident - that was unlucky and couldn't really be helped. One however, was simply due to us not getting the micro right in the capital!

Secondly, we need to be much better and looking ahead at when towns will grow and making sure we have a plan in place so that the town will beable work an improved tile with this extra pop (rather than say - use this extra pop as an entertainer).

Finally, we need to learn how to prioritise a bit better. I'm talking about basics here. Lets not mine mountains for an extra shield when we have a nearby town working a grassland that hasn't been mined. Similarly lets not grow our RCP_7 towns up to size four when we have a RCP_3 towns surrounded by irrigable plains stuck at size 3.

This stuff may sound unimportant but if we crack it then it becomes the difference between a superfast dom and an industrial age slog. A few extra shields per turn gained over the first hundred or so turns is the difference between having a large stack of horses to get the jump on your unprepared enemy and not having them.....

Anyway, enough drivel from me for now.

Overall, I think we're actually in a pretty good position. Over to TaxPayer.

 

[Wardancer]

A couple more points
I had it in mind that both Hlobane and Isandlwana would whip out granaries and make use of their food bonuses to supply us with workers.

PaperBeetle had an alternative idea for Hlobane where it would use its food bonus to work both gems (under Feudalism) and we would get the town a marketplace that would use a combination of the gems and the coast to be a powerful commerce producing town.

The idea has a lot of merit. We are going to need to get cash from somewhere for disconnect:reconnect. However, workers are going to help us a lot more in the short run as we have a lot of improving to do and a transcontinental highway. I always prefer worker farms for military games.

I'd also like to see the next town settled North (on the desert next to the forest so that we open up a few more tiles for Ulundi. This is potentially quite reasonable town and we aren't getting enough out of it at the moment.