PaperBeetle
Emperor
So here are the interesting things that happened to me and by me:
- I changed the city governor to emphasise food everywhere apart from our peninsula.
- We still have the 9-worker gang on our iron source. I usually run this hooked over the interturn and disconnect then reconnect during the main turn. Any city which is currently set to build musket is one I would change to do a horse.
- One city is set to do explorer. I was thinking to build impi there, just to burn up a citizen, before starting a settler; the town gets better dom tile coverage by moving 1 tile south. Remember that if a town finishes reaches 30 shields on a settler and has no food surplus it gets the option to disband into a settler even if it is only size 1.
- We have a six-slave gang doing disconnect/reconnect on our saltpeter. In fact, our saltpeter is underneath Delhi, which we can't disband because it houses the Gardens. So we are unhooking the only road into town instead - again, it is best hooked during the interturn and unhooked during the main turn, not least becasue that way Delhi gets to enjoy our luxury resources, without which it would riot. At the moment we don't actually build anything
that uses saltpeter of course, but when we get Mil Trad, this will be the most important tile in our empire.
- At the start of the turnset, there was a Russian mace about to take Ngome from a horse. Rather than try to defend it, I gave it to India and bought them in against Russia. When an AI founds its capital it gets a load of free units. This is true even if it is refounding after a narrow escape from conquest, so I hoped that India (at the time a boat people) would get those units if I gave them a town to be their capital. Well, this turns out not be the case; the town fell to the single Russian mace.
- I attacked Russia mainly with the three armies that Bucephalus used to plough through the Ottomans. Without a saltpeter of their own, they didn't put up much of a fight. I got a leader in this campaign. Wardancer convinced me not to build Pentagon, so there is an empty army standing in Medina. Don't put anything into it until we get cavalries. Even then, just put one cav in so it gets to move quickly, and only fill it once it reaches Beta.
- There were three AI landing parties in our Oriental provinces; knight stacks from England and France, which kept me frantically rushing units around, and one very ineffectual longbow from America. Even with the ability to quickly rush units anywhere in our empire, we will have to leave some counterattackers stationed around Alpha - once the AI starts picking off towns, they can spread quickly through our tight town placement. They rushed spears very quickly too. It seemed like more than one per turn, although I suppose it is just that trick of the turn order that always seems to give the AI the edge on rushing defenders. Oh and they never autorazed any of our towns, even though a couple of their captures were pop:1 culture:0.
- Expelling the French invaders brought us war with the other Europeans. Otto had a 100g treasury which I forgot to buy from him before triggering the war. Doh.
Of course we had been at war with France for a long time, so I was relying on Joan to talk peace to save us from the berserks. She came to the table in 720ad (about 8 turns of war?) and wanted serious payment for peace. Our world map was of course very valuable, so I used that to buy her off. Since then I have happily traded w map for chump change with everybody. We are also selling luxuries to Joan for gpt.
- War with Egypt was a more painful affair than war with Russia, as they had cities on hills, and saltpeter coming out of their ears. I wanted to use ROP rape, but had rashly killed off their last pact buddy. So I gave Cleo peace and ROP (and got Navi too - Cleo charged us gpt at a fair rate!), and tied the deal to war with Korea, who we could kill at any time, to trigger the war without trashing our ROP rep.
- Ragnar spoiled this party by berserking the Koreans. He now has a town on Beta.
Luckily he is after Cleo in the turn order, so our units in Egyptian territory did not get attacked. Despite not being ready for the ROP rape, I pressed the attack and reduced Egypt to a single town with about 10 zulu knights sat outside. They also have a galley off our southwest coast. We have two caravels in striking range (one whipped at some expense during the interturn) with two more that can reach the turn after.
- And so to our current state. We are at war with India, England and America. Abe will talk peace, but there seems no immediate need to give it to him. We have two civs at our mercy; units are ready to finish off Egypt, and the last Indian is moored off Russian coast. We have two cannon nearby who redlined it, and a caravel further out to sea, fog-busting while we wait for the right moment to finish off Gandhi.
I strongly recommend that we finish off Cleo immediately, even if we can't get an interesting deal in the process. Egyptian towns have a high flip risk, and we are getting moderate war weariness from this conflict. Otto and Ragnar don't have Navigation, so perhaps we could use Cleo's death to sell Navi and luxuries to those guys at full price. Our empire maxes out at around 500gpt. Of course, with about 100 towns, switching everyone to tax is an extremely laborious process!
Then we leave Gandhi alive for the last great per-turn scam; war with India + gpt in exchange for Mil Trad. Helpfully, he doesn't seem inclined to shift that galley. Almost makes me wonder if that isn't the ship with the settler... but even if it isn't, we can still write off our debt by using an MPP trigger.
- I changed the city governor to emphasise food everywhere apart from our peninsula.
- We still have the 9-worker gang on our iron source. I usually run this hooked over the interturn and disconnect then reconnect during the main turn. Any city which is currently set to build musket is one I would change to do a horse.
- One city is set to do explorer. I was thinking to build impi there, just to burn up a citizen, before starting a settler; the town gets better dom tile coverage by moving 1 tile south. Remember that if a town finishes reaches 30 shields on a settler and has no food surplus it gets the option to disband into a settler even if it is only size 1.
- We have a six-slave gang doing disconnect/reconnect on our saltpeter. In fact, our saltpeter is underneath Delhi, which we can't disband because it houses the Gardens. So we are unhooking the only road into town instead - again, it is best hooked during the interturn and unhooked during the main turn, not least becasue that way Delhi gets to enjoy our luxury resources, without which it would riot. At the moment we don't actually build anything
that uses saltpeter of course, but when we get Mil Trad, this will be the most important tile in our empire.
- At the start of the turnset, there was a Russian mace about to take Ngome from a horse. Rather than try to defend it, I gave it to India and bought them in against Russia. When an AI founds its capital it gets a load of free units. This is true even if it is refounding after a narrow escape from conquest, so I hoped that India (at the time a boat people) would get those units if I gave them a town to be their capital. Well, this turns out not be the case; the town fell to the single Russian mace.
- I attacked Russia mainly with the three armies that Bucephalus used to plough through the Ottomans. Without a saltpeter of their own, they didn't put up much of a fight. I got a leader in this campaign. Wardancer convinced me not to build Pentagon, so there is an empty army standing in Medina. Don't put anything into it until we get cavalries. Even then, just put one cav in so it gets to move quickly, and only fill it once it reaches Beta.
- There were three AI landing parties in our Oriental provinces; knight stacks from England and France, which kept me frantically rushing units around, and one very ineffectual longbow from America. Even with the ability to quickly rush units anywhere in our empire, we will have to leave some counterattackers stationed around Alpha - once the AI starts picking off towns, they can spread quickly through our tight town placement. They rushed spears very quickly too. It seemed like more than one per turn, although I suppose it is just that trick of the turn order that always seems to give the AI the edge on rushing defenders. Oh and they never autorazed any of our towns, even though a couple of their captures were pop:1 culture:0.
- Expelling the French invaders brought us war with the other Europeans. Otto had a 100g treasury which I forgot to buy from him before triggering the war. Doh.
Of course we had been at war with France for a long time, so I was relying on Joan to talk peace to save us from the berserks. She came to the table in 720ad (about 8 turns of war?) and wanted serious payment for peace. Our world map was of course very valuable, so I used that to buy her off. Since then I have happily traded w map for chump change with everybody. We are also selling luxuries to Joan for gpt.
- War with Egypt was a more painful affair than war with Russia, as they had cities on hills, and saltpeter coming out of their ears. I wanted to use ROP rape, but had rashly killed off their last pact buddy. So I gave Cleo peace and ROP (and got Navi too - Cleo charged us gpt at a fair rate!), and tied the deal to war with Korea, who we could kill at any time, to trigger the war without trashing our ROP rep.
- Ragnar spoiled this party by berserking the Koreans. He now has a town on Beta.
Luckily he is after Cleo in the turn order, so our units in Egyptian territory did not get attacked. Despite not being ready for the ROP rape, I pressed the attack and reduced Egypt to a single town with about 10 zulu knights sat outside. They also have a galley off our southwest coast. We have two caravels in striking range (one whipped at some expense during the interturn) with two more that can reach the turn after.
- And so to our current state. We are at war with India, England and America. Abe will talk peace, but there seems no immediate need to give it to him. We have two civs at our mercy; units are ready to finish off Egypt, and the last Indian is moored off Russian coast. We have two cannon nearby who redlined it, and a caravel further out to sea, fog-busting while we wait for the right moment to finish off Gandhi.
I strongly recommend that we finish off Cleo immediately, even if we can't get an interesting deal in the process. Egyptian towns have a high flip risk, and we are getting moderate war weariness from this conflict. Otto and Ragnar don't have Navigation, so perhaps we could use Cleo's death to sell Navi and luxuries to those guys at full price. Our empire maxes out at around 500gpt. Of course, with about 100 towns, switching everyone to tax is an extremely laborious process!
Then we leave Gandhi alive for the last great per-turn scam; war with India + gpt in exchange for Mil Trad. Helpfully, he doesn't seem inclined to shift that galley. Almost makes me wonder if that isn't the ship with the settler... but even if it isn't, we can still write off our debt by using an MPP trigger.
Let's try not to fight them.
However, that would entail breaking a resource trade with Joan to use her as a trigger.
