SGOTM 12 - Team Zoe

[Bucephalus]

Once we get enough I think we should shrink the military and go all out on research. It's obvious AI research will not be very fast. After we have enough cities, should we consider giving cities to an AI so one can help us research faster?

I knew this game would be a lot of fun but I never expected to see you become a hippy! Worth the entrance money on it's own!

Edit:

Seriously though, doesn't that leave an unwealdy number of civs to manage when it's time to vote?

 

[Whomp]

Good discussion. The dromons are pretty effective against this age units with 2 bombard. I had one spear that our dromons knocked off two hps.

The next two turns will be huge to watch because the whole Aztec stack is in the city (Teoblahblah). Let's hope the Aztecs throw all their horses at them but control the tile in front of the city (another unroaded tile). I did see some jags attack and they best they were able to come up with was a retreat.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

A size 6 city jumping to 7 will cost us 9gpt, so it will take a few more sizes to make it profitable, especially if we increase this to 10 gpt with an aqua.

I haven't played yet because the discussion was still progressing but I think I'm ready to go with a side dish of cereals right now.

 

[zerksees]

I knew this game would be a lot of fun but I never expected to see you become a hippy! Worth the entrance money on it's own!

It's not my fault that winning usually requires a good bit of war mongering - is it? I have tried to be peaceful in the past.

Seriously though, doesn't that leave an unwealdy number of civs to manage when it's time to vote?

The AI will ruthlessly backstab each other, plus I'm sure a few of them will fall to other AI. If there are 17 civs left we'll only need 9. 9 military alliances won't cost that much in the late game if we need them. (I'd even guess that if our rep is good no special effort would be needed to win if we build the UN.)

I just think that once we get our base of cities established techs will be number 1 priority to get a fast finish. berzerksees might just have to go into the closet for part of this game.

Edit: We are taking the Aztec capital first - right?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Pre-Turn: Move in, bombards go 1/3: ivory disconnected.
Aztecs go 5-3-1 on the offensive - that I see.
Japs are 1-4 trying to bus Teo, but they are still in possession of the ground tiles on the Aztec side of the border.
I might have missed a fight or two pulling up my notepad window.

T1.
1st AC goes 3/5 killing vSpear, second goes 2/5.
archer/spear pair comes back from the front, bomb it with dromons before going back for the next shipment: 1 hp off.
3rd AC goes 2/5 and tadaaaa

SS ThERat and HMS Zerksees are abandoned after scouting 2 more tiles, the USS Smart is left hanging in the ocean.

Everyone ships out, 10% lux, +14gpt.
The swords go 2/4 and 4/4 killing the spear/archer pair.
I save there and submit so that we can look like we did it almost close to when Klarius did it. Hopefully we can intimidate the other teams by being nearly-but-not-quite klarius

IT
Missed the fights

T2.
Spend our flip free turn healing the AC's, one sword has HP knocked off still so he will stand guard later on for the resisters


T3.
0% flip risk in Teno so I send everyone away but the one guy that needs healing still. He will stay there for a while, just in case.
Bombard and knock their "sentry" spear to 1HP (the one that is fortified on the hill before Teo)
4 AC 3 swords 2 cats marching on.

The japs are still holding one of the 2 tiles of the aztec southern border. They are breaking down though.

IT
Japs busy struggling for the border, they don't attack. This is our chance.
Aztec send a horse to reinforce the sentry.

T4.
Move in for the sentries, one of the AC's loses 1 HP. Stack moving in.


IT
Japs lost the border but ended up getting back in - with 2 units only.

T5.
AC+sword produced, fill in transports. Catapults just reached the siege zone, attack due next turn. 2 elite spears and at least one vet in there. Fortunately it is not a hill.


IT

Azzies send BOTH their elite spears to attack the aztecs. This is gooooooooooood

T6.
After not sinking in the ocean for centuries, the USS Smart is decommissioned.
Dromons knock 2 HP off the first vet spear in Teo. Looks like there's going to be a lot of people in there.
AC goes 4/5 attacking vSpear. Both catapults kick a HP, but the one on top is still 4/4 vet and I know the elite spear from earlier is still in there at 4/5.
I decide to halt the attack and wait for everything to be there: many are still on their unloading turn.

IT
Japs and Azs sign peace
Horse and archer attack us, we get one win one retreat.

T7.
2 AC and 1 sword wins, but I get scared right there ebcause there are yet more unharmed vet spears. Crowd sent to heal in dromons...


IT
Only one attack on us, eArcher makes our AC elite at 6/6.

T8.
Unload more and more troops, next turn will be Waterloo or Normandy.
Resume making dromons.

IT
From what I gather, aztecs have 2 spears 2 archers outside the city. This is the time.

T9.
Artillery pretty much blew, 3 cats 3 dromons get 2 HP's off.
eAC retreat, then 5 AC victories. Swords go 3-1 and

So this is it, we are at QSC with 3 towns, 3 workers / 2 slaves, library in Teno is 1 turn from completion (picture was taken before post-war micro). Military tally X-1, where X is whatever the Aztecs had

France still has a nasty monopoly on currency. We can do ivory for spices with india but they are broke so it is the straight-up deal or nothing.

Here's the save.

Morale: making the AC's attack, slowly but surely, does pay off. I've been slower than I could have, but we only lost one sword - swords are prone to die when send to battle, not AC's.

 

[Tubby Rower]

lurker's comment:

The Zoo is wasting food

That's hilarious. Almost as much as Hinduism spreading to Uranus.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Edit: We are taking the Aztec capital first - right?

Thanks for keeping the faith

Now the question is: when do we ram into Japan? My take on this matter is that they are weaker now than they have ever been, let alone 2 turns ago.
Heal and sound the charge.
If we go after japan now, we might as well scratch the dromon and make a swordsman unit, followed by catapults. We really always could use more catapults.

Roster:
Beorn -- 2 cities down
ThERat-- 2 cities to go
Smart -- On Deck
Zerksees--
Bucephalus --
Whomp--
Sanabas -- Give us a wavey when you can be re-inserted

 

[Whomp]

Awesome, awesome, awesome!!! Nice work B!!

Agreed with ThERat at the helm I'm sure ramming into the Japanese is what he'd like to do. They have no fast units nor iron so they should be easy to handle.
Once Osaka is taken the dromons can use the canal to bombard Kyoto.
What should we do with science? Can we crank it up and deficit research buy selling techs to the big cash holders so we get to the MAs?
How soon can we join the native workers?

btw our territory chart is on par and our culture is running strong. It makes me wonder if Ivan and Klarius went with another wonder.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

The international gold pool is very very poor, so deficit research is not an option we really can consider right now. About the native workers, I'd ship them to improve Teotihuacan before joining them in. There's hills to road (at least) and mine (preferably) out there and only 2 slaves to do it.

Btw Teo already provides a canal to go bombard onm the other side of the aztec mass. Also, with everything mined, we can reach 28 spt, 41 in golden age. That leaves us no room to spare when it comes to 2 turn cavalries, but for 3 turn knights outside GA it's 4 shields loose, and for 2 turn knights in GA it's 1 tile to spare for extra gold.

 

[zerksees]

Excellent work. My vote is Japan is next - as soon as possible.

I'd like to take our war machine on the road (er... sea) my next turnset if that is possible.

Let's not leave our new city wide open - whould probably have at least one or two MP, and could we please rename them to easier names?

 

[eldar]

lurker's comment: Nice going, Mr Bear

 

[Whomp]

It would seem the Indians without WE's would be logical and luxs with a harbor in intact. Romans with legions may not be the best choice. Is there any benefit to one of the big islands or is focusing on the small ones better because the AI struggles at naval assaults?
Are we still at war with Portugal?

We should keep this up to date.

Spoiler :

Other distances to civs include:
Aztecs bahbye/Romans 2 turns
India clear trading route 3 turns
Japanese/Mayans 3 turns
Incans 4 turns
Ottomans 6
Portugese 7
Egyptians 9
Persians 10
Korea/Russia/England/Sumeria 11
Russians/Hittities/Spain/Iroquois/Dutch 13
Mongols/Babylonians 14
France/Scandanavia 15
Arabs/Zulus 16
America/China ??
Greeks (Great Wall) and Carths to meet.

 

[Tubby Rower]

lurker's comment: do you have to kill them all or can you win by another method?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Killing them all does not achieve a diplomatic victory. There needs to be at least 3 alive, but the real goal here is to get a scientific machine up. Once we have a few islands, a FP in india and libraries everywhere, we can go peaceful.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I had the save opened and I tinkered around before closing it, so I noticed we can share the grass cattle with Teo. This makes a very powerful tile for little Teo to grow and it makes no difference in the Zoo at present.

 

[gmaharriet]

Some nice warring there, Beorn!!!

 

[sanabas]

Looking good, and agree we need to roll into Japan immediately.

If you want some pointless crystal ball gazing from the graphs, how's this: X-Nuts were the only team to found in place, rather than move 1 SE. Ivan, Klarius and ourselves have the SoZ, X-Nuts do not. Klarius has taken 2 Japanese cities, rather than Aztec cities. (due to the 2 extra territory they have).

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Makes a whole lot of sense, and it also means klarius will have a tougher time taking out the aztecs than we the japs now.

More from the graphs: team Regular posts a turnset less often than every other page. That's a lot of spam, you could believe they are from CDZ. And about the SoZ, regular, spooks, tao and Smurkz would reasonably not have it yet - some of these guys barely had their culture expansion so far.

 

[ThERat]

got it...since chinese new year holidays are over, this one is for tonight.

Some thoughts, you can all chip in before it's too late:

Wars:
Japan immediately and fast, hope that should be doable within my timeframe.
Next victim should be on the Indian continent. There are 4 Civs there IIRC. India, Maya, Inca and Ottoman. I would like to keep the sci Civs in the game as long as possible, so we could actually go after one of the others signing in the rest. I would decalre immediately once Japan is out, so that the rest use up their extra forces and then we step in. (and if we want to fight India, we better stick to no trades for now)

I do not like phony wars too much, might screw up our rep. Shall we go for peace with Portugal? What do we do, if others demand a tech?

Techs:
As predicted, the tech pace is abysmal. Worse, some of them might go after monarchy and republic as well. I would crank up science and try and get us into the MA. I would gift every sci Civ into the MA and get us all first tiers. What do we research after that? Invention or theology? It seems only France could provide some help here....

 

[Ansar]

lurker's comment: I would say go after India or Inca. Their UU's are not present/useful at this point so why not go after the weak?