SGOTM 13 - TNT thread

[dima42]

I looked at this some.

My feelings are as follows:

Tech: trade with Joao for guilds, research gunpowder, build musketeers. Pop probably replaceable parts, since we won't be in time for rifling. Some chance we'll need to pop chemistry and go that route. Turn off tech after rifling. I read through your suggestions to stop teching now, and I just don't see us winning with maces/trebs; we will need to take out a piece of either Willem or Joao and both have large armies.

Switch productions to spies and galleons on original cities after this round of units is done, then build musketeers there. Continue building primarily maces/trebs in viking/spanish lands.

Maces/trebs finish mainland spain, and make sue for peace with spain. They then proceed to go through dutch lands (not declaring on Willem) to capture Moscow. We then take out the rest of Russia.

Great general #2 leads whipped spy/musketeer army on Victoria. The army that destroyed Russia meets up with them, they all get upgraded to rifles, and we take out mainland portugal.

I plan on drafting and whipping like no tomorrow. I will be running free religion to please Willem. This lets us not worry about Willem running away in Tech, I think. I'm a little bit worried that taking out Joao will be difficult (he may well get grenadiers towards the end), but we should be able to draft/whip a metric ton of units by then. Of course if I can get Willem attacking Joao I will do that.

With mainland England, Portugal, and a bit of the Dutch-Russian continent, we should have enough land to win with simultaneous settlers in polar regions.

I'm guessing I'll play through about one third of the above.

Thoughts?

 

[fizbankovi]

now that i played a bit i have a better feeiling of the actual status, i think we should just stop the tech after lib or not even lib. And already start whipping towns down to pop 3-4. We should be able to produce more and more units, and trebs+maces can defete granadeers no problem when we have 10x the unit count. The AI simply doesnt have eneough units. There is a snowball effect on conquering the and empreror leaves the AI-s so weak.
my 2 cents.
btw. spies are not realy needed...
lib to chemisty would be nice to protect our galleons, and to bombard with ships. Maybie speeds up things.
(Turn 1 go to city, unload next to it, and bombard to 0 with ships, turn 2 suicide with trebs, and take with maces, leave musket to garison, turn 3 reload ships, and travel 8 squers to any other city to destroy next)
fastest posssible win in my oppinion.
We should have 2 striking forces with 4-5 galleons of troops anf 4-5 frigates.

 

[2metraninja]

I dont feel we need spies. About the actual way of dominating the whole world, I am not sure, but I think we are good even without rifles. I think that if we were going for rifles, we should have chosen this path long ago, be first to rifles and just then start conquering the world. Now we are halfway to domination started with axes and changing the general direction will cost us some more time I think. On the other hand, what we are going to do with our GNP if we just halt zero % science? OK- upgrades, but this is to some time, then? So we can continue teching if we are not going to slave to 3-4 pop cities, where we will need all our money to avoid strike.

Fiz is right that maces + trebs win against grenadiers. I have seen once how galleons loaded with samurais killed one of the best civ multiplayer player in the world (about 10-th position on the League Ladder) who had rifles by this time. They just smashed them with a mass.

I will load the save to take a look again - maybe the things have changed more from the time I conquered the Vikings.

 

[Keath]

I am not a warmonger expert but having a fleet of frigates would be highly effective, I think. Most cities we have to capture are on the water and frigates can bombard cities and protect our troops in galleons. We'd also control the seas.

Good discussion, guys.

At this point, all efforts should go for a fast domination with no frills.

 

[dima42]

Thanks for the input. Time to think some more and then play =).

 

[dima42]

Okay, this is an interesting spot. I really don't know whether whipping down immediately is correct. My primary concern is that we only have 16.5% of land area! In addition, Joao and Willem are both relatively strong and advanced.

Given the relative uncertainty about both teching and whipping, I felt like it was wisest to postpone the trigger on either deciding a tech path or massive whipping until a bit more of the game had passed.

I built pretty much solely granaries (everywhere), courthouses (almost everywhere) and military units (if you count spies, which I did build ~3 of because it saves a turn or more of bombarding with land units; I wasn't planning on setting up frigates for a while).

On turn 4, I decided that there was no use for the money in upgrades and/or extensive spying, and started researching liberalism at full speed. Unfortunately I was only able to grab gunpowder out of liberalism, since otherwise Willem would beat me to it.

Spanish were done on about turn 18. On turn 21, I declared on Catherine, and on turn 24, on Victoria.

I uploaded on turn 32, having taken London and Moscow, as well as the bulk of both the Russian and English army.

I think the thing to do here is to trade tech for nationalism, draft musketeers, whip galleons/frigates, and attack Willem . But I've been known to be wrong.

There should be no more reason to hold back; in fact, I'm regretting being a bit too conservative. Our economy is doing great thanks to GLH, and we will be way over the population limit.

I think this is winnable in about 40 turns from here.

 

[2metraninja]

Wow! Good set - taking two capitols is achievement to be acknowledged.

Dont take it for evil criticism - it was more like brainstorming with two people proposing other course of action

I am amazed it is only 16% we own! I might be wrong, but last time I played I saw something like 33% for us... or it was the population limit???

If it is the case - 16%, then we need a lot of settlers to settle (yes, I know I started to sound like Cato The Eldest and his Carthago delenda est, but if we are conquered almost 4 nations and yet we have only 16%, then it is absolutely needed)

 

[2metraninja]

Or maybe it will be easier we to go for Conquest after all?

 

[fizbankovi]

building some baracks would be benificial...

 

[2metraninja]

building some baracks would be benificial...

Yes, as this axe-rush turned into medieval chain-war. But only if we dont intend to mainly draft.

 

[justjohn]

Nice, very impressive dima!

I think this is winnable in about 40 turns from here.

I only had a quick look at the save, thus I cannot assess this properly, but if it indeed is winnable in 40 turns, then we should of course go for it. Apart from taking out England and Russia, what plan did you have in mind to reach this goal?

Btw, I noticed we can get Wine from Joao. I see no reason not the trade Wheat for it, even if we plan to attack him later.

-jj-

 

[dima42]

Well, my plan would be "I think the thing to do here is to trade tech for nationalism, draft musketeers, whip galleons/frigates, and attack Willem." Willem rather than Joao mostly because he is closer and because of the land to troops ratio. This will be a bloody fight but we should have him at about 2:1, and we should have the remainder of the English (and whatever is left of Russian, unfortunately probably won't be much) army to support the new invasion.

We had 16.5% at the beginning of my turnset, not at the end. I think we're somewhere in mid-20's.

I think barracks are useless at this point; the limitation on the game is how long it takes to get our units to places where they can conquer things . We're not losing troops. It's true that barracks let us draft a little more easily, but I really think that we don't care about happiness at this point.

I think domination is faster, but we don't need to decide now. Basically, we can afford the cities we keep, so we might as well keep them. The only difference would be settler production, but I don't think this will detract from our military.

To be very clear, the next turnset should in my opinion be very different from mine. I played conservatively, only whipping about 5 units per turn! Whoever is next should probably be
1)drafting every turn
2)whipping every other turn (so build for one turn, then whip)

Starting in about 20 turns, you should send out 3-settler galleons on paths to unclaimed land. (So have the settlers/galleons whipped and ready to go by then).

 

[dima42]

by the way, no more need for courthouses, and in about 15 turns, no more need for granaries. So just military at this point.

 

[Keath]

Very nice, dima! Great work getting the GLH! And 2 capitols. Great stuff!!

Who would be best to trade for Nationalism?

@the Dude - you are up next and it looks like some warring, some trading, drafting and setting up for the next assault:

To be very clear, the next turnset should in my opinion be very different from mine. I played conservatively, only whipping about 5 units per turn! Whoever is next should probably be
1)drafting every turn
2)whipping every other turn (so build for one turn, then whip)

*** Roster:


The Dude Esq (up)
justjohn (on deck)
enKage
keath
2metraninja
fizbankovi
dima42 (just played)

Can we assume that the dwarves have finished? If so, we should be close to the same finish date, perhaps a turn ahead?

 

[dima42]

What I really want to know is if/how the ducks pulled out a 325AD win. I have some ideas about winning this by 1200AD-ish (I'll expound on things I feel like we could have done better later), but it would be complete magic to me for someone to pull out a pre-500AD win .

 

[Keath]

What I really want to know is if/how the ducks pulled out a 325AD win. I have some ideas about winning this by 1200AD-ish (I'll expound on things I feel like we could have done better later), but it would be complete magic to me for someone to pull out a pre-500AD win .

First, how do you know they've finished?

These guys are good, no doubt. First thing I noticed and you commented on was they chose to settle north of us gaining the crab tile for a big advantage, methinks. Unfortunately, we didn't decide which direction our warrior should go on turn 2. My bad. It was a 50/50 call, I guess. Even so, I don't know if we'd have chosen that location, especially after we spent a lot of time discussing plains hill/SIP/corn. The first few moves often separate the winners from the also-rans.

I agree we should analyze our play once we have finished the game. It would be very instructive and I look forward to everyone's input. We're learning and I'm learning a lot but still have many questions.

 

[justjohn]

To be very clear, the next turnset should in my opinion be very different from mine. I played conservatively, only whipping about 5 units per turn! Whoever is next should probably be
1)drafting every turn
2)whipping every other turn (so build for one turn, then whip)

I also think Domination is faster, and then my only concern is that this might spend too much population. But maybe we get enough pop anyway.

-jj-

 

[Keath]

@the Dude - you are up next and it looks like some warring, some trading, drafting and setting up for the next assault:




*** Roster:


The Dude Esq (up)
justjohn (on deck)
enKage
keath
2metraninja
fizbankovi
dima42 (just played)

We last heard from The Dude on May 25. In order to keep up the pace, we'll give him 24 hours to post an 'I got it'.

 

[enKage]

*** Roster:


The Dude Esq (up)
justjohn (on deck)
enKage
keath
2metraninja
fizbankovi
dima42 (just played)

Can we assume that the dwarves have finished? If so, we should be close to the same finish date, perhaps a turn ahead?

Keath take my turn set please, I will not be able to play at least till next tuesday maybe more I can play my part after you or 2metra. (in case we don't win before :] ) thanx

 

[The Dude Esq]

Hi,

I'm back around.

Had a quick look at the save and posts. So it seems to mainly be a case of marching on, with constant whips, preparing for our next victim.

Certainly frigates would be good. And being able to draft a boon.

Haven't thought much beyond that. But time for bed now. Will have a proper look tomorrow.

btw: has the turnset only been around once since the last time I played? Or did I not respond for my last turn, sorry? It seems like the game has advance loads.