SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

Note: I wouldn't raze any cities any more. We'll deal with the maintenance somehow.

Ok. I razed Warwick, because I figured we could settle a much better city further south (where you're suggesting it now). The other city auto-razed.

I was also thinking that a Zulu mountain pass city would be great.

We could use border pops in the following current cities:
Ivory +3 tiles (not if we settle dyes)
Agra +8 (theater is 3t will do)
Lahore or Hyderabad +2 (need to whip theater on T+2)
Madurai +1 (need to whip theater by T+9 or so)
Birka +5 (needs a few artist turns at the end, after the current theater)
London +5 (needs theater on T+5, if we don't switch to Buddhism; otherwise also 10 artist turns and/or culture build at the end)
Hastings +1 (basically the same as London)
Coventry +1 (lots of culture building probably)

Some of those with only 1 tile are questionable, but I've had plenty of games where I come up just short at the end.

We also need two settlers for Agra-SW and NE England (4 and 5 tiles respectively). Mayeb these are not worth it, if we have enough in the hub.

 

[babybluepants]

Of course, we'll need many other settlers for only 10. I estimate about 15 total (including the four above).

15 settlers is nothing. I was expecting more. We can easily whip that up. Getting them into position may be tricky, with regard to barbs and travel distance. HA's are the best two move units currently available, btw.

Pop threshold is a bit tricky. Gandhi/Monte will count as a single team in this respect. We currently have 157/576, I think. Ragnar has 18, Liz 11, Shaka 57, that we see. There are two more cities we don't see. Mongolia has at least 42 + 5 cities we don't see. Assuming 30 minimum for those 7 cities, that adds up to something like 315/576, which is enough. We'll have another 15-20 from new cities, plus a bit of growth.

 

[babybluepants]

Note that Beshbalik and the rest of W/NW Mongolia are separated by a canal just south of that city. We can't land very easily from the bay near Old Sarai. Tabriz has quite a few troops, no idea about others. I'd hope to land Old Sarai, Sarmatian and Beshbalik quickly, but that may be a stretch. If we sail the galleons in western England towards Beshbalik around the continent, we can probably get a second mini-fleet going for Old Sarai on a similar schedule (T+5 or so). Haven't looked into it too closely, though.

 

[babybluepants]

Can we usefully switch EP to someone else, or do we just forget about it at this stage? Mansa/Shaka is the only other option, I guess.

 

[babybluepants]

Ok, I'm getting approximately 835/899 tiles from current cities, Mongolia, Zulu and a slightly revised dotmap in the hub. That requires 10 settlers, including your 100c cities, and assumes we can get all the Mongolian and Zulu tiles without extra settlers (tough chance, but that's only an extra 5-ish settlers). Leaves us 60 tiles short at least, so we will need to take some Mali cities. I guess our cut-off for getting cities out of revolt is only about 15-18t now. Mongolia and Zulu on that schedule seems doable. Depends on their units really...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Resistance

Pop  Resistance
 1     3
 2     3

 3     4
 4     4

 5     5
 6     5

 7     6
 8     6

 9     7
10     7

11     8
12     8

13     9
14     9

15    10

That's population before capture.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We should have no problem getting 10 in one turn, as long as we're in a GA, running castes, with the cultural slider at 100% (assuming we have the cash to do that...). Even an isolated tundra city can do this:

city center: 2h2c = 4
TRs: 2c = 2
Artist: = 4

 

[LowtherCastle]

We still need ~6t from the end of Zulu to Oz using 5-mvmt galleons, so that's also an issue. Basically we have 23t to do this:

1. Eliminate Ragnar, Liz, GK, Zulu.
2. Capture other needed cities (Mansa).
3. Settle ~15 cities.
4. Kill Oz.

We need to figure out what units we need for Oz.

 

[babybluepants]

Another thing I was thinking is that we could leave Ragnar's hub city and CF for a while. It might help with WW unhappy in the short term, if we need some turns to get units there.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I think about 15 CRIII maces and a CRII warlord is enough for Oz. I didn't do rigorous testing. If someone else wants to all the better. We could probalby get by with only 10 maces, but it would be risky.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Btw, absolutely NO! on Buddhism. It'll give us a serious unhappy hit in our bigger cities because we're warring against Ragnar then Zulu, both Buddhists.

 

[Mitchum]

OK. I'm back and caught up (sorry for my absence as explained in a PM). I really can't play turns due to continued time issues and and I'm just a little lost in the war planning and dot-mapping excercises. Maybe the best use of my time is testing at this point. Should I test LC's suggested number of units needed to take down the Wiz?

EDIT: Looking for bbp's test save...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Bbp, I guees maybe you and I should put together a collective PPP with the most important details. It's a bit intricate and there are parallel paths from here to the end. Each path has to work with the others.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Should I test LC's suggested number of units needed to take down the Wiz?

That would be great. You need to set it up on a map with random seed on reload. Oz has CG I, II , III and the first first-strike promotion.

I think we should use as our warlord a CRI/II/III CI/II/III amphibious maceman. BUt he wouldn't attack until the CRIII maces beat Oz down to above 90% or so odds.

How many maces do we need?

 

[LowtherCastle]

EDIT: Looking for bbp's test save...

Better would be Dhoom's test save which tested this already, because he has random seed on it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Here is one of Dhoom's posts that has a save. I didn't check the save, but hopefully it's got random seed.

 

[babybluepants]

Bbp, I guees maybe you and I should put together a collective PPP with the most important details. It's a bit intricate and there are parallel paths from here to the end. Each path has to work with the others.

Sounds good. We have 'till Saturday night my time, correct? That's a full 5 days for, hopefully, 25-30t. Maybe let's take today to bang out the full plan, leaving 4 days to play. If you could take a stab at a draft, while I'm at work, that would be great. You know the game better at this point.

 

[Mitchum]

Yup, it has random seed checked. I'll use that. Are we planning to use all new troops for this as our current ones will be busy taking down Ragnar, Liz, GK, Zulu? Or should I plan on some of the Oz troops to come from our current army?

 

[Mitchum]

Just ran a quick test and the 4th CRIII mace killed the wizard... Let me run 10 tests. Stand by.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Don't forget that the wizard has to be fortified for 5t. I'd just use CRI/II/III maces.

Plus you realize it has to be from sea, right? With Emerald City on a hill...