SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

Yeah, we should really get back into this now. Is everyone very busy?

 

[ZPV]

Yeah, we should really get back into this now. Is everyone very busy?

I'm between busy and very busy. Things will loosen up around Tuesday-Wednesday.
I've looked around a little - it looks like Ivory should work the silk instead of the plains hill for a couple of turns, to grow faster.
We need to decide on a timescale for our wars, or rather a wishlist of the units we want.
Ivory needs its infrastructure; pigs probably needs a barracks and maybe a stable; the rest probably don't.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm available but without Civ IV and my situation will probably be that way for a while to come. I'm happy to comment on screenshots, descriptions of the game, conceptual discussions, discussions involving past experience, etc, but am unable to load and look at either the real game or the test game.

Ivory needs its infrastructure; pigs probably needs a barracks and maybe a stable; the rest probably don't.

I could probably live with a simplistic approach like that one. Less Barracks for the initial rush generally means 1 extra attacking unit, which is generally a good tradeoff. Having a couple of units with a promotion available will be enough if we can hit pre-Longbowmen and if we can't then sheer numbers can still win us a City or two before we go back and build the missing Barracks plus possibly the odd additional Stable.


It helps to think of the early game... as a newbie, I always wanted to build a Barracks before any units were built, including Warriors. Now I almost never do so and my games are far better because of it.

Thus, we could keep things relatively simple rule to play by would be saying that Cities should build:
a) Granary
b) Lighthouse if they have at least 1 Seafood Resource
c) A building to expand the City's borders (Monument or Library)
d) Units

The exception cases would be Ivory (Barracks + Stable) and Pigs (Barracks plus a possible Stable).

If we go with a low-emphasis on Barracks, perhaps we can get the show back on the road.

The biggest decision will probably be "how many units of which type," out of War Elephants, Catapults, 1 Axeman (anti-Spear defence), and Galleys. City Defender units can always be shipped in during the second wave of troops, be they Archers or Spearmen or whatever.

I'm thinking 3 Galleys would be the minimum but perhaps we want to attack with 4 or 5 Galleys against Bombay? I'm not certain... thoughts?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

After the initial rush, we can consider building Moai Statues in our north-easternmost City, assuming that our initial warring went reasonably well enough for us to take a City off of unit production.

We can probably skip building a City in our north-west if we can capture Bombay and then make further headway against the AIs instead.

 

[ZPV]

I could probably live with a simplistic approach like that one. Less Barracks for the initial rush generally means 1 extra attacking unit, which is generally a good tradeoff. Having a couple of units with a promotion available will be enough if we can hit pre-Longbowmen and if we can't then sheer numbers can still win us a City or two before we go back and build the missing Barracks plus possibly the odd additional Stable.

My thought is, only a couple of cities will actually be building land units - with Heroic Epic coming soon - and then we need some building ships. Our new cities will mostly take the brunt of our research once the southern developed ones pop their GPs, and need no military infrastructure at all.

The biggest decision will probably be "how many units of which type," out of War Elephants, Catapults, 1 Axeman (anti-Spear defence), and Galleys. City Defender units can always be shipped in during the second wave of troops, be they Archers or Spearmen or whatever.

I'm thinking 3 Galleys would be the minimum but perhaps we want to attack with 4 or 5 Galleys against Bombay? I'm not certain... thoughts?

My instinct is 4 galleys with about 7 elephants and either a cat or an axe for the initial landing, with reinforcements coming via boat ASAP for the other cities.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Why so many War Elephants with only 1 Cat? Shouldn't we aim for at least 2 Cats for collateral damage plus a possible retreat chance? 1 defending Spearman could get messy if we go in with almost purely War Elephants and although an attacking Axeman of ours probably won't help, 1 defending one would be of use, even if only to hold the City without losing wounded War Elephants after capturing it.

I'd even say 3 Cats if we plan to Bombard the City first, which, if we're bringing reinforcements soon, is probably a worthwhile thing to do. I.e. 3 Cats bombard while 4 War Elephants and 1 Axeman defend our stack while waiting for at least 2 more Elephant/Axemen reinforcements before actually attacking, but using the few turns of Bombardment to get rid of the 60% Cultural Defences.

If you want to just hit the City after landing (hoping that there are, say, just 2 Archers and 1 Spearman or something), then 2 Cats, 5 War Elephants, and 1 Axe, with the Cats used purely for collateral damage?

 

[babybluepants]

Definitely a lot more than 1 cat.
What timeline are you guys proposing for this attack?
Why is there is stable in Pigs, but not in Washington? Seems to me like it should be the opposite, if anything.

 

[ZPV]

Why so many War Elephants with only 1 Cat? Shouldn't we aim for at least 2 Cats for collateral damage plus a possible retreat chance? 1 defending Spearman could get messy if we go in with almost purely War Elephants and although an attacking Axeman of ours probably won't help, 1 defending one would be of use, even if only to hold the City without losing wounded War Elephants after capturing it.

I'd even say 3 Cats if we plan to Bombard the City first, which, if we're bringing reinforcements soon, is probably a worthwhile thing to do. I.e. 3 Cats bombard while 4 War Elephants and 1 Axeman defend our stack while waiting for at least 2 more Elephant/Axemen reinforcements before actually attacking, but using the few turns of Bombardment to get rid of the 60% Cultural Defences.

If you want to just hit the City after landing (hoping that there are, say, just 2 Archers and 1 Spearman or something), then 2 Cats, 5 War Elephants, and 1 Axe, with the Cats used purely for collateral damage?

1 defending spearman won't get very messy - elephants do have twice as much power as them, so combat->shock negates rather a lot of defensive bonuses.
We want cats if there are lots of strong defenders, so that suiciding will damage several of them. I only even suggested the one cat, because it's a cheaper suicide unit if we need it, than an elephant - definitely this is hoping to catch Asoka pants-down without longbowmen, (if we can't, then we need a proper stack). There's no point in transporting and using three cats against 3 archers and a spear, when we could just attack with elephants and lose only 1-2 of them and not need to ferry over additional killer units.

Definitely a lot more than 1 cat.
What timeline are you guys proposing for this attack?
Why is there is stable in Pigs, but not in Washington? Seems to me like it should be the opposite, if anything.

Pigs, when it has mines, will be a good production city, and is a bit out of position for shipbuilding. Washington is busy building the Great Library, but if it has hammers to spare then fine.

What timeline? As soon as we can get the units - so Construction + time to get the heroic epic + build a few units for a quick early strike. Our southern coastal cities can build the ships if we can get the units there in time.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If an Archer and a Spearmen are defending, which defender will come up for a Combat I + Shock War Elephant?

Also, I wouldn't count on having all of our War Elephants being promoted.

Will we be whipping any more buildings or units, such as to help get out one of the final Galleys or final units to load on said Galley?

 

[ZPV]

If an Archer and a Spearmen are defending, which defender will come up for a Combat I + Shock War Elephant?

Also, I wouldn't count on having all of our War Elephants being promoted.

Will we be whipping any more buildings or units, such as to help get out one of the final Galleys or final units to load on said Galley?

The archer needs to be highly promoted, on a hill, more or less. If that happens, and we don't get good odds with a WE, then that's the time to suicide the cat (yes, uncovering the anti-mounted unit for our elephant to attack )

Whipping? Yes. Definitely for infrastructure where appropriate. Particularly to get galleys, and the last one or two units aboard our flotilla. Ivory city shouldn't be whipped, but we need one or probably two more workers before pig city can grow onto its hills.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, by the sounds of things, it wouldn't hurt to have 2 Cats and 1 Axe mixed in with our War Elephants, since you are hoping to only be facing 3 to 4 defenders... and if it is only 2 or 3 defenders then we could optionally Bombard or use collateral damage with 2 Cats.

If we'll be tight on units, we could even build a unit in a City before we build a Lighthouse.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

you're right bbp. I'm going to be out of town this weekend so I won't be able to really dig in until early next week.

"Early next week" has come and gone. Who would be up next? Mitchum, do you think that you have time to get this show back on the road?


I think that we already have a Great Person generation plan worked out, so it should just be a matter of ensuring that we pop Great People from our various Cities in the right order, then building up vertically (Workers plus Buildings) with some additional minor horizontal development (how many more Settlers are needed? Do we have one for Silver City yet? Maybe just one for Bridge City? Any others?) followed by pumping out a stack of units (4 Galley and 8 units to go in them, with the majority of said units being War Elephants and with at least me thinking that 3 of those units should be 1 Axeman and 2 Cats).

I think that we already have our tech path planned out, with Horseback Riding -> Construction being the next two techs to get, by majority vote.

I don't think that we figured out which AI team we'd want to try and please using Resource trading or gifting, so I guess that we'll just try and make some trades that won't hurt us (say, even trading away a 2-Health Resource like Corn or Wheat for a Cow if we don't need the extra 1 Health for at least 10 turns) but have the possibility of denying AI-AI trading from one AI team to another AI team.

We're probably not going to see many techs come up in trade.

No National Epic, Moai Statues will potentially come in a future turnset but not this one, and the Heroic Epic will probably have to wait until we start our first war, unless you are safely able to walk or land 2+ War Elephants in a stack next to the Barb City in the hopes that we'd get a bit of experience from defending (attacking is riskier and probably won't net us more Experience Points, but you can always check what the advanced combat odds display says for Experience Points gained to see if we could get 2 Experience Points from attacking).


Actually, that's probably worth testing--a defending Axeman on a Hills square that is fully fortified... will a 0-promo War Elephant get 2 Experience Points on attack? What about if the War Elephant takes the Combat I promo? How about also taking the Shock promo? What are our odds of success for whichever most-highly-promoted-as-possible option can give us 2 Experience Points? If no options can give us 2 Experience Points, what are our odds of success for a Combat I + Shock War Elephant attacking?

 

[Mitchum]

"Early next week" has come and gone. Who would be up next? Mitchum, do you think that you have time to get this show back on the road?

I can't play now, but I can provide comments. We have a birthday party for my youngest this weekend and my in-laws are coming into town today. I'll be away on business all next week and the week after.

I suggest that either ZPV (says he's busy but may losen up) or LC (hasn't posted for nearly a week) play... unless shyuhe or mdy step forward. Or, bbp can extend his turnset...

Regardless of who plays, I think we have to get the road on the show... or is that the show on the road?

 

[babybluepants]

I'd prefer someone else take over, but I guess I could play further if no one else can. Can't do a thing 'till Saturday morning, though.

@ZPV&Dhoom,

I meant to ask for an actual date of attack. We don't have that many turns between Construction and Astro, so I'm not sure when these galleys would set sail.

Are you guys proposing we don't even bother with the barb city? With iron available, that might be an option. Do we want to reinforce Panama against potential incoming barbs at some point?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I don't have access to the game, thus I'm not really even sure what date we're currently at. So, I'm totally clueless as to how long it will take to get an attack ready.

However, it sounds like we'll be willing to whip the last couple of War Elephants and Galleys, with possible Hammer overflow into an Axeman or Catapult or maybe not, all depending upon how many more base Hammers the City in question would need to finish off the second build item from base Hammers + whip overflow (preferably no more than 2 turns after the previous item was whipped, otherwise we probably whipped too soon).

Since I can't play with the game, I don't have a good feel for it, but I'm in agreement that we are short on Workers and building them sooner rather than later is good--possibly whipping them in a City with a Granary already built.

Going after the Barb City depends upon what we think we can get out of it... that's why I was suggesting someone run some brief testing of looking at the advanced combat odds of a War Elephant against a defending, fortified Barb Axeman on the Hills square of the Barb City... if we can possibly get 2 Experience Points from an attack, we'd almost certainly want to do so, since we only need 8 Experience Points in total, with 5 coming from a Barracks and a Stable.

If we can only get 1 Experience Point per Barb unit, it's still useful to do, but I'm not as convinced that it's something that we absolutely have to do ASAP. If there is a big lag time between having our final attack force ready and getting our first Barracks + Stable + War Elephant out, then fine, we can aim to try and win 3 Barb fights with said War Elephant, but we would definitely want to bring along a second unit (such as a Combat I + Medic I support War Elephant) to defend the Heroic-Epic-unlocker and to heal the Heroic-Epic-unlocker ASAP.

I'm not sure what the layout of the land around the Copper City looks like... perhaps we will want to raze it if we want to capture the Whale (I'm going from memory here) or perhaps we'll want to keep it, but either way I don't see a priority on capturing the City, but just see us possibly using it for getting an 8-Experience-Point unit.

The City itself is a bit far away and unless it is Size 5 or greater, it probably won't be a valuable contributor until later on... I'd rather capture a higher-pop City from an AI as a greater priority, especially given that a Barb City is only extra population for us, while capturing an AI City is extra population for us AND less population for an AI.


Once we start building units, reinforcing Canal City (did you name it Panama in the game?), we should be able to "react" to any Barb units that come without needing to assign it a major defensive unit, I would think.

The whole idea of a pre-Astro attack is to make the most out of the Hammers available to us just to get at least one AI capital in our hands, which would have the benefit of slowing their tech rate--of great use if we can hit them pre-Feudalism but of much less use if they already have Longbowmen. Still, if we have 2 Cats in our stack and the AI has Longbowmen, then having a stack sitting there and Bombarding for a few turns is a decent thing to have--it's not like the AI will have an "infinite stack" of Longbowmen--after a certain number of defenders have stacked up, they'll try to attack our stack anyway, which is what we want to see happen (especially if we have 1 Axeman mixed in with our War Elephants), meaning that we'll probably have to wait for more reinforcements beyond the inital 8 units before attacking anyway, but at least can do so immediately after our "second wave" of troops arrive, having bombarded the defences down to 0% by that point.

 

[babybluepants]

I got 8xp pretty easily capturing the barb city, with the loss of one cat (with stable, ofc).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Great! Now... how did you do it?

Did you use a Galley or Worker-built Roads to get the units there faster?

Was there a unit besides the Catapult to defend the stack after the War Elephant attacked? If not, we will probably want such a 3rd unit there, right?

Did it take you 3 battles or only 2 battles?

Were all battles on the attack or were some on the defence?

 

[ZPV]

Great! Now... how did you do it?

Did you use a Galley or Worker-built Roads to get the units there faster?

Was there a unit besides the Catapult to defend the stack after the War Elephant attacked? If not, we will probably want such a 3rd unit there, right?

Did it take you 3 battles or only 2 battles?

Were all battles on the attack or were some on the defence?

Winning a battle with not-overpowering odds gives you 3xp when you're the attacker. Fiddling promotions and (possible) cats to get the desired odds isn't too difficult. If there's a promotion spare before we attack, we can promote right to level 4 immediately after attacking.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Sounds reasonable, but we will still want a second unit (2nd War Elephant or an Axeman) to defend the attacker... getting 8 XP is fine but if the unit dies in between turns we still can't build the Heroic Epic (as far as I am aware).

Plus, if we lose due to the odds not being terribly in our favour, we'll probably want another unit or two nearby to get the kill on the wounded Barb unit. So, I still think that we should have 3 or more land units in said stack when we attack the Barb City, but getting 1 early Galley would almost certainly speed up the process.

The other question becomes... do we delay the Heroic Epic so that we can get the first rush out or do we focus on getting the Heroic Epic ASAP, even if doing so might mean missing our window of opportunity for a potential pre-Longbowman assault? I.e. If Ivory City is contributing a good portion of our units for the initial assault, we might want to slightly delay building the Heroic Epic anyway.

 

[ZPV]

Sounds reasonable, but we will still want a second unit (2nd War Elephant or an Axeman) to defend the attacker... getting 8 XP is fine but if the unit dies in between turns we still can't build the Heroic Epic (as far as I am aware).

Plus, if we lose due to the odds not being terribly in our favour, we'll probably want another unit or two nearby to get the kill on the wounded Barb unit. So, I still think that we should have 3 or more land units in said stack when we attack the Barb City, but getting 1 early Galley would almost certainly speed up the process.

The other question becomes... do we delay the Heroic Epic so that we can get the first rush out or do we focus on getting the Heroic Epic ASAP, even if doing so might mean missing our window of opportunity for a potential pre-Longbowman assault? I.e. If Ivory City is contributing a good portion of our units for the initial assault, we might want to slightly delay building the Heroic Epic anyway.

Heroic Epic will pay for itself before, or else very very soon after we get the units for our first attack.
If the soon-to-have-8XP unit has a promotion available before battle, then we can promote it after battle, all the way up to level 4 on the same turn, with no risk.
Having a second elephant for the barb city is a luxury. I think we'll have to see how the timing works out.