SGOTM 14 - Spooks

[Paul#42]

GA in two...

So my plan is:
a) take all Arab towns.
b) raze Istanbul, make peace.
c) start GA, find balance between building horses and knights.
d) After KT: barracks (vet crusaders), FP.
e) Gift new town(s) close to Uskudar to Russia and / or Zulus.
f) attack and conquer Russia and / or Zulus.

and all the time:
g) look for slaves and free money. Sell even chivalry.
h) build some galleys in corrupt towns to prepare overseas actions.

One open question: What about CC? workers is quite a waste in GA.
2-turn-settlers?
Or military?

 

[Andronicus]

GA in two...

So my plan is:
a) take all Arab towns.
b) raze Istanbul, make peace.
c) start GA, find balance between building horses and knights.
d) After KT: barracks (vet crusaders), FP.
e) Gift new town(s) close to Uskudar to Russia and / or Zulus.
f) attack and conquer Russia and / or Zulus.

and all the time:
g) look for slaves and free money. Sell even chivalry.
h) build some galleys in corrupt towns to prepare overseas actions.

One open question: What about CC? workers is quite a waste in GA.
2-turn-settlers?
Or military?

Great minds think alike ... or fools never differ

I had just been thinking about that 2 turner in CC
I think we should go for it - we will need all the settlers we can get for domination, an extra 10 during our GA would help both unit support costs (more gold for rushing) and providing reservations for AI


Looked at options for selling chivalry - only Russia and Germany have sig gpt to offer us. Since Russia (who have 24gpt + 45g avail) will shortly be a target gpt may be wasted and do we want to give them knights anyway? Not sure that 21gpt from Germany (they offer 21gpt, 62g + monarchy) warrants spreading chivalry to the AI sooner, but I could be swayed.

I think Arabs will go very quickly since they lack iron - who next victim?
Unfortunately I made peace with Zulu (I probably could have continued defensive war a while longer whilst we take out Arabs, but I wanted to ensure we had Mecca when KT built so sent a force that was somewhat overkill) which will last 18 turns unless we decide to hell with rep.
Alternatives include Russia who we have 10 turns remaining on MA v Babs (Russia has taken Elipi, we need to watch to make sure Babs dont fold - they only have 3 towns left). Perhaps we blow our rep and attack Russia whilst their forces are in the south? Third alternative is France. They lack iron, are just a short galley hop from Mecca and are average strength to us.
My pref is to get control of our home continent first, then we can go France -> Inca -> Iroq etc.
Will we have any need for rep in future given all AI appear to be on separate islands, so wars will not weaken them and we have sufficient WH already?

Current state of AI (in AA, in despotism, have iron unless indicated otherwise)
Strong to us
Rome
America
India
Mongols - middle ages, Rep
Aztecs
Celts
Inca - no iron

Average to us
Egypt
Greece - middle ages, have feudalism, in rep
Germany - middle ages, have feudalism, in feud
China
Japan - middle ages
Persia - middle ages, have feudalism, in feud
Zulu - middle ages, in rep
Iroq
France - no iron
Korea
Sumeria - middle ages, have feud, in feud
Maya - in monarchy

Weak to us
Babylon - middle ages
Russia - middle ages, have feud, in rep
Arabia - middle ages, have feud, in rep, ? no iron
Ottomen
Hittites - this is the one that really surprises me - everyone else who is weak has had war to burn off units, I guess they just havnt been building units - although I just checked with our military advisor - they have 3MC and their forces outnumber ours - must have lots of crap units)

Most AI have only 4-5 towns
2 towns
Ottomen

3 towns
Babs
Iroquois

4 towns
Mayans
Egypt
Greece
America
France

5 towns
Romans
Sumeria
Celts
Germany
Aztecs
Korea
Japan

6 towns
Inca
India

7 towns
Russia
Persia
Zulu
Mongols

8 towns
Hittites
China

 

[Paul#42]

Great minds think alike ... or fools never differ

One more question: I see little sense in keeping these captured cats - they cost no upkeep but at least they cost precious spare room in our galleys - and their success ratio is frustrating...
May I disband them to part-rush workers (or other stuff) in resisting towns (Mecca)?

 

[Yilar]

Would be nice to start our overseas invasion now, as these usually take longer than the continental invasions. The question is how many knights do we to start?

Btw, doesn't the Arabs have 2 offshore cities? Kufah and Basra... We should demand at least one in exchange for peace, when the time comes.

Also how do we plan on keeping the AI alive? We are gonna have to take pretty much all the islands (because of the vast amount of coast domination tiles).

 

[Più Freddo]

Paul and I are right.

OK, sorry.

Also I couldn't get rid of the last foreigner in the city, despite building multiple settlers and workers.

Only with time and culture. But who cares? Let's rather make sure that the corresponding prison-capital is far away. At later stages we can gift a far-away town and then capture the previous prison-capital. The one or other flip on the home continent is no problem, since we always will have plenty of troops available. But we could consider building a few more cultural buildings after KT and FP.

 

[Più Freddo]

captured cats - they cost no upkeep but at least they cost precious spare room in our galleys

What jerk would put one on a Galley!? Of course they should be disbanded in a resisting city.

 

[Più Freddo]

It seems Ivan has built a culture building making 3 cpt, perhaps a Library or a Wonder. But we're getting KT soon.

 

[Andronicus]

So its Arabs, then France then? With Russians backstabbed when alliance v Babs expires, unless there is a threat of Babs being wiped out, in which case ruining our rep is better than being penalised 10 turns.

We will need a lot more galleys - hopefully during our GA some of those 1spt galley makers will becpome 2spt. We may end up rushing a few as we dont want lack of troop transport to hold us up.

OS invasion force.
I was thinking along the lines of 12 knights (requiring 6 galleys). I would not be adverse to a couple of pikes to take the brunt of the counter attack on landing, but thats another galley required.

During our GA I dont see any city getting to 30spt, so most of our producers should be between 10-26spt. 24 spt is good for 3 turn knights, but 20-23spt has lots of wastage - how about a few MDI if we have production in this range? They will be a little slower getting to the galleys, dont have retreat but travel just as fast on galleys. I think I think I would rather 2 turn MDI than 2 turn horse we have to pay 120g for upgrade, or 4 turn knight.

Another thought
Instead of razing on the islands, how about we keep if not too large. We would take a risk of losing units whilst suppressing resistors so I am not wholly convinced, but once resistors suppressed its just keep a couple of units to retake flipped towns and slowly build temples to gain more domination tiles.

 

[Più Freddo]

20-23spt has lots of wastage

If tiles cannot be recombined with other cities or new improved, then shortrushing to 30 using e.g. a Settler after the first turn is pretty good in this case.

Another thing I sometimes do is to build the Marketplace while the city is growing to 24 spt, if it is a high-commerce core city. There you could short-rush using the Library at some point if you are in the 20+ spt area and have collected an odd number of shields.

Certainly no crappy one-move units if I can have a say.

 

[Più Freddo]

Instead of razing on the islands

Why would we raze?

 

[Paul#42]

here is the save

I take a break after just two turns
We were lucky, we got an MGL.
I think a view to our GA it was a no-doubter to found a knights army, AA will build FP in a hurry in GA and my RNG luck will get us another MGL soon

turn 0 (100) 550 BC
Bagdad
vet knight d reg spear -> 2/4 knight.
e knight d reg spear -> 2/5 knight, takes Bagdad, 2/3 resistors.
1/4 knight captures 2 slaves.

Narjan
vet knight d reg spear -> 1/4 knight
vet knight d 2/3 spear -> 4/5 knight
4/5 horse d reg archer -> 3/5* horse , takes Narjan (w granary), 1/1 resistor. Sell granary for 15g.
MGL founds army 1st knights in EE.

Damascus
10/12 1st knights d reg spear -> 8/12 1st knights

Switch SS to scout.

IBT
heroic epic message
CC worker -> worker
HH horse -> knight, upgrade 2 horses to knight
SS scout -> knight

turn 1 (101) 530 BC

Damascus
1st knights d reg spear-> 8/13 1st knights, take town, 2 slaves, 1/2 resistor.
vet knight d reg spear -> 2/4 knight
vet knight d reg spear -> 1/4 knight, takes town, 2 slaves, 1/2 resistor.

4/5 knight d reg warrior -> 3/5 knight
3/5 knight d reg warrior -> 2/5 knight
vet knight d reg warrior -> 1/4 knight
vet knight d reg warrior -> 4/4 knight

IBT
GG horse -> knight
CC Forgot to switch archer to worker Now we'll switch to settler
AA Knights Templar! GA starts
ZZ galley -> galley

turn 2 (102) 510 BC
2/5 knight d 1/3 archer -> 2/5 knight

Medina
1st knights d vet spear-> 8/13 1st knights.
1st knights d reg spear-> 5/13 1st knights.
vet knight d reg spear -> 1/4 knight, take town, 2 slaves, 3/3 resistors. Rax, harbor, market.
Arabs expelled

Take a break here.
I completely messed up the forestry for AA. I had wanted to get 1 or 2 chops to get rax next turn (depending on whether we get 30spt or less). But both chops take a turn too long...
One will go to BB, the other - cancelled?

Please post some ideas for GA, I'll join the discussion tomorrow and plan to continue ~20 hours from now.

 

[Yilar]

Make sure that SS and GG gets up to 24spt (join workers!)...

Leave the forest nw of AA, no point in removing it? We are gonna build FP there next no? Btw, the "other" chop should goto BB, as I understand it (following clock starting from 12, going clockwise).

Do we really need a barracks in RR?

If you really want do some hardcore civing , you can micromange all the cities and short rush, so the overrun is minimal. Since it costs more gold to rush than upgrade, you naturally have to figure out how much gold you spend compared to how much you save. 1s bought is 4g and 1s upgraded is 3g

Btw, we can demand Basra from arabs now in exchange for peace, shouldn't we accept it and gift it off to some other civ?

 

[Più Freddo]

we can demand Basra from arabs now in exchange for peace, shouldn't we accept it and gift it off to some other civ?

Brilliant. Natually a civ from our own continent.

 

[Paul#42]

Make sure that SS and GG gets up to 24spt (join workers!)...

I'll do.

Leave the forest nw of AA, no point in removing it? We are gonna build FP there next no? Btw, the "other" chop should goto BB, as I understand it (following clock starting from 12, going clockwise).

I had planned to part rush rax in AA (to get vet crusaders) in one turn
I know where chops go, I would have switched to a wonder in BB to direct the chop to AA if I was not able to get 30spt there...

Do we really need a barracks in RR?

RR is 59% corrupt now, but 45% when FP in AA is built. IIRC there were some hills around so at least in GA it should be able to get to 5spt there at size 4.

If you really want do some hardcore civing , you can micromange all the cities and short rush, so the overrun is minimal. Since it costs more gold to rush than upgrade, you naturally have to figure out how much gold you spend compared to how much you save. 1s bought is 4g and 1s upgraded is 3g

I'll do MM, of course.

Btw, we can demand Basra from arabs now in exchange for peace, shouldn't we accept it and gift it off to some other civ?

great idea.
I'll do that. Maybe for Babs, they might be under pressure already... But we could also chose the one with the greatest culture so we don't have them up north... Who's it?

We should also take a look at the Iroquois (just 3 towns) so we are able to gift them a shelter if they are in danger...

Should we build HE?
I'd favor that so we get more MGL. We won't be able to ship any of our armies around...

 

[Yilar]

You can ship armies around, you just can't join more than 2 units into it I think

 

[Più Freddo]

You can ship armies around, you just can't join more than 2 units into it I think

As long as we are stuck with Galleys, only one unit in an Army fits onto one ship. If we want Armies, we want larger ships. I think I would have rushed the FP with that Leader.

 

[Paul#42]

Oops. I had thought we'd like that army to take Arabs and especially Istanbul qicker. Sorry, I guess I should have stopped for discussion...

I promise to get another one to rush the FP...

Are there any larger continents we'd like to have an army on?
Is it worth hand building heroic epics?

 

[Yilar]

I don't think we should build HE. If we do get an army mgl use it to rush market in GG or FP in AA.

 

[Paul#42]

You'd use an MGL to rush a market?

I'd rather use it for conquest of any minor island (and rush a settler with it after usage) than using it for a market that will be built in 4 turns during GA...
I mean a market is barely more expensive than a knight and an army is far more valuable than a knight even if it is only used in a single war and has to stay on that island for eternity...

You must be pretty mad at me for using it for an army without asking.
Sorry. I had not expected that.

 

[Yilar]

No.. The army we have is nice, because our continent is rather large, but some of the smaller islands it would not make sense to build an army there and be stuck there forever . But you are probably right, on some of the islands it would be better to have an army on. India with elephants, japan with samurais etc... I am just throwing out ideas

Btw, how long would a reputation hit last if we were to attack zulu in 2-3 turns? And what would the consequences be?

Also what would it take for ottomen to accept Basra as a gift? We not exactly on friendly terms atm. Because if we can get him stuck on the island we can gift his old cities to the enemy without worrying about resistance.