SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[CommandoBob]

Prison assessment:

• Rusicade has ivory and India will be bordering them (and was supposed to get that ivory).
• Sabratha is a canal town, might end up close to india and will be productive once the industrious Carthage clears the jungle.
• Thevestes gets silks and already has some usable grassland. It's removed from India so they should not kill each other. EDIT: If Carthage gets 2 silks, they could trade one of them to the Indians!
• New Thevestes founded at the end of the pennisula would be good because it is easily blocked from attack until Marines. It also may or may not get silks. EDIT: Same comment about the silks, but it would require we let their culture expand to the full 21 Radius.
• Leptis Magna is actually not a bad prison either. It's closer to our core so we can fight culture/flipping easier and it's removed from India. Plus it can't make galleys to escape from the continent.

I favor New Theveste or Leptis Magna with my preference to New Theveste.

Minor Quibble:

I tend to favor Leptis Magna over Theveste or New Theveste.

The Theveste cities are both coastal, could build galleys and escape and become a problem later in the game. Leptis Magna is also coastal, also could build galleys, but cannot escape. Both exit points, Canal City and Sabratha/Canal City 2, will be part of the Greater Smurkz Co-Prosperity Sphere, and will not allow the Carthage ships to pass.

At Leptis Magna, Carthage becomes a Smurkz puppet state. It will have culture from the palace, but not much from anything else. We will have a city on ring 5 and two on ring 10 to contain the Carthage growth. It will not grow large.

I would rather have Carthage close and contained instead of it being a little further out but uncontrolled. It is not the distance; it is the dominance.

 

[ControlFreak]

I was thinking I preferred Magna also until I noticed that Theveste was sitting on a silk. With 2 silks, they could trade one to India. That will be important to India because we won't be able to trade with India, and we don't want them to have a city north of the chokes.

Of course, we could prison Carthage in Leptis Magna and let India have New Theveste but it would be a constant point of skirmish.

 

[CommandoBob]

Of course, we could prison Carthage in Leptis Magna and let India have New Theveste but it would be a constant point of skirmish.

Oh, I see. If India gets New Theveste we have a constant, pointless bit of warfare going on between us and them. If it becomes 'New Carthage Capital City', we can make peace with Hannibal and not have to worry about skirmishers and such.

In that case, to keep India happy and out of our hair, we need to take/raze Leptis Magna and allow Hannibal to keep either Theveste (pronounced The Vest or Thee Vest or The Vest E or Thee Vest E, take your pick) or its replacement.

 

[Niklas]

Sorry for my absence, I've been really bogged down for the last two days. I'm really glad that you keep the discussion rolling, I'll be needing lots of advice here.

Will be back later today, then I'll join the discussion for real.

 

[zyxy]

I've seen at least two swords enter Leptis Minor last turn from the west. So I'm guessing we will face an attack on the IBT and have to kill more than two Numids. I'm guessing 2 Numids, 2 Swords and possibly an archer I saw moving West away from Green Dot a few turns back. The Archer SW of New Ta-Tu came from the SW so it's probably not the same one. That's why I recommend bringing the horses to help the swords on L.Minor and then head back for Kazan. Or wait to hit Kazan until the new troops finish Tabriz and arrive on the way to killing Edrine.

That changes things of course. If the forces currently near L.Minor are exposed to 2 swords and an archer, then we might lose a few on the IT.

The reason I want to take Kazan is for logistics. We need a reinforcement road to Sages because Carthaginians can reach it in 1 turn. Also, it's a good route to attack Utica.

We are obviously in need of better military planning. If we do not attack L. Minor anytime soon, then our troops have no business sitting next to it. We can only lose them and not even counterattack any wounded Carthaginian swords as they'll be hiding under the Numids. (First rule of Civ Warfare: "Never close in with your enemy unless you plan to kill him." Otherwise, stay on your own ground and kill whatever comes your way.)

I don't have time to look carefully right now, but I think there are three alternatives:
- we assemble a large force to attack L. Minor, and wait outside its borders until this force can march in together.
- we bypass L. Minor for now, and attack the Carthaginian heartlands: Utica, Carthage (no defense bonusses there).
- we just defend vs Carthage and concentrate on Ottomans first.

In cases 2 and 3, I think Kazan and Tabriz should fall first. Kazan for the logistics, Tabriz to free up the troops sitting there anyway. In case 1 we could go for Kazan after L.Minor, but it means a gamble that Carthage will not attack Sages.

 

[ControlFreak]

We are obviously in need of better military planning.

I was afraid you'd say that. I'm a builder at heart and my military strategy definitely needs improving. My lesson learned is I should have grouped everyone in Sages in preparation for the attack and then sent them to Leptis. At a minimum, the swords should have waited outside the border until everyone was ready to move in for the kill. I will try to do better next time.

My thoughts in taking L.Minor are that we wanted to clear the way for the settlers who have arrived in the new core and need places to go.

Not being the war expert, take this with a grain of salt.

• Turn 0 - Pull the two unmoved horses from Iznik and move them to the sword on Green Dot.
• Turn 1 - One sword moves to the lambs and one to the plains next to L.Minor. That reduces the tiles the citizens can work on and, if we lose the swords to an attack, the attacker will be pulled from the town and won't be defending next turn. The horse/worker stack moves W. The two horses on Green Dot move 1tile SW, the incense horses move 1 tile N to join them. From here, all five horses can attack Kazan if not needed for the L.Minor attack. The sword/cat stack moves onto the hill for better defense.
• Turn 2 - Attack L.Minor with the cats, swords from the low lands, swords from the hill and if necessary the horses. If we have good luck, L.Minor will be captured with the 8 swords and the horses can bear down on Kazan.

Meanwhile, the swords and horses move towards Tabriz, getting onto the iron on Turn 2. There should be 3 swords and 3 horses to take the city on Turn 3.

The risk is that Carthage goes after CftSages. If they do, I think I would let them raze it and resettle after Kazan it taken. I think they will be more interested in getting L.Minor back though.

Without know what is in Utica, I'm hesitant to send the troops past L.Minor. They would have no support troops for a long time. Since I've already committed the sword stack to L.Minor, I think we need to hit that first. Had I to do it over again, I think I would hit Kazan (EDIT: I didn't know Kazan could be taken this turn and was trying to avoid having the swords sitting around in CftS) and then moved on Utica with all the horses. But I was following the original plan to get L.Minor so we could settle the pink cities.

Sorry for the bad logistics. I hope Niklas is successful in recovering.

 

[zyxy]

I was afraid you'd say that. I'm a builder at heart and my military strategy definitely needs improving. My lesson learned is I should have grouped everyone in Sages in preparation for the attack and then sent them to Leptis. At a minimum, the swords should have waited outside the border until everyone was ready to move in for the kill. I will try to do better next time.

It is all meant to be positive criticism, and I hope it comes across as such . Also, let's not get the impression that this set was badly played: three cities taken, 8 slaves captured, and close to 10 settlers built is no small feat. Figthing against Carthage is no small feat either, only the Greeks are tougher. Finally, the comment was not just aimed at you, we should probably have planned this better as a team. It is somewhat ... odd ... that we had detailed plans for the rather straightforward war on the Mongols, but only vague ideas on the Carthage operation. Perhaps in part it was you excellent builder skills that gave everyone the idea that planning wasn't needed .

Anyway, the lesson you've learned is the right one: when you enter enemy territory, bring at least enough force to take your next objective (usually a town). Preferably, also think of bringing backups/replacements for follow-up objectives. In short: stack of doom.

My thoughts in taking L.Minor are that we wanted to clear the way for the settlers who have arrived in the new core and need places to go.

The only place where I could possibly pose as a warmonger is in this crowd of builders, but let me pretend anyway and say that I think this comment shows the true builder nature. It is of course always a good idea to take over your opponents land, but a real warmonger would make it his first priority to knock out his opponent, and that means "go for the heart of the beast", usually the capital and the core region. However, your plan (below) seems good and will help to contract the frontline, so I think assaulting L.Minor is good under the circumstances.

Not being the war expert, take this with a grain of salt.

• Turn 0 - Pull the two unmoved horses from Iznik and move them to the sword on Green Dot.
• Turn 1 - One sword moves to the lambs and one to the plains next to L.Minor. That reduces the tiles the citizens can work on and, if we lose the swords to an attack, the attacker will be pulled from the town and won't be defending next turn. The horse/worker stack moves W. The two horses on Green Dot move 1tile SW, the incense horses move 1 tile N to join them. From here, all five horses can attack Kazan if not needed for the L.Minor attack. The sword/cat stack moves onto the hill for better defense.
• Turn 2 - Attack L.Minor with the cats, swords from the low lands, swords from the hill and if necessary the horses. If we have good luck, L.Minor will be captured with the 8 swords and the horses can bear down on Kazan.

Meanwhile, the swords and horses move towards Tabriz, getting onto the iron on Turn 2. There should be 3 swords and 3 horses to take the city on Turn 3.

Looks good! 7 vet swords and 5 vet horse have 97% chance to win against 2 reg numids, 2 reg swords, 1 reg archer in L.Minor, with 2 mean losses. This is not counting the effect of the cats, and it's assuming we do not get attacked and lose units. Hopefully the Carthaginian swords aim for some undefended city in our backyard.

Small comments:
- On turn 1, I would move the Green Dot sword N to Kazan (it is essential that he blocks the road, so don't move NW or something). This gives us an extra strike at Kazan. Btw, the wounded sword on the mountain near Sages should probably stay there and defend Sages once healed.
- On turn 1, Ta-Tu can be defended by the spear and sword coming from Tabriz. The horse in Ta-Tu can go to the tile just E of the New Capital, it seems, to hit Kazan as well. We can take out the archer easily once he comes closer.
- On turn 1 again, there are some horses near Iznik that could be stationed between Iznik and Kazan, within strike range of Kazan.
- Obviously, a road Kazan - Sages and New Ta-Tu - L.Minor will be essential (after we take the towns of course).

The risk is that Carthage goes after CftSages. If they do, I think I would let them raze it and resettle after Kazan it taken. I think they will be more interested in getting L.Minor back though.

Without know what is in Utica, I'm hesitant to send the troops past L.Minor. They would have no support troops for a long time. Since I've already committed the sword stack to L.Minor, I think we need to hit that first. Had I to do it over again, I think I would hit Kazan (EDIT: I didn't know Kazan could be taken this turn and was trying to avoid having the swords sitting around in CftS) and then moved on Utica with all the horses. But I was following the original plan to get L.Minor so we could settle the pink cities.

I would rather abandon Sages than let Carthage raze it. They have no fast units IIRC, so we can always see the attack coming. Agree that Utica is not the ideal target under circumstances - it does take priority over Edrine though.

Sorry for the bad logistics. I hope Niklas is successful in recovering.

That's what we have him for... to correct our mistakes. All of them .

 

[ControlFreak]

@zyxy - Indeed, I'm taking your comments as positive critism. It was a good thing for me to be in the war-turns of our game, and some decent gains were made. I think I had been trying to dump units next to L.Minor for Niklas to use without regard if they would be enough or not.

I agree with you about burning Sages and have used the scorched earth policy before. Shouldn't have phased it as "Carthage razing", but rather Carthage forcing us to raze.

I think our build up to my turns were more about where we wanted the prisons to be. I didn't expect to have much choice where things were going with Carthage. I only felt I should decide what to do about the Ottomans. I guess I ended up deciding how to attack Carthage as it was happening without a real plan.

Niklas should get on soon and post his long and short term lists and we can decide: If we want to disconnect iron; How to go about Carthage; When to prioritize the Ottomans.

I'm also curious what India is building since they got map making. A harbor perhaps?

 

[Niklas]

Gee, I'm honored by your confidence in me ... and terrified!
I too am much more of a builder than warmonger, but I'll certainly do what I can to straighten out the situation.

A warning, I haven't had much sleep the past few days (will remedy that tonight ) so what I say here may be way off.

Some thoughts then. If there are swords and an archer in LMin, they will certainly bear down on our stack in the IBT. Worst case we could have three units less next turn, probable case is that we'll have at least one unit dead and two more in no fighting condition. No way I could take LMin then.
Not much I can do about this at all, I'll just have to wait it out and decide after the IBT what path to persue. One possible thing I could do is to move a horse in from the incence to try to draw an attack from LMin, the horse could possibly retreat. But this seems like a gamble, a sword has a much better chance of actually withstanding an attack.

Neither Tabriz nor Kazan should be a problem really, I have more than enough troops to take care of those, even after losing some swords at LMin. I think the plan outlined by CF is a good one, and unless something unexpected happens I will follow it. After that I will pause and heal, possibly bearing down on Edrine if I have enough fresh horses, and wait for the roading crews to do their job and some backups to arrive.

I'm not too keen on the shipping strategy though, boats will travel really slow in those waters with DNM in place. It would be a different matter if we could ship from the south, but the DNM will make that impossible. As it is, it would take two turns for a galley to ship two units over from Atroid, one to get there and another to get back again. As CF indicated, we won't really save anytime by doing so, so I think the galleys are better used exploring.

I think disconnecting the iron is a good plan, we clearly can't rely on horses alone for taking out Carthage. A combination is probably the best way to go.

I will post the long and short term strategies early tomorrow, then wait for some more comments before playing. If worst comes to worst I won't be able to finish until Sunday.

 

[Niklas]

Alright, here we go (9h or sleep later, :yawn: ):

Long Term Strategy

• Send Gandhi to space. (ETA ~1500-1700)
• Give India a core to work with (ETA ~100+ turns, early IA)
• Reduce all other AIs to OCC (ETA ~30 turns on home island, otherwise no assessment).
• Build up City for the Sages to be a SSC (super science city) with lib + uni + Copernicus + Newton (+ hopefully Colossus)
• Connect luxuries to make us able to handle the WW from India.
• Increase our research capacity up to 4-turn research.

Mid Term Strategy

• Set up a second core in the north and do a FPJ there (ETA 10-20 turns)
• Reduce our three neighbours to OCC (ETA ~20 turns)
• Switch to Republic (ETA within 20 turns)

My Term Strategy

• Capture Kazan and Tabriz to exile the Mongols to their island. (ETA 3 turns)
• Capture Leptis Minor (2 turns), and possibly Utica (6-10) depending on the winds of war, and Edrine (5?).
• Disconnect iron (0), build warriors, reconnect (~8), upgrade warriors to swords. (Switch to horses after a while.)
• Settle lots of towns with silly names in the north and south.
• Develop the northern core, and get us ready for the FPJ, possibly even do it towards the end of my turns.
• Research Republic (1), Literature (4 more), then probably Polytheism (5 more), get Construction and Currency in peace deals.
• Defend against Indian incursions (and hope to see them expand a bit).

It was harder to write a list like this than I expected, hope it turned out alright.
I'm sure I missed something important, so please fill me in. I'll start playing tonight, don't want to rush into it since I've been out if touch for a few days and I'm hoping to see at least some discussion before I start.

Btw, I leave you for a few days and wham, Xteam is 40+ posts ahead.

 

[zyxy]

Generally looks good. Some comments:
- I'm not so sure about iron disconnection. I would rather use the cash for deficit research, and moreover, most of our rax towns are set to 7/8 shields per turn, so warrior->sword upgrades don't help that much (2 turns vs 4). But perhaps we have no choice, if we cannot build troops soon enough otherwise. We have 2 iron sources btw (3 once we capture Utica).
- keep war focus on Carthaginians (and Mongols). Edrine we can take whenever, I would rather get Carthage first.
- research plan looks good. Only problem is that we will have to sign peace in 10 or stop research a bit. We could also revolt to republic at that point to gain a few turns of war.
- keep sending suicide galleys out, from different spots if possible.
- MM: switch Karakorum to sword and poprush next turn (or warrior and no poprush).

 

[zyxy]

.... allow Hannibal to keep either Theveste (pronounced The Vest or Thee Vest or The Vest E or Thee Vest E, take your pick) or its replacement.

I like The Vest. As politically correct speak for The Straitjacket .
(I also think this city is the best cage for Hannibal, at least for now).

 

[Niklas]

Gah, things are getting even worse for me.
I should probably ask for a skip, but I should be able to play tomorrow and WarDance can't play on weekends anyway. Will you give me a break here? Please?

 

[zyxy]

Ok, we'll wait until tomorrow then . But this game could really do with a slightly faster turnaround, or we'll still be playing by next summer .

Speaking of WD, haven't heard from him in a while...

 

[Niklas]

I know that only too well, and I hate to be the one slowing down the pace.

I thought these last weeks of teaching would be easy on me, but creating the exam for the course, plus (which I'm doing now) a trial exam, plus giving out solutions to exercises, everything simply stacks up too high. But the exam is given tuesday, after that nothing... that will be nice for a change.

 

[CommandoBob]

- research plan looks good. Only problem is that we will have to sign peace in 10 or stop research a bit. We could also revolt to republic at that point to gain a few turns of war

This is over my head. Could you dumb that down some? What I stumble on is 'sign peace in 10 or stop research a bit'.

 

[CommandoBob]

Defend against Indian incursions (and hope to see them expand a bit).

I find India's lack of presence a bit disturbing at this point.

Has anyone seen India do anything except want to talk?

By now I would expect them to be tired of their island kingdom and looking to expand. But we are at 350BC and they still have only one city. It is at size 6, so Delhi will not be growing any more. India does have two gaps in the mountains to the west and south where they could build a new city on a hill. That has not happened.

At size 6, India has a minimum of 2 spt coming in. A settler is 30 and so is a galley, a warrior 10 and a spear 20. The most India could put into a boat for a new city is 80 shields (galley + settler + spear), which would take 40 turns. It could be done much faster, AI permitting. In 1250 BC Delhi was at 5; in 1000 BC Delhi was 6. India has had time to grow.

I know, I know; this presumes that the AI would try to expand, which seems a reasonable presumption. My point is that we have not seen reasonable activity out of India and our strategy of India attacking us is based on reasonable activity. We plan to leave cities undefended so that India will tempted to attack them. I agree with this. But does India?

What concerns me is that India has done nothing that we have seen. Not settled a second city, not put units on the mainland to explore, not even really been much of a pest.

Even India is not normally this passive.

In the next few turnsets I hope to see India get off life-support and do something. If not, then it would appear that India wants to be a OCC, and that changes things.

The Vikings agree to teach india the art of war, and make them strong through conflict. In return India will take the Vikings to the stars.

'strong through conflict', well, doubtful. I am not sure that India can even defend herself, much less make war.

We may need to put units on those hills to keep the new world civs from wiping out India!

 

[ControlFreak]

This is over my head. Could you dumb that down some? What I stumble on is 'sign peace in 10 or stop research a bit'.

I'm guessing zyxy is refering to not wanting to waste research on techs that the AI already knows.

India is untouchable until Marines so we will have crushed the New Continent by then.

Take your time Niklas.

 

[zyxy]

This is over my head. Could you dumb that down some? What I stumble on is 'sign peace in 10 or stop research a bit'.

Sure. I can try at least. EDIT: only saw CF's reply after I typed all this.

Niklas has apparently computed how long it will take to research Literature and Polytheism. This you can do if you know the research costs of these techs (which you can see for example in CivAssist) and the amount of beakers you can make per turn (set the science slider to 100% to check that). His computation shows that we can do these two techs in 4 and 5 turns respectively, and with 1 turn to go on republic that's 10 turns total.

After that, the only techs we can research are Monarchy, Currency, or Construction. We hopefully don't need Monarchy, Construction is known to the Mongols and we can get it in peace in 3-4 turns, and Currency is known to Carthage. (Ottomans may also know these techs, I forgot and we cannot see right now.) Of course we could research Currency ourselves, but I would prefer to save the money and get it in a peace deal.

That means we should try to beat up Carthage as much as possible in the next 10 turns. Btw, we could give ourselves a bit more time to do that by going into anarchy after we learn Polytheism, because no high speed research is possible in Anarchy. Or we could have a few turns of no research, to fund deficit research later. We may have to do both, because we also need to make peace with the Ottomans before we research any MA techs: The Ottomans are scientific, so they will get a free tech upon entering the Middle Ages, which is another tech we do not need to research. So it is not very critical, but I would prefer to research at the highest speed possible, because we need to get this spaceship for India; another reason for that is to get to Astronomy asap, so that we can explore the sea.

 

[zyxy]

I find India's lack of presence a bit disturbing at this point.

Has anyone seen India do anything except want to talk?

No. It's worrying, but at least India seems capable of keeping up in tech. Should this continue, then we'll have to reconsider the Great Library jump maybe.

By now I would expect them to be tired of their island kingdom and looking to expand. But we are at 350BC and they still have only one city. It is at size 6, so Delhi will not be growing any more. India does have two gaps in the mountains to the west and south where they could build a new city on a hill. That has not happened.

At size 6, India has a minimum of 2 spt coming in. A settler is 30 and so is a galley, a warrior 10 and a spear 20. The most India could put into a boat for a new city is 80 shields (galley + settler + spear), which would take 40 turns. It could be done much faster, AI permitting. In 1250 BC Delhi was at 5; in 1000 BC Delhi was 6. India has had time to grow.

I think the auto-governor would select whale tiles before fish and rock, so that means 6 spt at size 5 or 6. It's interesting that their population dropped. Maybe Ghandi built a settler?

CF has suggested one possibility: Maybe India has been building a harbor, which could have taken all the time between the moment they discovered MapMaking (18 turns ago, IIRC) and now. India needs to queue up a boat before they can settle anywhere. As the AI was probably not programmed to deal with a situation like this, I am not surprised that it doesn't prioritize correctly and doesn't have a boat yet. I will get worried if still nothing has happened 10 or 15 turns from now, as that would be more than enough time to do a harbor and a boat .