SGOTM6 - Team Bede

[eldar]

A palace jump isn't really needed... Entremont is pretty much central in our Empire. Don't forget the FP doesn't act as a second core in C3C.

What we need are Markets and Courts, more than Unis.

 

[Pied Piper]

The point I am trying to make is to not spend any more shields on the war effort, we must convert the territorial gains we have made into culture points needed to win. We should have just enough military to provide security (not conquest) and the rest of the shields should go to building up culture. Or new cities that can build cheap temples for culture. Old cities can get a harbor and provide monetary support.

I believe a univ cost more than a temple+library+cathedral and only provides half the culture, so starting new cities is culturally more productive.

 

[Bede]

Playing tonight. ConcuR the harbors, markets, courts and new towns are more useful than expensive universities. Our economy is upside down right now because of culture in towns that can't support it economically.

BTW, what did we ever do to the Babylonians? I've combed through the saves and the logs and the only record I have of a Babylonian deal was when we sold them Chivalry for 26gpt. There is no way that the deal could have broken....Something strange here. Unless we included some resource to sweeten the pot and the trade route got broken. . We certainly held uup our end of the deal as they got Chivalry....

This is going to complicate our future diplomacy, I'm afraid.

 

[Pied Piper]

At the start of my last turn set, I believe I bought Babylon into the Indian dogpile. What's up with them?

 

[Bede]

@piper, you signed an alliance with Hammi against India on T0 and signed a Peace Treaty with India on T8, that's what's up with Hammi. Oh, well.

The realm at 850AD

In 760 Iroquois start Copernicus.

In 790 finish off the Japanese but have to withdraw from Darah. Lose two knights in the process. Advance is put on hold until the Gallic Army finishes its mission and arrives at the back door.

The French finish Copernicus in Paris. And the Vikings get Bach's.

In 800 China and India sign a peace treaty. All those Chinese troops now have to come home across our lands.

In 810 France And Babylon sign an alliance against India.

In 820 I drag Hiawatha to the negotiating table and get Metallurgy for Iron by threatening war.

In 830 upgrade the trebs in Augustodurum to cannon.

In 850 do a map trade with Babylon and get a complete world map and most of what was spent back from the rest of the world.

The Gallic Army has finished its tour through Mongolia and the Mongols are crippled, population is shrinking at their capitol and the horses are cut off (no Keshiks). The force at Augustadorum is back to strength and can move on Dahran as soon as the bogies around the town are dead. They are just too tough to bust off those hills, even with bombardment support and then the victorious trooper is hung out to dry for the next LB or Mace.

Delhi was taken by the Babylonians and India is now down to a 1CC, New Bombay, between Mauch Chunk and Grand River in our Far East. The forces waiting at the corner have started the move down there.

I shut off research as everybody who had what we wanted already had Banking and the rest had nothing we needed.

Skimmed settlers out of towns in the homeland and also out of the Japanese towns and built eight new towns. And started settlers in the towns that had their temples whipped. Keep an eye on the pop1 towons without temples and when they get to pop2 whip the temple.

It looks like the best plan going forward is build a temple first in every new town, then start a settler.

The towns outside the 2nd ring should never grow past five as it costs too much to keep them happy and whipping libraries costs too many pop points and too much maintenance. Keep them on settler duty. The Mongols managed to cut the incense suppply so a couple of towns rioted.

There is a settler ready to found between Verulamium and Kaifeng.

Babylon is on their way to becoming a Democracy as they are in anarchy now.

BTW Ulaanbattaar should have been starved or whipped down. They have become a perennial problem child as there are nothing but Mongols there.

And I lost track of Noviomagus, the little one tile island without a garrison which is now rioting....It has no harbor so no luxes get across the straits.

Culture per turn grew from 282 to 319.

The five core towns should keep buiding military. There are no more cultural buildings worth the investment. We need muskets on the borders and at least two more strike forces of a dozen knights or cavs (when we get to Military Tradition which we will have to steal or extort). The troops are costing us nothing right now so keep building them, then use them to 1) Finish off the Mongols 2) Then the Chinese 3) Then the Carthaginians.

Keep the rest of the world involved in our wars, on our side. Now that I think on it it was a mistake to start the troops from the Indian corner away from Babylon. Use them as garrisons along the northern border.

The strategic problem we have right now is that we have China to our NW and everybody else to the north of old Japan. We need to eliminate both the Carthaginians and the Chinese.

The best way to do that is start a dogpile on Babylon using the Americans, the Vikings, and the Iroquois, and also get the the French and the English at war with each other so that we can concentrate on Carthage and China. Doing that will also allow us to do other per turn deals with our allies.

Until we can protect our backside (China) and link the two halves of the Empire (Mongols and Carthage) we will not be secure. And going it alone just invites the rest of the world to take us on.

 

[Minute Man]

I'm up next, right? I got it, but I probably won't be able to play until Saturday.

So, basically, our current plan is to:

(1) Start a couple of phony wars, to keep the rest of the world busy while we...
(2) Conquer our neighbors, which gives us more room to...
(3) Build a whole bunch of cities (as tight as we can, except near the core) and whip a whole bunch of temples.

But the main focus is on building settlers; only the fully developed core cities should be devoted to military. Do I have everything right?

Also, if I do start the suggested wars (mini-dogpile on Babylon, French/English war), will that be enough to keep, say, the Mongols from bringing in one of the other civs against us, or should I try to get alliances against our neighbors as well (which would be an awful lot of alliances)?

 

[Pied Piper]

For new cities I would recommend placement in the area directly across the channel. There are unused tiles over there and corruption is low. Perhaps we can ship some workers over there to develop the tiles Japan did not do, or change some irrigation on grass to mines. Also forest in Tundra is more productive than mines.

 

[Bede]

The Mongols don't have many legs left, or much of an economy. So their ability to form alliances is pretty weak. They haven't been able to buy any help yet.

The bigger concern would be a Carthage/China alliance against us. Maybe Carthage vs China till when we are ready to take on China? Or Chnia v Carthage? Include a Right of Passage. And yeah, it is a lot of alliances but on a map like this that is the only way to keep everybody busy and out of our hair.

And shipping workers to old Japan and planting trees on the ice are good.

And you have the plan, MM.

 

[Tubby Rower]

I'm going to be gone next week to Chicago for work. I'm going to request a skip until I check back in. I'll be here this weekend but I don't know how much time I'll have due to packing and playing with my daughter..... Good luck guys. I'll check in and offer suggestion if I can.

 

[Minute Man]

I'm midway through my turns, and it looks like we have a bit of a problem. Babylon finished wiping out India and then decided to sneak attack us! I tried to sign alliances with Hammurabi's neighbors, but nobody is willing to ally with us ("will never accept such a deal"), due to our broken alliance earlier. Is there any way around this, or are we going to have to go it alone (which could get ugly)?

 

[Bede]

How is the economy?

Can you use the threat of war to get them into an alliance?

If you can 't just try to hold them off in north until the Mongols are out of the way, then link up the troops and start mar marching north.

 

[Minute Man]

So is renegotiating peace the only way to get an alliance? I did think of that, but once I start the negotiation, we have to come to a deal, or we're at war, right? And we have ongoing deals with all of Babylon's neighbors (in fact, we have existing peace deals with both the Americans and Iroquois - can you even renegotiate before the 20 turns are up?), so we'd trash whatever shreds of our rep we have left if we can't come to an agreement. So I've been saving that for a last resort.

The economy is about as healthy as can be expected - if I shut off research again, we have +85 or so gpt, with almost 900 in the bank. That should be enough to buy some alliances, if it wasn't for the rep issue.

I did take your advice and moved the troops back to the Indian corner, which is where the main Babylonian attack seems to be, so it shouldn't be too bad. But they also have a few troops running around near our far eastern border, which is very lightly defended, so we might lose a couple more cities there if I can't distract them somehow. Plus, they have cavalry. But the biggest problem is that Babylon has deep pockets (a couple of turns ago they had more than 2000 gold), so they can probably buy some alliances.

 

[Minute Man]

OK, I really hate to have to stop and ask for advice again, after taking so long to get these turns played, but the Babylonian war is turning into a disaster. They've managed to pick off a couple of our lightly defended eastern cities (Mauch Chunk and Tonowanda), which is annoying, but not the end of the world.

But now there's a sizable fleet (3 galleys and a caravel visible so far) heading directly at our core - which is, of course, almost completely undefended. We just built two knights, which is better than nothing, but if Babylon drops off, say, half a dozen cavalry, we're in very deep trouble.

Btw, it turns out we can sign alliances after all; they're just really, really expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it took most of our economy even to budge them to doubtful, which is why I thought it was impossible. I managed to sign an alliance with the Iroquois (by shipping them a couple of luxuries) when the war started, which has helped, but we don't have enough money to get another one.

We just don't have enough military to go around, and what we do have is mostly too far away from the action to be of much help. I'm attaching an intermediate save - can you guys look at it and give me some suggestions? I'm really not very good at dealing with this sort of situation...

 

[Bede]

When last I looked there was knight army in old Japan.

Can you send them on a Mosby's ride through Babylon, tearing up the countryside?

I'll look at the save later.

 

[Minute Man]

Yeah, but I just started moving them east to try to stop the bleeding there (since it's the fastest unit). Really, it's the invasion fleet that I'm concerned about - our core is almost totally undefended, and I would really hate to lose one of the few productive cities we do have. Everything else is manageable.

 

[Minute Man]

While I'm at it, I'll go ahead and post the turn log so far:

IHT - 850 AD

In light of Bede's suggestion that we should try to stir up some trouble in the rest of the world (so that we can pound on our neighbors in peace), I start out by doing a quick review of the diplomatic situation. And I discover that we have the following deals going:

Babylon: peace treaty with 20 turns left
Scandinavia: selling them spices for 8gpt (10 turns), receiving 4 gpt (20 turns)
America: peace treaty (6 turns)
Iroquois: peace treaty + sending them iron (17 turns)

We are also receiving 4 gpt from France (20 turns) and have ongoing ROPs with Carthage, China, and Iroquois (all of which can be freely canceled).

So there's clearly going to be no dogpiling on Babylon during my turns, and probably no troublemaking at all. It's be sort of nice if China and Carthage started fighting, but I don't really want to open up a two-front war by declaring on one of them to get the ball rolling right now. So I guess I'll have to just concentrate on wiping out the Mongols, hope they can't bring in any help, and figure out what to do about our other neighbors later.

On research...I agree that researching Banking is going nowhere, so I look into the possibility of researching Military Tradition - we want it ASAP, we can't trade for it with gpt, we're not going to be signing alliances in the immediate future, we're not going to be beating it out of anybody anytime soon, and we have so many libraries that we get about 20% more beakers than gold from the same amount of commerce. At 40% research, we can get it in 24 turns with +6 gpt, so I do that (at 50%, we're at -59 gpt, which is too much). If nothing else, it'll be cheaper when we do get a chance to buy it.

2 - 870 AD

Babylon takes New Bombay, wiping out India.

Take Darhan. There are still a few random bogies around, but the Mongols are going to keep trickling longbows at us forever until we take the rest of their cities.

4 - 890 AD

On the IT, Babylon sneak attacks us, taking the undefended town of Grand River. OK, I guess we will try to start a dogpile after all. Unfortunately, due to our broken alliance earlier, nobody will ally with us!

I think we really do need allies, because we just don't have the military strength to take on Babylon alone, not to mention whatever allies Hammurabi signs up with his 2000+ gp treasury. As it is, some of our far eastern towns are in jeopardy because our defenses over there are very weak.

I pause to consult with the team, hoping that there is something I'm not thinking of, but it looks like renegotiating peace is the only option. However, I discover in the negotiations that, even though the advisor says "will never accept such a deal", they actually will ally with us - we just have to put so much on the table to even budge them to doubtful that I didn't see it earlier. So I renegotiate our ongoing ROP with the Iroquois and find that we can get an alliance for ROP, furs, ivory, our world map, 600 gold, and 21 gpt. Ouch! But since the Iroquois are between us and Babylon, it will help immensely to have them on board (and should protect our weak eastern border), so I take a deep breath and pay it.

Our entire remaining economy isn't sufficient to get an alliance from America or Scandinavia, so one ally will have to do. At least the Babs can't send any more troops through Iroquois territory.

5 - 900 AD

On the IT, the Babylonians sign an alliance with the French...vs. the Iroquois. Whew.

They also take Mauch Chunk (which was guarded by a single GS that I couldn't reinforce), but the rest of their troops turned around, so hopefully that'll be the extent of our losses.

The Mongols attack Darhan with a Keshik. Diplo screen shows they still don't have horses, though, so must be left over. Hope they don't have too many, especially with all these mountains around.

A Babylonian galley comes into view north of our core. This is very bad news, since we have so many undefended cities, and the Amazon dividing our forces. If he drops off, say, two cavalry, we have a major problem on our even a couple of reinforcements ready.

6 - 910 AD

Another alliance - Iros bring in Scandinavia vs. France. We're certainly managing to stir up some trouble, but unfortunately it's not helping us against the Babs.

Oh, no! Two more galleys and a caravel come into view. This could get really bad. And the Babs take Tonowanda - those darn cavalry are just too fast. I try to retake Mauch Chunk, but somehow two spearmen have appeared there in the one turn that's elapsed since it's fallen. In retrospect, counterattacking here was probably a bad move. Need to get some forces from the west over here.

On the Mongol front, I just finished moving forces into position to take Hovd, so I go ahead and do it. Hopefully this will consolidate our position a bit here, but there are still a few too many random Mongols running around to be able to spare many troops to send east.


Is it worth thinking about making peace with the Mongols and racing east to defend the core? Or should I keep going and hope to be able to deal with the invasion with what we have? I guess it's possible that the mighty invasion fleet will just drop off a couple of bowmen and I'll feel silly, but even two or three cavs would be enough to stand a good chance of razing a core city or two.

 

[eldar]

I'd say, take peace with Temujin, and do as you say. We've still got the Gallic Army, right? Should make a decent defender for the core, and is our quickest unit in that area anyhow.

 

[Bede]

SInce Darhan and Hovd are in our hands do the peace thing with the Mongols and take what they will give us (but no towns) and see if they will throw in an RoP inthe deal. Then put the two armies in position where they can do us some good.

The galleys and caravels can be dealt with if you can get the two armies over there. ANd hope that our friends the Iroquois can keep the bozos busy on the other side.

And sorry about leaving you some bad advice and not posting the log of a deal with Babylon. But somehow I ended up renegotiating peace with Hammi and I'm not quite sure why.

On the science front every one pop town that has built its temple can become a scientist. And every bigger town on a river or lake should have at least one scientist. That will bring the research time way down on MilTrad and preserve the treasury.

 

[Minute Man]

OK, it turns out that I was mostly worried about nothing - I forgot how truly awful the AI is at conducting invasions. You'd think that an emperor-level AI, of that size, could manage to land at least a couple of cavalry....

6 - 910 AD (cont)

OK, the first order of business is to make peace with the Mongols. Unfortunately, they have absolutely nothing to offer in return. I think we did too good a job of pillaging them. Since we're much bigger than they are, I figure they'll accept a ROP even if it's not part of the peace negotiation, so I do the two deals separately. Then I start moving units east to deal with the threatened invasion. I also change a couple of knight builds to MDIs just because we need warm bodies. It'll have to do, I guess.

I follow Bede's suggestion and hire a bunch of scientists, which drops the research time on MT from 21 to 15 turns. Nice. While I'm at it, I change a couple of our second ring cities to barracks - we clearly need more military.

I hold my breath and press enter...and the Babylonian fleet doesn't drop anybody off, electing to sail further down the coast. Good; every extra turn gives us more time to get defenders in position.

8 - 930 AD

On the IT, one of the Babylonian galleys was sunk attacking our galley. Still no troops dropped off. And in the east, that pesky Bab cavalry decides to go after the Iroquois instead of us. So it looks like the situation might actually be turning around now.

We also get a message that America has started Newton's. We're starting to fall well behind in tech, but not sure what there is to be done about that.

Our knight army attacks Tonowanda, and defeats the first (fortified) spearman flawlessly. So I attack again...and the second (unfortified) spearman does 8 (!) damage, so our army wins with one hit point left. That gives us Tonowanda again, but unfortunately Babylon still has a cavalry within striking distance, and we can't afford to lose that army, so I'm forced to retreat. Nobody else can quite reach the city, and if I abandon it the cavalry can use the roads to kill our army, so I'm forced to leave it undefended.

9 - 940 AD

As predicted, Babylon retook Tonowanda, but the forces that couldn't quite get there last turn retook the town (and killed that annoying cavalry!). The invasion fleet just sat there, and I haven't seen any other Bab troop activity recently, so I am declaring the situation officially under control once more (well, until the Babs and Iros sign peace, anyway). Really had me scared for a couple of turns, though.

As a side benefit of ending the Mongol war, the incense is now hooked up again.

10 - 950 AD

Babylon signs Scandinavia in against the Iroquois. This is turning into a dogpile on the Iros, which isn't exactly what we wanted to happen.

The Babylonian invasion fleet sinks both of the galleys I had built to defend our waters. But still no troops dropped off. I know the AI is bad at invasions, but this is ridiculous. Not that I'm complaining too much, though...


Notes:

I think we have enough military in our core now that we can start thinking about moving forces back west (or to the Chinese border, or wherever seems appropriate). I strongly recommend that we don't leave the core totally undefended again, though - if the Babylonians had actually bothered to bring any ground troops in their invasion force, things could have gotten really ugly.

The eastern front is stable, at least for the moment - haven't seen any Bab activity there (other than that one cavalry, who is now dead) since the beginning of the war. The alliance with the Iroquois is really helping us there. The knight army is currently healing in Osaka; as soon as it's done, it can be used to take the Bab cities south of the Iroquois, or sent pillaging, or whatever.

Military Tradition is currently due in nine turns, with the aid of a bunch of scientists, who should probably be turned back into productive citizens once we have it.

Even with losing a couple cities, our city count increased by ten or so during our turns, and our culture per turn is up to 366.

I just noticed that just about every other team has crossed our score graph by now. I think we might have focused a bit too much on building new cities and culture, and not enough on military - progress in our wars has been awfully slow.

Anyway, enough rambling. Here's >>>The Save<<< , for the next better player. Sorry about taking so long for my turns....

 

[Bede]

Yup!

Now that I think on it two things were non-optimal:
1) Stopping our campaigns when we should have pressed on.
2) Researching the wrong side of the tech tree in the MA using cash instead of scientists.

Going forward I think it is best to keep every town on a lake or a river and every town with more than two population with at least one scientist if corruption (gold) and waste (shields) exceed 30% if we are researching or keep at least one tax collector if corruption exceeds 50% if we are stockpiling cash. The scientist is worth 3 beakers per turn which equals three gold pieces and the tax collector equals two and since roaded tiles only produce one gold we will get more scientific productivity and more income this way out of those towns. And since a roaded and mined regular grass only produces one shield the shields lost will not be noticed either in those towns if we have a hill or forest available.

Also Japan is full of trees, use them to hustle the builds after the temple. It takes some careful figuring to get it right but it will be worth it in the long run,

Mab - up
Tubby Rower
Pied Piper
eldar
Bede
Minute Man