SGOTM7 - Team tao

First things -- I don't think we want a city on that forest by Lahore. It'll make our first palace ring RCP-2, and that is going to nail nearly all of our high-production towns with extra corruption. It won't gain us any critical tiles, either -- Lahore will keep all the ones immediately adjacent to it. India has no horses; they won't be able to hit very hard very quickly. As long as you have reinforcements to ship on the second turn, with plenty of cats, I think you'll be fine to move on Lahore via the second forest. Focus on swords for offense initially, with just a couple of horses to pick off the last unit of a stack. We can send more horses later.

As for keeping Lahore, well you'll have to see what size it is when you capture it, and whether or not it still has its harbor after bombardment. (Plan for at least ten units, by the way (mostly spears), as they had at least five or six already when I played and will most likely be able to reinforce a bit before you get there.) With India still in despotism, it probably has whip unhappiness already, and will get more once you land, so it won't be a useful town for us for quite a while. Raze and replace sounds rather tempting to me, actually.

Re: AI Bait -- keep the units out of the city itself, and off the coast wherever possible. (You'll probably want to keep a unit on the olives to keep it usable by us.) You need to leave room for them to land, or they'll go elsewhere. Don't take too many troops away from Izmit, because the Indians have apparently been landing there a bit. You can use the cats in Sogut to nail galleys as they go past when the opportunity is there -- might get a few to turn around. Eventually, we'll need roads over the mountains between Izmit and AI Bait to allow better movement, and we definitely need a road on that last desert coast tile by AI Bait so we don't lose movement by attacking a lone enemy unit.

I don't think we want anything else in trade, unless we can sell our maps or a truly obsolete tech for decent cash.

Renata
 
Oh, one question of my own. Monarchy should show up fairly soon. Do we want to revolt right away?

Renata
 
Renata said:
First things -- I don't think we want a city on that forest by Lahore. It'll make our first palace ring RCP-2, and that is going to nail nearly all of our high-production towns with extra corruption.
Good point, I should have thought of that!
As long as you have reinforcements to ship on the second turn, with plenty of cats, I think you'll be fine to move on Lahore via the second forest. Focus on swords for offense initially, with just a couple of horses to pick off the last unit of a stack. We can send more horses later.
So, how many swords, spears, cats, horses would be optimum?
As for keeping Lahore, well you'll have to see what size it is when you capture it, and whether or not it still has its harbor after bombardment. (Plan for at least ten units, by the way (mostly spears), as they had at least five or six already when I played and will most likely be able to reinforce a bit before you get there.) With India still in despotism, it probably has whip unhappiness already, and will get more once you land, so it won't be a useful town for us for quite a while. Raze and replace sounds rather tempting to me, actually.
If it loses it's harbour I'll raze it. This invasion technique is something I'd like to perfect. Do I take a couple of turns just to bombard the town and then try to capture it all in one go? It seems to me it's always bad news to attack and only wound the defenders. That would mean at least one attacker per defender once they are reduced. The only problem I always have is the ratio of failed artillery per turn. Patience or swashbuckling, that is the question.
Re: AI Bait -- keep the units out of the city itself, and off the coast wherever possible. (You'll probably want to keep a unit on the olives to keep it usable by us.) You need to leave room for them to land, or they'll go elsewhere.
Good, that's what I'd have figured. Thanks, Renata, this is good info as I need to improve my invasion techniques. :goodjob: Is it considered bad technique to invade while in anarchy?
 
Renata said:
As for keeping Lahore, well you'll have to see what size it is when you capture it, and whether or not it still has its harbor after bombardment... With India still in despotism, it probably has whip unhappiness already, and will get more once you land, so it won't be a useful town for us for quite a while. Raze and replace sounds rather tempting to me, actually.
I agree. I think that the decision to keep it will be crital. Abandoning the city after capture will spread the whip unhappiness to our other cities I believe so a small city with a harbour is OK to keep IMO but a large city and/or a city without a harbour should be razed. If in doubt, raze and replace as we need a safe foothold from which to expand into the island.
 
Lahore is one of the furthest cities from their capitol, and (I think, I haven't checked) closer to ours than theirs. I would have thought we could keep that one and save the Settler for a larger city, closer to their capitol.

Around AI bait, I agree with Renata, keep some of the Units on the Olives, there's another spot behind the city (NE), that leaves 2 tiles, SE and S of AI Bait for the AI to land on. This will allow the S tile to be roaded and allow the AI to land on the other tile, or to allow a unit to finish a turn at one landing site and still allow the AI to land at the other. Once Barracks town is built you'll be able to put lots of the units in there as well, with the landing sites beween the 2 cities.

On the make-up of the landing force; tao posted a suggestion a while back, and remember you can unload both lots of units in 1 turn, by loading up the galleys and moving next to the landing site, waiting till the next turn, unloading, moving back to the city, loading the next lot, back to the landing site and unloading again.

edit: none of the Indian cities are very large, Bangalore and Bombay are Size 5, Delhi is only size 3 and apart from Calcutta at 2 the rest are size 4.
 
Tone said:
Abandoning the city after capture will spread the whip unhappiness to our other cities ....
Really? :eek: I didn't know that. So you can't have a look at the town to see if the harbour survived without risking unhappiness? :confused: These subtleties must be what separates the experts from the rest of us.

Any other help is obviously welcomed. I will start in a short while. There is always something to interfere with your game, like RL. :D I'll check once more for more excellent advice.

More advice before I post. Super!
Furiey said:
Lahore is one of the furthest cities from their capitol, and (I think, I haven't checked) closer to ours than theirs. I would have thought we could keep that one and save the Settler for a larger city, closer to their capitol.
I'll *try* to keep it for sure.
Around AI bait, I agree with Renata, keep some of the Units on the Olives, there's another spot behind the city (NE), that leaves 2 tiles, SE and S of AI Bait for the AI to land on. This will allow the S tile to be roaded and allow the AI to land on the other tile, or to allow a unit to finish a turn at one landing site and still allow the AI to land at the other. Once Barracks town is built you'll be able to put lots of the units in there as well, with the landing sites beween the 2 cities.
Okay, my thinking would be that all those lurking units might scare them away. :lol: I'm happy to be corrected.
On the make-up of the landing force; tao posted a suggestion a while back, and remember you can unload both lots of units in 1 turn, by loading up the galleys and moving next to the landing site, waiting till the next turn, unloading, moving back to the city, loading the next lot, back to the landing site and unloading again.
I assumed 3 galleys could deliver 6 units, twice in a turn, for 12 units per galley move. Load galleys, move one tile, unload units, move galleys back to Sogut(costs 1 movement point), load galleys, move one tile, unload units. Or do I have that wrong?

Thanks Furiey and Tone. :) I'd hate to bungle this operation.
 
Keath said:
AI Bait will get some reinforcements nearby - cats and troops from Izmit. Won't that scare the AI away? I'm not clear as to where the cats should be placed - next to AI Bait on the coast?
You always have to leave Al Bait ungarrisoned and at least one coastal tile (S or SE, not the olives) free for AI landing troops.

And I would seriously consider keeping all the Indian towns. We will experience an extremely high flip risk.
 
@ Furiey - There is an Indian and Persian galley south of Upulu. If they contain units, they could be dropped in the jungle tile with workers all around. Do you remember if these galleys are empty? You mention one passed by AI Bait, then last turn went S, then N. I could put a sword from South Beach on the dangerous tile just in case.

I'm working on the 550 bc pre-turn still, but am ready to press return. I'll wait for a short while for a response, if not I'll move the sword.

tao said:
And I would seriously consider keeping all the Indian towns. We will experience an extremely high flip risk.
Are you suggesting keeping them or razing them? We'd get a high flip risk if we kept them, right? Regardless, Lahore looks too good to destroy, Calcutta goes, though, there is a better square east.
 
I wouldn't worry about them, they've been sailing past all the time. I'll check just to make sure though.

OK,

The Persian one has just appeared from the fog, so I would guess it has units.

The Indian one sailed past AI Bait, reached where it is now, then last IBT moved 1 tile further then 1 tile back - looked like it was checking out the location where I built Epulu, maybe it has a Settler and was going for the open land, or possibly it bypassed AI Bait as at the time it passed the landing sites were both blocked with healing troops and the stack of units (why I said to keep 2 clear) so it started for something else.

I would not move the Sword though, it would make South Beach more vulnerable and may invite a landing there rather than at AI Bait.
 
I am now finishing turn 6 and will have to take a break. The invasion is underway. We know Monarchy and I'm set to revolt this turn. Presently earning 32 gpt. We are in the MA and have Monotheism. I am thinking of a plan while in anarchy to research Engineering(in 34 at -5 gpt before anarchy) which the AI don't work on immediately. I'll hire scientists. We have a lot of food in most cities so we can afford to go negative food if need be. We have 120 gold.

Maybe this won't work but I thought I'd toss it out there in case someone else has a better idea about how to handle our anarchy. I will get back to it in the am and check for ideas during the meantime. By the way:

Killboard:
Furiey – 8
Sabre - 3
Renata - 1
Keath - 9, 4 slaves, 1 sword lost. :D
 
Good to hear about monarchy. Let's hope we get a decent (3-5) number of anarchy turns. Do we need to do engineering? The AIs should research it for us. If we really want to start research - I'm not at all sure that this is a good idea now - we should go for chivalry/knights.
 
As the AIs will surely all go for Fued first and they seem a bit slow on the research front, I can see the reasoning behind going for Eng. However 34 turns @-5gpt doesn't seem worth the investment as we can get it so much cheaper using min research. Can we crank it up more (Monarchy *may* help here) or alternatively just have one scientist and get it in 40? We'll surely need some cash in the bank though as we'll need to upgrade units when Fued comes in.

I suspect our unit costs may mean that min research or no research are the only cost effective options but I can't look at any saves at work so please take my comments with this in mind. (i.e. partially uninformed at best :sad: )
 
The AI is vey slow to research, but we do need the gold for upgrades and it would be very annoying to spend it on research and then get if from the great Library.

Saying that though, if we are going into Anarchy we will probably have to have quite a few specialists, we are also on the conquest route and will be starving cities down, again with specialists. We could probably find one of these that we could spare as a Scientist for quite a while to come. In this case we'll only have wasted 1gpt if they do research it for us.

edit: you need to put yourself at the top of the killboard Keath, not the bottom!
 
Okay, so we'll go for Monarchy now, forget about researching techs as we'll get them anyway and try to save some gold for upgrades; hope we get a decent number of anarchy turns and meanwhile go for a swift capture of Indian towns. Lahore is down to pop2 and may not be much to keep but it's in a great spot so I hope we can capture it with harbour intact.

What else can you do during anarchy? :D
Furiey said:
edit: you need to put yourself at the top of the killboard Keath, not the bottom!
Too late to edit. :lol: I'm larnin'.
 
I wouldn't argue with one scientist on Engineering. There's a remote chance that two AIs get to education before two get to Engineering. It's rare, but it does happen, and if nothing else, we need the river-crossing ability. Make one of AI Bait's citizens a scientist, perhaps. We don't want a junk town like that to use up too many tiles.

If Engineering pops from the library, continue with 40 turns on Invention, and so forth.

Once we're in Monarchy, I would like to re-evaluate the research possibilities, but odds are it still won't be practical.

(Yay, invasion!)

Renata
 
Oh, and ... start handbuilding the Hanging Gardens once we've revolted? I think the cascades are dead -- GW and Lighthouse were both built -- so we'd have a better-than-usual shot at it. With map visibility we could tell who else was building and where, except for Vikings and America.

Renata
 
Thanks everyone! :thumbsup: I'm about to get revolting. :mischief: I can't see putting too much into research when we have the GL so I'll look at a single scientist in AI Bait, good idea. I guess the logical place to build the HG is in GL, so I'll see how the revolution and invasion go and then see what Monarchy does for us.
 
550 bc (0): After reading the latest posts, I check the game and away we go! Switch Cowtown North to settler in 1. Switch Uskudar to settler with plans to mm for growth and settler in 6. Move peninsula sword se and see Zulu galley se.

IBT: Lots of galleys about moving somewhat aimlessly. Zulu galleys coming from north along with one Indian galley. No landings though. Aydin catapult =>cat, Antalya Lib=>Spear, CT North settler=>harbour; South Beach catapult=>catapult.

530 bc (1): Settler and spear head to incense hill. 2/4 sword heals in CT South. Worker roads forest. Settler SSE of AI Bait accompanied by 2 swords. Upgrade reg warr->swords. Move workers to jungle. Leave iron up as no need to pillage now.

IBT: Lots of galley moves. 2 Zulu and 2 Indian galleys in strait nw of Sogut so no invasion this turn. Arab galley drops off warrior and settler in jungle 4 tiles due south of Aydin. Persian and Indian galleys cue up around AI Bait. :) Sogut spear=>settler. Izmit spear=>spear

510 bc (2): Move some reg swords from Izmit s. Move workers towards lambs to road mountain. Build Desert Beach=>barracks. Kill Arab warr and capture 2 workers->move to chop jungle for future jungle town. Move 3 cats n from Sogut to bombard galleys. 2/3 hits on Indian galleys now 3/4. Mm Uskudar for growth and settler in 4. Mm South Beach and Desert Beach for growth in 3. Persia – 4 towns, lacks construction. Zulu and India have currency.

IBT: Zulu galleys move on. Wounded Indian galleys retreat to Calcutta. We learn Currency, enter Middle Age and get Monotheism. Build FP=>Library. CT South spear=>spear. No landings this turn.

490 bc (3): Next turn Zulu will be out of Sogut waters and Indian galleys will be safely healing in Calcutta so it would be the ideal invasion date. Build Incense Hill=>galley, road bg to connect.

IBT: Persia drops 1 immortal s AI Bait. Zulu drop 1 vet Impi, 1 reg warr near CT South. Izmit spear=>spear

470 bc (4): Move 11 units to forest. One horse late, stuck on ferry. Lose vet sword to Impi 2/4. Reg sword wins. Vet sword kills warr. Vet sword(2/4) kills Immortal. Move lots of troops for reinforcements next turn.

IBT: Sogut settler=>to be warrior. Uskudar settler=>worker. Aydin cat=>to be warrior. Antalya spear=>to be warr. Bursa Lib=>to be warrior. Palace lawn.

450 bc (5): Move units w to forest s of Lahore. Vet sword kills reg sword, promotes 2/5. Move workers in jungle in prep for settler. Persia and Arabs have Monarchy. :D We have 83 gold, +37 gpt, so ‘we’re going to have a revolution, yea’. I decide to cut iron to build a few warriors before Monarchy. Switch builds to warrior, include CT South, Epulu. Can’t find any decent pop rushes.

IBT: Arabs land settler/warr pair in jungle again. We learn Monarchy. Sogut warrior=>warrior. GL Lib=>barracks. Izmit spear=>warr. CT South warr=>warr. AI Bait cat=>cat. Epulu warr=>warr. Stack wins 3 battles; spear 2/4, sword 1/4. 2 Indian galley appear in Sogut arena.

430 bc (6): Kill warr in jungle, gain 2 slaves, they chop. Workers road mine after chop then bring settler to jungle site. Move workers back to iron. Bombard Lahore – 1 pop killed. Vet sword(3/4) kills vet sword. Sword and spear ferried to forest. Bombard Indian galley pair – both hit for 2/3. Only Persia of our known neighbours is not in the MA. We revolt – 6 turn anarchy! :( After mm, no citizens will be lost. Hire scientist in Izmit to research Eng in 40, +1gpt.

IBT: No landings. Indian warrior attacks our 3/4 sword and dies promoting our sword 2/5. 2 wounded galleys return to Calcutta. Zulu galley NW of Sogut.

410 bc (7): Cowtown South grows – mm AI Bait to allow taxman in CT South, +2 gpt. Bombard Zulu galley – 2f, 1 hit - 3/4. Bombard Persia galley s Desert Beach, 2/2 hits - galley 2/4. 2 cats miss on Lahore. I decide to get more units there before the attack – move swords, heal others. Build Jungle Port – Damascus using fish so use mined bg => cat.

IBT: Wounded Persian galley drops 2 immortals at AI Bait. 2 Zulu galleys drop reg warrior and reg archer at AI Bait. The bait works! :goodjob: 3/4 Zulu galley moves homeward. Persians building HG.

390 bc (8): Bombard immortals 3/4, 2/3.

Battle for Lahore
Lahore temple destroyed. Second hit reduces spear to 3/4. 3/3 spear appears. Time to attack – 4/4 sword kills spear(2/4). 4/4 sword kills spear (3/4). 4/4 sword kills spear (2/4). 4/4 sword kills spear (4/5). 3/3 sword dies redlining spear. 3/3 sword kills spear (3/4). 3/3 sword attacks 3/4 spear and wins (2/3).

Feeling lucky so 4/4 horse attacks 3/3 sword and wins, 4/4. 4/4 horse attacks 3/3 sword and dies redlining sword. 4/4 horse attacks 2/4 sword and dies redlining sword. :( 4/4 horse attacks redlined spear wins (3/4). Now there is only 1 redlined sword left and only spears nearby BUT I find a 4/4 horse who can move n and does the job. We capture Lahore, :dance: 4 gold, 1 resistor, 1 eqworker, harbour intact =>barracks. Worker to road forest. That’s 9 wins, lose one reg sword, 2 horses.

4/4 sword kills 3/4 immortal. 4/4 sword dies redlining immortal. 4/4 sword kills immortal. 3/3 sword kills Zulu warrior (2/3). 3/3 sword dies vs. archer (3/3). 4/4 sword kills archer (3/4).

Road iron in 2. Uskudar grows, hire taxman. Workers clearing jungle, roading forests. Arabs and Persians in Monarchy.

IBT: Galleys leave AI Bait. Indian galleys deliver 2 reg swords, 2 warriors next to Lahore, covered by reg spear from Calcutta.

370 bc (9): Bombard Indian spear 2/3, sword 2/3. Bombard Persian 2/4 galley (1/4). Sogut cat bombards Indian galley 3/4. Fortify spears and horses in and around Lahore, rest heal in forests. Move wounded units to Desert Beach to heal.

Persia in MA, Arabs down Mono. India down Monarchy, Mono. Move some warriors for upgrade next turn.

IBT: 2 Indian warriors and 2 swords are impaled on our spears, (3/4 and one promotion 5/5). 2/3 spear hides in forest. 3/4 galley returns to Calcutta. Resistance is over in Lahore.

350 bc (10): Bombard 2/3 spear 1/3. Kill spear with elite sword, no leader. Hire taxman in Lahore.

Post-turn: I leave everything else as is for next player. The iron is back on and there are reg warriors to upgrade. Most invasion troops have healed. There is a settler in the stack s of Lahore. When Calcutta is razed, there is an excellent site at the right distances due east of Calcutta. Elite sword in forest next to Calcutta. Monarchy in 2. Arabian galley nearing AI Bait. J

Our Firaxis score is 593 and we are number 2 behind India – 641.

Killboard:
Keath - 28, 5 captured slaves (5 losses) :)
Furiey – 8
Sabre - 3
Renata - 1

Renata(up next unless Tone to play)
tao
Sabre
Furiey
Tone
Keath(just played)
>>the save<<
 
Yay invasion! (Yeah, so I said it before, but I'm excited. Sue me. :p ) 6 turns on anarchy stinks, but it's probably no worse than average for our number of cities. And 28-5 is an awesome kill ratio given that we had an invasion in there. Still need more cats, though, and some galleys to stash down south and pick off damaged ones would be quite nice.

I'll probably have dozens of comments once I get going, but finding a few free hours to actually play looks iffy until probably Sunday. (I'll know more of my weekend plans by tomorrow.) If Tone can play in the meantime, I'd prefer that so as not to slow this thing up any more.

Renata
 
This is a good read, Keath. :goodjob: Lahore with the harbour was more than I had hoped for. The only disappointment was the six turn anarchy but at least that is shared between two players. I look forward to looking at the save later.

Renata up next, please. I'm afraid I had to skip my turn as my timetable construction has hit a critical patch and I don't want to play unless I can give my full commitment to the turns. It also looks like I'm going to miss my first XOTM submission since I joined the site (GOTM16) but I WILL make time for my next turn in this game. This is by far and away too good a game to miss!

(BTW I hope that I can also play your map later in the month, Renata. I rushed the last one you did and regretted it-such a beautiful map and I wasted it! I don't want to make the same mistake twice so if time is tight, I'll play it properly when I'm able to-even if that means missing the submission deadline.)
 
Back
Top Bottom