SGOTM8 - Own

I went ahead and played 20 turns since I took so long and because I wanted to make sure things were ready to go as soon as we got Helicopters as best I could. Not quite perfect, but I think I did OK. Sorry for taking so long though. :blush:

TURNLOG:
Turn 00 / 1050 AD -
Preflight: Do some tile shuffling to maximize growth in Springfield, Spokane, and Philadelphia. GPT stays at +166 GPT and Steel in 2. Rush a Harbor in Oakland. Reactivate some workers to keep the turns interesting. Rome is offering +81 GPT, 150 GP, Democracy (whatever) and World Map for Steam Power. It's next on the priority list and draining them of cash is good enough to give them a tech they'll get anyway. The AI typically wanders after Communism and Fascism anyway, so odds of them getting Infantry before we get Helicopters are low. None of the other AI have any cash of note. IBT the Dyes and Wines for Furs and Wool deal expires. Offer Dyes, Wines, 259 Gold, 47 GPT for Furs and Wool. Still make out with a +34 GPT benefit and only 109 GP loss. Should have checked deals screen. Make mental note to do so in future.
Turn 01 / 1060 AD - Miami founded. Holding at +200 GPT and 1 Turn. IBT learn Steal. Combustion requires Research increase to 90% to achieve 4 Turns, with +84 GPT. MM to +92 GPT with specialists. Centralize nonactive Workers, Trebuchets, and Infantry near 01. Change all low priority builds to Infantry. Upgrade 4 Musketmen to Infantry.
Turn 02 / 1070 AD - Unit movement. At 4 Turns with +90 GPT.
Turn 03 / 1080 AD - Begin low-scale Explorer production, estimated run of 10 units total. Cheap and extremely effective at pillaging enemy resources - will be a good drop unit for say, every third helicopter. Holding at 3 Turns and +86 GPT.
Turn 04 / 1090 AD - Rush 3 Settlers on Greek Island. Holding at 2 Turns and +84 GPT.
Turn 05 / 1100 AD - Houston, St. Louis, Detriot founded. At 1 Turn, +92 GPT. IBT Silks for Gems deal expires - give Romans Gems, 22 GPT and 277 GP for Silks. Learn Combustion, research Flight - even at 100% Research with all Specialists to Science will take 5 turns. Will MM next turn.
Turn 06 / 1110 AD - Rush 2 Settlers on Greek Island. Cap growth at El Culture Bomb, 17, Buffalo, Athens, Kansas City, Los Angeles, 20, Canton, Dallas, Shanghai, Oakland, Beijing, Cleveland, 15, and 12 - reach 4 Turns at +23 GPT (all from trade). No cities should starve before we get it.
Turn 07 / 1120 AD - New Orleans founded. MMing puts us at 3 Turns and +26 GPT. IBT renew peace with Greeks.
Turn 08 / 1130 AD - Infantry force at 20 Units. Baltimore founded. Rush a Settler on Greek Island. Steady at 2 Turns and +24 GPT. Sell the Chinese Printing Press for 1 GPT, World Map, and 51 Gold. IBT Veii completes Shakespeare's Theater.
Turn 09 / 1140 AD - Denver founded. Rush a Settler on Greek Island. At 1 Turn, +23 GPT. IBT learn Flight, research Mass Production, due in 4 at +183 GPT - will MM at start of next turn.
Turn 10 / 1150 AD - Cincinnati, Memphis founded. Reestablish normal to semi-normal growth pattern for cities. MMing results in 4 Turns at +194 GPT. Rush a Settler on Greek Island. Begin reactivating Workers for Airfield Farms. Using normal Workers for Airfields as cuts down on support costs and we have a huge surplus anyway. Construct 15 Airfields on mainland, more on the way. Shift core to Bombers. Shift Greek Island priority to Infantry - only 3 more Settlers required there. After Worker sacrifices we are at 4 Turns and +224 GPT. IBT 01 completes Hoover Dam.
Turn 11 / 1160 AD - Rush a Settler on Greek Island. Build 6 Airfields for a total of 21. At 3 Turns and +230 GPT.
Turn 12 / 1170 AD - Richmond founded. Build Airfield on Greek Island. Disband 4 Trebuchets on Greek Island (without boats they're not going anywhere - can't airlift). Disband 10 Trebuchets on Mainland. Disband 14 Longbowmen on the Mainland (Guerillas suck, 150 GP to upgrade is no good, they're eating up troop cap). Disband 4 Regular Longbowmen on Greek Island (same story). At 2 Turns and +258 GPT. Upgrade 1 Knight, 1 Horseman to Cavalry.
Turn 13 / 1180 AD - Las Vegas founded. Rush a Settler on Greek Island - all necessary Settlers completed. At 1 Turn and +258 GPT. Cease Explorer production at 5 Units. Reprioritize military builds on assumption of a 20 Helicopter Strike Force as follows:

20 Helicopters = 60 spots.
5 Explorers = 1 Explorer every 4th Helicopter as Pillager.
20 Cavalry = 1 Cavalry every Helicopter.
35 Infantry = Remainder.

Current Explorer quota filled. Have 2 Cavalry, 21 Infantry. Mandates 18 Cavalry and 14 Infantry need to be produced. This should be sufficient for any beachhead establishment - remainder of forces are to be Bombers and Tanks for artillery / assault operations. Rebalance production to 18 Cavalry, 14 Infantry, remainder Bombers. Steady at 1 Turn, +258 GPT. Begin stockpiling cash for rush before Advanced Flight. IBT learn Mass Production, research Motorized Transportation at 4 Turns, +258 GPT.
Turn 14 / 1190 AD - Sacrifice a random Longbowman that somehow eluded my notice. At 4 Turns, +260 GPT.
Turn 15 / 1200 AD - Phoenix founded. Greek Island filled in. Build 1 Airfield on Greek island. At 3 Turns, +234 GPT.
Turn 16 / 1210 AD - Build 2 Airfields on Greek Island. At 2 Turns, +234 GPT. IBT 135 GPT deal with Rome expires.
Turn 17 / 1220 AD - Sell Romans Industrialization for World Map, 192 GPT, Free Artistry (random) and 2 GP. They will not reach Infantry by the time we roll around to them, can use the tech to finance military buildup, and suck their research dry. They should be a secondary or tertiary target so our Bomber and Tank forces are well built up by the time we confront them. Sell the Japanese Steam Power for Music Theory, 31 GPT, 100 Gold, and World Map. Same story - those two will probably be last or near last. After these deals and slight MMing, we are at 1 Turn, +328 GPT. IBT we finish Motorized Transportation, enter Modern Age, go for Advanced Flight, due in 5 at +143 GPT. Will MM next turn.
Turn 18 / 1230 AD - MMing gets us to 4 Turns at +141 GPT. IBT Rome demands the Corporation - cave. We cannot afford to lose funding right now, so I err on the side of caution and hand it over. Again, they won't be able to do much.
Turn 19 / 1240 AD - Steady at 3 Turns, +143. IBT the English want to trade World Maps - pinch 4 gold off them.
Turn 20 / 1250 AD - Nothing really to report. We're about ready to kick some ass.

NOTES:
Alright, I would really love to continue this a bit farther, but that'd be rather selfish. Here's what I think needs to be done:

1.) Allow current builds to run until we get Advanced Flight.
2.) Shutdown research after reaching Advanced Flight. We don't really need anything more, and we're going to need lots of to finance a massive war operation.
3.) Shift all core builds to Helicopters so long as it doesn't waste shields. Shift stuff near completing in the boonies (eg: Delphi) to Helicopters and rush them. Try to acquire 20 Helicopters ASAP without depleting cash too quickly.
4.) The turn before the final Helicopter finishes, rush as many existing Infantry and Cavalry builds as possible, hopefully all of them. With any luck we'll have our 20 Helicopter strike force all ready to go as soon as the final helicopter is done and we can proceed to kill people. We will be ready for the final set of wars in less than 10 turns.
5.) Convert all remaining cities to mostly Tanks with some Bombers spaced in.
6.) Pick a target and kill it. I think either Vikings or China should be first, depending on when the deal with China expires relative to when our force is finished building, or whether we even care about maintaining a trade reptuation anymore.
7.) Repeat 6 with a different target. If we work quickly we can maybe get China, Vikings, and Greeks out of the way before hitting Rome, Japan, and England.

SAVE: Own_SG008_AD1250_01.SAV
 
The end is nigh - how quickly can we finish it?

I agree we can shut off research after advanced flight. Only the Romans have Nationalism, we can expect pikes and samuri from Japs, muskets and cav from English, muskets and zerks from Vikes and nothing from the rest.
(edit - selling libs and unis will help pay for our army)

I would suggest prioritising attacks on Japan ASAP allying Rome then turning on Rome as soon as Japs destroyed on their main island. This will allow time to establish our city base near Kyoto (on a hill) then airlift tanks in to use against Rome's rifles with bomber support. Meanwhile next heli with settler / infantry settle in Vike land and airlift cavs to quickly do the damage, followed rapidly by one to England. Helis can then take shock force of infantry to take the weakly defended islands (we should be able to speed this up by getting them in phony peace deals)

Could we possibly finish in 20 turns? I think we may unless I am seriously underestimating the resistance we might meet.

All other civs exc China(rep) are demos.

I think we have enough bombers - only really needed for Romes bigger cities - currently have 21
Not sure of need for explorers - I see little need to worry too much about pillaging - we should have the technological upper hand with tanks or cavs v rifles or muskets (or even less)
We need settlers for our foreign cities - we could also do with a few more infantry ( have 21)
Not convinced we need 20 helis - 6 or 8 should be plenty, rest can be tanks and cavs as these will do most of the city razing. These need to be transported by airlift rather than by helis. Do we want more cavs - extra movement or tanks - more expensive, slower, but blitz ability to double the casualties and more resilient so less time spent recovering and more time attacking -I favour tanks.

Our task is to destroy 72 cities (22 Roman, 20 Vike, 13 English, 10 Jap, 5 Chinese, 2 Greeks) although I would identify 6-8 far-flung cities to get in those phony peace deals.

That leaves it for Own and Abegweit to see if they can complete this in the next 20 turns (assuming they're avail).
 
Andronicus said:
I think we have enough bombers - only really needed for Romes bigger cities - currently have 21
I'd advise 30. They won't take that much longer to build and wiping out opposition from the sky is superior to having to waste tanks to do it. The more Bombers we have, the fewer Tanks we'll need. Bombers are pretty much Artillery, but better, and Artillery already pretty much owns CivIII.

Not sure of need for explorers - I see little need to worry too much about pillaging - we should have the technological upper hand with tanks or cavs v rifles or muskets (or even less)
Removing an enemy's resources is a pretty good cornerstone tactic, though I agree it won't be near as important as it could be considering we have a tech lead. But we can cripple their luxury resources if needbe. It's not like it's a huge force drain either.

We need settlers for our foreign cities - we could also do with a few more infantry ( have 21)
That's why more are cued up for 35 total... and I don't really see the point of Settling at all. We won't need science or money at this point, and producing more Settlers does little other than waste production that could be spent on units and bring us closer to the Domination limit (even though we're quite safe currently). We don't need more cities. We need more ass-kicking capability. Score doesn't matter - end time does.

The only thing it'd be good for is setting up Airports in enemy territory, and even that would take a lot of cash and defensive units. Waste of resources overall.

Not convinced we need 20 helis - 6 or 8 should be plenty, rest can be tanks and cavs as these will do most of the city razing. These need to be transported by airlift rather than by helis.
I know Tanks take Airfields. Why else would I have built a bunch of them? That doesn't change the fact that the AI has likely got a fair number of units roving around - especially Rome - and you need a strong punch to kill a city and set up an Airfiled to begin dropping in Tanks. 6 to 8 Helicopters is only 18 to 24 units. We should be focusing on hitting multiple targets at once, not just one. It's all about time now. It will take approximately 10 to 15 units per drop, minimum, depending on the enemy tech level.

With 20 Helicopters we can create either 5 Strike Forces of 12 Units or 4 Strike Forces of 15 Units, and hit as many places simultaneously as we have Strike Forces. With the cash we have saved up and some of the Bombers already in queue in the North we could get 20 Helicopters in maybe... 4 - 5 turns after finishing Advanced Flight.

I am in favor of hitting as many places as possible rather than one place at a time if we want to even try and conclude this in a rapid manner.

Do we want more cavs - extra movement or tanks - more expensive, slower, but blitz ability to double the casualties and more resilient so less time spent recovering and more time attacking -I favour tanks.
So do I. But you can't Helicopter in Tanks. You can Helicopter in Cavalry. Which makes them useful for setting up a beachhead which you can fly Tanks into. Unless you're going to dump your Infantry by Helicopter right next to the target city, you will need Cavalry to reach an objective in any reasonable amount of time.
 
@ Own - I think its worth pausing a while until we all digest the current situation and decide on quickest way to complete this campaign.

Symphony D. said:
I'd advise 30. They won't take that much longer to build and wiping out opposition from the sky is superior to having to waste tanks to do it. The more Bombers we have, the fewer Tanks we'll need. Bombers are pretty much Artillery, but better, and Artillery already pretty much owns CivIII.

Bombers are powerful, however they have had their lethal bombardment capability removed in this scenario. The main advantage of bombardment is when the enemy has strong defensive units (ie Rome), otherwise I suspect 10 extra tanks (or cav) would do more damage than 10 extra bombers


Removing an enemy's resources is a pretty good cornerstone tactic, though I agree it won't be near as important as it could be considering we have a tech lead. But we can cripple their luxury resources if needbe. It's not like it's a huge force drain either.

Each explorer takes a heli spot that could be used for another infantry thus protecting our beach-head - the best use I can see for explorer is to disband to rush airport (I confess I have never used an explorer in civ3 so perhaps someone can tell me what I'm missing)


That's why more are cued up for 35 total... and I don't really see the point of Settling at all. We won't need science or money at this point, and producing more Settlers does little other than waste production that could be spent on units and bring us closer to the Domination limit (even though we're quite safe currently). We don't need more cities. We need more ass-kicking capability. Score doesn't matter - end time does.

The only thing it'd be good for is setting up Airports in enemy territory, and even that would take a lot of cash and defensive units. Waste of resources overall.

I think that having 1 city on each major island (only require 4 - 3 more - settlers) will allow quicker deployment of tanks and cavs with rush build of airports (only req 1 per island). Not sure 35 more infantry is as valuable as 35 more tanks - may already have enough infantry - although before dow-ing Vikes should ensure infantry are defending our core cities.


I am in favour of hitting as many places as possible rather than one place at a time if we want to even try and conclude this in a rapid manner.

Agree - Only why wait. Once first strike force ready send it against island which is likely to take longest (ie Rome / Jap island), then attack next as soon as next strike force ready.

But you can't Helicopter in Tanks. You can Helicopter in Cavalry. Which makes them useful for setting up a beachhead which you can fly Tanks into. Unless you're going to dump your Infantry by Helicopter right next to the target city, you will need Cavalry to reach an objective in any reasonable amount of time.

Looks like I'm mistaken but I thought multiple movement units (other than explorers) could not be transported by heli - I checked civpedia and it just said mechanised troops could not be transported in helis so perhaps you're right.
 
I think that having 1 city on each major island (only require 4 - 3 more - settlers) will allow quicker deployment of tanks and cavs with rush build of airports (only req 1 per island). Not sure 35 more infantry is as valuable as 35 more tanks - may already have enough infantry - although before dow-ing Vikes should ensure infantry are defending our core cities.
Why bother with cities and settlers? Burn an enemy city, use the resulting Workers to found an Airfield and put some Infantry on it for defense. No need to take with us what we can find in the field.

The 35 Infantry was also a ballpark for 20 Helicopters, which is about what we'll need to effectively hit a large number of targets. After that we can just churn out Tanks.

Each explorer takes a heli spot that could be used for another infantry thus protecting our beach-head - the best use I can see for explorer is to disband to rush airport (I confess I have never used an explorer in civ3 so perhaps someone can tell me what I'm missing)
Treat all land as roads and 3 movement - perfect pillager unit. 1 Infantry unit will also not make a huge difference if we tote along about 5 or 6. We can just use them to rush some other Infantry builds if need be if people are opposed to this idea. I just figured they might be useful.

Bombers are powerful, however they have had their lethal bombardment capability removed in this scenario. The main advantage of bombardment is when the enemy has strong defensive units (ie Rome), otherwise I suspect 10 extra tanks (or cav) would do more damage than 10 extra bombers
Point. However, the Bombers can rebase halfway around the world and our opponents will have no counter to them - RNG can't screw us over with them in combat. Remember - for every unit we dump on a foreign continent we will need one Airfield or Airport to rebase it to the next target area.
 
lurker's comment: Helicopters cannot carry any fast combat units.
 
Well damn. Scrap the Cavalry builds then. Looks like it'll be a slog.
 
Defenders will be at most Riflemen, and those likely only in Japan and Rome depending how quickly we move. Everything else will be Musketmen or lower.

And yeah, we only need one Airfield or Airport on the receiving end (enemy land) - but we need as many Airfields or Airports as we have lift-necessary units on the sending end (our homeland). This isn't a problem since we've got a bunch of Airfields already set up.

The problem is when we have sent all those lift-necessary units to the enemy's land and have killed him, because then to get them off that land in a timely fashion, we will need that same number of Airfields or Airports on what was formerly enemy territory.

So we're going to need lots of Workers to turn into Airfields, or are going to have to keep a lot of cities and cash rush Airports. I am, again, absolutely in favor of Airfields over Airports because workers are either free or extraordinarily cheaper than Airports.

We have four options to resolve this problem: 1.) ship in the remaining workers we have stored up on the Mainland to enemy territories to build these new "emergency" Airfields. 2.) Burn enemy cities on capture and use resultant workers to make Airfields. 3.) Keep enemy cities and rush Workers to make Airfields. 4.) Keep enemy cities and rush Airports.

I am in favor of 2 and 3 because 4 would be prohibitively expensive to do, and would result in a limited number of Airports to get troops to the next front, thereby delaying advance.
 
Cross posted with Symphony D

It appears we have 2 tactical options

1) Send squads of 4-5 helis with 12-15 infantry and land next to city. Next turn attack and raze city with bombers weakening first. Use captured workers to build airbase to which tanks (maybe 10-20) can be airlifted and then sent to conquor other cities to take entire island. Repeat for other 2 large islands, perhaps just a couple of helis plus infantry for smaller islands if not gained in peace deals.

2) Send smaller squad of 2-3 helis with settler and explorer plus 4-7 infantry for defence, landing on preferably hill 2 squares from a city whilst active rop. Next turn dow, build city, rush airport with explorer. Following turn airlift 10-20 tanks and rebase bombers ready for attack.

Pros and cons I can see
Option 1 requires more infantry to take first city (and more helis) - they then have little use in conquoring remainder of island (although heli could transport most to next island once airbase secure)
Option 2 risks flipping - would be ugly if contained a dozen tanks and bombers ( although that many units should minimise flip risk esp if not adj to capital) - only Vikes are culturally superior to us, although Kyoto is I think strongest culture city.

I think option 1 may be safer and option 2 quicker (less infantry and helis, therefore more tanks)

My pref is for tanks over cavs
 
Symphony D. said:
We have four options to resolve this problem: 1.) ship in the remaining workers we have stored up on the Mainland to enemy territories to build these new "emergency" Airfields. 2.) Burn enemy cities on capture and use resultant workers to make Airfields. 3.) Keep enemy cities and rush Workers to make Airfields. 4.) Keep enemy cities and rush Airports.

I am in favor of 2 and 3 because 4 would be prohibitively expensive to do, and would result in a limited number of Airports to get troops to the next front, thereby delaying advance.

The Japan - Roman island will probably take longest to conquor. We will likely have quite some time to build airfields to airlift tanks to somewhere else at the end of this war, but by this stage we should already be successful or nearly so against Vike and English islands and smaller islands will only req 1-2 heli with infantry, so not sure we will actually need to transport off the bigger islands to any great extent.
Once an island is falling rapidly we simply stop further airlift to that island and increase airlift to island which appears to be taking longest.

I figure our core should be able to produce 3 tanks per turn (? one to each war zone) as well as being able to rush 1 or 2 per turn elsewhere
 
Alright, after talking with Istari on AIM I've decided something he said had some pretty good merit. Here's what I suggest we can do:

1.) Get Nationalism for somebody we can declare war on quickly for GPT. Maybe Japan. Then immediately declare war on them, and sign somebody else into an alliance with them. Like Rome. We need neither a trade reputation or a diplomatic reputation at this point. Enter mobilization for production benefits.
2.) Rush some builds with the Explorers. They won't do much good overall given the type of fight we're engaging in.
3.) Build 6 Helicopters once we get Advanced Flight. Pair up 3 Infantry per Helicopter, into 3 Task Forces of 2 Helicopters each. Infantry have sufficient Defensive values that they likely won't be attacked on landing, and with Bomber support 6 Infantry can crack one city. Engage these against targets.
4.) Either build or draft a handful of Infantry to follow-up until Tank production is sufficient to become the main force and replaced killed Task Force members
5.) Shift all remaining builds to Tanks, with sufficient Bombers in queue to reach 30 Bombers (10 per Task Force) each. After that, all Tanks.

With this we'll only need 6 Helicopters and IIRC 9 Bombers, and we already have all the Infantry we need. Everything else can go into Tanks.
 
I'd just like to say that we don't need soemthing outrageous like 20 chopters. We need, say, 6 or so.

We drop off at japanese/rome island first. Then, a couple turns later when they're ready for service again, we load them up and send them to vikings. I don't think we can even reach England with them, in which case we might take a little in-between island at this time.

Conquering Japanese/romans will take long enough that building enough to hit EVERYONE at once will not save use time, as is wasted units and cash. Rather, 6 or so should be sufficient. We just make sure to build some airfields on new captured lands, or at worst rush an airport.

All the single cities and little islands we can get in peace. No need to overwhelm them with troops.
 
I am against Japan/Rome first. I think we should get Nationalism from one of them for Mobilization, then get the other one to beat on them. Let them wear each other down while we go kill Vikings and Chinese.
 
Symphony D. said:
I am against Japan/Rome first. I think we should get Nationalism from one of them for Mobilization, then get the other one to beat on them. Let them wear each other down while we go kill Vikings and Chinese.

I dont think Jap has nationalism, Rome certainly does

My reasoning for attacking Japan first is
1) They may get Nationalism soon
2) Their combined island with Rome will take longest to conquor
3) Rome can be of some assistance for a few turns at least
4) We can then double cross the stronger Romans once we have a sufficient force of tanks / bombers over there

I agree with getting Nationalism off Romans if poss - we can soon reneg on any gpt deal - just make sure any exchanged tech is useless :mischief: .

Edit - allying Rome initially prevents them trading Nationalism to Japan ;)
 
We don't even need to give them tech. Make it raw GPT. DOW on Japan, then get an MA with Rome against them. Then DOW on Rome. Reputation will be shot six ways to Sunday but it won't matter and it'll keep both of them busy.

What about the rest of the revised plan? Is everyone good with that?
 
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