SGOTM8 - Wacken

[Xevious]

I'm not sure when I'll get my turns in yet, most likely going to be late tonight if I'm lucky.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ah ok, and are you doing for Flight or for Hoover first ?

 

[dmanakho]

next turns set isn't affected.
It will probably take most of next 10 turns to research steam and then we will need to research medicine and electricity anyways... or that's what i think we should do 1st.
We need to gift Greeks to IAs though... If they get steam or medicine - good for us - research will be cheaper. If they get nationalism it will be cheaper to buy it later in the game.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

next turns set isn't affected.
It will probably take most of next 10 turns to research steam and then we will need to research medicine and electricity anyways... or that's what i think we should do 1st.
We need to gift Greeks to IAs though... If they get steam or medicine - good for us - research will be cheaper. If they get nationalism it will be cheaper to buy it later in the game.

True, the prebuilds for now are only factory builds, they have to be done anyway.If they get steam or medicine, we are of course not gonna research that. We then research the other one and trade. If they need gold or gpt with it, we should pay it.
We can get that back with the next tech we research.

 

[Xevious]

Here's the SAVE.

550AD(0) See no reason why I can't attack Macao now. Take it with archer and elite horse. May have some problems with flips in Beijing and Shanghai. Make Peace for Tatung, 5g and WM. Debating a harbor rush in Shantung to get them connected so they can grow. Worker can go to grass by Tatung and then colonize the spices or start roading it while we wait for a settler to connect it. Move some citizens around to speed up some builds and grow some cities faster.

560AD(1) Enter IA, use Big Picture to gift Greece to IA, they get Steam! Can't get it with Chivalry, 379g and 104gpt, so will have to go for Medicine first. Due in 5 turns at -26gpt. Hmm, and now the downside, because of the era change there are massive barb uprisings on Tatungs island. We're going to probably lose a lot of gold to barbs in Tatung, so I think I'm going to rush the harbor in Shantung when they get near. Viking ship down S of Seattle, but they still don't have Engineering (and hence no Invention) so they don't have Berserks yet. Just need to have the horses nearby in case they land some units. Start moving workers toward Washington and SanFran.

570AD(2) Horses approaching Tatung border, will rush harbor in Shantung next turn. Houston:Market->Library. More workers head toward SanFran. MM a bit.

580AD(3) Barb horses don't move. Won't rush harbor until they are a threat. Seattle:Uni->Bank(Factory pb). Eindhoven:Market->Uni.

590AD(4) Barbs next to Tatung and a barb warrior on hill next to worker. Will move spear to defend worker (don't want to lose progress on road). NY:Uni->Knight. NO:Harbor->Library. England builds Sistine. Rush harbor in Shantung. Able to drop sci to 70%, giving +8gpt, so no worry about going negative in gold when barbs start taking it.

600AD(5) Atlanta:Uni->Bank(F pb). Chicago:Knight->Bank(F pb). Thermopylae:Settler->Worker. Shantung:Harbor->Settler. A few more scientists lets me drop to 60% sci, Medicine in 1.

610AD(6) Stack of horses will attack Las Vegas next turn. Learn Medicine, trade it, 224g and 77gpt for Steam from Greece. Start Industrialization at 60% (best speed), due in 7 turns. We have 2 coal connected, so start railing Washington and San Fran. Buffalo riots? Hmm, what happened? Have to make clown and scientist and check others, have to make scientist in St Dman. Hmm, find Lux at 10%. Must have dropped it last turn by mistake. Leave where it is for now, cheaper to have to manage 2 cities than to raise it to 20%. Rome is in the IA now. They have Military Tradition. Could trade for it now, but we have lux deals coming up soon. Would like to save our techs to renew those deals if needed.

620AD(7) Miami:Harbor->Uni.

630AD(8) Forgot to protect workers from barb horses and lose 3. Barbs pillage LV for all our gold (23). Washington:Uni->Bank(F pb). Shanghai:Lib->Duct. SanFran is all railed. Washington shields are all railed. Take out last 2 horses in NW. China built a city on spice island.

640AD(9) England lands settler/spear on our NW corner. Buffalo:Market->Uni. China has another city on spice island. I'm going to use worker to make a colony. We can rush Settler in 5 turns in Shantung and then settle beyond spices to get as much of the remaining space as we can. Trade Steam for MT, furs, and some gold from Rome. Didn't take gpt so they will keep up research. Ack, somehow I screwed up and didn't get the furs in the trade. End up trading Coal, wines, dyes and gems to get them back.

650AD(10) Trade Medicine for Wool, WM, and 43g from Rome. Again, leave gpt to them so they can research faster. Build colony on spices, drop lux to 0%, raise sci to 90% to shave a turn off Industry (due in 2) at -92gpt. Manage to get some more scientists and drop to 80% at -40gpt.

To Do:

A number of banks are prebuilds for factories, as is the palace in SanFran. Industrialization is due in 2. Rush a settler on spice island in 4 turns so it will pop out with growth to 3.

About Flight or Hoover, remember that Hoover will start our GA. This might make it better to go for Hoover first. It should grab us the last few techs much quicker.

I would post pictures now, but it's already 3AM and I need to get some sleep. Sounds like Wotan won't be playing until Sunday night anyway.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Do i see spices? Sounds good, will see it later tonight

 

[dmanakho]

Ack, somehow I screwed up and didn't get the furs in the trade. End up trading Coal, wines, dyes and gems to get them back.

I bet it was the timing... it's easy to screw things up at 3 am in the morning.


EDIT: And i reckong we want to go after Hoovers 1st... we need to get into those GAs.

Anything we can do with our corrupted cities??? Hire more scientists perhaps?

 

[Wotan]

I am back but will wait until tomorrow evening before playing my turns. Plenty of time to discuss things.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

We can get more production in Washington by railroading and mining etc.

I think we can stop producing workers in ICS land. Put them on wealth, let them max their size and get max scientists. We are also producing too many settlers. I suggest terminating some of those builds.

Keep trying every turn if you can get gpt from any AI.

We must get back that gpt from Greece in 2 turns, if they are not willing to pay, i think we coud declare war on them. We won't need our reputation anymore.

Note that Right of Passage has high value for Greece as well. We can get quite some gold for that. Same for China probably if they ever have something to offer. They are no danger anyway.

I guess we are going for the Hoover Dam then. Looking at SF, it will be about 26 turns before we have the Dam ready. That is not too bad. It means we will probably be able to use half our golden age production on bombers.

 

[Offa]

Much as I like going for flight ASAP, it does seem reasonable to research electricity after industrialisation, as we want to be able to give it to the romans in time for them to start researching rep parts (they will obviously be researching nationalism first). They will have loads of time to research this while we do other things, are are bound to get it in time for us. After getting that from Rome, we ought to keep all other techs to ourselves.

Once we get electronics via TOE, assuming that is our plan, we will still have 5 techs to go to flight. I hope we don't "waste" half our Golden Age without useful units to build.

Any thoughts about the conquest? Attacking the tech laggards first appeals to me; and finishing off the Greeks of course.

Wacken, you seem very keen on bombers. Superficially this seems like conquering using artillery, not a favoured method in fast conquests. After we get flight, which we ought to keep to ourselves, we will undoubtably build bombers for the want of anything else, but I need convincing that these should be our mainstay. Once we get 'copters, moving in with settlers, workers and a few defenders, building some airstrips and then flying in tanks with which to steamroller the AI seems like it should be much faster.

 

[grahamiam]

all sounds and looks good I like going after Hoovers to trigger our GA, we could use that boost to finish this one off.

@ offa: building an airfield via worker sacrifices does indeed ruin the improvement, however, we can run a worker team back to the new airfield tile and mine/irrigate it to get the bonus back, without losing the airfield. so we can build them in our core without losing food/production.

 

[dmanakho]

We will have to see how much bombers will help us...

here is how i see our warfare.

1. We make right of passage with everyone (got to keep our reputation until then).
2. Paratroopers land near the key targets. Also we move settlers and some workers on helicopters right into the AIs mainlands. Click next turn

- Settlers, workers, scouts, explorers, leaders, cruise missiles and tactical nukes can be loaded into helicopters.

3. We declare war and bomb towns. At the same time combat settlers establish new towns right on enemy territory. Workers build airfields and we dump all the tanks, cavalry and infantry over.
4. Paratroopers take hopefully empty or weakly defended after the air raids towns and fortify.
5. Next turn - full scaled Blitzkrieg.

With such a strategy and enough troops we can take any island in no time.
I hope nobody here has problems with breaking RoPs and stabbing AIs in the back.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

sounds good to me.

I just wonder how many units per turn we kill with bombers and how many with tanks.
Bombers will attack almost every turn.
Tanks need to heal and lose time moving trough enemy territory. They also risk dying

Tanks can be expected to pretty much kill any unit they attack 80-90% of the time. Cities won't be >12 defenders will probably be defence 6.
So they would kill about 0.8 units per attack. However, most of their attacks, they will probably be damaged and they will need 1 or 2 turns to heal, lets say 1 turn on average. Also will they often need a turn to move trough enemy territory before reaching a city. I think this is almost always the case.
So that would make 0.8 kill per 3 turns. (0.27)

Bombers do not need to heal, and they probably need to rebase once every 4 attacks or so. (Less if we use them wisely i think)
With the defenders modified defence meeting the bombers attack power in strong positions and having half the defence in weak positions, i expect to do about 2 damage with a bomber attack on average. Meaning 0.5 kill per attack.
With their movement, that means 2 kills every 5 turns. (0.4)

Now of course, my numbers are merely estimates. Therefore i am not sure either. Correct my numbers as you wish to make your own kill rate estimate.

Cavalry have more movement than tanks, they are good to capture cities that are bombed emty.

EDIT:
Also do i not see much benefit in combining them blindly. The combined forces here does not give a real strategic benefit.
Only bombers would give the advantage that they do not have much to counter attack on their lands. They can still counter attack our captured cities, but that requires fast moving units from them. Cavalry can stay further away from the enemy and still be able to capture empty cities than tanks. (cavalry we build of course long before we can make bombers or tanks, so we can have them anyway)
Tanks could combine nicely to take out the damaged things in the open that will die without damaging the tanks. However, that leaves the tanks open to counter attacks.

 

[Wotan]

I will probably not have time to finish my turns tonight but we are ahead of most teams so I hope there is no problem if I have to use tomorrow evening too.

@Dman; sounds like a likely setup for our "tour of conquest".

 

[grahamiam]

To WAO's and D-man's attack points regarding air warfare: at some point, we need to stop selling Rome lux's and start bleeding money from them for tech's. Hopefully, we can grind thier research to a halt somewhere around steel or refining (or before), giving us a monopoly on flight and advanced flight.
Also, 4 movement Cav armies may be more useful than 2 movement tanks, in case we finally get lucky and make some leaders.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

To WAO's and D-man's attack points regarding air warfare: at some point, we need to stop selling Rome lux's and start bleeding money from them for tech's. Hopefully, we can grind thier research to a halt somewhere around steel or refining (or before), giving us a monopoly on flight and advanced flight.
Also, 4 movement Cav armies may be more useful than 2 movement tanks, in case we finally get lucky and make some leaders.

Yes, after they have researched us replacable parts, we should be done with them.
I do not really fear their tech a lot though. They have so many buildings to build and a production that is a fraction of what ours will soon be.
It would maybe be nice to ally everyone against Rome after we gotten replacable parts to ensure that noone else will get replacable as well. Then, we won't meet infantry from others than Rome.

 

[grahamiam]

well, further to the point, we won't have to worry about bomber damage if the AI doesn't have flight (nothing to shoot at our bombers), so we could, theoretically, take everything with 50-75 bombers and 25 cavalry (along with the requisit choppers and settlers).

 

[dmanakho]

The only reason i mentioned cavalry is because we can start building it much earlier and will be able to have more units to attack.
Cavalry will do just as good against weaker AIs like Vikings for example.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

The only reason i mentioned cavalry is because we can start building it much earlier and will be able to have more units to attack.
Cavalry will do just as good against weaker AIs like Vikings for example.

We will also have loads of gold to upgrade horses to cavalry after research is completed. I hope we still have some horses

Before we have flight, I would suggest creating a horse/cavalry force muskets/rifles. About 50/50. Since after research we have plenty gold, we could disconnect stuff maybe to produce the cheapest units that we can upgrade. Also could we delay nationalism to enable the production of cheaper units.
Then after flight, we add bombers primarily IMO and tanks if we prove to have too little ground forces to capture and hold the cities.

 

[grahamiam]

I'd prefer 30/70 or 25/75, with 70-75% being cav's, otherwise, I completely agree that we only need to build tanks if it seems we need to. since the goal is conquest, I don't see the need to build a lot of defenders, just enough to hold key landing areas.

once we get to mass production, we should make sure all AI's have steam. that way, they can rail the terrain for us to speed thier conquest.