Short fun game (immortal)

[Silu]

Niiiice to get the ball rolling, great job Certainly didn't expect 2 vassals for this turnset

Gandhi will surely use the beef of that stack to attack someone. My guess is actually Churchill, namely Nottingham or straight London. OTOH 80% and hill for Cuirs against Rifles is pure suicide, it can't be done if we don't have at least 6 Cuirs per Rifle or something, even then it's insanely bloody, like Chariots against Pikes. Still even Cossacks against Rifles is very hard as well and he doesn't have many Rifles yet. Maybe we should attack after all trading his cash away as proposed.

I am quite skeptical about splitting our stack to such small pieces though, he does have 1+ rifles everywhere and 60-80% cultures and a lot of hills. IMO we should converge at least 2 of those, maybe the southern ones against Varanasi, depending on where he moves after DoW.

I'm still for Theo/Slavery. We'll certainly need all the numbers and XP possible against this guy. Tech setup looks great.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Niiiice to get the ball rolling, great job Certainly didn't expect 2 vassals for this turnset

Me neither, a very nice round and report! Comments when I can open the save

 

[mystyfly]

IIRC the eastern stack can reach Gandhi SOD in 2t as well as the other stack so they can be "technically" merged... while still DOWing right now. I usually try to attack as many cities as possible early to "shock" the AI... that way it often only counterattacks uncoordinatedly and defences are not as tough as when attacking only one city.

We have some withdrawal horsies that can try to damage the rifles. While hills really are a drawback, gandhi at least isn't protective so his units aren't uberpromoted... if you look closely at the S/S, his units are very scarecely promoted to CG... most are combat... and lots of units are mounties which don't do great on the defence. ATM, in varanasi, only 2 rifles, a lbow and a pike are really troublesome for our faithful cuirassiers... I think this is crackable...

As to civics I am leaning more towards caste instead of slavery... Production is very high as it is now and our cities are nicely grown so whipping isn't that effective atm anyway... and running some specs in st pete is nice as well... next GM can be cashbombed.

 

[Silu]

Ha! Never thought I'd be the lone voice for slavery in an SG Caste is good too of course and would keep our cities bigger, but I think Slavery might give us some extra oomph right now, which we might need as Gandhi is our biggest hurdle to overcome for sure. Maybe dip in Slavery during GA and then switch back? Best of both worlds actually, we can whip the first round of Cossacks.

Yeah your approach would almost always be the best I think, but here we can run into strength ratios like 12 vs 32. Axe vs hill LB 0% culture, HA vs Pike 0% culture and Knight vs Rifle 40% culture are rough analogies; that's rough, man We need overwhelming numbers if we want to be sure about avoid giving those few rifles 5 promotions in a single turn and surviving

 

[shyuhe]

I believe Ras is up because of his long hiatus.

Roster:
shyuhe
Ras - UP
mysty - just played
Silu
bbp (on deck)

Nice picking up two vassals! Guess it paid off to not be mean to Churchill. Research looks like rifling--astro right now. I'm ok with declaring right now and picking off Gandhi's SoD once it leaves the city. I'll have to look at the save to see if caste is better than slavery right now. Our bigger concern (for speedy conquest) is to start manufacturing boats on the coast, which slavery may be better suited for.

 

[Silu]

Roster:
shyuhe
Ras - UP
mysty - just played
Silu
bbp (on deck)

Now that's one wonky roster.

EDIT: Tiny thing that also speaks for DoWing now (kinda I guess); if Guangzhou flips to Gandhi Mao gets the right to break free through population.

Also checked why Churchill was willing to vassal. Nottingham got starved down a couple notches due to Gandhi flipping his BFC tiles, giving us just enough to vassal him before declaring on anyone Speaking of vassals, IMO we should gift MT and Gunpowder to our vassals. They will be great buffers during this war and that would at least make them borderline useful.

Xian looks to be in need of some kind of garrison as well.

 

[shyuhe]

Gifting MT will make it cheaper to research for Gandhi so I'd prefer not to. I don't mind gifting gunpowder though to give them protective muskets.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I see it, will got it in the evening and post a plan then

Boosting vassals is something I do an a regular basis... Silu, you are saying that you have already seen an AI vassalized by force breaking free? I am used to gift them back all their cities offline and never experienced that... am I a lucky guy?

edit: I agree with Shyuhe, slavery is excellent for boat farming... we might get ride of caste system finally!

 

[Silu]

Gifting MT will make it cheaper to research for gunpowder so I'd prefer not to. I don't mind gifting gunpowder though to give them protective muskets.

Huh? Only gunpowder is probably better though as we mainly want them to suck up attacks rather than go on a Cuirassier spree

I see it, will got it in the evening and post a plan then

Boosting vassals is something I do an a regular basis... Silu, you are saying that you have already seen an AI vassalized by force breaking free? I am used to gift them back all their cities offline and never experienced that... am I a lucky guy?

edit: I agree with Shyuhe, slavery is excellent for boat farming... we might get ride of caste system finally!

It's not that uncommon for them to break free if they're capped ASAP. You see it all the time in AI-AI wars, not that often in AI-human as humans tend to go on a general rampage (as we are here) and have enough land area and population to hold on to their vassals even if they gift some cities back. Pretty sure there's a minimum of 10 turns for this as well as most such deals.

 

[shyuhe]

Er, my post was not written correctly. I meant to say that gifting MT will make it cheaper to research for Gandhi....

 

[Silu]

You mean you'd rather have him make Rifles than Cavalry? I'm quite partial to 15 vs 7.5 strength ratios rather than 15 vs 30

 

[mystyfly]

I am not afraid at all of either churchill nor mao breaking free. I am not too familiar with the code about that but I have in mind that vassallages are kinda implemented similar to how it worked in RL: A small, weak civ accepting protection from a big, strong civ... we're growing in power, pop and land so we shouldn't have any troubles. I have simliar experiences then like ras, I don't remember civs actually breaking free.

I don't see the necessity for slavery to get out our boats... we have lots of coastal cities with high production and should get out those boats in time anyway... we need to vassalize biz too... I see the main advantage of slavery in whipping newly captured cities.

 

[bestsss]

shyuhe, I would sell as cheap as possible or even gift MT to mr. G!

I love when the enemy produces horsies and you play Russia.
It is guaranteed to do so (i.e. switch into "fast movers" strategy when the AI has better 2move than 1 move units)...

That is possibly one of the most exploitable feats in the game. Not only it makes the AI loves you but helps w/ the war and the capitulating (if the AI loves you it's easier to capitulate, as far as I remember there is no difference between peaceful and forceful vassals [decision wise I mean])

{actually if i play solo i don't take capitulations, either wipe the civilization or just abandon the game)

 

[Silu]

I thought about gifting MT but for some reason abandoned the idea because he's church's WE... Not sure why I thought church diplo was relevant

 

[shyuhe]

Thanks bestsss. I didn't realize the AI prioritizes cavalry over rifles. I guess giving him MT isn't such a bad thing then... Still, then he'll upgrade his horse archers to cavalry which will be slightly harder to kill. Not that it's a big difference though...

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Opening the save is even nicer than reading the report Mysty ... though I wonder why some plains are farmed while grasslands aren't (western coastal city)...

Short plan (seeing as this is a quickie ):

-> Start a GA, switch in mercantilism/theo: finally, with only 4 coastal cities already being workshopped, I doubt of the usefullness of slavery... mercantilism seems a no-brainer with vassals here (no contacts with oversea AIs, etc...)
-> Gift gunpowder/MT to vassals (even if it makes MT cheaper for Gandhi: Gandhi won't produce many troops, Churchill and Mao in war mode will)
-> Dow Gandhi
-> kill knight/settler party, smash Varanasi stack when it moves out west (I guess it will do that). Move Nottingham stack to be able to attack Varanasi asap
-> grab Varanasi
-> rest
-> move toward Vijayanagara (ouf) after that.
-> finish rifling when the monney is available (Ais can't help here unfortunatly)
-> take Vijayanagara (second time is even harder) together with reinforcements.
-> have a beer...

thoughts? (high probability that I missed something )

Ras

 

[shyuhe]

Sounds like a fine plan. Don't forget to start building boats

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Yeah, will start a fleet build up as possible

edit: tech path after rifling will be as per Mysty's thoughts at the end of his report (unless someone disagree ofc)

 

[Silu]

Sounds great

 

[mystyfly]

Not much to say, ras, but I think you missed the thing about gifting MT to gandhi so he will focus more on cav instead of rifles. Are we agreed on that? Shyuhe, your concern that he will ipgrade his HA actually is good for us if he actually does so - I prefer attacking cav/maces than HA/rifles.

About the farms, I'm not quite sure what you're meaning (though its no big deal :d). Might be because I have taken to farm more plains to make more use of GAs...