Shyuhe-6.5 - War!

[GreyFox]

Seems like a good set.

However, personally, I think it may be a little premature to be sending a force to Tenochitilan though. What do we want to achieve there? It only stretches our line of defense longer ... and speaking of which, there is no longbow following that stack, so even if we capture it, it might be difficult to hold. I would instead first make sure that all our border cities each has at least a longbow and a phant as a minimal defense before extending our borders. As to target, the nearest boudica city in the SW of Babylon would be a better choice since unlike Tenochitilan, it might be easier to defend.

As of now, we could raze Tenochitilan just to get some plunder money. That would ofcourse means razing the stonehenge. But it may not be easy, as it is the capitol, so defense will be very much stronger there than other monty cities we captured so far.

Good luck.

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[shyuhe]

I'll post some comments once I get home. No civ at work unlike some others on this forum

Roster
shyuhe
BurnEmDown
Ralph_Jackson - UP
Paulus III (on deck)
GreyFox

Take your time Ralph. I don't know about the others but I'm going to be busy over the holidays. I'll be OOP from the 25-30 so if my turn comes up during that stretch, just auto-skip me.

 

[shyuhe]

Burn, I wouldn't whip the cities so hard. As Paulus pointed out, Babylon has a lot of base production and really doesn't benefit from whipping. For quick math, it takes 17 food to grow to size 8. With 5 surplus food, that's 4 turns. It has a base of 13+3 hammers for production so it's actually more efficient to slow build units there at its current size.

I would also withdraw the stack heading for Tenochtitlan. Asides from cats, it really doesn't have a lot of CR units so I don't think it's worth sending after the Aztec capital. I would rather protect our current territory and make sure we don't lose access to the ivory. Elephants + LB should pretty much kill everything in this era.

Sakae should also get some mines soon so that it can contribute to production. It has two good food tiles and we should turn some of that excess food into production.

As for Gandhi's stack, our road system is inefficient so the stack will get to Akkad before our troops can get to it. I would send the mounted troops to protect the city and change production to a LB. Hopefully the stack will head south towards Dur K though.

PS. Will the next player revolt to HR-vassalage when we have a chance? I just noticed that it hasn't been done yet.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Ok a mainly defensive set... but that didn’t mean not killing a lot of troops.

After we had accumulated enough cash for the much needed Bowman to Longbow upgrade we took the civic switch..

Now as it was mainly defensive I will spare you lots of screenshots of the enemy camped at our gates ready to suicide but this picture will probably show how hectic it all was.

Picked up a GG who was merged at our Capital.

After Currency went C of L which is now complete and Machinery selected but with no Beakers invested (may be better to beelining for the Heroic Epic instead?)

But we have assembled a stack ready to take the city SW of Babylon (hasn’t moved so next player can attack straight away)

Merry Xmas!!

Ralph

 

[PaulusIII]

Got it.

(10 chars)

 

[PaulusIII]

Anybody got some thoughts? Anybody at all?

 

[BurnEmDown]

Thoughts about what?

 

[GreyFox]

Exactly, thoughts about what? Seems pretty straight forward to me. Defend against those jumbos (spears may be needed) in Dur and take that celtic city (seems likely defend enough).

Research wise, I don't see why we need HE ... machinery is far better. However, may be worth diverting to mediation for one turn to enable monastery and spread confusion a bit.

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[PaulusIII]

Exactly, thoughts about what? Seems pretty straight forward to me. Defend against those jumbos (spears may be needed) in Dur and take that celtic city (seems likely defend enough).

Research wise, I don't see why we need HE ... machinery is far better. However, may be worth diverting to mediation for one turn to enable monastery and spread confusion a bit.

--

I agree with going machinery and taking that Celtic city. I don't think meditation would be a big deal to take but I don't know whether we have the time to spread it around.

Also, best typo ever.

 

[BurnEmDown]

I agree with going machinery and taking that Celtic city. I don't think meditation would be a big deal to take but I don't know whether we have the time to spread it around.

Also, best typo ever.

I've seen better
And back on topic, when will we get to see the results of the turn set? (Not trying to rush or anything).

 

[PaulusIII]

178: I might've taken Camulodunum in this turn, but I decided against it. I could take it but I'm not able to hold it yet as I lost one axe. Troops for holding Cam are already on the way, I've sent some LB's to keep Camulodunum safe once I've captured it.

179: Camulodunum is reinforced, proving my doubts about being able to keep it. We grind away at their troops but once again lack the power to keep it safe.

180: Damn those elephants everywhere! It seems as if by now everybody is fielding them. I queue up some spearmen to deal with the threat. Spearmen are both cheaper and better as a raw counter because of vassalage: we get 2 promos so we can immediately give them CII+Formation.

By now everybody's in Vassalage and thus has access to longbows. It's gonna be a long grind if we don't upgrade soon.

On the plus side, we capture Camulodunum.

181: Nap's nearing Texcoco. We've got one ellie and two longbows ready to kick ass, and another longbow on the way. I don't think he's going to cause trouble with that.

182: Hey, Nap's gone away again. Seemingly he wasn't interested anyway.

185: We have a stack of Monty's at Texcoco, 2 ellies, 2 HA's and a catapult. We have three longbows and an elephant on standby, so I can probably handle them. To be certain we better get some more LB's and spears over there.

186:

Uh oh. Red alert at DK. We have two incoming stacks, one by Izzy, and one by Fred...
Oh wait, it's not that bad after all. I grind Izzy's pathetic excuse for a stack into a bloody pulp.

187: Machinery is in, tentative research set to Engineering - no points invested. I quit here after having dealt with most of Freddy's stack,

There are two points of bad news, though.
-Nappy destroyed our elephants while Monty was running the siege, because of which I had to leave the fort unattended. I don't think we are in danger there, though: likely, reinforcements will be there before Monty will try to capture the city. We have a 1 pop whip for a spearman as well.
-Camulodunum is in for a tough ride. Boudica/Nap have about 15 units/cats there and we cannot mount a proper defense. My suggestion: run to the hills, run for our lives.

I like the idea of going for Engineering. We get castles for stronger defense, pikes to kill those damn elephants, trebs and extra mobility on the roads. Guilds or CS are both options as well.

 

[GreyFox]

I got it. Since Shyuhe will be back afte 30th, I will play tomorrow so that he can be UP immediately when he returns .

I am inclined to taking engineering as well. Not so sure abt abondoning Camulodunum though. Will assess the situation after pressing enter

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[shyuhe]

Are you trying to bury me here Fox? I'll read through and see what I missed while I was out.

 

[GreyFox]

Don't worry, I hadn't got the time to play Hercules last night, so I won't have time to "re-learn war" tonight. Everything is pushed back one day .... ... Hence this game will be played tomorrow (it's New Year's Day! Happy New Year! ).

 

[shyuhe]

Still there Fox? Happy New Year!

 

[GreyFox]

Sorry for the delay, didn't anticipated that New Year Day would be a busy day. But I have played

Upon evaluating the situation, I decided to take the risk of defending the city. However, I did try to make our chances of surviving as high as possible by performing a preemptive attack:

The cats have no much use in defense anyway ... so sacrificing a couple for the city is a good trade, me think.

We survived the onslaught:

and it is time for some counter-attack, and that's what remains:

We prevailed, and remaining what's leftover of boudica's troop tucked tails and returned.

On the west Dur side, it is an easy affair. Spent a few turns killing the cats and horse archers parked outside the city with our phants. When the dust clear off, our diligent city defenders did notice a platoon of Germans moving northwards:

They immediately dispatched some units to the wine and waited for the invaders to attack across the river. We again prevailed.

On the southeast, I added the G-General to a spear for better defense in the city. We did fend off some waves of Monty's phants + HA + cats in small pockets.

Meanwhile, I have accumulated enough forces to afford a split so that we can regain our ivory. The fort was ready by the time we got engineering, so the next player should one again be able to build phants next turn when the road is built, and also start to grow some city again.

And throughout all that, the west have been relatively quiet. Too quiet in fact. The AIs must be busy building shrines But seriously, I fear we may see some huge stacks soon. I rather keep seeing the AIs sending some pockets of troops.

Anyway, we got engineering:

And I have temporarily selected CS. This may be the best to go for maces + bureaucracy. However, we may need to detour to sailing a bit for lighthouses as well. Maybe after CS, we should also get Mediation to start spreading our religion.

Oh, I built a cottage on the banana ... hate to see the tile go to waste just waiting for Calendar to arrive. We also have a lot of empty tiles just west of capitol. It maybe time to build an extra city to fill in the gap now that our economy is stable at 60%.

 

[PaulusIII]

By now we have all the techs we need to turtle until gunpowder kicks in - we have engineering and feudalism. But we don't have to turtle, of course!

I think we should now decide whether we want to go on the offensive again or turtle, improve the economy and wait until the renaissance with warring. If we want to fight a full-scale medieval war (either Boudica or Monty), we want CS before economy techs, and we want to start stocking up on trebs/pikes for the SoD. If we want to turtle, we should get out a few pikes but for the rest concentrate on economy building, and go for techs such as Calendar, Literature and Meditation.

I think we can pull off a full offensive against Boudica or Monty. We've got ellies to spare at DK, we have a round of xbows coming in and we can probably get out a few trebs as well in the next turnset.

And if we get CS, don't forget that upgrading GG's is free and keeps all the experience. Maceman Zhukov is a killer unit for the SoD.

 

[GreyFox]

I doubt we can turtle much ... Frenchmen is already showing off their maces ... fortunately we have crossbows to counter.

Bu yes, we should probably finish off with one round of markets, turn off research after CS to get upgrade money, and start pumping out trebs + maces + phants to go for an offensive the next turnset.

 

[shyuhe]

The question is, which way do we want to attack? I would prefer Monty as I think he has fewer neighbors. German, Indian, and Spanish troops keep on streaming through Boudica's lands but nobody comes from Monty or Nappy's direction. So I think we're on the eastern side of the pangea. Thus, attacking east should be safer than charging west. Techwise, I'm thinking CS so that we can start a real offensive. I will also see if there's a good spot to plant a city on the river west of Babylon. There are lots of tiles there that we can use.

I'll probably play on Saturday.

 

[GreyFox]

Probably, the only thing is Monty is at the rock bottom of score list. Depending on your philosophy this may be an issue: whether to attack a strong opponent first or the weakeast one.

I subscribe to neither so I am okay

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