Shyuhe-6: Re-learning war

[GreyFox]

Great play, Ralph. I agree with most of your points on MM'ing. I myself has always been an advocate of MM, seeing it as one of the main methods to bridge the gap between human and Monarch+ AIs.

I also agree with Shyuhe on settling the GSpy. Unfortunately, he is in Carthage now which won't have a library for the foreseeable future, so I will have to move him back to Cuzco for settling to optimize the representative gains. Personally, I don't see the advantage in snooping around with him ... not at this stage where we are in defensive mode.

Research wise, the point on ivory is a very valid argument for going after construction. I think I would go after it once IW is done. As to sailing, since it is a relatively cheap tech, we could wait a bit until we are ready to settle a coastal city.

Speaking of which, the decision to build the settler with 2 turns to growth is a bit dubious ... I suspect is to whip (which I will ). As to settle where, I doubt it will be within my turnset to decide, but I currently is inclined to settle two cities between Carthage and Cuzco -- one to grab wheat and cow, the other to get stone and clams. Both subject to change anyway once IW is in.

Got it.

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[Ralph_Jackson]

Speaking of which, the decision to build the settler with 2 turns to growth is a bit dubious ... I suspect is to whip (which I will ).
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I was actually thinking that now Archery is in (so we can build something useful) we could swap back to an Archer to let the capital grow and then finish the settler at Size 7 as I would like to keep working the cottages / hired scientists?

Before Archery there was just nothing else worth building so started the settler straight away.

Ralph

 

[shyuhe]

Does cuzco have a granary yet? If not, it's not worth whipping at this point.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Does cuzco have a granary yet? If not, it's not worth whipping at this point.

It does, that was part of the problem...
Having finished its Granary, & Library it had nothing to build other than scouts / Quechas to let it grow hence why I just let it stagnate at size 6.9 by growing a settler as I couldn't find anything worthwhile to stick its hammers into..

Ralph

 

[GreyFox]

Yes, it does have a grnary, and that's why I whipped

The scientists will be added back after 4 turns of growth, no big deal. Speaking of nothing to build, well, Quechas are good. They have 100% against archers, so a few CR promoted Quechas will be a good stack to take that barb city SW of capitol.

That basically summarized my turnset

Back to the beginning, after killing all but one roman archer (which fled south) in Ralph's last screenie, we are told about being the most un-glorious. Yeah. So we are broke. Big deal.

Next came a dutch stack of archer and chariots. I had no choice but to whip Carthage (even though it lacks a terrace).

The stack detoured around the defenders I placed on the hills, but were eventually decimated as well. And the following screenie illustrated the two benefits (out of three) of Great Wall:

The Great Spy moved back to capitol and settled, and the battles within our cultural borders yielded a Great General. Sweet. The general is moved to Carthage in anticipation of connecting the horses for a super medic chariot.

Meanwhile, the Babies captured the Barbies west of Carthage:

and then the Germans gave me a good scare when they send out a respectable troops of longbows.

... these arewere the strongest unit we seen so far, might be tricky in repelling them. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, they disappeared the next turn ... only to be replaced by a stack of even stronger foes we will dread for quite some turns (hence the "were" and the "unfortunately"):

Luckily, we learnt IW the same turns (thanks to adding back the 2 scientists and the settled spy):

which means that my turnset ends here ... so the praets are not my nightmare to handle

There are 2 sources of irons, both not immediately useful. As shown in the screenie as well, I have 3 Quechas ready to hit the barb city, with a forth 2 turns away. So if the next player feels lucky, he can try to attack (CR promoted Quechas has 65% odds against city-fortified barb archers) right now, or he can choose to wait for the 4th to arrive to be safe.

The settler is in place for 3 turns by now, whom I delayed settling waiting for iron to be revealed. I still think that my original intent of the two cities (see dotmap below) are valid, though the next player may wish to settle the blue one first for the iron.

The purple one is debatable, as some might want to settle 1E instead to reduce overlap and also have less useless desert tile. However, I think overlapping with carthage is better as the new city can immediately work on useful tiles.

 

[shyuhe]

Got it, will look at it tonight and post some thoughts. I'm more inclined to settle blue dot. Once its borders pop it'll have lots of really good tiles to work. We should probably build another worker in Cuzco to go hook up the iron ASAP. Not that we'll build lots of swords but they'll do a respectable job against LB (not praets though). As for the praet issue... I'm thinking construction elephants. Shock axes to hold the fort until then.

 

[GreyFox]

Fine with getting blue dot first. We are not exactly hurrying for planting cities anyway (except maybe needing it to reduce the troops upkeep). The settler has full movement points, so move him before hitting enter if you plan to get blue first. Good thing about blue dot is it can work on the cottage of the capitol initially, so there is no real hurry for a worker to scramble over there. But we do need one or two more workers for our "growing" empire.

Speaking of workers, the barb city is at size 3 for a long time, at least since the beginning of my turnset, which is unusual as it has two 3F tiles (before our culture pop). Thus probably it is producing a worker (for us, if I might add ). Hence, might be good to wait for the forth quecha to arrive anyway before attacking in the hope of getting a free worker. But we probably shouldn't delay too much as we need the plunder money to stay afloat.

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[shyuhe]

So I started to play my set but ran into some computer issues. It spontaneously crashes the OS after I play a few turns. Anybody have any ideas? I'm going to try re-installing tonight but if that doesn't fix it, I may need a skip while I go reformat my computer.

 

[GreyFox]

Hmm ... I distinctly remember eradicating that CutieSim color thingy, so I sure hope it is not that BUG bug again. But f it is an OS crash and not crash to desktop, it probably ain't the BUG bug. Were you accessing the log when the crash occur?

 

[shyuhe]

No. It crashed when I hit enter for the next turn. I don't think it's related to BUG but I'll see if it crashes on my own games just to make sure. Or maybe I just need to install BUG

 

[BurnEmDown]

GreyFox, is that a graphical enhancement mod? Everything looks alot better than my CIV.

 

[shyuhe]

Weird. My computer works again. I wonder what it was... Well I'm not complaining

So here we go:

Turn 110 - Fred build the Temple of Solomon. Great...

Turn 112 - Sailing is in. Research set to mathematics. I also capture Hittite for 108 gold.

Turn 113 - Willem builds the GLH. Big deal. It's a pangaea map so it won't help him much.

Turn 116 - Our super medic is born. He's chilling in Carthage.

Turn 120 - Math is in. Fred also builds the ToA. Grumble...

Here's where we stand:

So our big tech choices are: HBR, construction, alphabet, currency.

HBR (12): Gives us HA. They'll do well against LB. I haven't had time to hook up the iron yet as I felt that building cottages was more pressing. Since Hammurabi is fielding catapults, I think this may be a good tech for us.

Construction (16): Gives us catapults and eventually elephants. Unfortunately that's 28 turns till elephants

Currency (20): Fixes our economy. It'll also enable more specialist slots.

Alphabet (15): Gives us spies. And lets us build research in the backline.

MC (22): Increases production. Also opens up machinery.

The catapult development worries me the most so I'm inclined to go go HBR. Either that or currency/alpha. We may be able to steal some techs with alpha and spies (Germany has some cities nearby) but it'll take a while to reap the fruits. I think our offense needs more help for the time being.

I've also started libraries in Tiwanaku and Carthage. Please whip them accordingly so that we can open up scientist slots in those cities as well. We appear to have enough troops for the time being so we might as well put our hammers to better use. Hittite is building a galley to go explore the coastline and to prevent an amphibious invasion of our backline (unlikely).

All tech times are assuming no change in our economic position (+2 gpt at 0% ). Once we whip in libraries (those two cities are working sub-optimal tiles anyways), that rate should improve. Hittite and Machu Pichu should also start contributing once they get some cottages/libraries. Cuzco should be on semi-permanent settler/worker build after growing to the happy cap (one more).

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

 

[GreyFox]

@BurnEmDown: Unfortunately not. Just that when I prepare the screenie, I always make it a point to enhance the contrast by 20% (partly to compensate for scaling the image down to a forum-friendly resolution).

Good play, Shyuhe. I would vote for HBR myself (it is needed for phants anyway). Enhancing economy, while necessary, can take a backline since we would eventually rely on espionage for research. As to getting money to support our war, we would be filling up the space with mainly commerce cities (blue dot, purple dot and the newly added barb city are basically commerce cities) anyway, so once they got developed, it shouldn't be a problem. They aint the frontline, so the cottages won't get pillaged.

So, in fact, my choice will be HBR -> Construction -> Alphabet. As to MC, we can steal it

As to whipping libraries in Carthage and Tiwanaku, not so sure they will improve research time since 25% bonus of 0% science is still a whopping 0 . Eventually they would, maybe by adding the scientists once they grow back or by going deficit research for a while.

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[shyuhe]

The libraries are mostly for the scientist slots. Not much point working a plains tile at this point of the game anyways.

 

[BurnEmDown]

We should also steal feudalism soon for LB. Maybe that should be the first tech we steal.
As for which tech we research, I vote for HBR and then Currency\Alpha.

 

[PaulusIII]

Got it. I hope my laptop holds out again.

HBR seems like a good bet. It's AW after all.

 

[shyuhe]

PS. Turn sets are 10-15 turns here on out. Feel free to pick a good stopping point in that range.

 

[PaulusIII]

Gents, I hate to be the one to break it to you but it seems like we're pretty much f**ked in this game. I don't know whether my analysis of it all is pretty gloomy (or if I screwed up rather than the team) but I just fended off two big attempts on Carthage/Tiwanaku by the skin of my teeth. Outnumbered two to one simply because the AIs are ganging up on us, and outclassed because we're facing units against which we lack a proper counter (praets/longbowmen).

A proper report will be up later tonight. I'll post the save so you all can see how badly we are doing.

 

[PaulusIII]

Gentlemen... behold a tale of fear and failure.

120 (IHT) Nothing more to do for me, the tech is already set to HBR so we're going with that. End turn.

121: I whip libraries at Carthage and Tiwanaku. The tile quality is poor and we're really better off either running scientists or getting proper tiles up.

122: We get a GS in Cuzco. He'll bulb Alphabet but that's imho not worth it. I academize Cuzco, that's going to work out in the long run anyway and is also worth it right now (we're up +10 in science because of the Academy).

123: I try to get the forests around Tiwanaku out of the way. Too late cause Augustus is already here

IBT: Willem fails at Carthage. Score is Capac 5, Willem 0.

124: Romans make a detour, I try to get those forests out of the way before they come back. That's a perfect hidey-hole for them and I do not want it to remain there.

126: Oh . .. .. .. .. Augustus is nearing Tiwanaku now with a genuinely scary stack. He's brought 3 catapults, 4 chariots and 5 praetorians. That's... likely gonna cost us. I have enough troops there to fend him off but we'll lose axes to this nonetheless. Plus even more, if luck fails us.

IBT: A few running-free Ottomans are caught at Tiwanaku, giving me a much-desired Shock promo on an axe. No problems here.

127: The stack is at Tiwanaku. Hammy has also got one at Carthage, though not nearly as scary. I remicro a bit, trying to push out a bit of economy because we're crippling ourselves. Our land is not that good, we're constantly under attack, and have a big military crippling our research. We're at -6 now... at 0%. This is not going to end well.

128: A snapshot of the Romans at Tiwanaku comes in. Eep.

129: HBR is in! Finally... I switch to Alpha to start up the stealing. Remember, we need spies for that!

Wow. Things still got worse. Freddy's now supporting Hamster at Carthage, the result is really something to get afraid of. If I get lucky we might still get a HA or two out before he attacks to deal with the pesky bowmen and longbowmen.

IBT: AC attacks. We lose 3 axes and an archer to the praetorians, who of course get off really lucky with their attacks. I can't counterattack without losing 3/4 more axes. At least the catapults are gone, though.

130: Shiver... I whip HA's to deal with Freddy. Hope they are in time. Please. Please...

131: 2 HA's at Carthage. We might still make it through. A quick prayer to the RNG to please not screw me over like at Tiwanaku (We lost about everything that wasn't a clear win for us) and hope for the best.

IBT: Hammy and Fred attack in unison. Hammy obliterates his own stack but Fred's off easier. There's still a lot of Germans out there, and Babylon already has reinforcements on the way.

132: I survey the devastation. We lost our last military advantage over the other nations, which practically translates to 'sitting ducks'. We're not safe, our economy still sucks and we're not going to recover from this.

Guys... it's up to you to determine if I screwed up or if the whole game was doomed from the start. In the first case, feel free to show me how it should have gone, I apologize in advance and hope you'll give me a chance to redeem myself. Feel free to replay the turnset because I screwed up.

 

[BurnEmDown]

Well, I just have to say that I'd probably screw it up even more, and I think it's better if I switch with Ralph, so he can save us from this situation (which will put me in a great position to screw us up again XD)