simple_01 Is This Monkey Craaaazy??

FP would be a good idea I think. A second army is not that urgent at the moment. We need more productive cities to build units. We can support the double of our current units with our city count and actually we are quite short of units in my opinion.
 
Agree with using our leader for FP. The question is, in what city? We need that magical mix of production and growth. I'll look at the save tomorrow sometime (I won't be able to open it until late tonight at the earliest) and take a look at it, but in the mean time we should talk over location.

As far as going across the big water to contact (I suspect) Spain, I'm contemplating it. My guess is that Inca is the superpower right now, and that Spain might be the only other surviving civ, or at least one of only a little remnant. If we pull Spain into our war machine right now, that doubles our number of landings. On the other hand, it's gonna slow them down. For now I vote yes to make contact and let Bella know what we think of her.

BTW, I noticed that Cathy's galley apparently didn't have a settler on it. That's the first big trophy in the Byz hall of fame! :banana:

I also notice that longbows have a pretty serious attack but are total pansies on defense. Should be easy to chop them up with AC.

Long live the Byz war machine!

goz - hung Byzantine wallpaper in Moscow and declared war on the big guys
Andronicus - reduced Cathy to a spear and an archer and got us two lux and iron
markh - killed Fat Cathy and got us our second leader :woohoo:
SimpleMonkey - UP!
classical hero - ON DECK
 
In conquests the placement of the FP is not that important as in Vanilla or PTW, but Andronicus already suggested Chalcedon. +20% commerce would not be too bad.
 
markh said:
In conquests the placement of the FP is not that important as in Vanilla or PTW, but Andronicus already suggested Chalcedon. +20% commerce would not be too bad.

In conquests there is a small but sig reduction to corruption in cities near FP. This becomes insig when too far from palace. Chalcedon is centrally located on western peninsula at a distance where corruption is significantly low enough to make the surrounding towns quite powerful. Putting it far away gives a bigger improvemnet in corruption for the FP city but does nothing for surrounding towns if they are totally corrupt. Either way there are obvious benefits across the board due to increase in OCN it produces. Running some tests in civassist with FP in multiple sites can be helpful - I only trialled Chalcedon because eyeballing it, it appeared best site.
Perhaps there is a better?
:scan:

OK I ran a few tests with civassist and best commerce is shown with FP in Yaroslavl because it it goes from 90% corrupt to being able to utilise the wines, however Chalcedon is only 1 behind.
When it comes to total production Chalcedon leads the way.
 
With Fat Cathy now only a memory, it was time for Theodora and her (so far) capable Monkey Generalisimo to take stock of the empire. As the monkey general found the last time he assumed command, markh had left things running smoothly. With four lux now on line, no extra income was required for the Byzantine citizen's beer fund. Many former citizens of Russia were plowing fields and digging mines for future Byzantine development. A few cities were tweaked to foster growth without sacrificing science or commerce. Our armed forces, who had so bravely ground the Russians into hamburgers (with fries) were in good shape, but there were too few of them -- only 7 horses, 5 cats, 1 sword, 3 warriors, 4 archers, 14 spearmen, and 1 dromon (the terror of the seas) stood between the Byzantines and the new threat.

The Inca.

Expansionist, Agricultural, and with very poor personal hygine, the Inca would no doubt prove to be a challange.

Monkey Generalisimo felt up to this challenge.

It was not yet time to contemplate an overseas invasion. Many more dromons would have to be built in our harbors before that would be possible. No, the job for now was simply to drive the Inca off our shores and to keep them off until the day came for Theodora to set foot (size 6) on the Inca continent and make it hers.

Preflight Move our new leader towards Chalcedon, the site of our future Forbidden Palace. Though Chalcedon lacks fresh water, it does have a fine cow, many hills, and access to one of Brusa's bg tiles. Not too far and not too close to Con, our ancient capital. It would have really been nice for it to have had an iron mine in the neighborhood, just for the ridiculously remote odds that coal would have appeared there eventually as well, giving us the much-desired, seldom-accomplished FP/Iron Works combo. Oh well.

Odds are likely that the Inca are going to land hostile troops up north in the recently liberated Russian lands. At least that's where I'd land them. It's the closest to Incaland, and our forces up there are a bit thin. A couple of cities are, in fact, completely ungarrisoned. I move our army up north to await developments there. Leaving an inland city or two up there unguarded is a pretty good way to keep the Inca landings in a limited area. We will not neglect to have a welcoming party waiting. :lol:

Shift some other troops to clean out the one spot that keeps this from being a purely Byzantine continent.

And I take the risk of pushing our first dromon into trecherous waters. Time to make new "friends."

Ah, as I suspected.

new_friends.jpg


By the rules of our varient, our Byzantine sailors empty their garbage pails into Spanish waters, pop open some beers, and, in the name of the mighty Theodora, declare war.

Funny, Isabella was already furious before we even knocked on her door. Wonder if Cathy was sending her postcards before all mail service from Russian was terminated. :D

IBT The Inca longbow tries his luck against an AC up on a hill. His luck is not good. (1-0) Two Inca galleys show up outside Vladivastok, which is not exactly where I was expecting them. Why do the Inca insist on toying with me?

Isabella runs around with her hands in the air and gobbles like a turkey.

Oh, and our bold dromon actually sinks off the Spanish coast. :gripe: Come on, we're seafaring, for goodness sake.

260AD Our mounted killers sweep towards Huanuco Pampa. A lucky shot from an Incan longbow takes down one horseman, but his fellow slays a spear and promotes to elite, and the AC finish off the remaining defenders. (4-1) Our continent is now ours alone. I rename HP.

inca_stinka.jpg


Move troops to give the Inca a big hello when they land next turn.

IBT The two Inca galleys turn tail, then a third shows up and drops off ... a single horseman. It is to laugh. Ha hah.

Inca cat takes a shot at our dinky boat as it sails by, but the Inca shore patrol have been dipping into the grog a little too early in the morning for good marksmanship.

270AD Our AC on duty makes short work of the Inca horse. He keeps the scalp. (5-1)

Our dinky boat out on patrol also sees dark blue borders. Could it be time to invite the Koreans to come and play next turn?

IBT Well, the good news is that a very quick construction job is now complete.

fp.jpg


That's quite a nice thing. But do you see what happens when a monkey's not paying attention?

drat.jpg


Should have known they'd go after that unguarded incense. Well, this will not last.

280AD Move troops to get rid of this blight on our shores.

Monarchy due next turn. I crank down the volume on reseach and fire some scientists for just one turn.

Oh yeah, and we declare war on the Koreans.

IBT Three Spanish galleys swoop down right next to our dinky boat. We may not be doing much sea exploration for a bit.

290AD Monarchy comes in. We're not quite ready yet to give up the despot's throne, so I put off our revolution. Set research to Literature in 6 while still pulling in 2gpt.

Shift troops. Not ready to kill anybody yet.

Figure the only safe place for our dinky boat is out in the deep ocean. Even if he sinks there, I won't give Isabella the satisfaction.

IBT Not much. Our dinky boat doesn't sink. There are lots of galleys outside this new Inca incursion on our shores. Suspect they're landing troops. We shall see.

300AD More moving and sharpening swords.

IBT Lots of Inca galleys sail around, but nobody lands that I can see.

310AD Use blazing dromon fire to soften up Tambowhatchamacallit. We damage a galley parked inside the city harbor, leaving the pikeman unharmed. :cringe: Put off the assault for another turn.

Build Iconium near our western iron hill. Figure that's where the AI would love to plant another city.

IBT Korea build's Sun Tzu's chinese restaurant. Inca sightseers sail by.

320AD More of the same. Cats are now in position to take out Tambowhatever next turn. Our dinky boat still sails the deep ocean, mocking the feeble Spanish sailors.

IBT I suspect that Inca are trying to land troops somewhere, but they haven't come out of the fog yet.

330AD Dromon takes a nice little piece out of an Inca galley on our west coast. Sail on. Gotta get over to Incaland to start stripping improvements.

Our other dromon crisps the pikeman in Tambowambo and yellowlines him. Cats ping the spear. Army finishes off the pike, elite AC takes down the spear, and vet AC takes out the longbow. (10-1) Guess Inca were landing troops there after all. I keep the city, since it went up to 2 pop and it's where we were going to place a city anyway. Thanks, Inca dude.

Our dinky boat is still riding high. Spanish are right next to it but won't touch it.

IBT The Inca finally land a more serious invasion force than a single horse: 1 reg archer, 1 reg longbow, 1 reg pike, 1 vet medinf, and 1 vet knight. They're in easy reach of Vladivostok (1 spear) and Naissus (nobody home). Will have to move some units fast to cover us down there.

340AD Resistance in Inca Stinka finally comes to an end, so I set it to starve. I have no patience with these Inca folk. Move troops in a desparate scramble to cover our butts near the Inca invasion. I also notice a galley way up north near Orenburg, so send an AC up there to prevent mayhem.

IBT Spanish attack our dinky boat with a galley and we sink the galley. (11-1) That little dinky boat rawks! :rockon: Inca send their main troops towards Moscow, which I left open to tempt them, but their knight proves too much for our single spear guarding Vladivostok. (11-2) :mad:

Literature comes in. Set to CoL in 4.

Looks like the Inca got themselves some Knights Templar.

350AD AC takes out the knight that took Vlad. (12-2) Inca must have rushed spear instantly, so we don't have it back yet.

I leave the rest of the troops unmoved and ready for action. Some fancy shifting should let the next better player tear up the rest of the Inca when they move onto the flatland outside Moscow next turn. Not sure where they're going to land after that. I tried to pump out plenty of settlers so we could minimize coastline hiding in the dark. One dromon is over on the Inca continent but hasn't managed to pillage anything yet. Many troops are over in the west. Bank account is healthy at 183g plus 19gpt. We're still despots for the time being. Dunno what else to say. Here's where the fighting's going to be.

350AD.jpg


Hope I left things in as good a shape as when I found them (well, except for that whole losing Vladivostok thing). The most irritating thing is not knowing where the Inca are going to pop up next. This annoys me. Why don't they call ahead first?

Ah well, here's the >>SAVE<<.

The roster is:

goz - ON DECK
Andronicus - reduced Cathy to a spear and an archer and got us two lux and iron
markh - killed Fat Cathy and got us our second leader
SimpleMonkey - invited Spain and Korea to join the party
classical hero - UP!
 
Turn one. I manage to get our Golden age going. I kill a galley with a Dromon.


I managed to kill the stack of Incan units on one of our gems. There was a pike, MI, Archer and long on that square. We lose an AC to a pike near some ruins. Had we won we would have got us some slaves.

IBT. Nothing

Turn two. We kill the Injured pike and we get ourselves some slaves. We attack a Galley and we lose. We try to take back Vlad, but we have an AC retreat and a Horse die. We kill one spear in the city, the other is wonded. We have lots of Incan galleys around the place and we must stop them from getting close to our shores. We bombard a galley and it dies.

IBT. Reinforcements arrive for the Incans.

Turn three. I kill an Incan Galley

IBT. Nothing. The AI is stupid.

Turn four. I recapture Vlad. I kill two spears fo the loss of nothing and I kill a galley inside.

We produce anothe AC. I kill two MI and i get two elite Swords. I bombard a galley to 1/4

IBT. We lost a curragh in treachous waters.

Turn five. We get Code of Laws. I research Philosophy. We bombard another galley. We build Vidin.


IBT.

Turn six. I kill a galley after losing a Dromon.

IBT. Nothing

Turn seven. I build Samosata.


IBT.

Turn Eight. I kill a Gallley and I bombard a galley inside of Juli.

IBT.

Turn Nine. We produce a AC and we discover Philosophy. We are now producing Currency. We killed a spear in Juli and we had an AC Retreat.

IBT.Nothing.

Turn ten. We kill two spears in Juli and we had an AC killed. There is onlu one very injured spear and it shall fall the next turn. We build Ani.

We need to wary of the Incan armies because they can appear just about anywhere. It appears that SM did not play his full turns last go because I finished off his turn ten. So next time he plays 11 turns to get things back to even. The whole continent is just about covered with our cities so we need to continue on doing that. Only the marsh is not covered by that is ours unitl we want it. Our biggest threat is the Incan since they are so powerful and they have the most culture.
 

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I don't know if that was an accident or if the galley attacked our dromon at the start of CH's turnset, rather than the other way around, but let me say it now. Initiating our Golden Age while we were still in despotism was a mistake. How major a mistake, I'm not sure, but we're definitely not getting the benefits from it that we should. We specifically agreed to postpone it until we were in Monarchy, and we hadn't switched to Monarchy yet. (Pop size hadn't gotten high enough for unit support.) Our dromons were for damaging enemy vessels to send them back home before they landed troops, and most importantly for pillaging coastline improvements. Well, now it's too late and we have to deal with what we have to work with.

My suggestion is that we use our GA to build units (of course) and libraries in as many cities as are producing a decent cash outflow. Our science output is pretty good already, and the discounted libraries we can build will help that a lot. Since we're still despots we can use pop-rushing, especially short-rushing, to hurry the libs along.

I notice that no other civ has started the GLib, but I wouldn't start building it ourselves. We don't have a prebuild in place and we could easily be outbuilt, leaving us with a very expensive coliseum or temple. Let the Inca build it and we'll take it from them eventually. It will benefit us more then anyway.

More dromons and keep pounding the Inca coastal improvements. Next leader should be used to make a pillaging army that we can land and use to start tearing up Inca roads inland. We could make it a three AC army, shipping the parts over separately, to maximize the damage it can do.

Switch to Monarchy after our GA is over and our core libraries built.

If Inca continue to land troops near Vladivostok then we can keep leaving Moscow empty to tempt them inland and hit the landing party from the mountains. I probably didn't do a very good job of distributing our troops, so they'll likely need to be rearranged to be able to cover our coastline. Even better is to keep sinking enemy galleys and soon the seas will be ours.

The roster is:

goz - UP!
Andronicus - ON DECK
markh - killed Fat Cathy and got us our second leader
SimpleMonkey - invited Spain and Korea to join the party
classical hero - started our GA and got us our continent back
 
Re dromons
My understanding of previous discussion was that we would stack them and then bombard. This should mean no AI attacking our stack keeping dromons safe and by lethal bombardment we avoid occasional losses attacking other seacraft. Pillaging Incans shores would be my next priority after ensuring Incans cannot land on our continent.

I recommend using remainder of our despotic time to rush some dromons in corrupt coastal towns. Agree with selective lib rushes, but not in productive towns lacking food boni to regrow quickly.
 
Tambo appears under sig flip risk - open up mapstat and yes its huge
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Flip_risk_440AD_SM01.JPG
If we wish to keep it then units should be parked outside. Of course getting rid of Juli will sig reduce this risk. On the subject of Juli I recommend abandoning and build our own town there with a slave on the other tile to prevent AI landing (if we keep Incan town we would have to leave a force outside to retake in event of flip

OUR NORHTERN AREA CAN BE DEVELOPED AS A SCIENCE FARM AS IT HAS MANY FOOD RICH TILES (UNDER MONARCHY) (oops just realised caps lock on :blush: ) whilst being corrupt. It needs an extra town on a desert tile between St P, Samosata and Yakutsk to make use of wheat and cow.


@ c_h I guess everyone is a bit :confused: at finding us in despotic GA, so have not acknowledged how well you did with clearing our continent. The Incans are certainly dangerous with their advanced units (and will be more so with crusaders) and GLH allowing landings from hidden sea tiles.
 
Goz should be able to sack Juli early in his turnset. I'd also recommend rebuilding there, then just park a unit on the other tile and it's ours till marines. (Though I don't see the game lasting quite that long.)

Keeping up the output of dromons should mean that it won't matter how tough the units are that the Inca load in their ships. Ya ain't that tough from the bottom of the ocean. :devil:

Basically, I'm agreeing with Andronicus's analysis above, though I'd still put emphasis on using our dromons to pillage. If we sink enough ships, the AI will eventually give up and stop sending them out. Then we can burn their shores at will. I'm looking forward to it.
 
Sorry for the delay, I got totally swamped here.

Pre-turn - I'm a bit confused. Our cores are not even half developed and no workers in sight? We have 11 native workers and around 20 slaves for 30+ towns, which are spread out as well. We need more workers, something like 20 more would do, so we can improve our core(s).

Switch and swap stuff in cities, always try to get max food out of corrupt towns.

Our city-planning is out of whack, we'll need to plop down some towns in squeeze mode later, but that's not a great concern right now. ICS is only good in a diff government. The problem is that our empire is way too stretched out for our resources. Luckily we have some 20 fast units that can intercept here and there.

The lack of workers makes me change my mind and I will get out at least 10 during my turns.

I won't type down every unit we build from now on, only buildings.

With Currency in 3t, we might as well start some markets too and I will whip some stuff out of corrupt cities.

450AD - Nicaea build library.

Sink a galley. Then take out Juli, losing a horse:

SM_Juli.jpg


Raze the city and get 4 slaves.

460AD - Adri library.

470AD - We learn Currency -> Cobstruction in 4t.

Caesarea lib -> market.

Sink incan galley.

480AD - Varna court -> lib
Trebizond lib -> market

490AD - Inca drop off a couple of MI's. Army takes care of the first and the elite archer:

SM_leader.jpg


What to do with the leader? HE or another army? I decide on army, we will need an AC-army at home.

4 dromons are ready to go overseas to wreak havok.

500AD - Smyrna build court -> lib.

510AD - We learn Construction and get Engineering as freebie -> Feudalism, in 5t.

Inca drop off LB and knight, our new AC-army takes care of that.

Dromons fail to burn a single tile.

520AD - Not much.

530AD - Varna lib -> market.

540AD - Con market -> lib.
Chalcedon market -> aqueduct.

Constantinople founded.

Again our lousy dromons miss.

550AD - We learn Feudalism -> Invention in 7t.

Adri court -> aqueduct
Nicaea market -> horse
Smyrna lib -> market

A second stack of 3 dromons goes overseas, they can be joined by a couple more in a turn.

GA is over, we need to switch gov.

I had to rush through this so next player can sort out builds and stuff. :)
 

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Progress! We're not in the AA any more!

What's up with the lack of firepower with our dromons? :hmm: Again, I'd say that the next leader (and we will get one) should form a one unit army and be shipped overseas with another shipload of two units to form a pillaging army for Incaland. Even if the dromons don't burn the coast, a three unit horse or AC army would have the mobility to sack multiple tiles per turn. I recommend this course of action highly.

Agree also that some serious micromanagement at home is a good idea. Of course, if the next player has to sit through a bunch of turns of anarchy, then there's really not that much micromanagement to do. Do we want to wait until after we get Invention, or just suck it up now?

Leaving Moscow open seems to be a magnet for the Incan landings, so maybe leaving it open could at least increase our odds of knowing where they're going to come visit.

Looks like Spain and Korea don't feel like testing their luck with us either.

Anyway, good set, goz! :thumbsup:

The roster is:

goz - second leader = AC army
Andronicus - UP!
markh - ON DECK
SimpleMonkey - invited Spain and Korea to join the party
classical hero - started our GA and got us our continent back
 
Great news about the leader

I agree with second army (and more mobile AC one at that) for home continent. Next ones definitely for pillaging.

I think we should revolt ASAP and get working on our core. Will try to belt out a heap more workers :D - I LIKE workers

Might be a day or 2 before I can take this - is that OK?
 
Hey- why haven't you built Heroic Epic yet? :confused: Your army has been victorius many times. Getting more armies (and the Pentagon after you get your next one :D) would be a good idea, and Heroic Epic would speed this up. So why not?
 
Haven't gotten around to it, I suppose. Figure that with this kind of game we'll be fighting all the time, so leaders appear pretty regularly whether we have the HE or not. Building units and necessary improvements have been a priority, not major construction projects. But I wouldn't object if we got ourselves a small wonder built pretty soon.
 
SimpleMonkey said:
Figure that with this kind of game we'll be fighting all the time, so leaders appear pretty regularly whether we have the HE or not.

Yes, but the more, the better, :mischief: and you might want to keep an army or two at home in case the AI stops being stupid :crazyeye: And like I said, Pentagon would be good too... maybe you could use a leader or two on these small wonders... :mischief: Anyway, keep up the good work! :goodjob:
 
It was a tough choice between another army or HE, but with MI's and knights coming, we need some tough stuff at home. Archers and horsemen won't last long.

If I were to send over an one-unit AC army with some more to fill in, it would be eaten alive. That plus we would lose firepower back home, all I was building was workers and buildings. :) We will ge more leaders.
 
gozpel said:
If I were to send over an one-unit AC army with some more to fill in, it would be eaten alive.

As far as I remember, the AI won't attack an army at full health, even if the AI has enough firepower to blow that army to splinters. The exception is if that army is fortified in a city that the AI has decided to attack. Then they'll take it on. But if we send over an army -- even with just one unit in it -- and then load the other two units after it lands, the AI will ignore it completely. We just can't attack anything with it.

In Own9, the forerunner to this game, the AI kept walking right past our two spear army and let it tear up roads endlessly. We could get away with it again. Hey, it's not my fault that that AI is so dumb. :lol:
 
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