Soda I - Jumping to Monarch

[retro V]

The Wanderer returns, yaay!

Good point, that. I didn't notice the hill in the pics.

@aquar. Look at you, only just posted the save an hour ago and you're telling rrau how long he's got to reply,


Besides, Soda's back. Doesn't that mean he's up now?

 

[AdamW81]

We will have a hard time getting the GL without marble since we already traded alphabet around. I usually wait to trade alphabet until I get Literature near complete. The AI doesn't prioritize alphabet but once they have it they go quickly for Lit and the GL. Definitely don't trade literature if we are going for GL though until we are well into building it.

I usually go for CoL/Civil Service or Construction after Literature depending on how quickly I want to start the next war. Depending on where we are with infrastructure and city development, we can quickly go for a catapult/axeman attack or wait and go catapult/macemen (people will have longbowmen in the latter scenario). I find it pretty easy with macemen as long as you have catapults to get the city defense down.

 

[rrau]

I got it. Going to dinner and movies. Will try to play after that.

 

[rrau]

@aquar. Look at you, only just posted the save an hour ago and you're telling rrau how long he's got to reply,

That should be SHE


415bc (0) Preflight check: nada

IBT: Mansa wants to trade Poly for Meditation. I select negotiate option, then decline so I can try to trade same tech for multiple techs in our turn. Also get 2 new immortals and automatically start building more. (this automation is usually considered bad form in a succession game, so I undo it)

400bc (1) Start iron mine, move immortals. Texcoco now pop 2. Trade Poly to Bizmark for Meditation. Trade Poly to Mansa for Priesthood.

385bc (2) Move some immortals. Waiting for peace treaty to expire.

370bc (3) Iron mine done. Whip 2 immortals to let overflow go into a couple melee units

355bc (4) Still waiting for peace treaty to expire. Start a couple axes.

340bc (5) Whip axes. Towns are starting to get unhappy. Need to lay off the whip

325bc (6) Move axes towards Texcoco.

IBT: Monty demands we stop trading with Egypt. I tell him to buzz off.

310bc (7) Axes in position. Hopefully peace treaty ends this next turn. We've run out of money. Research is slow.

ibt: Peace treaty over. Our Units are On STRIKE!!!

295bc (8) Invade Texcoco. Micromanage towns to get rid of -7gpt so we don't lose units. Has to disband one of 2 warriors in Tetohiuacan (sp?). Also move an axe and immortal next to Suza. Surprized to see it's just guarded by 2 archers.

280bc (9) 1st axe loses to archer, but hurts them. Second axe attacks spear with about 79% chance of victory and loses without even scratching the spear Immortal with shock promotion and 0.6% chance of victory knocks the spearman down to half strength. Immortal wins vs spear. Immortal wins vs archer to capture Texcoco. Near, Susa, both the axe and the Immortal are outclassed, so have them wait for reinforcements.

IBT: Hatty wants to trade math for alphabet. I negotiate and then decline.

265bc (10) Reinforcements arrive to Susa next turn. There's 3 units with moves still on them, but the odds don't favor us winning this turn. I end the turn with no attack.

 

[retro V]

I see what you mean about trading techs. Mansa would have given Bismark Poly IBT and we'd have lost out if you accepted the proffered deal. Good thinking, batman.

You can blame me and my alt-key for the unit automation, I'm always doing it. Won't do it again I can see where it could all go wrong if, for example, the next guy timed a couple of forest chops to rush a wonder once a unit was complete, only to have their efforts wasted because the prompt didn't come up for the next build instructions. In future, I'll just queue up repeat unit builds for my own turns, and leave the alt-key to SP games

Micromanage towns to get rid of -7gpt so we don't lose units.

Are we at 0% research and losing money? Uh-oh, we've been whipping too much Better get some cottages down and start growing them.

Bad luck with the RNG, looks like you would have nailed the Aztecs altogether if not for one f*****d up roll.

 

[aquar]

Bad form by me to "RUSH" player. Just got excited. Too excited.

RRAU, great leave. We own the western empire.

 

[AdamW81]

Soda up or me?

I haven't looked at the save yet, but I'm assuming quickly take back Susa then go into serious economic rebuilding mode. I guess we are doing 10 turns now as well?

 

[SpriteSODA]

you're up mate.

 

[AdamW81]

Alright I should be able to play tonight. I haven't looked at the save yet but I think its pretty straightforward: get back Susa and end the recession!

 

[AdamW81]

alright, overview: we are in serious danger of falling way behind in tech due to poor economy. We have the most cities/land and soon to be population once the cities grow a little. Tech needs to be at 30% to avoid losing money (running at 50% currently with -20 a turn). I think we will be fine but we need to really focus in the short term on getting turned around.


IT: Change cities at happiness limit for higher production lower growth (no point in unhappy people). Move two workers who were building cottages at capital to other cities where they can do more immediately useful things (leave one building at capital, which wont use the other 2 right away). Switch several cities from units/barracks to granary/library.

1: Take Susa with one casualty, decide barb city to the west would be a nice addition since we have this huge army (was a spot we wanted anyway) so take horses towards barb city.

2: Notice Caesar has Literature already AND marble. No point in holding alphabet at this point so I trade to Catherine for Math. No oen else will trade. Begin archer in Susa, granary in texcoco (both come out of resist).

3: Begin road to gold for happiness, begin stone hookup, switch cities from production heavy back to food heavy in preperation for happiness limit increase (3 turns for road on gold).

4: Whip a workboat in Tenoch, start another workboat. Start granary in persopolis after finishing axeman.

5: Reject Catherine's request to end deals with Hatty. Trade fish for spices with Hatty. Attack barb city and capture it with one loss (really hoping to lose more actually...). We get a worker and 117 gold! Worker starts chopping a tree on river next to new city (trees all around, will later cottage the river spot). We really need to get rid of these horses as they are already almost obsolete with all the spearman about so I head north to raze a barb city for gold (above Catherine's area).

6: Gold hooked up, I notice Lit is done next turn and we have no chance for GL so give Hatty a spare clam in the hopes it will bump her opinion (currently none of the AI's will trade with us...thats not good).

7: Get Literature, start Construction. No one will trade anything for literature and its 66 turns for GL:/ I continue granary in capital instead of GL.

8: Work boat done in tenoch, switches to barracks it was already working on. Switch from Construction to Code of Laws. We are in serious economic trouble, we need to whip out courthouses ASAP before we even think of another war. I should have realized this earlier and not wasted a couple turns on construction, sorry guys.

9: Barb city, Carib, pops, start granary. Granary done in capital start spear (not sure what we want to do here now...)

10: Raze barb city and get 76 gold. Tree chop done near carib and texcoco (on a hill).


We still have alot of horses left and I would recommend outright disbanding them (next person can decide). Honestly we built way to many and probably went a little crazy with the whipping based on our city sizes. The horses will not be useful next war (using catapults and likely macemen due to the recovery time we need).

We are in much better shape with happiness due to the trade with hatty for spices and the gold coming on line (plus the whipping wearing off). I micro'd most cities for max growth and commerce, but CoL is still going to take a little while. We need to focus on getting some cottage growth and not be afraid to whip courthouses in just about every city as soon as we get CoL. At that point we can research construction and hopefully be getting on a solid economic footing for the next war.

Catherine is getting a little peeved at us due to our rejection of her demands. She is in last place and no real threat until Cossacks. I personally would plan to kill germany next. They are fairly high on the power scale (I always prefer to knock the highest down first, always just get harder later on), have good land for the taking, and are right next to us.

Whoever is up, check the maintenance and disband as many horses as necessary to get to no unit maintenance. I would keep checking the foreign trade screen as well so we can get the most of literature once someone is willing to do a trade (may stop giving clam to hatty too, although I think it would be good to make her an ally, she is powerful and not an immediate target for war since we will likely go for germany and russia first, plus she has a generally friendly personality).

If we can get CoL and get back on good ground tech wise before the AI pulls ahead we are in really good position to take a lead with all our land and cities. We should have a good idea of possible wins here in the next 20 turns or so (stick with what we have and go for space, go for domination if someone is pulling ahead in tech, etc)

 

[VeryApe]

Got it and will probably play right after looking over the save some more

 

[retro V]

Adam, that made for depressing reading. Truth hurts I suppose. If we're not gonna get the library, and we're nowhere near the Pyramids to take it over, can't we cottage spam our under-productive cities and get our commerce up?

Code of Laws would be a good beeline. Courthouses in all cities would lower the distance costs, and it is a good tech to trade with if we get it soon. If we get it first, then we have our first religion, although I would be careful about converting without first assessing the diplomatic climate.

We may have overdone it militarily, I didn't expect we would have so many survivors. I'm loath to disband them, there are other uses for them. Like gifting them to an AI to get them in our good books, or gift them to an underdog to use against someone we don't like. Or, as you say, use them to knock our neighbours down a peg or two. But not for taking more cities, that just makes our situation worse than it already is.

We could use more workers, for cottaging and connecting our empire together. Why not split the Immortals up into smaller parties, and go rustling for workers in Russia or Germany?

Good luck with it VeryApe. Looking forward to your results.

 

[pholkhero]

lurker's comment: Something I always forget until i've disbanded my units is to go through all my cities and MM or set "Emph Commerce"

 

[VeryApe]

100 BC (1): Granary done in Texcoco, start Lighthouse. Spearman done in Susa, start Library. Granary done in Carib, start Library (mostly to get the gold). Delete most of our units not guarding a city. Unit cost goes down to 2, but when I delete another unit it doesn't go down anymore so I leave the rest (not much).
85 BC (2): Change from building Spearman to a Worker in Persepolis. Chop some forests for cottages, and start building one at Tlatelolco.
70 BC (3): Some more cottages and I farm the rice.
IBT: Hatty wants us to cancel our deals (OB) with Cathy. I agree, we want to get better relations with Hatty. Cathy is last in score and friends with Bismark (who someone thought we should attack next) and Caesar (second last in score).
55 BC (4): Move down the lone Immortal from the north. The one with 10 xp.
25 BC (6): Judaism spreads to Carib and I don't switch religion. The borders at Carib expands but we didn't get the gold, Giza did
10 BC (7): Granary done in Tlatelolco and I start a Library instead of the Barracks in queue. We are now out of money and down to 30% research.
5 AD (8): Worker done in Persepolis. I start a new one and hire two Scientists. CoL down from 22 to 16 turns.
20 AD (9): More cottages started and pasture on the sheep.
35 AD (10): Barracks built in Tenochtitlan (don't think we need more Barracks for a while) and I start a Granary there. Imhotep (Great Engineer) is born in Berlin.

We should hire some more Scientists when more cities get Libraries to speed up the research. I think we should go for Currency and Calendar next. The AI's all have Calendar, so we should be able to trade for it when we get CoL. Until the last turn no one wanted to trade any techs, and when they got Calendar we didn't have anything to trade it for

 

[pholkhero]

lurker's comment: Just a suggestion but a few screenies with your reports would allow us lurkers to better follow what was going on, esp empire overview shots.

 

[retro V]

You want screenies?

Actual in-game footage

Agreed, pictures help make a report more readable. I try to remember to take captures of important events, but it's easily forgotten in the heat of the moment.

 

[pholkhero]

good one ~

"Why you little- !"

 

[VeryApe]

lurker's comment: Just a suggestion but a few screenies with your reports would allow us lurkers to better follow what was going on, esp empire overview shots.

Yeah, I know I also like screenshots when I'm reading a SG, but nothing changed during my turns (except for chopping some forests) so I skipped them this time

Edit:

Edit 2: I see now that I forgot to change Teotihuacan building Swordman to something else non-militaristic

 

[pholkhero]

Awesome, thanks! It looks like Carib got that gold in the end

 

[VeryApe]

Oh, didn't even notice that That's great.