SP6 - Deity Training

[Renata]

Originally posted by ToddMarshall
And why risk facing that juggernaut UU the Ottos have right now before you have infantry or at least a sizable force of Rifles (even rifles can have a tough time with it though) to fend it off?

One benefit, if it could be pulled off, would be depriving the Ottos of coal (and thus high-production from railroads) before they get many Sips going. Less rails = less units to face later.

I'm still not decided, though; still need to think about the peaceful options.

@Matt: yes the coal's at Bolu, and Sirp said our military was average vs both Germany and Ottomans, so they're probably average vs each other.

I'm also very interested in the number of turns it would take to get Japan's coal roaded up.

Renata <--- back to work

 

[Sirp]

Look for this file on the server to get the save: SP6-430AD.zip (I'm pretty sure that's the right one, forgive me if it's not; don't have time to check).

It would take 10+ turns to road up the Japanese coal, and then I'm shuddering to think what they'll want to charge us for it.

It's deep in Japanese territory, and they don't have any roads in that area; our workers would have to walk over jungle.

I must admit I am a little biased toward going to war, since it'd be more fun

If we do go for war, we will DEFINITELY be able to take the city, but will we be able to survive the counter-attack? If Osman is the only one we have to face, then I think so, it won't even be that hard. If he buys in Japan, we'll be in some trouble.

I'll probably play in about 12 hours.

-Sirp.

 

[Renata]

Ugh, ten or a dozen turns, while all the while the AI production is revving up. Eep.

I don't think I like option 3. For starters, how long will it take us to research nationalism ourselves? That one will be a killer to buy. And MPPs are always tricky; there could be several out on the table by the time we had nationalism ourselves that could drag us into a war we're not at all prepared for. Attacking the Ottos ourselves is no more risky, I don't think.

Ok here's my vote (waffly tho it will be), for what it's worth. *If* the judgment of those more experienced with this level than I am is that
a) the counterattack is survivable
b) keeping the war confined to just the Ottomans is a realistic expectation (whether through ending it before alliances get shopped around or by buying in an ally ourselves)
c) we can economically survive the rep hit and the ensuing loss of our ability to sell our surplus luxes and resources while still having a prayer of hanging even in tech

then I vote for go to war. If any of these is judged to be a serious problem, then I say go for the coal road.

Renata, feeling oh-so-decisive today

 

[Borealis]

I think that we'd probably be best served by war, as the nature of the game dictates war in any case, which means that having your own of each of the major resources is strongly encouraged if not necessary. If we have enough catapults to move to the front/first defensive lines, we should be able to cut down on the counterattack casualties.

As far as AI alliances, how far ahead in tech is Osman compared to the other AI? If any of them lack Nationalism, giving that to anyone would mean a MA against us in a heartbeat. However, if he's equal or behind in tech & cash, he might not be able to buy one quickly, allowing us time to end it.

I agree with Renata on attacking before the massive wave of MPPs occurs. Keep a weather eye out for Japan taking a bite out of us via MA with Osman, but otherwise now is really our best chance to secure the coal. Depending on Japan to not only sell the coal to us for an affordable price, but also repeatedly sell it to us and no other civ, is far too risky.

 

[Sirp]

It'll take us 15+ turns to research nationalism ourselves at the moment. Not an option.

(a) and (c) are true I feel. (b) I'm not sure about. At the moment, Germany and Japan would "never accept" a deal involving a MA against Osman, but that seems to change once war is declared, from experience.

As for ending the war before alliances against us come into effect, well that's an iffy one. A war always lasts at least a few turns, since they won't see our envoy before that. After we do meet with them, if it's still just a bilateral war, then we'll probably pay pretty much anything for peace (except give the coal city back!)

I doubt Osman has many if any Sipahi yet, and he seems to have lots of slow units, which will be incredibly easy to deal with. Our strategy against Sipahi will be to try to stack our cities with lots of units; any units, good or bad. In attacking us, a Sipahi will place itself vulnerable to a counter-attack with our cavalry.

Although, we should note that a vet musket in a 7+ city, has over 50% chance of defeating a regular sipahi.

My only real concern is if an alliance is signed against us. We will be able to hedge strongly against this by ensuring we are exporting resources to Japan and Germany, if possible. We could also try to take out some loans - then if they attack us they lose the money. Although I'm not sure if Japan has anything to offer at the moment.

There is the question of Military Tradition and Japan. They don't currently have it, and have little with which they could get it (they would have if they had coal hooked up!) I'm not sure whether to give it to them. By giving it to them, they become a little happier with us, and a great deal more powerful. If we don't give it, then the Ottomans have something to give Japan to get an alliance against us.

Another possible option, I suppose, is to attack Japan and try to sieze their source of coal. They have a much weaker economy than us I feel, they do not have MT, they don't seem to like us, and they don't have any cash to upgrade to cavalry. It'd take a while to get to the coal, but we could definitely beat them if we concentrate our cavalry on them. Of course that leads to the danger of Osman stabbing us in the back, which would probably be vicious with sipahi.

Yeah unless there are any major objections, I'm thinking we should attack Osman. We'd also get an extra supply of silks and iron, the iron being especially valuable, and Osman has been asking for it with his aggressive settling. He did the same thing to me in Epic 26: settling a city in some desert in *my* land, and this time he must pay!

If things go badly, may the be all on my head.

-Sirp.

 

[Matt_G]

10+ turns. Ugh.
@Borealis, Good points.
I'll cast my vote along with Borealis and waffle.....er...uhm....I mean Renata.

Let's get some coal with a pointy stick.

I just hope we don't get hit by the mother of all dogpiles.

Edit: I got sidetracked while typing this and didn't see Sirp's post.
Interesting point about MT and Japan. I am sure you'll do fine Sirp, and you're right. He has been asking for it!

 

[Sirp]

Certainly, getting coal ourselves would be a much bigger 'prize' than merely being able to buy it off another. But, we wouldn't have to keep getting it over and over. 20 turns would be enough for our industrious workers to railroad a large proportion of our empire, and another 10 turns with replaceable parts would probably allow us to finish it.

What I'm really hoping is that this charade doesn't repeat itself come rubber. Rubber wouldn't be nearly as crucial immediately: we could buy it off another, and we could happily wait to do that, but it would still be a pain. I am half-tempted to add Muglu to our list of targets, since there is no-doubt soon-to-come oil there.

To war we shall go!

-Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

(3) 430AD (continued)

Having consulted his senate, Sirp Lincoln's mandate was clear: War with the Ottomans as soon as a sufficient force could be mustered.

Hmm....it says we have '0 extra' iron, now that our deal with France has expired. But, we are importing a source from Japan, and we have a native source. Will we lose our source if we export it to France? Hmm...well we'll be getting another source when we attack Osman, so, I get MT off France for iron + 100 gold. We still have a source available.

I buy wine off Germany for 29gpt, renewing one of our cancelled lux deals and the only other deal was furs off the Ottomans, which we obviously can't renew right now, and so lux -> 10%. Our gpt falls to 380, and we will lose another 20 when we declare war.

I work on getting something back for MT, selling it to Hiawatha for 21 gpt and a worker.

I think we should have a contingency plan on this coal, so I trade MT to Japan for a RoP, and some workers enter his territory.


(4) 440AD:

I upgrade a heap of knights and horses to cavalry, and we have 14 cavalry. 13 preparing to attack, and one in a backward position keeping an eye on several directions.

After the upgrades, we now have an 'average' military compared to Japan!

Free Artistry came in this turn; bleah.

I position our cavalry to attack. I'm thinking we might take out one of the Ottoman's sources of saltpeter as well.


(5) 450AD: Chicago bank -> barracks. Miami barracks -> cavalry. Buffalo market -> bank. Denver temple -> aqueduct.

Firstly comes some intelligence gathering.

Salonika, our first target, is still garrisoned by two regular spears.

Hmm..the Ottomans have just started trading with Japan. They also have just one source of horses, it's in a core city, but only one behind their saltpeter city.

Bolu, the coal city, has a regular pike and a regular spear.

Denizli, the saltpeter city, has a regular musket and a regular spear.

Mugla, the city in 'our' land, is has two regular spears defending it, and has two archers and a sword around the city. I will try to find time to capture it. It has no barracks and is not linked up to their trade network.

Finally, Sinop, their core city with the horses, is defended by 2 regular and 1 veteran musket. It's size 10 and has a barracks. Is currently building Shakespeare's.

Just as a note, I normally do fairly thorough investigations before attacking, if I have the cash. I find the intelligence is well worth it.

The time to attack is nigh. We sell our only source of silks to Japan, in order to shore up friendship, confident that we are about to acquire more.

Salonika is captured without loss of a single hitpoint, and one of our cavalry promotes to elite.

Our first cavalry retreats from Bolu without inflicting damage, but our second kills the defender without losing a hitpoint, and promotes. The second also wins.

I celebrate victory by starting the Grand American Rail Network.

Then I go onto attacking Denizli, the saltpeter city. It falls after one retreat from us.

Now that we've declared war, we can indeed get alliances with others. Germany wants 560 gold though, and Japan 860. Worth it? I'm thinking bringing Germany in at least might be. I convince them to come in the war on our side for 28gpt. I also shove luxuries up to 20% with war weariness about to strike and all. Our income is down to 317gpt. Not a problem though, we have coal, which is priceless.

The die is cast. The first turn of combat played. I brace myself for the Ottoman counterstrike...

(6) 460AD: Germany convinces France to join us in the war against the evil Ottomans!

A sipahi attacks our cavalry at Denizli, and wins, of course. We take it on the chin. The sipahi will not live. Well, he almost killed one of our cavalry who attacked him. Almost.

St Louis barracks -> cavalry

I spare some cavalry to attack Mugla, that dratted thorn in our side for so long. We capture the city.

(7) 470AD: Ok, I am not happy. I can take that Sipahi narrowly killing our defending musket man. That's fine. But when Bolu, full of 8 cavalry and a musketman flips to the Ottomans, arghhh!!! The size of our offensive military has just been cut in half. I was planning to try to relieve cultural pressure on the city next turn by attacking Kafa. We recapture the city, but the damage has been done.

I haven't had a culture flip like this for a lonnnnnnnnng time. Gee they're frustrating! Washington -> settler. We're going to 'delayed raze' the city and replace it with good American citizens. I just knew that was one of those times I should have stationed the military *beside* the city!

IBT....the Japanese surprise attack us! They attack Seattle with a Samurai, which retreats to our musketman. They also have a cavalry in sight, and lots of foot soldiers. The two-front war nightmare has become reality!

One of our cavalry loses attacking a sipahi on hills.

Because the Japanese attacked us, we lose our source of iron from them. Lucky we got that other source from the Ottomans! I have to build a colony to get it online immediately.

(8) 480AD:

Emergency rails are built. One Japanese cavalry killed. The evilll Ottoman city is destroyed and replaced with Dallas.

With us being attacked, weariness goes down, so I chance turning lux -> 10%

(9) 490AD:

Nationalism has arrived, but we can't get it yet

Our injured defensive cavalry kills an attacking sipahi!

We also kill a Japanese cavalry with a defending musket, but a heap of Japanese cavalry come into sight all over the place.

Osman will talk to us now, and whoa...give us 35gpt for peace. Umm...I know it'd be nice to keep our side of our alliance with Germany, but considering we are in deep trouble here with attacks on both sides, I don't care one bit. Peace with Osman signed.

All sorts of fighting with the Japanese going on. We could use those 8 extra cavalry about now!

(10) 500AD:

I sell Osman's silks back to him for 18gpt

More fighting with Japan. They won't see our emissary yet. Unfortunately I have to cut this short, I am running out of time. Will discuss it more later.

Matt is up, and he probably wants to carefully review the current situation. I suggest peace with Japan asap and then go back to economic development. We got the coals we wanted, and that's the important thing.

Oh and yeah..the Americans sneak attacked by the Japanese...hmmmmmm

-Sirp.

The Game

 

[Renata]

LOL well that was .. entertaining. Reputation well and thoroughly trashed now, I assume.

Go Matt!

Renata, amused

 

[Sirp]

Reputation thrashed? Why of course

That might be a reason why Japan attacked us.

Coal is priceless though, well worth it. Sometimes it is worth it to thrash your reputation, and the later in the game it gets, the less your reputation is worth. You don't want to kill it in the ancient age, but by now we are a strong enough power in our own right to not have to rely on the kindness of others.

With us being industrious, and now having coal which many others do not have, we will be able to get our economy really going nicely.

Oh and yeah, Matt, and everyone else, please keep Boston as a worker factory. Keep it below size 7, churning out workers. We should even be able to get out 2 workers every 3 turns now we have railroads. (Will post instructions on how to do this later).

-Sirp.

 

[Matt_G]

I'll make peace with Toku a priorty of course.
Will do with Boston. 2 every 3 turns? I'll figure it out.
Got it and will play today barring any surprises.

Mugla is ours? Awesome!
The sight of that city really got my dander up every time I looked at it.

 

[ToddMarshall]

Well, as long as you don't need to make gpt payments to anyone the rest of the game your fine with a trashed rep. Maybe in your situation, you won't have to. Then again, its possible that others will still take gpt payments eventually. The fact that The ottos didn't flat out refuse to buy a lux is a good sign. There are diffrent levels of rep damage and you probably wont trigger the total up front payments only forever kind with this action.

 

[Stormrider]

That is the second worst flip I've seen. I had one where I had a comparible amount of military, the city was at least one ring behind the front, and I had just rushed the FP there.

Toku is on my list...

Can we see a screenshot of our new acquisitions?

Even if we get back to peace, we will need to build our military back up. Japan is one of those civs that loves to sneak attack.

 

[Shillen]

Hmm as far as I know there aren't different levels of reputation hits. Even when you trash your rep really badly the AI will still give you gpt deals for luxes and things like that. There's two categories of trade goods. One is over time goods like luxes/resources/gpt and the other is instant goods like gold/techs/etc. Even when your reputation is fully trashed the AI will still give you over time goods for instant or over time goods. What the AI won't do is give you instant goods for over time goods. Even if only part of the deal is an instant good. Therefore you have to buy techs for lump sums, but you can still sell or buy luxes for gpt.

edit: Hmm I checked your save, maybe ToddMarshall is right. If he meant by different levels that you only have a trashed rep with certain civ's. It seems you have a clean rep with everyone except Germany and the Ottomans. France and the others will still sell you techs for gpt, but the Ottomans and Germans won't.

 

[Matt_G]

Originally posted by Sirp
Reputation thrashed? Why of course

That might be a reason why Japan attacked us.
-Sirp.

Now that I have thought on this a while, I have a theory. I think is was a combination of the rep hit and Bolu flipping. Mostly the flip.
I noticed they attacked in the IBT after the flip cut our offense in half. All of a sudden we were back to being weak against them and they jumped on it.

Something has come up and I am not going to be able to play today. Probably just as well because I would like to see some discussion. We are at critical point in the game. I have had a chance to look at the save and I have noticed the following things:

Re Nationalism:
I can turn off lux tax completely. This would stop WLTKD in the few cities we have it going right now. I would have to hire a taxman in Houston but that doesn't matter. It's hopelessly corrupt anyways. All it loses is food. If I slam science to 100% we can get Nationalism in 12 at a cost of roughly 6100 gold. It drops our income from +513 gpt to only +11 gpt.
In 3 turns this would become a loss of -3 gpt due to a ivory deal running out with Hiawatha. This can probably be renegotiated though. Do we want to do this? Even if we only do it for several turns it will drop the price if I am not mistaken......or am I?
I am inclined to say no we don't want to do this. Save our money and buy in @last, but I thought I would throw it out there. <shrug>

Re Toku:
We have 6 cavs, with 5 more due next turn and I will probably make this 7 by rushing the remainder of the builds in New Orleans and Chicago. I am going to take Ise. That will bring Toku to the table and on our terms. Thoughts? Of course this is assuming that Toku doesn't tie me down by sending units at us from all over the place which is a very strong possibility.

Sirp, do you think we should starve Salonika down to one Ottoman citizen and use workers to build it up or just add workers now to get a majority of the citizens American. It's at size 5 and I am leaning towards starving it, but if just getting a majority of the citizens our nationality is good enough then why bother.
Thoughts from any one on this?
I noticed it still has it's aqueduct. Nice!

If I can take Ise in the next 2 or 3 turns, and get Toku to the table, we will be in good shape. I just want to get it done before he brings in someone else against us. If I can get peace without concessions on our part before taking Ise I will probably accept it just to avoid that possibility.
I look forward to hearing what everyone has to say, teammates and lurkers both.

Matt

 

[Stormrider]

Starve 'em down to one and then blast in our workers to grow it back up.

Hopefully Japans poor roads will keep him from multiple probing attacks. Take Ise and kill / pillage as much as you can on the same turn and hopefully we can get peace straight up.

I think you were right on the money by stating that the loss of 1/2 of our offensive military while engaging an enemy on the other side of our nation from Japan caused Japan to jump us.

 

[Matt_G]

Here's a screen shot at Stormriders request.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by Matt_G


Sirp, do you think we should starve Salonika down to one Ottoman citizen and use workers to build it up or just add workers now to get a majority of the citizens American. It's at size 5 and I am leaning towards starving it, but if just getting a majority of the citizens our nationality is good enough then why bother.
Thoughts from any one on this?
I noticed it still has it's aqueduct. Nice!

The flip possibility has nothing to do with the number of our own citizens in the city, but only with the number of Ottoman citizens. Having more of ours won't help matters any. So I say starve the suckers. We can add in our own workers afterwards to get it productive (since it's so close, it should be a good city). And by the way, aqueducts (and hospitals) are never destroyed by capture, which *is* nice.

Re Ise: Could you possibly get a screenshot? I might have something to say once my mind is refreshed on where everything is.


*edit* I see you beat me to it. I'd say sure, to go after Ise once our own defense is secured (i.e. take out any and all exposed attacking units that could reach our cities first). One of Japan's extreme SE cities (if they're in cav range) would probably be more lightly defended, but the loss wouldn't hurt Japan as badly as losing Ise would. Ise should be razed, by the way; with it only 3 tiles from Satsuma the cultural pressure would be overwhelming.

And one more thing - it might be worth it, prior to trying to make peace, to put a unit (any unit) in each of the undefended cities. It'd make us look less vulnerable and might improve our chances of getting an offer.

Renata

 

[Sirp]

Yeah take Ise *if* you can. However on my turn there were loads of Japanese units flooding in, and so I was entirely on the defensive. If I had those extra 8 cavalry though, I probably could have taken the battle to them a little more

But, I may have endured the main attack, and they may be ripe for the counter-attack. Try to kill off all their units in our territory before negotiating for peace. Especially that longbowman on the mountain - I have let him through thus far because I could never spare a unit to attack him, and he was never threatening anything.

No we don't want to research nationalism. Just wait around until more techs come in and broker a 2-for-1 deal. We don't need Nationalism for this war, so we're fine. Start thinking about Theory of Evolution soon.

We do want to starve Salonika down, but our workers have other jobs for a while. Only merge them back in once Salonika is back over size 6.

-Sirp.

 

[Borealis]

Hmm... every unit we take knocks down the price for peace, and taking Ise would make Toku cave almost immediately. Also, I know that we've said that the AI's attitude/reputation concerning our civ doesn't matter right now, but I'd like to point out for potential consideration later that razing Ise would give us a huge attitude hit with everyone long-term.

At least we have coal now, and have erased the orange blot from one side of our borders. Getting coal and keeping it long-term will also allow our 'sappers' to build railroads faster when we go to war again.