SP6 - Deity Training

[Matt_G]

Originally posted by Renata
No one's threatened us overtly with units, but we are still *very* weak militarily, with most of our cities defended by just a single warrior. Makes me nervous being this overextended.
Renata

Made me nervous also. My whole turn I felt like a long tailed cat, in a room full of rocking chairs.
And 8 turns of anarchy!! That sucks. Don't feel bad about it though. Nothing you can do. (you know that though)

I hope I didn't leave you any serious Renata. I know that the turns I played before you were not the best I have ever played.

As far as Osman is concerned.......I agree. We need to him soon, but the thought of a dogpile scares the crap out of me. What about trying to get a MA with Bismarck and maybe Toku? At least then our nearest neighbors wouldn't be attacking us. Of course that would lock us into 20 turns of war (Not good)
Do you guys think we could get enough forces together to take our proposed targets in 1 or 2 turns soon enough?
I look forward to some discussion on this. Right now, our military is streched so thin, it's damn near invisible.

 

[Borealis]

We had bad luck and good luck on the anarchy- 8 turns but no one sneak attacked us. For Osman, if we position our units correctly, we can take several cities quickly, unless he has pikes. I noticed that Sun Tzu's was mentioned building, but not any sightings of Ottoman pikemen. I'd get an MA with Japan, as Tokugawa doesn't like us, and would like an excuse to take our territory, and guard our front with Germany if at all possible. An MA with Germany against Otto might result in Biz taking too much orange territory and getting too powerful, especially with the higher leader probability there.

Japan is the big worry for me- on the verge of getting Samurai, and already economically strong, we need to ally/buy tech from them if at all possible to keep them away from us until we're ready for them. Sirp was right about our long expansion period, and until we get Cavalry and lots of bombardment potential, we probably won't be able to fight Japan effectively. The cost to get them into the war might be prohibitive, but leaving them out would mean a severe problem defending, and limiting us to making peace very, very quickly.

As far as the timing on hitting Osman- if we can estimate his probable strength and figure that he doesn't have pikes in his exposed cities, we can probably get them if we hit hard and fast, but will not be able to take his core without help. I'd rather attack him now or extremely soon with a 'goal-oriented' offensive, make peace, and then continue with Knights before he gets Sipahi.

Oh, and this is also a 'got it' post, but I'll wait for Sirp's comments and more discussion on Osman before I play.

 

[Renata]

Our offense consists of all of two horsemen and a catapult right now. But we could have 10 or so attacking units in 10 turns if we go after it aggressively. Chicago is one turn away from a catapult - could be switched. New York's marketplace could be sacrificed to the war effort - the city needs a fair amount of hill-mining and grassland-irrigating before it can grow at any reasonable pace anyway. And finally, whichever city it is that's buiding a barracks could be switched to military.

Alternatively, if we let the barracks and the marketplace finish, we could have the same amount of military in about 15 or 16 turns, with contributions from those cities and Philadelphia starting in 8 turns. (Washington's problematic - it finishes its market in 9, but is growing very fast and will need a temple unless we start hiring specialists.) I'd rather not sacrifice Boston to the war effort, since we still are short on workers.

One thing to keep in mind is we're only getting +8 gpt right now, and that will decrease with more military and workers, so we probably can't afford to rush or upgrade much of anything at all. We can sell our WM to get a smidge if Borealis thinks it worth the effort. The payments to Hiawatha end in 12 turns.

*edit* I've yet to see any pikes accompanying the two or three settlers I've seen. Mugla and Salonika are almost certainly spear-defended, and Mugla at least probably does not have a barracks. Urfa's setter pair probably left home before Osman got Feudalism, too, but I'm not certain. With regard to possible alliances - do we have any embassies, yet? I didn't buy any on my own turn, for obvious reasons.


Renata

 

[Matt_G]

Originally posted by Renata
With regard to possible alliances - do we have any embassies, yet? I didn't buy any on my own turn, for obvious reasons.
Renata

I forgot about needing embassies to get MA's. I didn't buy any either. Was saving cash to buy Republic.
I just opened the save I handed off and we have one with Toku. That's the only one.

 

[Renata]

Well if we fight Osman anytime soon we'll be going in blind anyway, since there's no way we'd have enough cash to investigate 3 cities. A little creative trespass would let us know what's on top of the defense. So the one with Toku's all we'd need.

Renata

 

[Sirp]

Renata: Bad on your turn! Didn't you cross your fingers behind your back and pledge your firstborn to Sid as you called for the revolution?

Guys, before we all start thinking about taking it to Osman, let's remember that we have managed to etch out enough land for ourselves to have a good chance at winning already. Do we really want to risk everything to get a few more cities?

Our FP is going to come online in not so long, and we're getting slowly more powerful. Let's concentrate on economic development for a while, and if an opportunity to take it to the Ottomans arises, then we'll take it to them.

If we get our cities fully developed - and that can happen fairly quickly without the burden of building an aqueduct, colloseum, library, or university, then they can start building military units. Horsemen in particular, which will be upgradeable to knights once chivalry is available.

If it so happens that we get our military going, and Osman is looking a little weak, we may fight a limited war against him to take the cities we want. But sacrificing some of our economic growth to go after these few cities is not the way to go, especially with Japan looking ominous.

Think economic development, being nice to our neighbours, marketplaces, worker jobs, etc etc. Not swords and horses.

-Sirp.

 

[Borealis]

Ok, that's why I waited to play. I have to pack today, but I should get to the game early tomorrow. Markets/workers/infrastructure coming up.

 

[Stormrider]

Diety = Ulcers

Good Luck Borealis.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by Sirp
Renata: Bad on your turn! Didn't you cross your fingers behind your back and pledge your firstborn to Sid as you called for the revolution?

I forgot. So sorry.

The thing about attacking is I'm just worried if we continue to be so short units as we are, someone's going to try to take us out. And right now we have nothing at all to stop them. And the Republic deal has ensured that we'll not be able to research *or* buy another tech for 15-20 turns minimum. But you're the deity player, not me.

One thought, though - does Japan have ivory of its own? If not, we could try to get our roads hooked up and sell them some for whatever we can get. If any other civs have harbors, we can sell there, too in a couple of turns - that might help.

Renata

 

[Sirp]

Renata: oh yeah make no mistake, if someone decides that they don't like our face about now, we're probably dead meat. That's exactly why I've been telling people not to settle on sites that overlap AI cities. If we don't do that, and we do pay all tribute demands, it's much less likely that the AI will decide it wants to smack us about.

Just keep concentrating on our economy, and hopefully at some point down the future we will be powerful enough to build a nice big military and guarantee our own national security. Even if we did concentrate on building military now, we couldn't build enough for our security to be assured, and we'd just fall behind economically anyhow. Indeed we are vulnerable at the moment, but being vulnerable is part of the territory on Deity.

Oh and btw guys, if anyone decides to march troops through our territory, that's fine, as long as they're not going for us. Whatever you do, don't demand they leave. They will declare war and we will die. Likewise, if anyone demands tribute, give it to them. No question. We are the nice friendly Americans who wouldn't hurt a fly and just want to leave in happiness and peace, got it? Whatever you do, just don't mention that we plan to roll over everyone else with tanks in a couple of thousand years

I've played Deity games where the AI marched half a dozen cavalry past my capital which was defended by a lone spearman - and come out of the game with a win. See Epic 4 on my homepage, or RBE1, in which our premier military unit was a longbowman, as in ONE longbowman, while the other civs were going at it with each other with huge armies of knights. We won that one, by Domination, using modern armor.

Hope that clears some things up. Let's sit tight, be nice to everyone - especially Osman and Ieyasu - and hope we come up with a win.

Oh and btw, I haven't had a chance to look at the save, so I can't really make comments on micromanagement/build orders, etc. It's in Borealis' capable hands

-Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

Ok, I've seen the game now and I have some comments:

Firstly, why are workers mining grassland next to Baltimore? They should be irrigating! We're in Republic now and irrigating is the go! We want our cities to grow as fast as possible!

Likewise, we want to get some irrigation around all our cities: New York, in particular, the grassland shared between Chicago and Washington should be irrigated and used for both those cities growth.

We need lots more workers than the 13 we've got. St Louis would be a good candidate to build us some workers if it had some irrigated grassland: it could probably get us a worker every 2 turns.

We are going to want to get ready to put lots of cheap units in San Francisco, Baltimore, and New Orleans - and perhaps Seattle - as flip suppresant. Don't worry about trying to build lots of culture ourselves there fast: winning a culture war against religious Japan is a lost cause.

We do want to keep our two horses on our road network whereever possible. They're not much defense, but they are something, and we need everything we've got.

Chopping the jungle around Atlanta is probably a good idea in the fairly near future: it would get us some good tiles very near our capital. Atlanta could start building workers fairly quickly itself in fact.

Go get em Borealis!

-Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

Btw, people might be interested in RB Epic 26 - a Deity Epic - having closed today. Reading the reports to it would be sure to improve your knowledge of Deity. My report can be found here and the discussion thread for all reports here

-Sirp.

 

[Matt_G]

Thanks for those links Sirp. I will read them today. I am also in the process of reading through your AW reports from Epic 6 and 14. I have decided to participate in Epic 27 'The Ming Dynasty'

I noticed that you have finished it. Just one question......was it a fun game?
I can't wait to see what Sirian did with the map, could....get......ugly.
I know you can't say anything about that and I wouldn't want you to anyways. Just want to know if you enjoyed it.
I am off to read this stuff and get familiar with the Epic ruleset.

Matt

 

[Sirp]

Matt: oh yes, it was lots of fun! I'm sure you'd love playing it.

-Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

Borealis, what's the status on you playing your turn? It's now been three days since Renata played.

-Sirp.

 

[Renata]

Think I might try the current epic, too - I'll probably lose, but it looks like fun. I'm getting addicted to any form of comparative games ---- and tournament season 5 won't start for another month!

Renata

 

[Sirp]

Renata & Matt_g: I think you'll both enjoy epic 27 alot if you play it. Expect a difficulty level half way between emperor and deity for Always War on monarch. Always War with China should especially suit your avatar, Renata.

I'm not sure what's happened to Borealis, but she's certainly overdue to play her turn. Stormrider, feel free to post "I got it" anytime if you can play. If Borealis shows up first though, she can still play.

-Sirp.

 

[Borealis]

Sorry on the lack of notice- I ended up in the hospital unexpectedly and didn't get back until now. With that and moving back home, my computer still isn't set up (I'm borrowing someone else's right now) and I won't be able to play until tomorrow afternoon US time. Please skip or swap me for now- I apologize for not being able to post sooner.

 

[Sirp]

Ahh, sorry to hear about that Borealis. We'll swap you with Stormrider for now, and if you still can't play after that (moving can indeed be such a hassle!) we can pass you for this round.

Stormrider is up!

-Sirp.

 

[Shillen]

<lurking>

I have to jump in and say I just started Epic27 myself. It's my first Epic and my first AW game and I'm absolutely loving it. Probably the single most exciting game I've played to date. I highly recommend it.