Space 5 - Old hands can be newbs too, getting back in the game

[a space oddity]

Wow, that's an eventful set, ainwood. Well done getting rid of some of those Muskets.

I suggest I respectfully hand the save to MB and not mess this up by trying my still very n00b ciV skills on this situation. I am going to admit defeat in trying to get into this version. Sorry guys.

Roster:
a space oddity - admin only
mad-bax <-- UP
TedJackson - in skip mode
AlanH
leif erikson
ainwood <-- just played
Karasu - in skip mode

 

[leif erikson]

I suggest I respectfully hand the save to MB and not mess this up by trying my still very n00b ciV skills on this situation. I am going to admit defeat in trying to get into this version. Sorry guys.

It to learn and have some fun.

Fighting a defensive war to knock out enough of his units so you can then go on the offense can be interesting. Think you should at least give it a try?

 

[AlanH]

Yuck! I agree with Leif.

I had to take the save as a complete noob in the middle of a defensive war against Nappy, and lived to tell the tale. Whatever happens, we've all learnt some interesting lessons from this one.

My ulterior motive in trying to persuade Space to take it - M-B is very busy on a visit to the States currently. If Space and MB both skip, that puts me in the hot seat to try to resist the French. I'll wait for M-B to let us know how he's fixed, though.

 

[a space oddity]

I understand what both of you are saying.

The problem is that I have trouble with the way this game looks. I just can't get a good overview, a good grip on the military situation. I like strategy games, but I dislike tactics. And I dislike tactics even more if I feel I can't judge the topographic info. It is just too clogged. Civ3 has a clean look, it was lost in civ4 and even worse in this version. I've tried the 2d board view, but I don't like that either. :/

 

[AlanH]

I must say, I have been playing a few of Mad Bax's recent Civ3 GOTMs and finding them a lot of fun. And, as you say, it's far easier to get a handle on where everything - and everyone - is. The only thing that I really dislike in Civ3 is the intense micro needed to limit overflow wastage; to monitor the AI's trade options; and to look after city happiness; pretty well every turn.

The 2d view in Civ5 is unintelligible as far as I'm concerned. I have to play it in the 3d view. And on my system, scrolling is very jumpy. Hence the occasional rogue worker, wandering off on an ocean voyage due to an errant click.

But we are where we are, and at least by playing it, I can find out what I do and don't like about Civ5 at first hand. Then I can make an informed judgement about whether to play it again.

 

[leif erikson]

Yeah, but please remember, this is vanilla.

BNW is quite a bit different.

 

[AlanH]

BNW is different in detailed game play, but the overall visibility of the terrain, units, cities etc are about the same, aren't they?

 

[leif erikson]

Yes, I think that is fair to say.

There are additional resources, but essentially the terrain features and graphics are consistent.

 

[ainwood]

@Space - don't worry too much, and give it a go! You just need to think through the terrain, how far units can move, where the defensive bonuses are (and which units get them) and what ranged unit area of effect is. I stuffed it up a bit around Orleans, mainly because of the line of fire around hills, and because I tried for unit kills rather than just wounding, meaning our unit got taken in counterattacks (nappy has an impressive array of cannons that wear down units on the edge of Orleans. Perhaps rifling for riflemen might have helped as well (instead of steam power).

Anyway - I have tried spreading the pain a bit instead of wiping out units, in the hope that he may try to heal and retreat some units - I.e. Slow the war down a bit until we can bring more units to the front lines. If we get the golden age in a couple of turns, the production and gold bonus will really help our war efforts.

If we get that far, I'd like to take Paris to put a big dent in nappy's future goals. Of course, that may be optimistic!

 

[mad-bax]

Guys,

My sincere apologies. I am working away on assignment at the moment and I am with a team of people. Even though I managed to get the game running on my work laptop (after a fashion), I am just not getting any "me" time. I need a skip until 12th December I'm afraid.

 

[AlanH]

Sounds like it's me next, then.

You may not get a chance to play again

 

[mad-bax]

Because you are going to play an inspired turnset leading to a glorious victory, or because by the the time my turn comes round again I will have slipped into senility? If the latter, then no need to worry, I'm teaching my kids to play and I'll bequeath my place in the roster to the one that does the least washing up.

 

[AlanH]

None of the above. I'll play to an ignominious conquest by France, relieving anyone else of the need to play another turn set.

 

[ainwood]

Good luck!

 

[AlanH]

Sorry about the delay. I'll try to get to this over the weekend.

 

[AlanH]

A couple of questions before I start this set:

1. We have 11 workers. Do we need them all?
Eight of them seem to be asleep. One is exploring Siam, and one is fog busting the southern seas. One wants orders before I can proceed, and as far as I can see there's nothing for him to do, so he might as well have a as well. We have thirty units (over 25% of them are sleepy workers!), and they cost us 79 gpt in maintenance (How does that work out?).

2. We are going to lose Orleans. There are eight musketeers approaching, with a full supporting cast of cannons, knight, longsword .... We have four bombard units there (2 cannon, 2 crossbow), and no melee units in range. We shall lose one or more units between turns anyway. Next turn I could move one or two melee units into the arena, but I suspect they would then be cannon fodder - literally. Does anyone think we should not retreat from Orleans?

 

[leif erikson]

1. We have 11 workers. Do we need them all?
Eight of them seem to be asleep. One is exploring Siam, and one is fog busting the southern seas. One wants orders before I can proceed, and as far as I can see there's nothing for him to do, so he might as well have a as well. We have thirty units (over 25% of them are sleepy workers!), and they cost us 79 gpt in maintenance (How does that work out?).

Probably not, depends upon whether we think we can take Nappy's possessions or not? It is going to be difficult to do so .

The next question is how best to get rid of some of our workers. Think we can get some goodwill by gifting some to City-States we would like to influence. Perhaps 4 or 5 or them?

2. We are going to lose Orleans. There are eight musketeers approaching, with a full supporting cast of cannons, knight, longsword .... We have four bombard units there (2 cannon, 2 crossbow), and no melee units in range. We shall lose one or more units between turns anyway. Next turn I could move one or two melee units into the arena, but I suspect they would then be cannon fodder - literally. Does anyone think we should not retreat from Orleans?

Yes, things do not look good for Orleans. It would be best to pull back to a defensible line and try to kill off a bunch of his units while building a reserve to attack him with.

We should work to weaken his units before we attack them with our melee units to inflict as much hurt on him as possible while preserving as much strength of our own as we can. I'm sure I did not need to say that, but ...

 

[ainwood]

I considered canning some workers, but as we're close to railroads, I was keeping them for that.

 

[AlanH]

OK. I'll hang on to them for now.

I didn't say which weekend, but maybe this one
Sorry again for the delay. RL's a bit manic right now. Daughter's moved into a new flat and requires frequent assistance with flat pack furniture assembly and technology; and then there's Christmas!

 

[AlanH]

Looking at this again, and trying to do some lateral thinking, it occurs to me that, rather than limping out of Orleans and letting Napoleon walk in, it might make sense to sell the city to another civ.

The advantage would be that if the purchaser doesn't have open borders with France, it would slow Napoleon's advance on Space Station. On the other hand, it strengthens another civ on our continent, so we should probably not sell to a strong civ.

Is this a very bad idea? How would we know whether a civ has open borders with France?

I checked, and the weakest civ that will give us money for it is Japan - 220 gold. Russia,Greece and Arabia are weaker, but won't buy. I'm not sure we would want to sell it to Russia or Greece anyway.