Succession game (Deity)

[Elephantium]

I've taken a look. Does anyone have any objections to me moving the current Settler 1 square SW (on the tiny peninsula next to the fish) before settling?

Pros: Fills more culture space, shares fewer squares with its neighbors, more commerce possible with coastal squares later on

Cons: CxxxC instead of more defensible CxxC placement, it will take a few extra turns to get a road to it.

 

[ThinkTank]

Looks like a tough game. But we're still alive!

Ack, that could have been prevented! When you get a demand for gold when you're running negative gpt, click on the advisor's head to get to the F-screens. You can then adjust the slider before going back and caving like a caveman

Good tip, I did not know that.

I've taken a look. Does anyone have any objections to me moving the current Settler 1 square SW (on the tiny peninsula next to the fish) before settling?

That's fine by me.

 

[Elear]

What ThinkTank said.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I trust your judgement, Elephantium. Strict adherence to early dotmaps is very difficult and usually unwise, as circumstances change as you play. Besides, our early defenders have a movement of 2, so strict cxxc placement isn't as critical.

 

[Elephantium]

Our Horse gambit just faltered; Carthage settled next to the NW horses.

Should we settle CxC from that city, hoping to snag the horses, or should I send a settler towards the Arabic horses and grab those with aggressive settling?

 

[Elear]

Grab the Arabic horses. Can't wage decent war against Carthage with their Numidians. Aggressive settling on the Carthage ones is unlikely to get us anywhere.

Need to go for walls -> barracks in the new city too. Has to be a fortress to capture Basra and Kufah, as well as resist the Deity stacks. Re-enforcements from core producing Impi and Horseman should last us long enough to get a good sue deal. Then again, with the way this game is going...

 

[Prof. Yaffle]

lurker's comment:
Hi there,

Im following this thread as I am struggling on Emp with a similar setup to this. It looks like a very difficult game. I hope to learn a lot from how you are playing it.

Good luck!
Yaffle.

 

[Elephantium]

Yaffle: I'm not too worried, I've found that high-difficulty-level games often seem to have an early "Oh, crap! We're probably about to lose!" factor to them, so you feel like it's a struggle right up until you take control of the game.

As for the Arabic war, I should have the city settled by the end of my turnset (I was on turn 5 when I posted last night).

I'll surely post a log tonight. Wish me luck!

 

[Elephantium]

Pre-turn:

Move the Impi towards Hlobane; I don't like the look of the barb Warrior standing N of it on the hill.

Egypt and Persia lack Math; Persia lacks Writing. If we could afford to buy one of those techs, I'd contemplate doing some tech trading, but we don't really have the funds atm

IT:

Americans kill the barb warrior I was worried about.
Egyptians start ToA.

Turn 1 (1475 BC):

I find that the Arabs have a source of Ivory. If we can trim Kufah from them quickly, we might be able to pull off the SoZ in this game.

IT:

Hlobane: Rax->Impi
Isandhlwana: Worker->Worker
America starts Pyramids. Join the club, chumps.

Turn 2 (1450 BC):

Settle Mpondo next to the fish and start building a rax.
MM Ulundi to avoid wasting food (and permitting the Settler to complete on the IT).
We met the Dutch on the IT. They're as technologically advanced as anyone.

IT:

Watch fighting between Portugal and their two enemies, Greece and the Netherlands.

Turn 3 (1425 BC):

GRR! The governor mis-assigned the citizen at Ulundi, so we didn't get the two shields I was counting on.
Lux slider to 30% to allow Ulundi's citizen to work.
Sci slider to 30%, HBR still due in 1.

IT:

HBR->CB
Ulundi: Settler->Settler
Americans start MoM.

Turn 4 (1400 BC):

Lux slider to 20%, sci slider to 40%. CB due in 5, +1gpt.

IT:

Persia gives us the soft boot. We apologize.
Zimbabwe: Rax->Impi
Bapedi: Impi->Impi

Turn 5 (1375 BC):

I turn everyone around and head for the Arabic horses. Stupid Carthage

IT:

Carthage complains about our explorer. We apologize.
Carthage starts MoM.

Turn 6 (1350 BC):

Zzz...

IT:

America complains about our explorer. We apologize for the "mistake", heh, heh.
Hlobane: Impi->Impi

Turn 7 (1325 BC):

Stop a riot in Bapedi by hiring a taxman. The alternative was lux slider to 30%.

IT:

Intombe: Barracks->Impi
Carthage starts Lighthouse.

Turn 8 (1300 BC):

Sci slider to 0, change the Bapedi taxman to a Scientist. CB only needs one more beaker, and doing it this way instead of 10% sci with one taxman gains us one extra coin.
We still can't make a deal for Math. Too bad; Persia still lacks it.
Settler is in place to claim Arabic horses.

IT:

Silks are roaded. Hlobane is now happy!
CB->Writing
Vikings start work on the Lighthouse.
Vikings complete Pyramids. Lots of AI start new Wonders, no one completes anything else.

Turn 9 (1275 BC):

Settle Ngome next to the Arabic Horses. Making Walls.
Lux slider to 30% to prevent a riot in Zimbabwe. It can go back down next turn if we use the Impi as MP.

I'm going to halt here; we should talk about which tech to research next. We can get Myst in 5, Writing in 9, Math in 10, or IW in 7. I think Writing has the most utility; it will come in before we attack the Arabs, so it will open up more techs for us to extort from them.

Spoiler :

 

[Elear]

Writing will open up Philosophy, Code of Laws, and Map Making: much better than either of the other two techs. If we can extort one of those, chances are at least ONE of the many civs won't have it yet.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I agree, Writing is best right now, then IW, so we'll know where to pillage. Impis make excellent pillagers, with 2 movement, 2 defense. Looks like buying research isn't working, so we need to get going on the pointy-stick version. Start cranking out horses and impis and take Kufah first, that Ivory looks tempting

 

[ThinkTank]

What Elear and Overseer said. Elephantium, will you finish your last turn or do I take it from here?

 

[Elephantium]

Go ahead and take it, ThinkTank. I didn't want to hold up the game any longer Also, feel free to play 11 turns to make up for me only taking 9.

 

[ThinkTank]

Got it. I can play tomorrow or Sunday. Any advice on our war plans would be welcome. I'm assuming the plan is to get in and out of war fast and to extort techs in the peace deal. Kufah I guess? Do we need a second city before they will talk? That would be Basra I suppose? Do we capture or raze & replace? Finally, how many defenders can we expect to be there?

 

[Elephantium]

Not so fast, pilgrim. We don't even have the horses hooked up yet. I'm thinking we won't be ready for war for another 15 turns or so.

Elear, do you have any thoughts on how many horsemen we need for a credible invasion?

 

[ThinkTank]

Not so fast, pilgrim.

Elear, do you have any thoughts on how many horsemen we need for a credible invasion?

That is basically my issue: at deity, I have no "gut feel" at what is needed for an initial rush. Indeed, how many horses do we need, and what else? Even if the fighting does not occur in my turnset, I need to know what military we need to build.

 

[Elear]

Enough to win

Sorry. Seriously, there will be two parts to war. Part A, use the horsemen to take Kufah and Basra. Part B, fighting off stacks of units: some of the initial warriors, plus archers and spearman. What resources do they have? If they have iron and/or horses, it will be harder, because we would see scattered horsemen or swordsmen.

If we can take/destroy both cities, and fend off the assault, they will be easily sued. Just taking the cities won't convince them of anything very fast.

Additionally, if we raze cities, we have to be ready to replace. Deity AI are experts at replacing their cities within turns of their destruction.

In all, we have to be prepared for 2 regular spear, 1 regular archer defense at each of the cities. The archer will essentially render our first attacker a regular. Then... I really think to have a decent shot at doing some damage, we will need about 6 to 8 impi and 8 to 10 horsemen. The impi are also adept at pillaging if they resources.

The key to this war will be achieving our objectives without getting greedy. We have rather limited production still, and we will lose a number of troops trying to take cities. How about focusing on Kufah, then shifting the remainder of the attack force + re-enforcements to Basra? I don't feel comfortable splitting our forces between the cities, especially as the AI sends stacks at us. If we try to take both cities at once, and miss one or both, we will not only be deprived of our attack force, but also be left having to produce more of a defense.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I'd bet 4 spears and 2 archers per town defending. We'll need at least what Elear says. And we'll need replacements on the way for the inevitable casualties and counter attack. The good news is the Arabs are a long narrow country and seem to lack much in the way of roads. Their reinforcements may take some time to arrive. Our advantage is our 2 move defenders. Depending on our luck, we might raze several towns pretty fast.

 

[Elear]

No no, 3 spears per cities, and 1.5 archers. Fair?

The reason why I say lower is that the AI does a poor job on defense. They put all their defenders in their 'important' cities, and leave the border ones for grabs.

We should prepare for more, but I really would not expect more than 3 on any border city.

And exactly, a fast strike, retreat and heal, and see where we are at. If we can beat the stacks, we may even be able to sign for peace before we have to do any real defense. We will need 2 or 3 rounds at the Arabs to catch up in tech. Perhaps alternate with attacking America? (Unless we want to do false peace -- that works too).

One thing to be careful of is when you for an early attack at an otherwise powerful civ on Demigod, Deity, or Sid, you may take them down and sue for techs, only to find the rest of the world has progressed far beyond anything you can sue for. (Their tech will suffer greatly during wartime, and once you take some cities, you cripple them for the rest of the game.)

 

[Elephantium]

I think we should oscillate war between Arabia and America. They're both in range, and they both have "our" luxes.

Once we're comfortably into the MA, I think we can include Carthage in our war schedule.