suomipeli

[sampsa]

Yeah farms for Timbuktu is the way to go. My choices for GP farm cities during the GA would be Timbuktu, Djenne (Pig, Lighthouse lake and grasslands farm borrowed from Gao) and Eridu (can work 2 scientists starting next turn). Not a big fan of starving Uruk during the GA as it is lacking high food tiles.

Agree with the choices! Rather not work scientists yet, favor growth and wait for -bonuses (GA+caste+pacifism). In Eridu, take tiles from capital if needed, run scientists only when problems with health/happy. Capital is weak and will be weak, but it's no big deal.

Should we use the GG to get a level 4 supermedic and unlock the HE? I would build the HE in Uruk as it has high production.

A vulture is +10xp so HE is unlocked without GG. I'm ok with medic (either Sandels or scout) or settling in Uruk (agree that it should be our HE-site).

 

[OtsoMaki]

Agree with the choices! Rather not work scientists yet, favor growth and wait for -bonuses (GA+caste+pacifism). In Eridu, take tiles from capital if needed, run scientists only when problems with health/happy. Capital is weak and will be weak, but it's no big deal.

A vulture is +10xp so HE is unlocked without GG. I'm ok with medic (either Sandels or scout) or settling in Uruk (agree that it should be our HE-site).

I can take one town from Uruk and give it to Eridu so it can keep growing. Uruk will be close to stagnating, but we can emphasize production in our Capitol.

Did not realize that we already had a level 4 Vulture. I will make a supermedic with Sandels.

 

[Robert FIN]

Good job with Mansa, Jouzou! Let's stand back for a while now. We need to heal our economy for sometime. We are gonna win !

 

[sinimusta]

If we're going to be using our capital as a prod spot, are we going to get a traditional bureau cap somewhere (meaning heavily cottaged spot with high science multipliers)? Eridu could get to 4 cottaged FP but then what? Cottage the grassland? I don't think some sort of hybrid prod/science cap is a great idea.

Timbuktu would be also a good cottage spot but we're using it as GP farm. Memphis does have a lot of riverside, hopefully Hatty grows cottages for us. Other than that, I don't see a great bureau site.

 

[OtsoMaki]

If we're going to be using our capital as a prod spot, are we going to get a traditional bureau cap somewhere (meaning heavily cottaged spot with high science multipliers)? Eridu could get to 4 cottaged FP but then what? Cottage the grassland? I don't think some sort of hybrid prod/science cap is a great idea.

Timbuktu would be also a good cottage spot but we're using it as GP farm. Memphis does have a lot of riverside, hopefully Hatty grows cottages for us. Other than that, I don't see a great bureau site.

Agree with this. I see this as the main long term problem with this game. Eridu has the floodplains but we should have committed to building non-riverside cottages earlier for it to become a good commerce capitol. We are also going to probably starve the city during the GA for Great Scientists. Timbuktu is probably the top choice because of the long river and decent food, but we are going the GP farm route already.

I think I am going to start building SP instead of HE in Uruk after I finish the missionaries. We do not need HE currently as we are not building an army and SP can be build for failgold with 125% modifier. What are your thoughts on this?

 

[sampsa]

True, there isn't a good bureau-site, but it's no biggie. We have no academy either and the bulb path towards astro is logical in many ways. OtsoMaki, try to do something to the scouting issue in the next few turns.

We are close to 1 AD so starting cottages is imo late if we are not planning to win space. Most of the commerce will come from intercontinental trade routes. Probably we can conquer the world with trebuchets.

On SP-failgod: if there is nothing beneficial to build, failgold is ok. GLib-failgold first of course. Timbuktu needs a missionary (from capital?). Remember that library is better than ziggurat. We might want to build Globe so need some theaters (they are dirt cheap though).

 

[OtsoMaki]

In the north I am going to scout Hattys land and try to find her missing cities. I will also send a Vulture to see if there is a possbility of seeing another AI in the very north-eastern tile (1S of clams). In the south I am going to fogbust the area and check if there are other continents visible

Do you want me to move some of our army close to Niani so that we can eliminate Mansa in 10 turns?

Just give me a thumbs up when you have no more suggestions for my turnset (7-8 turns) so that I can start playing.

 

[sampsa]

Do you want me to move some of our army close to Niani so that we can eliminate Mansa in 10 turns?

Yes, some units there (don't forget to produce the settler somewhere) and some as military police where we want to grow (Eridu?).

Just give me a thumbs up when you have no more suggestions for my turnset (7-8 turns) so that I can start playing.

 

[sampsa]

Still waiting for input, OtsoMaki? Do you need help with some details?

 

[OtsoMaki]

Still waiting for input, OtsoMaki? Do you need help with some details?

I will play in about 3 hours when I get home. I did not have time to play last night because I had to finish some work.

 

[OtsoMaki]

Here we go. Played to 100 AD.

Made a trade and begged gold from Hatty on the first turn.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Notice that trading getting Drama dropped music from 8 to 7 turns.

Our warrior in the south won the battle against the archer.

Spoiler :

Walata reviolted in 1 AD immidiately after we gained control. I left troops and moved a spear from timbuktu to stop the revolts.

Spoiler :

Lots of chopping later we arrive to 100 AD. We are first to music and get this guy.

Spoiler :

Our troops arrive to Niani.

Spoiler :

And most important, we get the GL.

Spoiler :

Rough overview of the empire.

Spoiler :

I am building a Settler in Uruk so that we can settle our own city in place of Niani in few turns. We can also see Hattys research. I did not whip in our cities because I was chopping heavily and we are going to starve soon during the GA. We have Judaism in all but two of our cities, but missionaries are currently on their way.

Edit: The last picture was missing. Fixed now.

Could not do much about scouting because I played a short tunset.

 

[sinimusta]

I checked the save and estimated that we're 154 turns from optics with 10% research which is our break even point with +3 gpt. Now of course we'll be faster than that with things like failgold and binary research and so on but still it's a long road. I think this makes failgold very important since cottaging anymore isn't so strong option and we have good resources for it and we have hammers (we're first in the world in prod). SP can go theoretically anytime now. We are able to delay HE as long as we want for failgold though, but we can't use our best prod city Uruk for that. 3 monuments could open Zeus statue for us too.

My techpath from here would be compass-metal casting(if it can't be traded)-machinery-optics. I think we can count on Hatty teching at least calendar (typical ai tech) for us in that time(though if she decides to go fo MoM, she might not trade it for us right away).

 

[sampsa]

Very solid play, OtsoMaki!

The only minor quibble I have is worker micro around Timbuktu - we could easily have it so that the NE would be finished this turn and we'd get the Philo-bulbing scientist with double speed. Then our empire would be ready to start the GA. Maybe I didn't stress the importance of this enough.

Hatty going Theology was a bit unfortunate, let's hope her next tech choice won't be Divine Right.

I checked the save and estimated that we're 154 turns from optics with 10% research which is our break even point with +3 gpt. Now of course we'll be faster than that with things like failgold and binary research and so on but still it's a long road.

You are right that our per turn is very low, but that shouldn't come as a surprise. Did you forget my proposition that our research towards optics-astronomy will come from scientist bulbs? My original thinking was that we'd not only have optics but also astronomy by 700 AD. We were sloppy with getting GLib-NE up in optimal time, so those turns are a direct delay to our astro date. Also Hatty is not being helpful with the trades. Anyway, I'm in utter shock if we don't have astro by 1000 AD (T160, 41 turns from now).

I think this makes failgold very important since cottaging anymore isn't so strong option and we have good resources for it and we have hammers (we're first in the world in prod). SP can go theoretically anytime now. We are able to delay HE as long as we want for failgold though, but we can't use our best prod city Uruk for that. 3 monuments could open Zeus statue for us too.

Agree that the time of cottaging is pretty much over. Good thinking on the HE-failgold! Not a fan of putting 90 to monuments to be able to failgold SoZ.

My techpath from here would be compass-metal casting(if it can't be traded)-machinery-optics. I think we can count on Hatty teching at least calendar (typical ai tech) for us in that time(though if she decides to go fo MoM, she might not trade it for us right away).

I'll think about the next tech a bit and return to it in my PPP. Are you sure that a friendly AI will deny you a trade for "we have our reasons."(=the AI is building a wonder attached to the tech)?

@OtsoMaki: Are we getting any GLib-failgold next turn?

edit: my understanding on how fog-busting works: the unit prevents barbs from spawning 2 tiles to each direction, like this:

Thus, the warrior should be 1NW (or 1NW 1W to prevent barb galleys from appearing). Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[OtsoMaki]

Very solid play, OtsoMaki!

The only minor quibble I have is worker micro around Timbuktu - we could easily have it so that the NE would be finished this turn and we'd get the Philo-bulbing scientist with double speed. Then our empire would be ready to start the GA. Maybe I didn't stress the importance of this enough.

Agree. Two more chops this turn would have finished the NE in a single turn. I think we have 1 chop coming this turn.

You are right that our per turn is very low, but that shouldn't come as a surprise. Did you forget my proposition that our research towards optics-astronomy will come from scientist bulbs? My original thinking was that we'd not only have optics but also astronomy by 700 AD. We were sloppy with getting GLib-NE up in optimal time, so those turns are a direct delay to our astro date. Also Hatty is not being helpful with the trades. Anyway, I'm in utter shock if we don't have astro by 1000 AD (T160, 41 turns from now).

We are currently suffering badly in commerce department. The lack of early cottages is showing and I see this as our main long term problem.

Agree that the time of cottaging is pretty much over. Good thinking on the HE-failgold! Not a fan of putting 90 to monuments to be able to failgold SoZ.

Seems like SP is the best thing to build for failgold. 90 into monuments is quite a lot just to get the 125 % modifier compared to building wealth. SoZ might be going quite soon anyway so there is no guarantee that the investment into monuments would have positive return.

@OtsoMaki: Are we getting any GLib-failgold next turn?

No failgold unfortunately. We finished the GLib this turn, so gold would have come this turn anyway I think.

edit: my understanding on how fog-busting works: the unit prevents barbs from spawning 2 tiles to each direction, like this:

Thus, the warrior should be 1NW (or 1NW 1W to prevent barb galleys from appearing). Correct me if I'm wrong.

I screwed up the fogbusting a bit here. The Hatty archer was on the green hill on the coast when I moved the warrior south and I totally missed it moving away.

 

[sampsa]

On grand strategy - I know I am repeating myself here, but the only way I see to have decent / is to get astronomy asap for intercontinental trade routes + per turn for resources + from sold techs (for the last one optics is enough). Attack Hat when we can afford to lose the trade routes to her, capitulate or kill her off, we can think about that later. The difficulty I see here is that we won't be researching any military techs while bee-lining astronomy (except machinery). Probably we need to wait for engineering (trade from the other continent I hope). If everything goes smoothly, we don't need any techs after that. Just saying this to make sure we are on the same page and that you understand my planned scheme. Note how much easier this map would be if we had even one or two island cities for domestic intercontinental trade routes (+2 in every city).

I am thinking our victory date (domination/conquest) could be somewhere around 1500 AD (T210, 91 turns from now) or sooner. This is important to guesstimate since we'd like to know if a settled city (or a building) is beneficial. I am thinking we won't be settling that many cities anymore as they would just bog down our commerce further. I'd vote for not re-settling Niani after all, just raze it and let Hat re-settle the spot if she wants to. We have two stronger city sites imo - the marked clam+corn and sheep+fish (SW and S respectively) of our capital. They have forests too which allows them to chop the needed buildings (at least a granary, need to do some math to know if a library/ziggurat/forge pays itself back in due time). Crab-site might be ok too, chops pay back the settler price and I'm sure we have enough workers. Horse-site probably not, but we can re-think it in 15-20 turns.

I'd love to get the shrine + Parthenon from Hat, but I think attacking soon with cats+stuff is just too risky economically. I feel that we are not up to it, even though it's probably doable.

Please comment if you see some other possible plan or if you see a possible flaw in my plan. It's easier to fix now that we have not yet committed to anything it.

 

[sinimusta]

calendar-IW-compass-MC-machinery-optics-astro

I just copied the bulp path from Sampsas post as a reminder. So with 4 GS we could double-bulp astro and two of the pre-requisites. Calendar I think we should trade (I'm not certain about if she will deny it if se's building MoM). Probably Machinery and optics then. It'll be reasonably fast then it seems.

What would be the best stack composition for amphibious warfare? Since transport capacity is a factor too I think we could use an ele/treb stack with veteran vultures and some cats. WE:s would work as stack def against almost anything but spears, though they're perhaps not as hammer efficient as vultures on strenght/hammers. But we need HBR for that.

 

[sampsa]

Yes - would hate to bulb cheap stuff like compass/MC so I hope we don't have to do it. Optimally mach, opt, 2xastro as you said. Need to do some calculations on how many GS:s can we get during the GA.

On warfare - yes we need HBR. Trebs+phants+x-bows+veteran vultures can take pretty much everything pre-rifling/military science. Protective x-bows are insanely strong btw if promoted along the drill-line. On emperor the AIs might get rifling like 1200 AD?

A bit busy now but hoping to post the PPP tonight and maybe even play tonight if everything is clear.

 

[Robert FIN]

Victory by 1500 ADs??? Whaaaaaat?? Is it possible .. Well, sounds good to me. What is the unit we are gonna spam for conquest? Rifles? Cuirassiers? What? Btw, I can't play this friday. Probably its difficult to make time in weekend either. When it is my turn and I cannot play, give the turn to the next player in list (el Capitano, I suppose) and I take my turn when I can! I'm still 100% able to give ya suggestions and comments every day ! Astro is good tech IMO. Let's beeline to it soon. It gives us trade partners and observatories. Its good. Astro: +1!

 

[sinimusta]

What is the unit we are gonna spam for conquest?

It has been mentioned in the posts: trebs + mop-up/stack def. No need to go for the renaissance warfare (hopefully).

 

[sampsa]

Really tired now - will post a detailed plan tomorrow.