T1-4: Temple of Doom

[frankcor]

Hmmm, things to ponder. You argue both sides with skill!

If I had my druthers, knocking down HC sooner would be better for our long-term prospects. Correct me if I'm wrong but by taking only a couple of his cities, that will reduce the number of his cities bordering on Temple of Doom and thereby reduces our requirement for resident priests?

 

[Jet]

Well it doesn't matter per se who else has cites near TOD. For each city we own, if its Aztec culture does not touch TOD's culture, then TOD must run a priest or prophet. The Aztec cities near TOD are, like, basking in the glow, and so don't require a priest/prophet.

So for example if we captured Huamanga it would touch TOD's culture after its first border pop. For another example Cuzco (given that we know approximately where it is), if we captured it would take a long time for its own Aztec culture to touch TOD's - it might happen eventually, but until then we'd have to run a priest or prophet for it, unless we lost possession of it.

 

[frankcor]

Ah ha! Now I've got it. Man, am I getting dense or what? Thanks!

I vote "scr*w Liberalism." Let's kill HC. We'll do our research at the end of a sword.

 

[Swiss Pauli]

HC has War Elephants, so our swords might get all trampled. Peace is the way - until we get a decent enough army then we kill everyone, of course.

 

[Jet]

I was thinking Maces. I thought he didn't have Ivory for trade, does that mean he's getting it from someone else? Where did you see the elephants, anyway?

 

[Jet]

Turn 1: 995 AD, Paper to Mao for MC + World Map + 190, revealing the whole of Central America.

Random highlights:
- Ramses built Heroic Epic in Heliopolis, the crapalicious desert Jewish holy city with ten workable tiles and zero hills. Bwaaahahaha.
- Beijing has FOUR SHEEP in the FC, and 3 hills, on which are built... 2 cottages and a windmill. Bwaaaaaahahahahaha.
- Judaism is not actually that widespread. (It depends how current Mao's map is. I think it updates buildings automatically, but not religions.)
- We have to be conservative in what cities we keep, but I can imagine taking a couple from the one civ with a lower score than us. Don't tell Vicky I said that.
- I'm even more tempted to try, this turnset, to take Bantu... raze it and rebuild 2E, which should get 10 floodplains and 2 hills. I think there will be similar sites which, later, we aren't able to keep because of the variant... but getting one now, without having to fight another civ for it, seems worth it.

World screenshot, extra-wide and suitable for framing:

Spoiler :

To be continued. ...Not sure, but I might not finish until tomorrow night. Bede, Asperger, any opinion on Education vs. Machinery? Machinery is 9 turns, by the way.

 

[Bede]

Machinery will get us to Engineering, probably my favorite of all tech, and of course it means maces. Education is the road to Liberalism so a lot depends on where we stand in the tech pile.

I would come down on the Machinery side.

 

[Swiss Pauli]

I was thinking Maces. I thought he didn't have Ivory for trade, does that mean he's getting it from someone else? Where did you see the elephants, anyway?

It was down at that barb town I razed. HC turned up with a Jumbopult combo so I had to attack with my Cat/Jag combo before the Incan claimed our prize. The AI will only trade its excess goods, so I assume he's only 1 source.

 

[frankcor]

I vote for Machinery. My gut feeling is we don't stand a chance at getting Liberalism first.

 

[Jet]

remainder of turn 1: 995 AD: Traded Paper to Shaka for 260, trying to raise enough $$$ for CS+$$ to Napoleon for Feudalism.

Turn that frown upside down, Napoleon - we accept your offer. So it looks like one turn of 0% beakers would have done the trick instead of the trade with Shaka.

Adopt Vassalage, Serfdom, and Organized Religion.

I check out the Iron situtation. Unless there's some in the fog near Bantu, or up in England, we'll have to go far afield to get it. Mao will trade it for 73 gold + Dye + Gold. (He's trading Iron to Shaka just for fur, though!)

Set research on. Machinery (9). On reflection I have a slight preference for the less risky strategy.

Send some troops up toward Bantu.

Saxon puts Longbowman in front of Aqueduct. It has an unworked 5F Corn tile, I don't think an Aqueduct is at all a priority there.

2: 1010: Shaka offers OB. Nobody dislikes him, so... OK.

Tlateloco Heroic Epic -> Longbowman. Considered a Forge, but I figured +25% on top of +100% isn't that much. Maybe later.
Saxon grows.

3: 1025:
Adopt Vassalage, Serfdom, Organized Religion (no SR, to trade missionaries between Little T and TOD). I thought I had done so a two turns ago.
TOD finishes Settler, starts Hindu Missionary. Settler moves toward position D.

4: 1040:
The scene at Bantu is not perfect. There was another barb city blocking the spot where I wanted to rebuild, and it's in revolt after being captured by HC. Also, our scouting GII/CGI Archer is on a hill but is next to a barb Longbowman. We can still rebuild 2E1S of Bantu, which is what I plan to do.

5: 1055:
Mao drops a culture bomb on Gaul, blocking site D just as we're about to settle it. Note to team for later:

Send Settler to Saxon to replace Bantu.
Hammer T Longbow -> Longbow.

7: 1085: Bantu has a stiff resistance: 4 Longbows and walls. One of them takes out a Jag. Oops, I move around so we can attack from the hills.

10: 1112: here it is:

Set research to Engineering (15). Bummer that even Vicky has Engineering, although she still won't trade with us. Napoleon doesn't have Engineering, of course.
Saxon finishes Longbow, grows past happy cap (oops). Puts Settler in front of Longbow.
TOD finishes Missionary, starts Monastery.

11: 1124: Hinduism succcessfully spread to Little T. I wanted another city able to spread Hinduism if desired. I guess we could also spread it to Hammer T so that it can build 2 monasteries and try to reclaim the site D tile.

Vicky will talk again, and

It shaves a couple turns off Engineering and brings our map up to date nicely. I could have done Compass which is more expensive, but I thought Drama was more practical.

How do you all take small size screenshots? What I do is when I'm playing SG turns I reduce the resolution from my usual to 1280x1024 to 1024x768, then take screenshots with Alt-PrintScreen, then paste them into MS Paint, then usually reduce the size to 66% / 66%. Sometimes it looks OK, but sometimes it looks very jagged.

12: 1130:

Mao has already declared on Ramses. Shaka and Vicky like Ramses, but Napoleon has gone Taoist (score!) and still dislikes him. As you can see, China pretty much blocks Egyptian access to us, so I go for it. You go, Mao! You take Ramses and we'll take HC.

Confucianism successfully spreads in TOD.

13: 1136: Hammer T finishes Longbow and I sneak a Theater into its queue. I want site D!
Louis Armstrong is born in TOD. OK, Mao, It is ON! But seriously, I think we should probably try to take site D's culture the old fashioned way (buildings in Hammer T). I think we're better off saving the Artist for something like an enemy capital, or maybe Military Tradition. So I park him.

Rival armies are closing in on Bantu:

First cat suicides.
Second cat wins at low odds!
Jag wins at 86%.
Jag wins at 95%. (Meant to use a 9 XP Jag, but somehow didn't.)
Bantu is razed! Actually, an easy win.

14: 1142: Shaka's mauraders clean up the dastardly barb Longbowman in the hills, and we found Tenochtitlan anew. It's a decent spot, although it will have to fight HC for culture. Hopefully we can raze the rival Incan city later.

Sell Rice to HC for 12 GPT.
Renegotiate Corn to Napoleon from 2 GPT to 6 GPT.
Some tech trades are possible (Drama to Shaka for gold, techs to Napoleon), but I leave them for frankcor if desired.

15: 1148: we should switch out of OR - in fact I'm not sure I ever should have switched in to it. What seems like the right thing now would be switching OR to Paganism, and temporarily switching Serfdom to Caste system so that we can run an Artist in new Tenochtitlan for a few turns and pop its fat cross. I leave it to frankcor's judgement.

 

[angeleyes]

How do you all take small size screenshots? What I do is when I'm playing SG turns I reduce the resolution from my usual to 1280x1024 to 1024x768, then take screenshots with Alt-PrintScreen, then paste them into MS Paint, then usually reduce the size to 66% / 66%. Sometimes it looks OK, but sometimes it looks very jagged.

\

My resolution is 1024x768, take my screenshots and with ImageShack i reduce it to 800x600

 

[frankcor]

Rather than switch out of Organized Religion, would it benefit us to adopt a state religion? And which one would we choose? I don't have the game available so I'm not sure of the religious layout of our cities.

I'll pick up and play, within 48 hours.

 

[Jet]

Right now we only have Hinduism and Confucianism, which are nobody else's SR. IMO we need the diplo from no SR -- but with diplomatic cleverness and Spiritual perhaps we could have interludes in state religions. Especially for Theocracy, but we don't have that yet.

Maybe the city we just founded (or the next one, we have a Settler 5 turns from completion) will pull in a new religion or two.

 

[Bede]

\

My resolution is 1024x768, take my screenshots and with ImageShack i reduce it to 800x600

I take the shots and play on, then use the Batch function in Irfanview (freeware image processing) to resize to 800x600, then crop them if needed (also using Irfanview).

 

[frankcor]

Photobucket automatically resizes anything larger than 800x600 down to 800x600 and the quality seems okay to me.

 

[frankcor]

I've got the save and I'm playing now.

 

[frankcor]

Inherited turn (1148 AD): I checked for trades, starting at the bottom of the score list:
o We had nothing interesting enough for Victoria consider trading Horseback Riding or Theology.
o Napolean would give us 90 gold for Drama or Horseback Riding and 90 gold for Paper.
o Ramesses wouldn't talk to us.
o Shaka is annoyed and won't deal anything.
o Mao thought we were becoming too advanced. Us?
o Huayna. thought we were becoming too advanced as well. Have we been doing that well in trading?

I decided to take the deal for gold and Horseback Riding with Napolean.

I searched for any of Ramesses' units. None are visible anywhere, so I figured it was safe to hit Enter.

IBT: Napolean adopted Bureaucracy.

Turn 1 (1154 AD): I checked our civics. We're running Vassalage but we're not building many units, just a Longbowman that I see. I figure I'll wait 3 turns until he's built, then switch to Bureaucracy for a while. Love that spiritual trait.

I upgraded some Jaguars to Macemen and slowed down research to build cash to upgrade some more.

IBT:

I guess she wasn't deterred by my Macemen upgrades. Well, at least she's close enough to actually wage a campaign against her, unlike Ramesses.

Turn 2 (1160 AD): Exactly 0 English units are visible anywhere on the Map. Same for Egyptian troops.

IBT: An English Longbowman/Settler combo showed up outside Tenochtitlan. She has got to be kidding.

Turn 3 (1166 AD): Temple of Doom constructed a Confucian Temple, started a Forge(14).

Turn 4 (1172 AD): Little-T (Teotihuacan trained a Longbowman, started a Confucian Missionary(4). Tlateloco (middle-T?) constructed a Theatre, started a Forge(13). I garrisoned the Longbowman in place then revolted to Bureaucracy. It bumped us up 5 gold/turn at 0% research.

Vicky built Liverpool on that hill outside Tenochtitlan.

IBT: Did someone say "dogpile?" Shaka declared war on us too (lost the screenshot).

Turn 5 (1178 AD): Saxon trained a Settler, continued work on an Aqueduct(12). I sent the settler south to look for a good site. There was a spare Archer down there waiting to take up garrison duty.

At Liverpool, a City Raider I catapult beat the snot out of a recruit Longbowman, dished out collateral damage to the other Longbowman, and died a heroic death. A second catapult dished out some whoop-ass and withdrew. Our first Maceman (highly promoted) killed a Longbowman at 96% odds. Oh, did I say first maceman? I meant our only maceman. I noticed too late that the other maceman in that stack had just arrived and had no movement points to mount an attack. So our 2 remaining catapults had to clean up, but they done good and razed tiny Liverpool.

Turn 6 (1184 AD): I pulled our Liverpool excursion force back inside our borders to heal. I upgraded one more Jaguar to Maceman and turned research back up to 70%. Engineering in ~6 turns.

IBT: This might explain why Ramesses hadn't sent any units our way.

Turn 7 (1190 AD): Our Settler arrived at Temple of Doom and saw 4 sites he liked.

I sent him to the lower right one that our Archer had staked out.

Turn 8 (1196 AD): Little-T trained a Confucian Missionary, started a Hindu Missionary(5). Here's our religious situation:

I think we should spread Hinduism first, then Confucianism, even though I screwed up and built in the wrong order. We should consider revolting to a state religion soon -- nobody likes us much anyways. I sent the Confucian Missionary to Tenochtitlan, it could certainly use the culture.

Turn 9 (1202 AD): Chartres constructed a Library, started a Forge(180). Texcoco was founded:

And started work on a Library(68). We shouldn't spread religion here -- maybe it can pick up Buddhism (Huayna) or Christianity (Mao).

When Shaka first declared on us, he had 2 War Elephants and a Maceman east of our northernmost city, Tenochtitlan. Next turn they disappeared into the desert and I guessed they were going to make an end run and try to hit Saxon. Luckily, I moved some of the force at Tenochtitaln south and sure enough, an Elephant/Mace combo showed up out of the fog.

Turn 10 (1208 AD): Our Missionary converted Tenochtitlan to Confucianism.

That's it. Engineering due in 1 turn. We're in pretty good shape but Saxon is due to get pillaged a bit. We're not equipped to handle War Elephants. Pikemen will be very handy.

Here's The Save. Have fun!

 

[Bede]

A spear with a couple of Combat promotions is all it takes to whup an elephant in either the open or in garrison defense.

Got it and really will play tomorrow night, but may not post until Saturday night.

 

[Bede]

Post deleted - doubled

 

[Bede]

With Engineering due in soon and Shaka's elephant threatening a rampage I find we have no iron and no trade potential for it, and we have no spears either

Mao had apparently trade his iron to Capac

So swap the civics to a war time footing (Vassalage and Slavery) and draft a spear everywhere I can, then start them on the road to the north.

Look around for the rest of the army and find a group in the north (every darn one had a city attack promotion) and sent them south.

The core towns appear "lightly defended" with the exception of Chartres which has some arrow armed troops and some maces and a newly minted spear.

I woke up the Artist and sent him to Texcoco to pop its borders out by settling and to provide a longer term protection against French border expansions.

Then I go looking for help and can't find any. Shaka appears to be everybody's best buddy so they won't even consider a trade embargo.

Shaka's mace and elephant are a feint, they move south to Middle-T

Meanwhile Ramses loses another town to Mao

I get enough force properly positioned to force the Zulu onto the flatlands and hit them first with catapults, then follow with a mace and spear

I get collateral damage promotions on all the cats, and a General is born is Temple of Doom - he charges off to Middle-T to become a DI and whip those new troops into shape.

And a spear gets an elephant and that is the end of that Zulu threat

Now I need fast movers because a new threat appeared at Chartres

and we have no horses so I make this deal with Mao.

Horse Archers are eaten by elephants, but properly promoted can hurt crossbows and maces, and even if they don't survive will hurt them enough for maces and bows to finish them off. Cats can deal damage to elephants for later elimination by spears.

The troops that had shadowed the Zulu feint south keep on heading south and are poured into Chartres to cover the town. Those maces wreck the dye plantation so now we have unhappy faces to go along with the sourpusses from our relentless forest cutting (let's not chop anymore, okay) but they are dealt with before they can do any more damage.

The tactical situation at Chartres remains pretty much like this

Shaka bombards the town then suicides a catapult, then loses a mace or crossbow on the attack, reinforces and does it again. It take a while but finally the catapults and some Horse Archers get there and I can hit 'em with stone throwers, then knock them off their perches with the horsemen. It was costly but finally here we are, holding the high ground and no Zulus in sight.

while the workers repair the dye plantation.

Vickie made a feeble move against the north with a single horse archer out of Incaland. He got smacked after pillaging an unused cottage and she made this peace deal

I have moved some troops to way point between the northernmost towns if Shaka makes an appearance there. He did send another mace and elephant at Saxon finally, but the troops up there cleaned them up after they had pillaged down a village to bare floodplain.

And a prophet was born and settled in Temple of Doom.

Shaka isn't receiving visitors right now but I don't have much stomach for plodding across France to get at him, and we don't have the army for it either. So let's deal with the sourpusses and unhappy faces in the most productive towns, build an army of combined arms - cats, trebs, maces, horse archers and spears and bows and lots of them and take a big bite out of Mao. His towns hold the resources we need unless we want to wait for rifles, but we are going to need his iron for cannon anyway.

Thanks for the opportunity to fight in the hot corner again, frankcor!