T_McC03 - Guns and Bowses (Vanilla C4, Emperor)

[T_McC]

Our next research target could be Assembly Line for Infantry (Corporation, Steam Power, Assembly Line: base cost 9800) or Artillery (Steel, Scientific Method, Physics, Artillery: base cost 13,200). Note how lovely it is that there is no overlap in those two paths. Neither will arrive in time for the end of the French war.

I vote for the Artillery path, even if we have no beakers into Steel yet. Artillery/Rifles make for a perfectly fine attacking force, even vs. Infantry (we'll just need more Artillery), and I don't expect our next victim (Huyana) to have Infantry before we get Artillery. Hopefully the final wars we have to fight are Artillery/Infantry vs. Infantry. Going Artillery first also allows another period of drafting to build up numbers. It would be nice to have two attacking stacks in the next war.

Mark is up.

 

[Mutineer]

remember that sci method will absolute GL, our single source of GP points.
Anyway, research steel needed to be switch of untill we have other prerequisites.

Combination of riffle/greens/cats should work good enogth again rifles defence.
Going after assemply line is better in my mind. It will give us option of Rail Roads for speed and more shields.

 

[Mark1031]

OK got it. We can get infantry w/o scientific method. Steel is also nice to get to rails. If we don't want to obsolete the GL. However given our restrictions I would rather have arty sooner rather than later.

 

[Mark1031]

Pre: Looks like we are ripping Louis a new one. MM Santiago to get Taj in 5 with massive starvation. For research i go with steam as arty is about 4 techs away and I thought we should grab infantry 1st. We should be able to pick up corp in peace.

1555: Huayan wants rifles for 10gp. Ya right. Louis now has rifles. Tours falls with no losses and we win one @ 23% against the 1 rifle he had there.

1560: No counter. Louis is gassed. We get a scientist. I bank him for now as I think we are getting to the point where a GA would be more valuable. He can take off 1800 beakers for SM. Heading for Paris.

1565: Orleans comes out of resistance netting us gold and removing happiness issues. Paris has 1 Greni and a few LBs.

1570: Louis decides to moce his Greni and cats out of Paris to take a shot at Tours.

1575: We get the Taj. Paris falls for the loss of 1 rifle. Adjust cities. With Colossus from Paris+Fin trait+ GA each coastal tile makes 5gpt. WW is of course mounting so we are at 20% lux.

1580: Moving on Avignon.

1585: zzz

1590: We take Avignon but loose 3 rifles and 1 cat to take out 5 rifles. We will get Silver from this city. OK we need Corp to get to assembly line and no one will trade so I decide to finish up steel going to RR. Machine guns provide nice cover and I want to get RR's up. When we make peace with Louis we can pick up corp.

1595-1600: Just healing/moving. I would finish France on the mainland and then take peace for at least Corp. we are getting a fair amount of WW.

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
increase lux to 30%, plenty unhappiness already

1. 1605AD
we defeated 2 cats on defenses in the north
Grenoble is razed for the loss of 1 cat

2. 1610AD
steel is in, RR next but that takes 9 turns at the moment
decide to sell Toku edu for 1090gold

realize that we can now not build any artillery any longer as cats are obsolete, that wasn't really smart I think
at least should have build more cats first

climb next to Lyons, my goodness, that city is defended by 7 rifles and 3 Cavs + 2 cats
how are we ever going to take that city?

3. 1615AD
bomb Lyon, maybe we have a chance after all

4. 1620AD
Paris is online, whip a theatre there since it's starving anyway
decide to attack Lyon with all we have
we lose 1 cat and 3 rifles, but Lyons has now only 6 units left

5. 1625AD
Louis pulled 2 rifles out of Marseille, one we pick in front of Paris
bomb Marseilles with 3 cats
attack Lyon again with wounded units, but so are his
this is nailbiting, lose a gren + rifle but defeat 2 rifles, now 4 units left
all wounded, win next 2 battles at 54 and 84%

he has 2 healthy cats left, we can't attack

6. 1630AD
still only 2 cats in Lyon, defeat both with wounded units and go to the altar of lucky RnG to pray some (we defeat 12 units at even odds I think)
this was awsome luck that we managed to take all those units out with inferior numbers and odds

but attacking with rifles and grens is tough, lose 3 units trying to take Marseilles, one rifles left there

7. 1635AD
lose 2 more units, but manage to take Marseilles and not lose any cats
we need artillery soon I'd say, this is brutal
time for peace now

Louis offers Huamanga but I take corporation and music instead for peace

science to 90%, lux at 0%, plenty of happiness now

8.1640AD
poor Huayna's land gets totally pillaged

I will leave it to the team who we go after next, but we need either infantry or artillery for that

9. 1645AD
zzz

10. 1650AD
RR is in, I suggest to go for infantry

start RR around the capital. we can build a nice RR net fast

assembly line would be done in 8 and then we can pick the next target
Huayna is gassed anyway and maybe we can raze some of his towns
the real opponent is Saladin who built Versailles recently

our new land

 

[T_McC]

Appears as though we can change Civics on the IT. We definitely want to be in Mercantilism now, we're giving a lot more trade routes than we're getting.

May be worth dropping back to Nationhood as well and drafting another round of Rifles to free any of our promoted Rifles to move on to the next war. The next war could be Infantry vs. Rifles, against Huyana.

We may end up doing a Galley-based invasion yet.

 

[uberfish]

Saladin is irrelevant, we don't need to fight him to win the game. The worst he could do would be to declare on us while we fight Toku, but we will outproduce him massively by that time.

Agree on HC as next target.

 

[T_McC]

This one is looking real good. While we were pounding Louis, the other four paired off and should have burned up a lot of units.

Industrial age wars when the AI actually has to build most of their own units are fun.

I would assume we'll keep HC's cities. We should be able to wipe him out and only give a slight pause before rolling on to the next target, I think we can get a 2nd Infantry vs. Rifle war.

 

[Mark1031]

Looks like we need more cats esp. if we want 2 stacks. Arty is still a long way away. Don't forget you can pillage the iron to be able to build them.

 

[Mutineer]

Problem is, we can not build any more cats any longer.

We can not have any cyicide cats to.

 

[Mark1031]

Problem is, we can not build any more cats any longer.

See above post. Pillage our iron and we can build cats.

 

[Mutineer]

Then we can not build rail road, which nulifying idea of reseaching stell and railroad on the first place.

 

[Mutineer]

I tryed to down load save, but server seems down.

 

[Mutineer]

Ok, today server is ok and I got saves.

Turn 0:
Set research to 100%, Infantry in 6.
Did some resource trades.
MM cities for more grow.
Turn 6
Infantry in
Research sci method, with help of GS.
Revolted to Nationalism/merkantenilism.
Drafted Infantry.
Bribed Toky to attack Saladin for Nationalism.
Turn down sci a bit to do some upgrades on trops with resonable exp and promotion.
Turn 7 Declared on Capac
He is pillaged to death, but he is one of more advanced AI, finishing him befor he give away all his tech is a good idea I think.
Sci method- astronomy
Turn 10
Nothing more to draft, no more avalible population. Next turn advice to revolt to free speach (We now have enogth towns).
Finish upgrading all resonable units.
Research set to Phisic, we have a small chance to get it first I hope.
Raise One Capac city.

We have only 4 cats, 2 in each attack group, not to good, but nothign we can do as we want to continue to build Rail roads.

In good civic Arty should be resonably soon.

 

[T_McC]

1700 AD (0)
Not much of a war we're throwing. No cities are building troops.

No significant changes except to fire a couple of Artists.

1710 AD (2)
Revolt us into Free Speech, net gain of 88 light bulbs from 700.

Bomb Cuzco to 0% and attack. We get fairly poor pRNG and lose about 5 units on the capture, although a couple of them were drafted Infantry so not that big a loss. City comes without Courthouse, so starts one to be whipped ASAP.

1715 AD (3)
Lux tax has to go to 10% for combination of WW and Draft unhappiness. Otherwise simply advancing on Machu Picchu from three sides.

1720 AD (4)
Toku wants us in vs. the Arabs, he leaves with free Coal instead. Enjoy!

1725 AD (5)
Begin the bombardment of Machu Picchu. Nothing like an infantry-only game to define slog.

1730 AD (6)
Defenses to 0%, so we charge. Lose another couple of drafted Infantry and a vaguely veteran Rifle in taking the city.

Huyana is now OCC'ing and we can't reach him anytime soon. Make Peace for his WM as he has nothing else, but make him swap to our civics just to be a jerk.

1735 AD (7)
Lux tax goes back to 0%.

I'll pass off here and uberfish can play an extra three turns.

We will definitely get the Physics GS next turn. I see no reason not to continue to Artillery, although the GS will help with Biology. We can grow after we have Artillery.

We have to choose the next victim. Almost our entire Army is in Machu Picchu. It can either go S and E vs. Cyrus, or N and E vs. Toku. Cyrus will only have Rifles for the duration of the next war, he's nowhere near Assembly Line. On the other hand Toku is busy with Sal and shouldn't have too much left. I was thinking Cyrus next because we can maintain a narrow front against him, while against Toku we'd be pretty wide. A single attack stack is very convenient against Cyrus, so we can keep our Cats together while we wait for Artillery. Once we have Artillery we can afford to be a little wider since the Artillery will multiply kill ratios.

I think we go Cyrus and ASAP. We may be able to win this game before anyone else (besides possibly Sal) gets Infantry, so Artillery will be devastating in our last war.

We could sell Sal Astronomy for Divine Right ( ) and 940 gold. I would do this and upgrade most of our remaining attack Rifles to Infantry. I also forgot to start building Wall Street in Madrid. I canceled our deal selling Sal Silks, he doesn't need happy help. We're now selling him Bananas instead.

 

[uberfish]

Yeah, I'll go with Cyrus I think. Easier logistically, and gives us nice launching positions to get into Toku's empire later. Toku owns a load of useless desert and is never going to catch us up.

 

[uberfish]

Noticed Cyrus' borders hadn't expanded at Tarsus yet, so I declare immediately and attack him. I divide our forces into two, the larger army takes the three out of our four (!!) catapults that have movement points to Tarsus, and a smaller force takes the last accuracy cat next turn to camp in the forest outside Gordium and bombard it while waiting for reinforcements. Both cities have 8-10 defenders.

Cyrus harrasses the large stack with cannons inflicting some collateral damage. Staging on hills with MG for stack cover is working very well. In the meantime, he attempts to raid Machu Picchu with cavalry. Too bad for him our defenders are MG, infantry and rifles...

Bombard Tarsus to zero and go in with Infantry and rifles. We take the city but lose 4 infantry and 2 rifles in the attack (ouch.) A couple of turns later the 1 catapult has reduced Gordium's defences too, the defenders aren't as well promoted here and I only lose 3 units. We are taking unacceptable losses due to our crappy 1-promotion units, because they don't have pinch to counter City defender. I actually lose a rifle attacking one of Cyrus' loose cavs. Revolt to theocracy to give our new recruits a better fighting chance, and start Pentagon in Santiago.

In the meantime Toku and Saladin are going at it, and they end up swapping a couple of cities on their border.

Cyrus sends in some cavs between the two cities we just took to try and cause trouble, but I kill them and am able to plug the gap with a couple of units on a forest hill so he can't run in and pillage. I recombine the two armies, heal up and move out.



When I reach Persepolis, it is defended by one of those ... stacks, so I wait a turn or two for a couple of new Artillery to arrive and heal up more suicide cannon damage.

With artillery and a lot of pinch troops now, the odds dramatically shift in our favour. I go 14-0 on the attack and capture Persepolis at the end of turn.

We got the free physics scientist. He helped us research biology, and then I went to fascism to deal with future WW. This will be done next turn. I also built some frigates to deal with some boats from Cyrus in our west. Drydock built in Rouen, French borders at Huamanga just expanded and we might want to kill him off. We could use a northern fleet for Tokugawa afterwards anyway.

40+ Cyrus units wiped out this set. Saladin has combustion now so don't get in a naval war with him

 

[uberfish]

oh yeah, the save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/T_McC03_AD-1800.Civ4SavedGame

 

[T_McC]

Took a peek at the save: We've got four Frigates. Frigates require Iron. Disband the Frigates.

Otherwise it looks we'll just continue to roll the Persians. A short break after that and we can move on the the Japanese and finish this game. For research we could go Electricity -> Industrialism after we finish Fascism, we are allowed to build Marines. Those units should arrive in time to fight the Japanese, at least the final few battles.

 

[uberfish]

I never even knew frigates required iron (which just goes to show that iron is really common I guess.)

Wouldn't have made a difference to the game, all they did was sink caravels anyway.