TJS1 -- Going on the Pill-age

[Lanzelot]

Regarding the Archers: "Healfdene" already spawned a leader, so it won't spawn another one: it's already "elite*". This one can safely be upgraded. The other one: maybe keep him around in Kufah fo a while for the case that another Arabian unit shows up there and we can try for another leader. But upgrading him as well would also be ok.

Much more important: Birka still hasn't gotten any irrigations?! As I already said earlier: let Yekaterinburg grow to 5 (e.g. by rushing a Galley when it hits 5 (which is now), so it can smoothly go back to worker-spawning). Then Yekaterinburg can replace the irrigated BG and mined plains with two mined grasslands (for the same 5 good and 5 shields), and Birka can have the irrigated BG!
Otherwise the game will be over, before Birka grows to size 7...
(BTW: Birka can now start its Market.)

Spoiler Spoiler :

Hit the "Insert" button and then you can choose "Spoiler" from the drop-down menu...

Regarding happiness: yes, increase the lux slider to 20% for now, don't let our precious citizens starve. And then do the following:

• Switch Yaroslavl to Settler and rush it.
• Turn the one citizen in Yaroslavl to a taxman.
• Interturn the game will ask you, whether you want to delay the Settler or abandon Yaroslavl. Choose "Abandon Yaroslavl"
• Move the Settler, the Horse from Molde, the Spearman and the three units at Utrecht onto the forest square as indicated. That should be more than plenty to defend that town and at the same time it can serve as an assembly point for the attack on Moscow: wait till the Horses have healed and 2-3 more have arrived there, and you can march on and take Moscow. The 7 units at Novgorod are sufficient to take that town. Just move them into the jungle, before you attack: otherwise you'll get the malus for attacking across the river!

So if I counted correctly, in 4 turns from now we'll have silks connected and can reduce the lux slider back to 10%. (If I remember correctly, the Russians had silks on sale in the past, so there is probably already a road on that tile. You can check next turn when the units enter the forest. If not, bring two workers and protect them with the Knight and Spear.)

 

[robbus]

NOT what I had planned. I played a turn already.

Lanzelot has been heard.

 

[Elephantium]

Derp, I'd spaced on moving Yaroslavl. Good thing you mentioned it, Lanz!

 

[Spoonwood]

I attacked the Aztec galleys because there were 3 of them and I felt we were thinly defended. 2 spears, 2 horses with 2 reinforcements rding south east of bergen. I figured on losing one galley and them losing a galley. Leaving 2 enemy galleys with 4 horse defenders waiting for them. I won the first battle... got cocky and won the second. Probably was risky but worked out

If you have a coastal undefended capital with a landing spot adjacent to it, ships will consistently beeline for it. Or at least I've NEVER seen anything different on several 20k archipelago maps unless the landing spot got blocked. You might check my demi-god/deity/Sid 20k victories in the HoF for examples and see when I finished The Heroic Epic, as only a few of my early ones didn't use this trick to spawn an MGL. So, you might alternatively keep enough offensive units and/or artillery to shell out and kill any units that land immediately. You can also make sure that they land on one of the tiles next to the capital using units to block off spaces. You might even manage a Sid victory with your skill level if you started now Robbus if you use this trick and then focus on research and go for a diplomatic/20k victory with a rich food start and an 80% archipelago as the trick works that well, but no promises on that... Sid research is tough.

 

[Lanzelot]

If you have a coastal undefended capital with a landing spot adjacent to it, ships will consistently beeline for it. Or at least I've NEVER seen anything different on several 20k archipelago maps unless the landing spot got blocked.

I can definitely confirm that. I think this even works, if the capital is not directly coastal, but can be reached from the landing spot on the next turn.

 

[robbus]

A brief post of 340 ad of Viking Republic.

I will have to put some notes in place later.
I captured nowgorod and 9 workers but lost 3 of them who are occupying iron . My only choice is to attack themwith damaged knight and occupy iron with the knight which leaves nov go unprotected .

In the south the Aztecs have landed twice with a total of 3 units. The southern galley near Tromso is possibly full... The Northern one too. Aztecs near tromso have been sailing around for awhile. I have only made some moves on this turn which is the last before regime change.

In 270 ad I put a granary in Stavanger which was likely a waste of cash and Now should disband it.

I am working the night shift tonight but will post some of my notes if possible.

 

[Nathiri]

Hmm. The Galley by Copenhagen should be moved one northeast. It isn't blocking any path there.

I think we have a bit of a lack of horsemen to protect our frontiers.

I assume you will be killing the Arab archer and Russian longbowman.

You'll probably be needing to use those horsemen in Stavanger. They are free units not in any danger and all healed.

I think we are coming to the point where we have enough workers. There are quite a few west and that. But a few more from Oslo and it could probably be taken off?

Regarding the Aztec galley at Tromso, you could if you want block it off to some extent to manipulate it a bit. But you should probably move another horseman down there as a pre-caution.

Remember to keep at least 2 horseman in the vicinity on the east coast to clear any aztec drop.

 

[Elephantium]

Quick notes...

I captured nowgorod and 9 workers but lost 3 of them who are occupying iron . My only choice is to attack themwith damaged knight and occupy iron with the knight which leaves nov go unprotected .

I don't understand this. Are you saying you had 3 workers occupying iron? Why?! And what do you mean by your "only choice" -- you can almost always wait a turn or two to let a unit heal before attacking. Could you clarify?

In the south the Aztecs have landed twice with a total of 3 units. The southern galley near Tromso is possibly full... The Northern one too. Aztecs near tromso have been sailing around for awhile. I have only made some moves on this turn which is the last before regime change.

Where did the Tromso Galley come from? I'm not too worried about it at first -- I'm guessing it's headed for the Arabs, based on the Aztecs landing units near Birka before. Are they at war?

In 270 ad I put a granary in Stavanger which was likely a waste of cash and Now should disband it.

I am working the night shift tonight but will post some of my notes if possible.

Yep. A Granary would have helped about 10-20 turns earlier, when it could have speeded up natural growth. It doesn't really help anything when you're joining Workers for growth.

I agree with Nathiri's notes as well

Oh, regarding Oslo -- I'd venture that we could Worker-join it to size 12 in another 6-8 turns.

Why is Reyk building a Berserk?! It doesn't have a Barracks. Ditto for builds in Molde and Vadso.

Building Regular military units is a waste of shields.

(that's the most important thing in this entire post!)

 

[tjs282]

Robbus:

Without having opened the save yet, the screenies generally look good to me Good work getting Stav up to Pop12, and its tiles improved (quite irritating that it still hasn't stolen Utrecht's Floods -- but that's not your fault). So it's really just Birka needing Worker-joins to Pop12 now, and then we can kick off our GA...

There is one thing I probably would have done differently (which is not to say that this would have been a better idea, just different!) -- assuming that you sent the 3 Workers(Russian) out to (re)road the Iron near Novgorod, and that they were re-captured by Cathy just after having finished the job:

I would have considered that too risky, not to mention kind of a waste (3 Slaves*[1T to move + 2T to road] = 9 Slave-turns). Instead, I would have preferred to use a single Slave to Colonise the Iron in just 2T (1T to move, 1T to Colonise); while this would have killed the Slave, it would have given us immediate access to the Iron (for Horse-upgrades), and the Iron-Colony would then have turned into a road without any further effort, 5T after Novgorod's capture-date (when its free-temple will pop the borders).

Current roster(?):

1. Robbus -- Just played
2. Elephantium -- Up next
3. Choxorn -- On deck
4. tjs282
5. Nathiri
6. Lanzelot

Thoughts for the next player:

(Not that Tusker really needs this, but still...)

Oslo's actually closer to Stav than Trond, and Yek is closer to Trond than Oslo, so I think we could/should continue pumping Workers out of Oslo, but let Yek start growing -- with those two Wheats it should grow reasonably fast even without Worker-joins: if it can get 7-8SPT at Pop10-12, it could start alternating between 4T-Galleys and 4T-Settlers to play fill-in-the-gaps, or maybe (if we can squeeze +5 FPT and 10 SPT out of it at Pop11-12) alternate between 3T-Galleys and 1T-Workers...

I guess Krasnoyarsk should be the next target, to reduce the attack-distance to Moscow -- looks like we easily have enough units to take both, especially if we upgrade some more Horses first. I think Cathy will most likely flee to Vladivostock, rather than St Pete's and Yakutsk (we can let Willy capture the latter -- for now...). OTOH, Smolensk is pretty useless to us right now: it's going to grow slowly, and stretches our war-front (tying up units to defend/quell it, or isking recapture from St Pete's), but adds little/no value to our empire. So I would retreat the vKnight (back to Novgorod?), and gift Smolensk to Willy (or maybe even 'Dora?), which will also help keep Cathy's remaining towns from aiding each other.

Also, while Kufah's flip-risk will have been lowered by our ToA-culture, and the free-Temple popping its borders, it won't ever reach zero as long as the Arabs continue to exist and be hostile to us. All the (attack) units garrisoned there (except maybe a single Spear) should move onto the Hill instead, so we don't lose them unexpectedly.

And I would definitely advocate recapturing those runaway Slaves -- they are currently standing unguarded on a neutral road, so a single fast-unit could be sent out to lasso them, and return them to Novgorod, all within a single turn

Finally, just a quick notification for all of you:

We're off on our summer-vacation tomorrow. I'm not taking the laptop, nor even expecting to have reliable internet access where we're going (but there will be scuba-diving instead, so I won't mind), and so will not be following/contributing to this thread for the next 2-3 weeks (June 21st to July 8th, though I will likely also spend most of the 9th catching up on missed sleep...). In the event that my turnset rolls around before I'm back online, please skip me, and I'll slot back into the rotation later -- if the game isn't already done-and-won before then...

Cross-posted with Tusker...

Why is Reyk building a Berserk?! It doesn't have a Barracks. Ditto for builds in Molde and Vadso.

But Molde does have a Rax -- or did you mean that it should be building a vZerk, instead of a vHorse?

Or were you rather talking about the rSpear-build in Tromso and/or the rGalley build in K'jok (switch that to a Harbour?)?

And while I agee that rSpears make little sense, what should Tromso and Vadso build instead?

 

[Elephantium]

Derp, I misread the map I was looking at Hareid, but now I see that it does have a rax ... The icon is just half-hidden.

Robbus, aside from the critiques I posted above, well done You made very nice progress in the Russian war and held things together in the face of possible Aztec landings.

 

[choxorn]

You could send one of those Knights to capture the Workers, and it would still have enough movement points to get back to Novgorod, wouldn't it? It's all roaded.

 

[robbus]

At work now so i have to make this quick about iron debacle....

I captured 9 slaves in novgorod! I put them to work roading iron (I should have asked about the colony as it had been mentioned in the notes earlier). Anyway the units around Novgorod had defeated an archer 2 spears and taken smolensk with loss of 2 horse. One knight occupied smolensk the other still healing in Novgorod. The healing knight could have captured the workers but I decided to leave it in smolensk... need to take iron back next turn..

This was my worst mistake to not hold the iron. The units there now are russian workers.

Does this help?

 

[robbus]

Opponent builds:

300ad mecca bulids great wall
aztecs ottomans byzantines suntzu begins
carthage byzantines begin leonardos
310 ad dutch begin suntzu and knights templar
330ad Byzantium Ottomans begin: Knights templar

340ad Russia suntzu build starts; Great Library completes in moscow

Arabs begin Knights Templar and Suntzu
Aztecs begin Knights templar
Carthage begins sistine and leonardos
Ottomans begins suntzu and knight templars
Byzantines begin sistine

 

[Elephantium]

Progress:

Good job getting most of the core cities up to size 12 I'm especially happy to see Stavanger at 12
The 9 Workers at Novgorod was quite a stroke of luck! Captive workers really help us in the long run because they don't cost unit support. That comes in handy for military spending
Looks like we should be 1 turn from completing the Road to Novgorod (which hooks up Iron to all our cities!)
Vadso is nicely placed, capturing the Silks. It certainly helps our happiness problems.


MM Notes:

Vadso should switch to Barracks.

D'oh! It looks like you completely ignored Birka/Yekaterinburg

Much more important: Birka still hasn't gotten any irrigations?! As I already said earlier: let Yekaterinburg grow to 5 (e.g. by rushing a Galley when it hits 5 (which is now), so it can smoothly go back to worker-spawning). Then Yekaterinburg can replace the irrigated BG and mined plains with two mined grasslands (for the same 5 good and 5 shields), and Birka can have the irrigated BG!

It's too late now; Birka is 2 turns minimum from size 7 (needs 6 food to grow). On the bright side, it'll still hit size 12 in 4 turns. Bummer.
Kufah looks good (no flip risk according to CivAssist).
Reykjavik: Steal grassland tiles from Bodo and Odense to get 15 spt.
Stockholm: Work a the mined Hill instead of the Sugar to hit 15 spt.
Odense: Switch to Settler (why was it switched away?)
Bodo: Switch to Settler (why was it switched away?)
Karasjok: Switch to Harbor.
Tromso: Switch to Settler (why was it switched away?)

Military:

Use the Horseman in Hareid to attack the Arab Archer
Use the two Horsemen in Stavanger to attack the Longbow next to Vadso. CRUCIAL: Make sure you have 2+ units in Vadso at the end of the turn!

You can blockade the Aztecs away from T'heim like this:

In general, don't worry about their ships rowing by; we just need 2-3 Horsemen each at Bergen and 1S of Bodo to contain any landings. From those positions (and the guys at Kufah), the Horsemen can reach anything the AI lands on our shores.

Finally: We've had a Galley fortified by Kufah for a while now. What's his purpose? I was expecting to see some scouting NW of Kufah by now...


Longer term:

T'heim needs mines on 3 of its watered tiles (food waste). Maybe all 5 (build a Harbor).
Aarhus needs Mines on its two watered BGs.
Bergen needs two new mines due.
Birka will need mines on all 3 irrigated tiles in its radius (and a Harbor, to work its coast).
Stockholm needs its BG mined. It could also work the Mountain once we have Worker moves to improve it (ha!).
Oslo will need to get desert tiles from the Dutch in order to keep 12 citizens busy (eventually).
Yekaterinburg needs a Harbor to manage 12 citizens, and it'll need mines on all its irrigated tiles.
Stavanger will need a mine 1NE of it (riverside = better than the tile 1W of it)

 

[Lanzelot]

quite irritating that it still hasn't stolen Utrecht's Floods -- but that's not your fault

It's impossible: a tile directly adjacent to a town cannot be "culture-stolen" by a town two tiles away.

(There is a thread somewhere about how culture expansion works. To sum it up in a nutshell: if two towns of different nations compete for the same tile, first the "distance/rank" of the tile is taken into account. Only if the tile is at same distance to both towns, the culture value of the towns is taken into account.)
So as these floodplains are distance 1 from Utrecht and distance 2 from Stavanger, Stavanger can never aquire them, no matter how much culture Stavanger will assemble.

@robbus: very solid work indeed! 2-3 more turnsets like this one, and you should be ready to take on Emperor on your own...
True, there were a few glitches, as already pointed out be the others, but nothing really critical. (Except maybe not letting Yeka grow to 5 as advised, so that Birka can also grow every 5 turns.)

One thing which hasn't been mentioned: it looks like, our elite Archer is still at Hareid? If you had moved it to Kufah as advised, we could now try for another leader...

 

[robbus]

OK gang, here it is, my last turn as president of the Viking republic...

340-350ad IBT

Northern Aztec galley retires.
Russian iron workers run off. Our cultural borders now include iron.
Maceman appears threatening worker stack roading plain to Novgorod. We have a spear in defense which is likely not enough so I plan a counterattack. I decide best option is full strenght knight from Smolensk is best option.

Dutch are busy! We have alliance vs Russia that I kept secret from the team! We are getting silks and Alliance vs Russia from them for a reasonable price. Their units are in play vs Russia. A couple of longbows from Utrecht move north. They are also building knight's Templar and Leonardos.

Ottomans finish knights Templar in Istanbul.

Byzantines offer me Theology for 970g, I decline.

350ad gameplay:

galleys repositioned to block Aztecs.

Russian Mace is defeated by redlining vet knight from Smolensk, workers appear safe. Road is completed to iron so we can upgrade horses.

I am passing off here: Too many important decisions to be made!

My current plan is to mine-up food wasting cities, get birka up to 12 and explore arabia by sea(which I did not do at all)

I spent a lot of time on my moves, what is obvious to the rest of you is not always obvious to me.

I am very grateful for the input, critiques and patience you have given me. I still have questions but shall save them. I realize my turns are poorly documented. I can provide more details as needed or available! (My notes confused me! I appreciate the rest of you who can succinctly summarize their turns).



THANK YOU FELLOW PILL-AGERS!

 

[robbus]

VERY Important: I handed off with Smolensk undefended. Units are available to protect. I left a bunch of worker moves in limbo too. Kufah galley needs orders too.

There are about half a turns worth of moves to make. I hope the next player doesn't think I left a hand grenade for them. I tried my best.

I honestly thought I could play faster!

Thanks again

 

[choxorn]

I am very grateful for the input, critiques and patience you have given me. I still have questions but shall save them. I realize my turns are poorly documented. I can provide more details as needed or available! (My notes confused me! I appreciate the rest of you who can succinctly summarize their turns).

You did fairly well, don't worry about it.

On documentation, the one thing I think I'd like is if you could gather all your notes into one post so we can more clearly see what you did over the entire 10 turns instead of hunting through the last few pages for all your posts.

 

[Elephantium]

On documentation, I keep a file open in Notepad++ for my notes on my second monitor. I just tab between that and the game whenever I need to record something. Then I have a nice collected log to post here

 

[Elephantium]

Hey robbus, could you upload the save? It looks like your last post had the 350 *BC* save by mistake