TT01: Beating Demigod

Lauwersoog or Pasargadae would be the best site for the FP, according to CA 2, Leiden is too close to benefit much. There's nowhere else even close.

I guess the question is do we want to delay a tiny bit and then pop it in Pasargarde, or do it now in Lauwerskoog? I ask again if anyone knows if your FP town can flip (and what happens to the FP if it does). We will eventually have more towns in the south than we do now, which could make the figures slightly deceiving. (Of course, we'll also have more cities in the east--but with all that grassland, it looks like science farm land to me.)
 
i am looking at the save now. will post my thoughts soon.

don´t know if FP city can depose. always wanted to know that myself. does any of the lurkers can give us the straight dope on this?

what i DO know is that the FP is gone if the city is taken and you retake it. it happened to me for the first time ever in my first GOTM here with the Celts lately. you may imagine how much i loved this happen :gripe:
 
Only the Capital is immune from flipping, and FP is a SW so yes, it may be lost in a flipped city.

How does Persopolis shape up as FP? Some of that tourist income might be nice.
 
preparation for my turns:

long term strategy – conquest victory

medium term strategy – war against Vikes for our continent, building up for the possibility of self research of all the necessary techs for victory

short term strategy – eliminate Persians (and Ports?), build the FP, settle the conquered lands; prepare for war against Vikes, decide on how to deal with Iros

i plan to load 2 knights on a boat and destroy the (then) probably last Persian city. furthermore, i´d DOW Portugal as soon as we can bring the healed armies against them. bring more units over to the southern island.
personally i´d keep pressing on the Iros for that northernmost peninsula for as long as that is feasible. the troops are already up there and we will have to move units to that end only later if we don´t do it now. (Iros are not willing to give more than 1 island city for peace now)

for the primary builds during our GA, i would like to of course do the build-up to prepare our military for war with Ragnar. of the buildings i would definitely prefer markets before libs – markets give you the money to buy libs if you want them. i´d like to buy most of the settlers we need from corrupt places and hurry to settle the empty lands. i post a dotmap and ask for your input on it. it´s mostly CxxC with a little CxC at some places, especially the SW where you find a lot of food. very nice for lots of scientists.

FP in Pasargadae would be my choice. lots of shields and money. could work out to happen in 3 turns when it is possible to finish the Persians if things work out optimal. do we want a plan B?
connect wine asap (4 turns i think)

i do not believe we will be fully prepared for war against the Vikes by the end of my turns, however, i would like your input on how many of which troops you would like to have where. my call for the stacks of offensive units would be:
+ the hill 2S of Reykjavik with loads of (upgraded) artillery,
+ the horse tile next to Tilburg (both slow movers mostly) and
+ somewhere near Holverd for some knights
plus for some defense plus artillery:
the mountain next to Zwolle.

i would like to hear your thoughts on very quick preparations to get this mostly done during our GA. the cp on our even near-core cities could depose any city like even Groningen from us just any time.

for tech, chemistry after astronomy? or even switch immediately? France is probably researching one or two of the optional techs right now.

sorry if any of this doesn´t make any sense. it´s very late already and has been a tough day.
 
(i maybe messed this up as i have never painted or posted a dotmap before)
 

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That dotmap... didn't come out so good. ;)

I'd continue to research Astronomy--we're about 40% of the way there, may as well not waste what we've put in.

On troop placement vs. the Vikings, I'd suggest the following:

1. A nice stack of fast movers in Tilburg, or on the mountain 1NW of Tilburg (better). This should include a mace army and some knights. probably our sword army, and some trebs. This would be our main attack stack, going through Copenhagen straight for Trondheim.

2. Our second mace army, along with maybe 3-4 knights, should attack Holwerd and proceed from there to Oslo.

3. A mini-stack of slow movers (3-4 MI should do nicely) should clean up Aarhus, and then rejoin the procession and/or play defense.

4. Our main stack of slow movers, along with a fair number of artillery units, should be ready to move onto the hill at Reykjavik and take that city.

We'll want a decent number of settlers for this, as we will need to raze most Viking cities (because the real fun comes when we get to invade their second island).
 
How to dotmap: Use the largest spraycan to make a dot. Hold the left mouse button about 5-10 seconds to fully fill in your dot. Using a different color for each dot helps distinguish them for discussion purposes. Also, setting the map grid shows the exact tile for each dot. You can use the alphabet toolbar to add text. The main thing is practice. Hope that helps, without seeming patronizing. Trust me, I'm still learning the stuff myself.
 
@ templar_x: in addition to the plans as you stated them, we need to instigate war on the other continent.
 
How to dotmap: Use the largest spraycan to make a dot. Hold the left mouse button about 5-10 seconds to fully fill in your dot. Using a different color for each dot helps distinguish them for discussion purposes. Also, setting the map grid shows the exact tile for each dot. You can use the alphabet toolbar to add text. The main thing is practice. Hope that helps, without seeming patronizing. Trust me, I'm still learning the stuff myself.

thanks overseer.
no, you´re not seen as patronizing at all. i had asked for help :) it was something like 2.30 a.m. and i never ever had used paint for any such a purpose before... and i thought :help:
 
i´m not even sure if paint is the right program to do this... let me know if there is another software for better use.
 
i would really like to hear some more on the points i raised last night (sorry the dotmap was not a genius´ first-timer, i won´t be able to do another one before tonight. if someone can see enough from this one to make a general statement on the sites i proposed it would be enough for me.

i deliver a shortlist of some topics i feel need further discussion:

Ports: ok with DOW and elimination asap?

Iros: continue war for the northernmost cities? leave their SE cities for the moment to have Ragnar play with sth

FP in Pasargadae? in Pasargadae if we can build it in 3-4 turns, somewhere else if not?

markets first, then libraries? lots of settlers, for sure.

chemistry after astronomy? even switch now? DWetzel was the only one to react here, he´d stay with astro (no pref for next tech yet). i´m fine with that.

next MGL: build a small wonder or an empty army for now?

war on other continent: i uttered my concern that this will now work out completely different than we might wish. i think the French will eat the others alive. i feel it´s already too late to get this started. but i think we need a clear (majority) vote of the team for one way or another. i only saw a statement of thinktank yet who favours to instigate war now.

i think we are at an important point. whatever we decide or fail to plan won´t have an impact on the fact that we´ll win this, i think, but definitely on HOW FAST we can do this. thus, i won´t get this started before i know a lot more about our consensus on how to proceed. after that, i am ready to start playing any time from tonight till weekend.
 
Ports: ok with DOW and elimination asap?

I would say a guarded 'yes' - as long as it doesn't mean taking units from more important military needs.

Iros: continue war for the northernmost cities? leave their SE cities for the moment to have Ragnar play with sth

I reiterate what I previously said: let the Vikings lose units doing it - we have nothng to gain by risking ours.

FP in Pasargadae? in Pasargadae if we can build it in 3-4 turns, somewhere else if not?

In 'Conquests', it's not so important where you place it, just that you do.
Look to choose whichever city will benefit most from low corruption.


markets first, then libraries? lots of settlers, for sure.

I would not build Markets at all in this game; we have lost our rep so Libraries are more imortant to fuel our research, and we have enough lux's to manage without the happiness benefits.

chemistry after astronomy? even switch now? DWetzel was the only one to react here, he´d stay with astro (no pref for next tech yet). i´m fine with that.

I would say switch to Chemistry immediately - continuing with Astronomy is just throwing good money after bad.

next MGL: build a small wonder or an empty army for now?

The Pentagon would be my choice.

war on other continent: i uttered my concern that this will now work out completely different than we might wish. i think the French will eat the others alive. i feel it´s already too late to get this started. but i think we need a clear (majority) vote of the team for one way or another. i only saw a statement of thinktank yet who favours to instigate war now.

I think I've made my position on this quite clear - war is overdue on the other continent. Yes, France will get it's GA, but sooner now when it will squander it's increased production capacity on Medieval units, than later when they are producing Cavs/Rifles. Also, in my experience I have found that the AI doesn't play France well as a warring civ (look out for them in a peaceful game though), whereas USA and Inca are usually well stocked with units (probably why they always lag in research). Whatever the eventual outcome, it will slow research over there, which is our motivation for war now. One thing I would caution against is the likelihood that France may ally Vikings against us. An ideal solution would be to ally them ourselves, but it may not be possible so you will need to keep some 'fast response' units around the border. If war does break out, depriving them of their Iron source would be a priority, and fortunately it's easy to reach.

i am ready to start playing any time from tonight till weekend.

It's probably a good time to mention that I'm going to be away on vacation from next Monday until Wednesday of the following week.
 
If we're going to start a war, why not pick on someone weak over there? (I.e. declare on the Inca) and then ally in France? That eliminates the chance that our target will get an ally before we're ready.

I also want to strongly disagree (again) about dumping Astronomy. I truly don't see how that helps us one bit. Presumably the intention is to trade France for it. But that just hastens their advance as well, which is the opposite of what we want.

Normally I'm all for tech trades--they put us ahead, relatively, of everyone that isn't in the deal--but in this specific case, I don't think it's very wise. Certainly not when you toss 40% down the tubes.

If we're going to try to get out faster, I suggest researching ahead and then buying off the last couple of turns of it.
 
If we're going to start a war, why not pick on someone weak over there? (I.e. declare on the Inca) and then ally in France? That eliminates the chance that our target will get an ally before we're ready.

What do we have to offer France?

I also want to strongly disagree (again) about dumping Astronomy. I truly don't see how that helps us one bit. Presumably the intention is to trade France for it. But that just hastens their advance as well, which is the opposite of what we want.

I would expect to get it as war reparations once Ragnor is on his knees.

Normally I'm all for tech trades--they put us ahead, relatively, of everyone that isn't in the deal--but in this specific case, I don't think it's very wise. Certainly not when you toss 40% down the tubes.

If we're going to try to get out faster, I suggest researching ahead and then buying off the last couple of turns of it.

I prefer to think of it as cutting our losses - better to toss away 40% than 100%.

BTW, DWetzel, I hope you don't take disagreement personally; as I've said before, discussion and disagreement is healthy in a SG - sometimes we don't see the wood for the trees.
 
1. What do we have to offer France? Good point. I suppose wooden shoes won't get it done.

2. I think there's a number of assumptions here that I don't necessarily agree with.

First, you assume that we want to make peace with Ragnar at any point. I would think that once we get a steamroller going we will want to try to eliminate him entirely. That would let us possibly keep a few Viking cities rather than raze/replace them all (which we will have to do a fair amount of anyway), and I don't see where we get the settlers that quickly. Granted, we may want to make a peace (even a false peace?) with him once he's off our main island and confined to the tundra. But even then we will more or less need to raze/replace everything anyway.

Second (and I don't have the save/CA2 from memory, so please tell me if I'm talking out my butt here), does he currently have Astronomy? I don't think he does. IIRC, he's on par with us technology wise--which means that it's entirely possible that he gets Chemistry before Astronomy. Either way, though, I'm content--if he gets Astronomy, that will lower our research time further. If he gets Chemistry, he's likely to trade it for Astronomy, and that would be best of all for us. The ONLY way I see dropping out benefiting us a great is if he specifically gets Astronomy, and NOT Chemistry, by the time we want to make peace with him.

Further, for all of our near-island conquests, we're going to need significantly more naval power than we have right now. We can safely kill Persia with four units (possibly two with a kind RNG, but not necessarily), which was my plan and the reason we have two galleys in the general area (one to pick up two troops from Hamadan, the other in the south to pick up General Buce and another unit). We definitely can NOT kill Portugal without significantly more units than that. I'd guess that we probably need a half-dozen artillery and about ten units (remember, we can't take our armies over there at all, unless we want to wait until Navigation and galleons--and I can safely say that's a dumb idea) to do the job right. Less is doable, but will entail significant risk and will likely result in more lost units than we want. That means either eight galleys or five caravels. Five caravels is less shields than eight galleys, they move faster (allowing for a more useful switch), and they are far less susceptible to unfortunate wartime incidents. Which means that we need Astronomy BEFORE we get the Viking peace--assuming we do want to off Portugal while we're down that way, and I can't conceive of a good reason why we should not.

And don't worry, I'm not taking any of this personally. I'm just so far unpersuaded that switching NOW is a good idea. (Point conceded that it probably would have been better to do Chemistry from the get-go--but that is a different question.)

Basically, forget the fact that we have put beakers in. We can either research Astronomy right now in roughly 9 turns, or Chemistry in roughly 15, if I have my numbers right, at our present research rate. Or we can try to trade for either of these, or beat them out of someone. (But anything we are going to beat out of the AI is going to take a while, because we are going to have to DOW and make peace, and I don't see that happening with the Vikings in the next TWO turnsets--by which time we are close to having both of those techs.)

I do want additional opinions on this. Even though ones that disagree with mine are wrong. ;)


On another note, what's the team's thoughts about gifting/retaking cities? Exploit, or good clean fun? That would be a fine way to beat up France for a tech or two if we want to take that route.
 
We will need to research Astronomy eventually, right? Why not finish it or trade for it with the beakers invested discount? Won't switching now lose an investment that we'll have to reinvest later? Substantial penalty for early withdrawal and all that. I want Military Tradition as soon as possible too, but we'll need Astronomy to get to Magnetism and the better boats that tech allows. When we come back to research Astronomy again, we'll have to start all over again with probably no ability to trade for it. Before dumping the invested beakers, let us try trading for it. I am interested in having Cavalry, but what do we need it for now? We have 1 tough enemy left on our continent, but will we need Cavalry to defeat them?
 
I don't think we need cavs. They'd help, no question, but we don't need them. More to the point, if we DO need them, we're still not going to have them for quite a ways into the future regardless of what we do now, and taking out our weaker enemies in the meanwhile (which I think entails Astronomy and caravels anyway, but enough galleys COULD do the trick) will probably give us enough additional research power to make up most of the difference, especially combined with the second-researcher discount.
 
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