Turns 150 -159

[1889]

Turn 151 820 AD

The army is almost done, but I switched to Theocracy anyway. That gives us 2 xp each for the 4 remaining units we'll build over the next 3 turns. That means we should seriously reconsider civics in 5 turns. Maybe go back to Bureaucracy, Organized Religion and Caste System.

As the army sails south, Piffle will get a nice look at them all and have a chance to warn Loco or Epsilon. Offering open boarders to them may get them to look at something else instead. Our border will expand in a turn or two and they will be trapped in that little pocket other wise.

I also wonder if open boarders will open a trade route to Aloha through Piffles little canal city. If so I think it is well worth it.

Mo Tzu (great Prophet born in Wheelville. He will give 1114 beakers toward Divine Right which doesn't sound so good. What shall we do with him and whit kind of specialists should we try to make next time?

 

[dutchfire]

Mo Tzu: Specialist in Chowderton?
Next: Scientist or Merchant

 

[1889]

I think so too. How do you feel about giving up our worker bonus for the merchant specialists when we change civics in 4 turns?

 

[dutchfire]

I'd do 2 scientists and 2 merchants, that should be enough. Slavery might be better (cheaper).

 

[1889]

Yes, at our happy limit and still lots of food slavery could still work out for us. As for Wheelville I'd like to run more than just 4 specialists though so how about a priest too?

 

[dutchfire]

Slavery with 2 scientists, 2 merchants and a priest sounds good to me.

 

[dutchfire]

We will need horses for Cavalry. This is our only possible source for horses:



Dzeta has clams, site 10 can act as a canal. Both sites will need a missionary to expand the borders.

 

[1889]

I love the hills around Dzeta but am more in favor of settling site 10.

Manufacturing is already one of our strengths so don't feel much pressure to make another production site, besides Dzeta will be in the way of a settlement further south at site 2.

Site 10's best point is that it will allow trade with Aloha (after our galley explores a few more tiles). On the other hand we'll probably be using mercantilism when we finish banking in 5 turns so foreign trade routes are out. We’ll still want resource trades of course though.

I'm also now in favor of settling sooner rather than later. That is we should get a worker to begin prepping the site and start a settler as soon as it is convenient.

 

[dutchfire]

152 840 AD
Uneventful turn, just loading units into transports. Mo Tzu sent to Chowderton.
For next turn, Wheelville finishes the galley, it's currently set to build a monastry, but a grocer might be better.

 

[1889]

I agree with the grocer, that will allow two more merchants also.

Piffle's warrior just saw our transport filled with troops. They know we are goint to attack Loco and so can now tell them and Epsilon that the attack is imminent. They didn't even respond to our OB offer. These people are our enemies as far as I can tell. Why should we let them gather any more valuable information. Lets kill the warrior.

 

[dutchfire]

I'd say stay neutral to Piffle, we might need them some day.

 

[1889]

Offered OB to Piffle. They already have the best seat in the house so I don’t see the harm if they go off exploring someplace else.

Banking and civics change in 2 turns.
Settled Prophet in Chowderton.
Changed Wheelville to Grocer

In Magadan our Axe sits tight. Barbarians will probably attak the city next turn. The worker and warrior continue roading to the incense and it turns out that Loco still has a unit up there. In Glassport the worker starts a road to the new city site. The settler has been qued up in Magadan and defensive units are on their way ( archer just offloaded near Wheelville, axe and warrior from Tropicana).

Any ideas what we should do with the warrior near Epsilon? He is at a dead end and keeping him around is just going to cost money.

The real action is the setup for the invasion. No sense in having our units loiter outside our territory and charge supply costs so I brought them back home to save a few bucks until they are ready to sail as a fleet.

Galley just outside Tropicana can sail out and begin scouting Locotopia.
Galley just outside the boarders of Chowderton has Mace and Cat. It can just wait for the fleet to assemble inside out territory.
Galley just inside our territory has a cat and just dropped off an archer. It can rendezvous with Tropicana longbow when the fleet sails.
2 Galleys just outside Wheelville will load up the mace, cat, camel and cat just being built in Chowderton.

We are about to go to war. This is a critical stage in the game let’s do it as a team: be sure to post any comments, questions, encouragements, favorite recipes, whatever.

 

[Theoden]

We are about to go to war. This is a critical stage in the game let’s do it as a team: be sure to post any comments, questions, encouragements, favorite recipes, whatever.

I don't know about strategical tips, since my civ4 war skills is barely comparable to my civ3 skills where I was able to outmaneuvre the AI completely.

There is one thing we need to be aware of though, and that's war weariness (WW). The most important to remember is how WW points are accumulated:

Your unit attacks their unit=+3 if you lose, +1 if you win
Their unit attacks your unit =+2 (win or lose)
You capture a unit=+1
Your unit is captured=+2
You capture a city=+6

For this game I think 1 WW point equals about 0.5% WW. So for instance 20 WW points would mean a city of size ten would have one unhappiness.

From the way points are assigned, we can see that it's best to win battles on the offense. If we know that we'll lose a battle however, it's better to do it on the defense. Also important to mention is that Loco won't accumulate any WW points as long as we fight in their cultural area (including their former territory a long time after we've captured it). So we have to play cleverly here to avoid serious WW problems.

BTW, should I post an official war declaration in the main mtdg-forum once it's time or should I make a letter to Loco or both? I'm looking forward to making a triumphant war declaration.

 

[1889]

Wow, I actually forgot about WW from capturing a city. For that and other reasons I've been thinking that we should raze B and O and plan on capturing the other cities.

By destroying B and O Loco is hurt bad even if our invasion fails, our troops are free to press the attack without having to worry about defending our conquest or preventing revolt and of course we spare ourselves the WW.

Later cities can be captured more easily because Loco's cultural area will be reduced, they will be less able to counter attack and WW later in the war won't hurt as bad.

I'm looking forward to your post. Start a new thread and send an email the turn before we declare in-game sounds good. What do you think are the chances of some Locotopians joining our team after we destroy them? Maybe we can send an OOC email along with our declaration that tells them no hard feelings. Some people take these games a little too seriously. If we do get some maybe we can change our name to the Innovatopian Empire.

 

[dutchfire]

One advantage of capturing B&O is that it will give us a bridge for our galleys soon. When B&O's borders expand, they'll cross the sea, and our galleys will be able to sail through.

 

[1889]

Next turn the fleet can load the mace and catapult and set sail. The longbow can leave Tropicana for the rendezvous on the land bridge. I just realized that if Piffle walks south they will see our fleet anyway so OB was a mistake, sorry. (It didn’t give us a trade route to Aloha either). Epsilons caravel (now with a move of 4) just showed up west of Chowderton. They don’t need OB to sail right into our harbors and can also overtake and maybe attack our fleet. We can use the extra galley as an escort rather than a scout. I assume that if they attack the AI will use the empty ship be the best defender.

Good news is that worker just finished in Magadan and is on his way to help chop jungles in Tropicana, but how about spending some time improving Sinsburg first? A water wheel would give that place some badly needed production.

BTW Epsilon now has Nationalism but we will be the most powerful nation in 2 turns.

Banking next turn Compass (4 turns) and Optics (6 turns) qued up to follow.

Civics change right after that. My suggestions are:
Switch Vassalage back to Bureaucracy. Its 2 gpt cheaper and gives Wheelville the gold and hammer boost, although I will miss the XP as we still have many more units to build.

Serfdom back to Slavery is same cost.

Decentralized to Mercantilism. When war breaks out we won’t have any foreign trade so might as well get free specialists, additional cost 3 gpt.

Keep Theocracy. It’s cheaper than Organized Religion, prevents heresy and since 3-4 cities will be building units anyway OR isn’t such a deal.

 

[1889]

Is it time for a major policy change!

It has really been bugging me that our invasion will not begin under the veil of secrecy, especially with the potential Epsilonian threat to our fleet and homeland. I’ve also been thinking about Dutch’s plan to win by domination and wonder if war with Loco is just squandering our demographic strengths and playing into our weakness.

Just sailing that fleet outside our boarders will cost us 5-6 gpt, and then there is WW and reinforcements, etc…

Plan B would be to bring our boys home and let our, now useless, warriors retire. Two galleys can sail out East and west and a third can station off the west coast.

 

[1889]

I've been having doubts about our war plan, but team chats have raised some interesting options, please see that thread for details.

There is little doubt that capturing Loco would be a tremendous victory for us and in a war between us and Loco I have no doubt that we would prevail without serious complications. I am now mostly concerned with how the other teams, especially Epsilon, will react to this potential game winning move on our part.

It is possible that they will misjudge the situation and do nothing, but that does not seam like the most likely response. Loco will most likely ask Epsilon for help against us and as their chief rival such an invitation may be hard for Epsilon to turn down.

The conquest of Loco will probably not be quick as transportation times alone will take 20 turns at least. During these 20-30 turns we will be most vulnerable to enemy action. It is not known how close Epsilon is to Astronomy, but caravels alone can cause serious difficulty by blockading coastal cities or worse by harassing our troop transports.

Until we can build caravels of our own (in about 10 turns) we can not protect our troop transports from even a single enemy ship, Piffle and Epsilon both have caravels in the area. An unpromoted caravel has a 74% chance to beat a galley in coastal waters with a combat 1 promotion.

Here are some things we can do:

• A 2-3 turn delay may let us sail after Piffle and Epsilon’s units have moved on to other area.
  
• Offering trades to Piffle may make earn some good favor. Silk for fish maybe, the point would be to make a good offer that they don’t want to loose.
  
• We could try to get a non-aggression pact with Epsilon; they will have noticed the troop build up and may wonder what our plans are. I know we agreed to keep our chat with Piffle confidential but if we suggest a non-aggression pact until 1250 AD Epsilon may wonder about that date and guess that we have been talking to Piffle, about what would be clear enough.
  
• Epsilon also mentioned an OB agreement that prohibits troop entry, but we can ask if they would at least let our warrior pass through just to get out since they got him trapped. It would give us another look at their preparations in the south.

 

[1889]

We got banking, compass in 3 and can change civics next turn.

However or southern region is becoming a massive tail gate party. Epsilon's explorer is still in the neighborhood along with Piffle's warrior and 3 caravels loiter off the coast. No way are going to sneak past all these folks, or succeed without their consent.

Our Galley has got a good lead on where Loco's missing city, Delhi, might be.

 

[1889]

Also Epsilon evidently still has expansion plans.

But lets talk about those civics.