UF1 - The Deep End

I would lean towards avoiding the "sell stuff/take loans the same turn you declare war" stuff, it is rather cheesy. If we want a hostile AI's gold we should fight them for it or use the extortion option

Can we really start a war with 1 horseman? Surely it'd spend forever healing up and not being able to attack?
 
My experience has been that if you have an Archer in the AI's city radius, it gets targeted. New cities are fairly weak, so yeah I think I could take it out with one Horseman and one Archer. That would leave Rome with just Rome (right?) and by the time we heal up we'll have two Horseman. I think its the best way to get the snowball running, but I'm willing to be talked out of it :). I'll play this evening instead of lunch time to give more people time to comment on my mad plan.

I think the "no cheese" vote has won out. Does that mean we don't steal CS Workers as well? That's pretty much in the same bucket IMO.

Darrell

P.S. If we aren't going to attack immediately, I would think we slow build a Horseman and not purchase one. No need to purchase until the turn or two before we decide to attack.
 
Well it's a new game and I have no real idea if the 1 horse attack + our current military (1 archer, 2 warriors?) would work or not, it's your call ultimately on this one Darrell. Lots of the old civ4 SGs featured wild and crazy stuff after all.
 
I am playing an AW game and tested horsemen. I think they are better than I thought due to their amazing reach. I guess combined with a +1 visibility range promotion, they are unstoppable.
 
Build stable first, if you going to build HM. Stables do pay off and our hourse city would spend most of it's time produce horse units.
 
BTw, my vote was not for or against "cheese". I was just pointing out cost. What I mean that is it not "cheese", it is legitimate way to play, which carries long turn cost, which could be come very hight. AI would start to ask 1K gold for open borders, give you like 150 gold max for resources.

In my experience it is more profitable in a long run to play honorable.

Basically My vote is going against using term cheese for this kind of tactics.

In addition, I founf it is mach better not to declare ourself, but to get double declaration together with some other ai or wait for ai to declare.

Civ 5 is very mach game of patience. there is no rush, not like in civ 4.
 
(45) - Okay its immediately apparent I won't have the option to attack during my turnset, because we won't even have Horse available. I look around and everything looks fine. I decide in the end to change Pasargadae to the Cow tile. 3F grows us in 4 turns instead of 7 and the cost is only 8g total. Seems worth it. I also try and hustle some cash but the most I can get is 10g from Ramses for Open Borders :(. I pay Venice 250g, much better than losing Ally status and its only slightly less efficient than a 500g payment would have been.

(46) - Bucharest targets an encampent in the middle of frickin' nowhere. The only silver lining is we can avoid having our Scout stumble into it.

(47) - Ramses builds Stonehenge in between turns. He's not that far away :mischief:. Scout has fully defogged the west, I start the long track back east but circle him north to pass between Pasargadae and Rome. I want to get a peak at what units Octavian has milling around.

(48) Someone we haven't met enters the Classical Era. Our Archer makes it to Pasargadae and finds a Barbarian Encampment.

t48.jpg


Smells like free experience :sniper:. Rome's got three Warriors and an Archer in Antium. And a tasty looking Worker. Too bad we can't take it yet.

(49) Perspolis grows into working the Sugar tile (again). Pesepolis also demands...Sugar :). That's a nice break, unfortunately it will be some time before we get around to improving that tile. Archer snipes for 2 XPs.

(50) The Pasture on the Cows is done, and the Archer snipes for two more XPs. We are rich:

t50m.jpg


(51) Perhaps not surprising given the last chart, Wu Zetian comes knocking:

t51n.jpg


Its a good use of money, but I don't see what the rush is. No one else has enough cash to join her, so I decide to hold off for now in case we do want to do a Purchase fueled rush (and I still think we do).

(52) We're Classical :cool::

t52g.jpg


I select Trapping next, it allows us to improve the Fur which we can then sell, and of course Trading Posts. Checking back, Wu is broke. I have no idea what she spent her money on, but now we can't get a research pact even if we wanted to. In other annoying news, when I click the Horse tile, the Worker takes the only path that goes within two tiles of the Barbarian Encampment :crazyeye:. I finish off the Barbarian with a city bombardment, then reclaim the Woker with our Archer, but that's one Worker turn lost. Our Scout knocks out the Encampment for 25g.

(53) Our Great General has been carefully making his way to Pasargadae, and finally gets there. The Worker at Perspolis completes. There's been a call for more Workers. I'm not sure that's the right call, but I can't make a compelling arguement for anything else since we don't have Horse yet (we can't build a Stables here). So Worker it is, although I'm not particularly happy with the choice. The Worker that just completed is sent to improve the last Wines to sell.

(54) The Encampment near Perspolis spawns another Brute, pushing the first one out into the open:

t54a.jpg


We gain 5XPs at the cost of 2 HPs.

(55) Ramses lands the Hanging Gardens. I love him :love:. We somehow spot a new Barbarian Encampment near Persepolis. I guess we are in that Social Policy.

t55o.jpg


The Wine deal to Ramses wears off but no one wants to buy it, including Ramses :confused:. Keep an eye out for this.

I thought I had taken an overview screenshot, of our front with Rome, but I can't find it. Basically the Archer is in the city, the Warrior is covering our Worker, which is improving the Horse. The Scout is now well east of the city and heading for the great unknown. At Perspolis, our Warrior is healing. I think/hope I moved him back to the Woods. 99% sure on that. Trapping is due in 2 turns. Horse is connected in 2ish turns.

We lack the cash to insta buy a Horseman, but the Mounument finishes in 4 turns and the Worker in 3 turns. We can cash rush a Stables at Pasargadae and slow build two Horseman I guess. I don't doubt Mutineer but it surprises me that a Stables is a worthwhile build.

Darrell
 

Attachments

I guess I'm next? Let's see...

Anyone know where Gandhi is? We seem to have his open borders. Definitely would have been better to get some of his money instead. Speaking of taking India's money, we can sell him wine for 111g and another 180 over 30 turns. That is fairly efficient, I'll probably take it. Ramesses has no money at all and we are about to hook up our fourth wine in 2 turns anyway, which we can drink ourselves, so there's nothing else to do with the wine.

In other diplomacy, I believe we generally wish to be friendly with China, annoyed at Rome (coming military adversary), and cautious with Egypt (future military adversary, and builder of our wonders), so to speak.

For economy, in about 4 turns Pasargadae will finish its monument and have hooked horses, and will grow and no longer have good tiles to add (only 2-yield ones). I wish it had been settled in better terrain. It won't even get better in a golden age, it's all non-river grass. :( I see three options for how to develop further:

1) Buy a settler immediately, send it to the river area and give it 1-2 of our workers so it can quickly become an excellent site. Build 2 horsemen.

2) Have Pasargadae build that settler (taking 12 turns, so getting it 16 turns from now) as this is a more efficient use of its food surplus than growing into bad tiles. Buy a horseman instead (and make one in the capital) and go to war once we have our horses hooked up. (Btw: worst strategic positioning of a resource EVER, haha. On flatland within range of our opponent's city, and twice as close to his capital as ours. :lol:)

3) Disregard development, get 2-3 horsemen ASAP! Only go for a settler once we're at war.

I think in all cases we want to get 3 horsemen and a settler soon, the question is one of ordering. The settler is the most useful to get quickly by quite a lot, but the horsemen are more efficient to rush buy, and after that it's a question of how quickly we can make them useful. I don't think it will be effective to attack in the next ten turns. The gains will be small, and, as we haven't done ANYTHING in terms of making the world not mind us declaring on Caesar (e.g. pacts of secrecy, being rude to him...), the drawbacks could be large.

Here are the reasons that we want to do those things.

War: Caesar is already mad that we have poached his land. Furthermore his borders are literally adjacent to our only strategic resource, which is on flatland. This is a big liability for us if he gets to good units before we have a more protected source of horse. We are in poor position to wage war in any other area of the map, until we have taken out Antium. So I think that's necessary. On the other hand, we get very little immediate benefit from doing so, just a bit of money and most likely a worker... and we might make the other AIs mad.

Settlement: I'm looking at a city on the deer. It has an insane number of resources, including marble and cotton, and generally has excellent tiles to work (PLAINS and RIVER). We desperately need land like this, both because it's ridiculously good by itself and because it will make our golden ages extremely effective. If we do not settle quickly, we are going to pop our first happiness golden age prematurely, with only our capital benefiting. We should also settle a city between there and our capital, taking horses, cows, and more river tiles. Ideally this can happen before our golden age too, but it's less important.

Techwise, Mining->Masonry after Trapping finishes seems pretty clear. It will give us Sugar, Sugar, Marble!

Thoughts? My instinct is that rushing to claim the best city site visible to us, when we are so low on quality tiles and have a high happiness surplus, is best. But maybe that's not abusive enough. ;)
 
Good news on the Wine. For some reason when I went door to door, no one would take them :crazyeye:. Not sure where Gandhi is, but the fact we have Open Borders explains why I couldn't see ours to him.

Speed on the attack is everything, I strongly suggest we move quickly against Caesar. The benefit we gain isn't the land (although Rome looks pretty sweet), its the peace of mind and room to settle into at our leisure, plus the development of crack troops to go steal all those wonders Ramses is building.

I favored the Deer site for city #2, I certainly favor it for city #3 :). As you point out, its more effective to build Settlers and purchase Horsemen. I think we can declare with two Horseman for sure (heck I think we can with one), no need to wait for three. I would probably go Settler at Pasargadae, and Horseman at Persepolis. Then, purchase a second Horseman at Pasargadae when the one for Persepolis is complete, then declare war and watch Rome suicide all his Warriors into our lands. Might be the one sliver lining of the Horse location...he'll possibily go to Pillage it :hammer:.

Darrell
 
The one tactical problem we have is that we do have to defend that horse tile - it's it's in range of Antium! This makes an initially defensive war a lot trickier, and is why I am hesitant to declare with just one horseman. With 2 (and an archer and a GG!) I think we'd be fine though.
 
I want to attack the Romans before they attack us (and they will attack us) because of the precarious situation of our horse tile. I noticed in a SP game that swordsmen got a 33% or 50% combat penalty for "lack of strategic resources" when I temporarily lost my iron and I guess horses might have that problem too.

I can see why you guys want to build a settler but I think the proposed deer site is likely to piss Egypt off and I wouldn't be surprised if Egypt/Rome joint war decced us if we took it. Cow/horse/banana site west of Hanoi is safer and easy to defend if you want to settle now though

My vote would be Horses now, rome as city #3 and sort the infrastructure out afterwards. We already lost a few turns by improving the cows first instead of horses.
 
delurking here.

rome has 3 warriors and an archer in sight on the screen above, i'd also suggest to use 2 horses to attack. don't forget to bring your warriors in position.

i'd also suggest to keep one warrior east of persepolis (but close to the city) to farm the spawning barbs. sooner or later your allied CS will declare a quest for the barb camp and you can save a lot of money by going for it then (or did you destroy it already?).
never fogbust near the city states, a camp there is one of the best things that can happen :)

can you buy the horse tile near your capital? don't know if you can expand that way right now.
 
I can see why you guys want to build a settler but I think the proposed deer site is likely to piss Egypt off and I wouldn't be surprised if Egypt/Rome joint war decced us if we took it. Cow/horse/banana site west of Hanoi is safer and easy to defend if you want to settle now though

Egypt just built Stonehenge and the Hanging Gardens and is working on the Pyramids if our current view of their city is to be believed. I don't think they're a threat. :)
 
My vote would be Horses now, rome as city #3 and sort the infrastructure out afterwards. We already lost a few turns by improving the cows first instead of horses.

I'm not even convinced that attacking Rome proper is a good idea right now. That's not a very good city! All grass and no river. But to clarify, this is basically a vote for my #3, right? 3 horses before settler (1 bought, and 1 per city)?

I've changed my mind to be pretty solidly in favor of option 2 (settler in Pasargadae, horses in capital and purchased). I don't think we need the third horse soon anyway. Between darrell and myself I'd say that option is in the lead at the moment. I encourage argument against it though.
 
Barring any surprises I'm planning to play in ~7 hours. (I'll be mostly busy in the meantime.)
 
Btw, the reason why I didn't settle further up north is simple. It's too far away from our capital and would cheese off Egypt while we wouldn't be in any position to defend it so far off.

I settled next to the horses to grab that from Rome, I agree it's not the best location, but in Civ 5, locations do not matter that much if you get the maritime food support (of course I know rivers are best, but it's not as if our land is full of them)
 
I got started really late, and I'm going to have to finish tomorrow. But interesting news guys: we're at war! :cool:
 
Back
Top Bottom