UNGY-01 Another spy attempt

[Rusten]

This is what you get if you attack while Rusten is on watch! His power will drop a little more as well as I finished off 4 knights this turn. Give the Pikes the upgrade vs mounted units, I unlocked it just now.



Units killed so far: 24 knights, 3 pikemen, 5 macemen, 2 catapults, 4 trebs, 7 longbowmen and 6 war elephants.
Units lost: 4 musketmen

We will now get cannons and cuirassier which will make short work of his current army composition. I suggest we make our move. The muskets will handle the Pikemen and the cuirassiers will handle everything else (and siege for cities). Cuirassiers are immune to first strikes, so they make great attackers vs longbowmen. They’re the most underrated unit on the forums, I barely ever see them used.

Turns: did the draft&whip thing and put an army together in the besieged city.
- We steal military science from Ragnar.
- We steal steam power from QSH
- We steal steel from QSH at the end of the turnset

Yes, as you probably figured by now, QSH did not go for rifling after assembly line.
To top it off he even went for railroad after steel (which he is researching now).

Suryavarman makes a demand:



I give in given our current situation. Fortunately it brings him up to pleased, and thus:



Reasons;
- maybe he can cause a diversion when attacking Monty.
- If he’s at war and gets the pre-req. for rifling he’s bound to research it.
- The diplo modifer doesn’t hurt either, especially for upcoming AP elections.

(At the end of the turnset Monty is 1 turn away from Communism and gets the Great Spy. My guess is that Suryavarman will then switch to rifling (the AI often does this when failing to get the great spy) and skip his cultural attempt (due to war) so keep an eye out for his next tech.)

A great general has spawned, I sent him towards our HE city in order to create a military academy (we’ve got Mil. Sci. now).

We spawned a great spy in Alemanni -> I set up a SY in York.

Nottingham is 1 turn away from a cuirassier, but after that one set the city to work on cannons (I already queued up two).

Also did some minor trades;
- ivory to Sitting Bull for cows and 9 gold p/t
- pigs to Suryavarman for silk

Too bad I won't get to invade, was having so much fun

 

[mystyfly]

I don't think sury will abandon his attempt on CV and so wont be first to rifling - I hope you'll prove me wrong...

Having another civ buzy sending SODs into our enemy's territory certainly is nice though.

I also think that QSH won't start any wars himself soon as he neglected rifling so we shouldn't get distracted from monty - BTW nice job slaughtering his SOD


Looking foreward to some action

 

[Rusten]

Even if we don't get rifling killing Monty with cannons, cuirassier, pikes and muskets won't be that hard.

I set the slider to 0% as we have all the techs we need atm. We can focus EP to whoever goes ahead researching rifling. The cash can upgrade our units now (trebs -> cannons) and/or later.

 

[pigswill]

Is it worth considering using the slider to incite some revolts or rely on cannon instead?

 

[Rusten]

Is it worth considering using the slider to incite some revolts or rely on cannon instead?

We will use incite revolts for sure, but the slider part has already been dealt with. I allocated EP towards Monty for this specific reason, I believe it's above 3k atm which is more than enough for revolts. The cannons should just focus on collateral damage to improve our battle odds, we can't waste turns bombarding, haste is the key in these situations. I didn't have time to recruit more spies yet though, that should be done as well the coming 5-10 turns. Not that we need so many, but 5 more or so would be good.

Edit: We're not getting 0 espionage either. There are several buildings with a set value that are still running in addition to the specialists (mercantilism).

 

[mystyfly]

Is it worth considering using the slider to incite some revolts or rely on cannon instead?

We already spent EPs on monty and we might as well use it, but only for the older and (culturally) better defended ones. IMO, cannons can take cultural defences down quite quickly so we won't need spies in his 40% cities so we wont need any more EPs on monty to finish this I think.

 

[shyuhe]

I imagine we're going t obe crippling Monty's tech rate soon so we might as well burn the EP that we have on him. Got it - will play later tonight.

 

[Rusten]

I imagine we're going t obe crippling Monty's tech rate soon so we might as well burn the EP that we have on him. Got it - will play later tonight.

Ok, if you're playing tonight then go ahead, but Morganknight should get the next set after you as he got the saves working again (dunno about this one though.)


Roster:
Ungy
Rusten: just played
Morganknight: UP
Shyuhe: on deck
Pigswill
Mystyfly

 

[shyuhe]

oh oops never mind then. I forgot about that. Morganknight - you take it first.

 

[Gr8scott]

@gr8scott:
Having the AP-religion as state religion doubles your votes. If we switch monty he'll lose many votes but the timing must work, we must know exactly when the vote comes up.

Thanks Myst.

I was also not sure what happens if the leader of the AP has their religion switched. Is there a new vote for pope? Are there just no more resolutions for a while or what?

GS

 

[Rusten]

I forgot to mention 2 things in my report;

1: remember to revolt from org. religion to theocracy. I couldn't during my set because I had to whip/draft in order to stop Monty's initial push (we also had to make stabes). It's best to do it right away so we get the experience for our cuirassiers in progress.

2: I settled a MI in our Globe city (we got 2 GGs as I finished off 2 major stacks) so that our drafted units would start with 2 experience points (promotion).

 

[Morganknight]

got it for tongiht.

 

[ungy]

Great job Rusten!

Monte does have a lot of units, so it might make sense to wait for cannon.
He's got a big stack of defenders in the south--if we clear that Tenochtitlan is weak and we could consider a naval move over there--we don't need our galleons.

We also might want to steal communism from Monte--that's a biggie for us.

I think we are well set here.

 

[Morganknight]

Sorry to take so long...

I am excited and a little nervous to lead the first wave of our grand assault.

240> I revolt to Theocracy per request. About half away through our set, I realize I probably should have implemented Emancipation as well. I'm not ready to sacrifice another turn of production in the middle of our war, so I put it on the shelf for the next set. I smile to see Nebuchadnezzar is still alive. I promote him to a Maceman. Sadly, somewhere along the way, he dies in battle. Se est la vie. I promote all of our Trebs to Cannons. I notice that most of our city defenders have multiple City Raider promotions. I institute a multi-turn plan to reroute some muskets to those cities and upgrade those units to grenadiers and get them to the frontlines.

241> The AP proposes the war against Montezuma cease. We vote no, and see if our new-found power will carry any weight.

242> We win. The cessation of war fails by 44 votes as everyone else rallys behind our cause. Sury starts researching Rifling...we are already set up to steal it, but I send another couple of spies that way just in case.

243> Our Granary in Nottingham is destoyed by spys. Oh my. (In retrospect, I never got around to rebuilding it. Low priority)

244> We get another Great General and it is sent to Alemanni to build another Military Academy to maximize that city's already high production.

248> Our first attempt at stealing Rifling fails, but our second attempt is successful.

We start upgrading units to Redcoats and Calvary. We trade SB Corn for Whales. Our trade partners actually force us to renegotiate many deals through my set, but most are boring, so I won't bore you. I do encourage the next set to examine them to see if they can be improved.

251> An AP vote comes up to cease the war against us. Hmm, I like the war against us, so I vote no.

252> Monty is the only one to vote yes and we continue.

In the remaining turns we keep our march moving ever forward, taking first, Texcoco and then Tlaxcala and finally the Aztec capitol, Tenochtitlan.

We now possess the Spiral Minaret in Tlaxcaca and the Mahabodhi in Tenochtitlan.

We have enough EP to steal Railroad from QSH and/or Sciectific Method as a prerequisite for stealing Communism from Monty. All three spys have been sitting in QSH lands long enough to get the full discount. Group input required...

We have spawned another Great General who is currently chilling in London.

I hope you all find things in good order. Best of luck on the next set.

 

[ungy]

Marganknight: good going! We've got Monte on the run now and things are looking up.

A few things:
we've been playing 10 turn sets--given the nature of our game I think the short sets make sense since that allows more comments--you played 20.

upgrading the warlord was a mistake--at this point in the game it should have been kept as weak as possible as its main value was its healing, and keeping it weak keeps it out of action.

I think the promotions are incorrect--I think some flanking cavs are good but definately not all. The cannon should not be promoted to barrage2--probably a mix of cr2 and the CR accuracy. Cannon at this stage are not suicide units with CR2--they become suicide with the barrage2. CR2 cannon are just devastating at this stage of the game.

But more importantly units should NEVER be promoted to anything that doesn't add defense before they are used in combat, and even the defensive promotions should not be given when they are out of the line. That allows the proper promotion to be given when they are going to be used, as well as possible healing if the stack gets hit.

We are in danger of losing Tenochtitlan back--not much we can do about it but we'll get it back again of course.

The Mahabodi is HUGE! We'll get an additional discount on spying with the shrine and the SM is useful as well.

 

[mystyfly]

Nice to see monty on his knees. going after him definitely is the best choice.

I got confused by those swaps. Is shyuhe now going to play?

 

[Rusten]

I got confused by those swaps. Is shyuhe now going to play?

Roster:
ungy
Rusten
Morganknight: just played
shyuhe: UP
pigswill: on deck
mystyfly

 

[ungy]

Not to be a nag but one more thing that we need to do is draft EVERY TURN in Warwick. We're in the golden age of redcoats. The smaller the city is, the quicker it regrows. That city should be either size 5 or 6--nothing else.

We should definately steal railroad--that seems like a no-brainer. As for sci-meth, I think we don't have too many monastaries anyway and their time is running out.

 

[mystyfly]

monasteries don't offer ANYTHING anyway. Culture we don't need anymore (in notts and hastings) and science not anyway.

 

[ungy]

monasteries don't offer ANYTHING anyway. Culture we don't need anymore (in notts and hastings) and science not anyway.

well 2H but I agree with you