who should i attack, (saved game attached)
- Thread starter web25
- Start date
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
Your options look like this:
Bzyantium is not as smart as England. And not as rich.
Lots of Maces near Britian; lots of Knights near Byzantium.
I would attack England, claim Norwich, Oxford and York (second Coal and gets past the jungle belt), begin to rail, drop Navigation and learn Military Tradition for Cavalry and then plan to head for Replacable Part to get faster workers, Infantry and Artillery, all the while rolling over England and Byzantium before expanding overseas.
- Attack England to claim the Coal across the border at Norwich, which is close and defensible and that Coal will be connected right away.
- Attack Byzantium, with Coal six tiles away from the nearest border, needing roads to be built to connect.
Bzyantium is not as smart as England. And not as rich.
Lots of Maces near Britian; lots of Knights near Byzantium.
I would attack England, claim Norwich, Oxford and York (second Coal and gets past the jungle belt), begin to rail, drop Navigation and learn Military Tradition for Cavalry and then plan to head for Replacable Part to get faster workers, Infantry and Artillery, all the while rolling over England and Byzantium before expanding overseas.
darski
Regent in Training
Yeah... what he said 
Elephantium
Malcolm was a very good cat.
I downloaded this and played through 1500 AD, roughly following CBob's plan. Attacking at Norwich actually took a while due to a huge stack of English units there; I covered much more ground in the northeast.
Other than taking the coal at Norwich, though, I noticed:
You have very few cities. You could easily double your city count without getting into science farm territory.
You could use more Workers, too, especially with the railing about to begin.
You have a lot of regular army units. Training them in only cities with barracks helps because they're more survivable -- fewer losses means fewer new units you have to train to maintain your army strength.
You have almost no artillery. A stack of a dozen Cannon would drop the defenders in most of the English cities to 1hp each, making it easy for 2-4 units to take the city.
Hope this helps
Other than taking the coal at Norwich, though, I noticed:
You have very few cities. You could easily double your city count without getting into science farm territory.
You could use more Workers, too, especially with the railing about to begin.
You have a lot of regular army units. Training them in only cities with barracks helps because they're more survivable -- fewer losses means fewer new units you have to train to maintain your army strength.
You have almost no artillery. A stack of a dozen Cannon would drop the defenders in most of the English cities to 1hp each, making it easy for 2-4 units to take the city.
Hope this helps
web25
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2011
- Messages
- 186
so are you saying i should build more cities in my territory or get more by war?
yup i need more workers
i just started to build more artillery, i capture many cannons when i attacked england. i have around 8 now.
Elephantium
Malcolm was a very good cat.
I meant, build more cities in your territory. I continued playing from your save, and I've been building almost nothing but workers and settlers to build rails and fill in gaps between cities.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
I played ten turns in a rather loosey-goosey fashion. It took a while to capture Norwich but it did fall.
Turn Log
Turn Log
Spoiler :
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
Several reasons.
One was to have more slaves for railing.
Second was that jungle cities serve almost no purpose. To make them productive takes a lot of worker turns clearing out the jungle. And unless there are a lot of workers to start with, this slows down more important improvements elsewhere.
Now, once the empire is railed then it might make sense to start removing jungle tiles in a massive fashion. But for the near future that will not happen.
Third, I didn't want to be bothered by defending these minor citiies in hard to reach locations. And babysit their puny resisters. Just easier to raze them and forget about them.
On the wonders, I switched those around so as not to build Shakespeare's Theater. Once a city gets over size 12 it needs a lot of attention to keep their people happy. At size 12 a city is much easier to manage. Get it set up to stay happy and productive and leave it alone.
This also makes it easier to cycle through the cities and keep an eye on the science farms, which do require a high degree of handling until they reach size 6 or 12, where they, too, can be put on auto-pilot. The big, productive cities can be ignored during this time, since they don't need any attention.
And somehow I forget to learn Military Tradition early. That did not really affect the death of England, since you had alread built so many Knights and Maces. And the faster workers are so nice to use! I didn't follow my own advice, but I think that was okay. Now, if you had fewer Knights, the invasion on England could have been very bad and the decision/oversight regarding Cavalry would have been obvious. But as it happened it went well.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
I started off by changing many builds out west near Byzantium to settlers. Then I saw that workers were needed for railing, so many of the settlers were switched to workers (when the switching made sense; that is, the shields committed to the settler build were less than 10). I have rushed many workers, paying 80 gold for some and 36 gold for others. Many rMaces were disbanded in captured English cities that had resisters to build a worker/slave in one turn. Maces, when disbanded, yield 10 shields. If a city has resisters, nothing can be rushed, so disbanding those Maces bypassed that problem, created a worker/slave, reduced the city population by one, which in turn reduced the number of units required to prevent a culture flip, and reduced overall military upkeep. This was an unexpected bonus to having some rMaces. I don't think I could have disbanded vMaces so easily
.So far I have built only two cities and that was in the second turnset, which I haven't completed yet. There are now 3 other settlers in the unit mix and I haven't had time to focus on them.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
This is my second turnset.
One thing I do in my games, and I did here, was set a contiental rally point near the capital. When new units are made and their turn becomes 'active' they will all move to that tile at one tile. That saves me from moving them there myself.
One gotcha on this: if a city is building improvements and then switches to units or if a new city is built and builds units, those new units will ignore the contiental rally point. To fix that, just clear the current rally point and set a new one, even to the same tile.
Having all the new units in one location lets me organize my turn better. I tend to park units near the capital so that I know how many units I have to use that turn. Nothing upsets me more than running out of attackers and having to scramble to find one more unit to get the job done. So I just gather everyone around the capital (easy to find with the 'H' key) and use them as I need them. Which I have done here. There is also a stack of Elites, ready to be promoted to Elite* status, when the time comes.
Turnlog
EDIT
8,000th post
One thing I do in my games, and I did here, was set a contiental rally point near the capital. When new units are made and their turn becomes 'active' they will all move to that tile at one tile. That saves me from moving them there myself.
One gotcha on this: if a city is building improvements and then switches to units or if a new city is built and builds units, those new units will ignore the contiental rally point. To fix that, just clear the current rally point and set a new one, even to the same tile.
Having all the new units in one location lets me organize my turn better. I tend to park units near the capital so that I know how many units I have to use that turn. Nothing upsets me more than running out of attackers and having to scramble to find one more unit to get the job done. So I just gather everyone around the capital (easy to find with the 'H' key) and use them as I need them. Which I have done here. There is also a stack of Elites, ready to be promoted to Elite* status, when the time comes.
Turnlog
Spoiler :
EDIT
8,000th post
Elephantium
Malcolm was a very good cat.
That's a very fine 8000th post, CBob! 
It's been a long time since I played a game with CBob, but I'd be very surprised if he automated slaves. FWIW, I'm in the middle of an AW game with ~125 slaves, plus my native workers. It's kind of a pain to direct them, but the AI is just awful at automating. I stack them, but do not automate.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
Stack slaves: Yes, oh YES! Generally. Ususally. It depends.
I seperate slaves from workers and rarely combine the two. It makes the mental math easier. Three workers = 6 slaves, that is easy to see. But does 4 slaves and 1 worker equal three workers? How about 2 slaves and 2 workers? And what does a stack of slave, worker, slave, slave, worker, slave, slave, slave equal? Those are not so easy to see. So I keep them seperate so I don't get confused.
Early in the game there just aren't enough workers to combine into stacks. And since it takes 3WT to road a flatland tile, unless the need is great, moving 2 workers into a tile on the same turn to build a road is not the best way to do that.
Once I get around 5 or 6 workers I will begin to pay more attention to stacking them. Now that rails are available, I will stack as much as possible. I will create stacks for railing/mining mountains, stacks for mining/railing hills and of course stacks for railing the flatlands. Around the captital are many mountains; many of those mountains were railed in one turn. It got the job done and it allowed the rail benefits to be used that turn.
For instance, if there were six mined and roaded mountain tiles around a Mayan city, is it better to have one worker in each tile railing or put all six into one tile to rail it in one turn? I opt to have all six in one tile and then move them around to all six tiles. On turn 6 all tiles will be railed, regardless of worker allocation. But by railing one tile per turn, we gain an extra shield each turn, for a total of either 15 (5+4+3+2+1) or 21 (6+5+4+3+2+1) extra shields over the six turns (my math and mind are fuzzy at the moment). That is biggest reason to stack: to get that extra, marginal, shield.
Automate workers:
To see how poorly the AI uses slaves/workers, just name them and then follow three or four them from turn to turn and try to make sense of what the AI is doing. Watch Worker Adam start on the east side of your empire near City X, walk ten turns on roads to City Y on the west side of your empire, road a tile and then spend another ten turns walking back to City X to irrigate the tile it started from.
Rule of thumb for workers: always road the tile you are in. Early on, in Despotism, mine green and irrigate brown. If you can do that (road -> improve or improve -> road) you will be doing a better job of worker managment than the AI. It is just that simple. Tedious, but simple.
CommandoBob
AbstractArt
And there are so many options:
- Alphabetical
- Attractiveness (or lack thereof)
- Bad Attitude
- Clashing border colors
- Culutral snobbery
- Trespassing units
Decisions, decisions
Elephantium
Malcolm was a very good cat.
Don't forget "proximity to your capital" 
timerover51
Deity
Or easiest to eliminate quickly.
