[SPOILERS] Bismark of Sumeria (luddite + Atlas1998)

[luddite]

Look how fast mackoti's power graph rose and fell He's below nakor and Lord Parkin, even. Hell, he might have been in last place after that last battle.


And what's this? A coloseum? He must be really hurting for happiness if he built a coloseum. And his only luxuries are in the south... if those cities fall, it'll get even worse for him.


I hired a couple spies to boost my espionage, so that I can get city visibility before the invasion begins.

[Ellimist]

Haha I just noticed that your great engineer was Archimedes. How appropriate that you'd use him to build the Great Library(of Alexandria) in a war zone.
From wikipedia:

He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors.
...
Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.
...
The mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. 530*AD by Isidore of Miletus, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance, while the discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.

[luddite]

Haha I just noticed that your great engineer was Archimedes. How appropriate that you'd use him to build the Great Library(of Alexandria) in a war zone.
From wikipedia:

Yeah I thought that was a nice coincidence too!

Um, there's been no turn today so I got bored and took some random pictures. First of all... does anyone else think that the vulture looks completely ridiculous? They wear a miniskirt, a shriner hat, and some sort of cape that only covers half their chest. They're armed with a shield that's completely square, and some sort of scythe. Then there's the huge beard. I think the cape is actually open on the top, and they rely on the beard for neck protection.


For city micro... I'm currently using Kinsale to work coastal tiles and build the Schwedagon Paya for failure gold (plus a temporary spy). I think I'll build the Moai statues here next, unless I need more units. Originally I was going to put the Moai in Silver City, but that will take ages, and it still won't make Silver City any good for production. Better just to let SC focus on commerce.


Mackoti whipped Dorbin down to size 4 this turn. Ouch, that must be killing his economy.

It's a little hard to follow because civstats was down for a while, but it says that WarriorKnight had a score increase. Did he really found a new city? WK is still at 7 cities, same as before, but now plako has a new city "beijing" so maybe plako took a city, and then WK founded a new one to make up the difference. I have no idea why WK would be making settlers now though, unless he just wants to spite plako by putting a city in a really hard-to-reach location.

[SevenSpirits]

Why are you running spies instead of espionage slider + coasts? Do you actually want commerce more than food, or can you not afford 10% EP at all, or do you want the spy GPP, or what?

Edit: Or are you the default governor?

[luddite]

Why are you running spies instead of espionage slider + coasts? Do you actually want commerce more than food, or can you not afford 10% EP at all, or do you want the spy GPP, or what?

Edit: Or are you the default governor?

Well I haven't done that math on this. I'm trying to save up gold, because I'm worried that I'll be running negative as soon as my army goes into the field. And I figured that running 2 spies was much less a hit than 10% of my commerce. Also, I don't want to grow Kinsale much more since I figure It'll be at the happiness cap once I'm hit with more war weariness.

edit: and those spies make up 2/9 of my science right now!

[luddite]

First of all... does anyone else think that the vulture looks completely ridiculous? They wear a miniskirt, a shriner hat, and some sort of cape that only covers half their chest. They're armed with a shield that's completely square, and some sort of scythe. Then there's the huge beard. I think the cape is actually open on the top, and they rely on the beard for neck protection.

Huh, apparently that's a reasonably accurate description of what they actually used.


from http://joseph_berrigan.tripod.com/ancien.../id46.html

The almost constant occurrence of war among the city-states of Sumer for two thousand years spurred the development of military technology and technique far beyond that found elsewhere at the time.

...
Both the Vulture Stele and the Royal Standard of Ur show soldiers wearing what appear to be armored cloaks. They were probably made of thin leather with metal disks with raised centers or spines sown on the cloaks. These cloaks afforded some protection against the weapons of the day such as the copper socket axe.

When the Sumerians introduced the use of overlapping plate body armor, it was quickly followed by the development of the bronze socket axe. Sumerian axes by 2500 B.C. show a change in design with the narrowing of the blade and bringing it more to a point so that it could pierce bronze plate armor. This became one of the most devastating weapons of the ancient world.

[pindicator]

I still am unclear why vultures have to wear lamp shades on their head

[luddite]

My army is ready to set out, next turn.

For some reason Mackoti moved a few units up to the border. Just scouting? Or maybe attacking silver city? Probably scouting.

[luddite]

Wow... look at all that whipping! Looks like WarriorKnight and Mackoti both went into final defense mode. But it didn't matter... plako still took WarriorKnight's capital.

[luddite]

So I began this turn by sending a chariot onto the hill (which mackoti thoughtfully roaded for me) to scout ahead. Looks like mackoti moved back those 2 units and the worker, not even pausing to build a road on that tile.


Now it's time for the invasion to begin. Here is "La Grande Armee". I wrote the turn numbers that I expect to move onto a particular tile. My hope is that, with that galley moving along the bottom coast, Mackoti will be forced to move at least 1 unit down to defend his bottom city, and remove it from the main battle. Anyway, the galley units will unite with the main stack on turn 123, giving me a full 20 vultures, plus 5 chariots, 4 spears, and my medic 3 scout. The army can attack either Hagi or Dobrin in 6-7 turns, depending on what mackoti does.


If mackoti wanted to actually destroy this army, his best option is to hit it with catapults and shock axes. But I really don't think he'll have enough units for that. A lot of mine have promotions saved up, so they can use that to heal and then immediately destroy any units that he uses to attack me.

My best guess is that he'll just pile everything into Hagi, which will allow me to raze the southern cities without any losses.

edit: the turn numbers for the galley are slightly wrong. I'll move it one tile further on turn 121, so that mackoti can see it and panic.