Gandhi of France: The Non-Violent Warrior

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 153[/SIZE]

A quiet turn on the Eastern Front. Here's what my caravel revealed:



Absolute Zero is founded one north of the equivalent Vigo Bay location. Plako gave Sulla plains cows instead of grassland sheep

I gifted five more musketeers to Shoot this turn, and drafted another pair out of Abraham Plains and Sedan. That's a total of seven drafted so far. I revised my original plan and am going to grow Vigo Bay and Verdun up to Size 6 and draft them before revolting again.

Ending turn gave me five border pops:



I'm now number one in land again. The border pop from Crecy defogged the last tile to my southwest, and look what was on it:



I was wondering why our team had only two silks. At any rate, I now have four backfill cities to found for happiness resources: 2 silvers, a whale, and now a silk.

Dien Bien Phu is really starting to shape up:



WK's settler is en route north, with another one to be gifted next turn.



End Turn.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 154[/SIZE]

I moved my warships into position to blockade Sulla next turn. We'll see just how he responds. Every hammer he sinks into a caravel to fight me off is one wasted, since I'll be throwing Galleons and Frigates at him before too much longer.



This turn, WK revolted into Nationhood, so Shoot took over funding my research machine temporarily.



Also note the second settler WK gifted me. The problem with this is that he didn't produce quite enough to fully fund me, so I had to pull this little trick to run 100% research:



In Aboukir Bay, I switched a scientist and a coast to citizens to make up the -2gpt deficit. It represented a 6 beaker loss, but it was less that the efficiency loss of not running 100% science for a turn.

At long last I hooked up the whales:



Just in time to, it helped me to deal with happiness issues in Waterloo and Abraham Plains. I really prefer using artists to pop borders, religion just takes too long.

I went ahead and 2-pop whipped a knight in Crecy, taking the city off its cottages and reconfiguring it for max hammers:



The nice thing is that with the current food surplus, the city will regrow on the next turn I draft it. After that, going to switch to working the cottages again and grow the city out.

Hit enter, and:



Now up to five knights:



After drafting Sedan again, the city was looking really unhappy until the completion of the Globe at the end of the turn:

Before:



After:



Verdun is now going max food with the completion of Hermitage.



Next build is a courthouse to help deal with the city's mantainence costs. I deemed a forge not worth the hammer investment, as it would take 40 turns to recover the 80 hammers with the +25% hammers from the forge, and the extra happy would be surperflous in this city.

One problem I'm currently facing is that Aboukir Bay, Damme, Vigo Bay, and Verdun are all set to grow to six pop on t158 (provided I did my math right), the turn I can draft my core cities again. As a result, it's looking like I'll need to spend an additional turn in NH to get those extra four musketeers: t152-t158 (revolt on t159 after drafting) instead of the originally planned t152-t157. In the end - we're looking at spending seven turns in NH + Theocracy to draft 20 musketeers, five of whom went to Shoot.

May, 1940 started on my first Salon:



Abraham Plains is now working the PHM, and working on another pike for Verdun.



Lurker Question
Does promoting a unit reset the fortification bonus?

I ask because I moved the finished pike to Verdun this turn, but decided to hold off on promoting it to Guerilla II in case I ever need it for something else. However, if promoting resets the fortification bonus, I'll just do so and have him hunker down in Verdun.



End Turn.

[T-hawk]

Does promoting a unit reset the fortification bonus?

Pretty sure not. Upgrading it does.

[oledavy]

Pretty sure not. Upgrading it does.

Thanks for the confirmation

[SIZE="4"]Turn 155 - Part I[/SIZE]

Alrighty. So, this turn, I moved my HA to get eyes on the Equestrian city of Trottingham.



Lots of things to comment on here:

- Nabaxo just built a workboat that is presumably headed off to net seafood for his island settlement(s).
- With only two defenders, he is basically begging me to capture this city. Right now, I could roll over it with three units.
- I've highlighted my planned 2-mover strike on the city, more on that later.

I don't want to be that guy who constantly speaks poorly of other players - lord knows I've made more than my fair share of weed moves in my own right. But there are a few things I have to comment on here. So without further ado:

[Judgemental Bastard]



This city is a microcosm of why Team #4 is doing so poorly. First off:

He built a monument

......

No, Nabaxo is not charismatic. Now granted, he didn't convert to a religion until a few turns ago - evidence of poor teamwork in getting missionaries around to spread Confucianism. Even given that fact, this is a medieval start. You can build libraries and theatres right off the bat to pop borders, and instead he builds a monument...

I don't get it.

Second, the city has no forge. That's a pretty productive location, and you've prioritized a monument, library and barracks over a forge? You generally want to start your cities out on a forge for medieval starts. And it's not like he just settled this city, this city has been there for awhile, which brings us to the final point. Why is this the front city?

This city is well-developed with 113 hammers in infrastructure, 7 pop, and +50 culture. The land around it has been completely improved, in fact, it's never worked several of the cottages. In short, this city has been there for ~25 turns, and he hasn't settled past it. Why didn't he expand farther south? The surplus improvements are evidence he had worker turns to spare, why didn't you sink them into improving a new city deeper in the jungle and claim some of that juicy riverside grassland? You are financial after all. This is not a good front city with me, period - it has a hill right next to it. Perhaps he needed to focus on expanding elsewhere, or could not afford to expand, but man, if my estimated time frame is right, he could have beaten me to securing the northern half of the jungled subcontinent. Slap a few longbows down and you would force me to build significant forces before pushing farther north. And if you do want this to be your front city, why have only two units - one obsolete - guarding it?

[/Judgemental Bastard]

Post Turn 155 Update:

- The city grew to Size 8
- The city produced another workboat
- My HA didn't die

[oledavy]

Right now, my attention is focused northward on the jungle. Here's what I have coming up in the next few turns:



[SIZE="4"]Assault on Trottingham (Red Arrow)[/SIZE]

I've already briefly mentioned my plan to assault Trottingham and lock-down the jungle. After my current military build-up is done and the units move north, I will have about two dozen knights and musketeers available to assault around t163. My strategic dilemma is this: Attack as soon as possible to nip Trottingham and lock down a defensible front, or wait until I have overwhelming force, blitz through Trottingham and into the Equestrian core. The problem is that I really have no idea how strong Nabaxo's military is, though, if the Trottingham garrison is any indication, not strong. Also tied to this is if I wait, I can deploy my GA on the field to pop out the borders of the captured Trottingham immediately, but how much good this will do against the entrenched culture around his core is dubious.

However, given the apparent weakness, I've decided to hit before he can mobilize more defenders. The current timetable is to blitz into his territory and onto the hill for t158, and then take the city on t159. I'll be moving in with 4 musketeers, 6 knights, and a horse archer, so I feel reasonably confident of success; unless he piles tons of units into there during the intervening three turns. Depending on how things play out, I still may use the GA here. The other idea would be to use him in the east on the northern chokepoint. We'll see how it all pans out. To get to the hill, I'll be using my 3FWs to chop the jungle, and my two workers to road the tile. Units start moving into position next turn.

[SIZE="4"]Naval Assault (Pink Arrow)[/SIZE]

My first galleon from Trafalgar completes next turn, and I thought of a sneaky thing to do with it. By forting the plains tile SE of Dien Bien Phu, I can move into the northern sea, and then through the soon to be founded port of Louisbourg. The plan: raze Nabaxo's Sluys equivalent by boating it with three musketeers.

As a side note, since it hasn't popped borders in 9 turns, it looks like the city is not a perfect Sluys mirror. I would hav gotten those crabs into the cultural borders sooner if they were in the city's BFC, so the city is probably 1S. It should still be coastal though, and doubtful that it's guarded. So, three of the musketeers following up the main force will head this way, load aboard the galleon, and hopefully kill the city without too much trouble. It should be a complete surprise. I need to kill Thoth's HA to ensure it, or at least chase him away. I have a pike being built for Louisbourg to serve as part of the Louisbourg garrison and it should achieve this end.

[SIZE="4"]Calais & Louisbourg[/SIZE]

Calais will be founded next turn, and Louisbourg on t159. Calais will be popping borders with religon, but Louisbourg will be popped via CS artist since I'm revotling back at that point, and I need to get those crabs in the borders as soon as possible.

My micro plan for Calais:



This is the first of my workshop cities. The plan here is to chain irrgate the rice and get the city up to a sufficient food suplus to work all the workshops and mines in its BFC. With chemistry about to come online, grassland workshops are 1/3/0 tiles outside of caste system. The plan here is to cap at size 12 working fish, 3 grassland farms, 2 grassland hill mines, and 6 grassland workshops. The city will be producing 25 base hpt, which I intend to convert into wealth to help offset expansion costs. We need to get Shoot at a higher sustainable research amount, and this is the best way for me to contribute. The build order for this city is:

Forge
Courthouse
Barracks
Wealth
(Eventually Factory, Power Plant, and Drydock)

The barracks, drydock, and hammer modifying buildings are to allow me to switch to all-out military production if need be, not to mention buffing drafting. The farms will be workshopped over with the switch to SP, as the +1 food for irrigating Louisbourg's rice is not worth losing three 2/4/0 tiles

I have five other cities planned in the north, four of which are visible in the screenshot. I haven't micro'd the others yet, but I have a pretty good idea what I want to do. Potiers and Louisbourg both have lots of grassland in their BFC, so they'll be getting similar treatment and get turned into workshop/farm spam cities with minimal infrastructure producing wealth. I can't wait until State Property to make these cities truly scary. Between the three of them I'll be producing around 100gpt pre SP. Due to being on rivers, Gallipoli, Leipzig and Dien Bien Phu will be farmed and watermilled to run representation specialists. The final city, Minden, is bordering Shoot and cut out of the shot. It's my backfill location on the continent - almost equivalent to my Louisbourg spot. There, I'll probably end up running speicialists since it has a nicer food bonus and not much land in the BFC.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 155 - Part III[/SIZE]

Alright, here's all the news I couldn't fit anywhere else, in no particular order:

If I do capture any cities in this game, I'm going to do a variation on my naming scheme and rename the cities after French military victories. Just seems appropriate

Did my normal check of all the visible opponent's cities, and wanted to share this shot of Cannon Barrage:



Sulla has built a lot of infrastructure there really quickly, including a courthouse. Which reminds me, I could use a few more. Courthouses, along with Salons, are going to be my focus during my next infrastructure push. When is that you might ask?

Civic-Switching Plan

t152-t159 - Nationhood + Theocracy (In Progress)
t159-t163 - Bureacracy + CS + Pacifism: Pop borders, produce great people, and stack GPPS
t164-t170 - Nationhood + Slavery + Theocracy: Another round of drafting, build tons of Cannon
t170-idk - Bureacracy + OR: Infrastructure push and emphasize vertical growth.

The basic idea is to switch in and our of drafting mode and building mode. I'm going to be slipping in a lot of catapult builds to convert into cannons for when we research steel. After the t164-t170 drafting/military spree, I'll be looking at 40+ new cannons and musketeers to throw at someone. In the meantime, I'm slipping back into pacifism to produce my Artist, Priest, and stack up GPPs for future Great People. The GS for Shoot's golden age is due out of Waterloo in two turns, on t157. After all this, it will be time to make another infrastructure push in OR.

God, I love spiritual

On a random note: I really like that you can get an extra half-turn of use out of slavery and nationhood by slaving/drafting before revolting.

I wrote a long and complicated explanation of the naval maneuvering going on between me and Sulla, but read back over it and decided I was making a mountain out a molehill. Here's the situation in one picture:



Sulla now has four caravels, so I moved back. Those things will quail before my frigates, and so are wasted hammers from my point of view. Team #1's decision to research astronomy indicates a run at the Kremlin, or that they really want to keep pace with us in naval techs. At any rate, with Sulla now able to build galleons, the naval war promises to get more interesting.

I never realized how awesome Musketeers are as mounted stack defenders. Slap guerilla II/woodsman II on one, end turn on a hill/forest, and you get odds against attacking rifles.

End Turn.

[SevenSpirits]

I see your mention of quail!

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 156[/SIZE]

Settled the city of Calais this turn:





It buffed my research amount by 7 bpt, but increased expenses by 11 gpt. Should be turning a profit soon enough though as I chop through all that jungle.

I'm readying up for the assault on Trottingham. I was being dumb when I said I need 5 workers and fast workers to chop and road into Nabaxo’s territory, I actually just need two to road through the jungle and enable the assault.

My HA moved 2SE out of Nabaxo’s territory. Next turn - the staging turn - I’m moving it back to the Windmill. Since Nabaxo didn’t kill it the first time, I’m hoping I’ll get away with checking out the city again the turn before the attack. If it survives, it can join my main army before they attack. If he kills it, whatever unit he uses will be cut off from moving back into the city by my advancing army – a win in my book.

My force composition:

6 5xp Knights
1 5xp Musketeer
2 2xp Musketeers
1 1xp Musketeer

Unless the stack is seriously threatened, I won’t be promoting most of the units until right before the assault. Waiting will allow me to pick the best possible promotions to whatever defenders appear and heal in the event he hits me with collateral. I’m definitely promoting the 5xp musketeer to Guerilla II to defend the stack though.



Around Damme, I moved one of my caravels north, out of range of Sulla’s stack and still in range of Damme to check for reinforcements. Now that Sulla has astronomy, I’m really concerned that he may try to boat the city. I need to move my warships out in case he does. However, I’ll feel a lot better next turn when I get to draft the city for an additional defender. Next turn, Vigo Bay starts on it’s first warship since the forge is about to be done, and Trafalgar starts the Heroic Epic. I should be able to finish it in a couple turns and then start one-turning frigates.

Cities that can’t finish their military builds in the next 2 turns are switching to infrastructure. Quiberon Bay and Agincourt, which were capped at max hammers, have been switched to coast to grow and will be drafted next turn. I need to tie in my horizontal expansion with vertical expansion and get some more tiles in play. I have a lot of infrastructure already in place, now I need to grow to capitalize on it; with the focus on bringing more commerce into play to be modified by all my cheap universities. Despite my drafting spree, I’ve still growing and have one of the higher crop yields in the game (I can't remember which place I'm in off the top of my head). A few turns ago, my total pop broke 100. My bpt amount has also gone up nearly 50 beakers in the last couple turns, almost at pre-Nationalism levels. The upcoming problem I’ll be facing is happy, especially since many of my cities will be facing +3 drafting unhappiness without +2 happy from barracks to offset it. I’m thinking I’ll gift my iron away to WK again and build a few more MPs. I could additionally use a couple sentry chariots as utility units. I’ll need a more long-term solution for my eventual switch to Representation though. I have three more luxuries in my sphere of influence to hook up, and I think I will be going for them after Louisbourg. With Trottingham and Louisbourg in my hands, I can settle the remaining cities in the north at a trot and get the jungle cleared before settling my other four cities. The wines, silk, and silver cities will all take very little worker attention to set-up. Only having 1 gems and 1 gold for the entire team really sucks. At least I have silver to be modified by forges.

Bureaucracy is going to be expensive, but with soon to be 235% research modifiers in May, 1940, well worth the expense. Pacifism is going to be harder to swallow. My military is now fourth largest and I’m headed for largest by the time I draft again. I think this may be my last stay in pacifism, at least while my military is so swollen.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 157[/SIZE]

I moved my Horse Archer back into Nabaxo's culture:



Looking a little pricklier than the last time I was there, but still pretty poorly defended. It doesn't help that last turn Nabaxo revolted into Mercantilism and Theocracy, so he's in anarchy last turn and this turn, and won't be able to whip many defenders. He'll probably kill the HA, then move back into the city. If nothing else his knight will be hurt and easy to mop up when the assault comes. Here's my army on the staging tile:



Sulla moved his navy back into my territory to annoy me:



At EOT, I birthed Carl Gauss in Waterloo:



I went ahead and drafted my five musketeers fo the next turn, just to get it out of the way and to get an additional defender in Vigo Bay and Damme:




Looking good.



End Turn.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 158[/SIZE]

Nabaxo killed my horse archer as expected, only with the musketeer instead of the knight.




I took this to mean he moved Whorse southeast into the jungle, and sure enough, when I moved forward:



I promoted my knight to Combat II, and took the 50% shot at killing him.



Win with 6.0 Health left.

The fast workers roaded through the jungle, and I moved a knight onto the hill to check out the situation. He revealed the wounded musketeer on the hill and just the crossbow and archer still in Trottingham. I decided to promote one of my knights to pinch and kill the musketeer:



There really wasn't much he could have done. My fast workers and wounded knight were covered by a reinforcement musketeer. Still, I didn't want him to get tougher by fortifying or healing, and I had the units to spare with the paltry garrison of Trottingham.

The situation after I moved everything in:



I promoted one of my musketeers to Guerilla II as planned, not that I think he'll be able to hit me with anything, but it's better to be safe than sorry. My unpromoted knights are getting ~65% odds on that Xbow, so unless he moves significant forces into the city before next turn, it's going to fall pretty easily.

I caved and promoted one of my knights to Sentry after taking the screenshot, just to be safe. He revealed nothing of any interest.

Meanwhile, in the south:



I went ahead and moved all the ships back into Damme, hopefully forcing Sulla to back off or I get behind him. Damme now has 2 musketeers and a longbow defending, so I'm pretty confident of holding the city.