[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Bigger]

This may be true, but not of Praets.
Without CR promotions, they get no benefit attacking into cities.

Well I was only addressing the issue of how promotions work, not what Praets have themselves.

However, I thought sword units got an innate bonus to City Attack of 10%. Was that removed between BtS and RBMod?

I checked the in game civlopedia .

In bts, swordsmen, jaguars, and gallic warriors get a 10% city attack bonus. Praets do not.
In rbmod, all 4 units get the 10% city attack bonus.

If I remember correctly, Praets did have the bonus at one time, probably before warlords or bts. Probably removed the same time redcoats and cossacks were nerfed (in vanilla pre-expansion Civ 4 mp, praets, redcoats, and coassaks were more dominant than any unique units, and the romans, english, and russians were greatly overplayed) . I guess the rbmod added it back to make up for them being nerfed from 8 strength to 7. Q is right, its not in the changelog, I checked - not sure why.

[Lewwyn]

Just FYI, I figured out back before we got IW that Azza and Serdoa both had sailing. When I switched around it was clear that we were getting known tech bonuses on Sailing fro two people, a known tech bonus on IW from one person and no known tech bonus from Archery.

I hopefully will get at the turn tonight in a couple hours after wife finishes work.

[Bigger]

Just FYI, I figured out back before we got IW that Azza and Serdoa both had sailing. When I switched around it was clear that we were getting known tech bonuses on Sailing fro two people, a known tech bonus on IW from one person and no known tech bonus from Archery.

I hopefully will get at the turn tonight in a couple hours after wife finishes work.

yeah that makes sense. this map demands sailing. we planned to get it 10 turns ago but necessity sidetracked us <G>.
azza needed it for his capital and sacrificed worker techs to get it and IW early.
Serdoa only had 2 cities until very recently (he has 4 now) so he was probably able to run max science forever, if he got some gold from 2-3 huts.

[Molach]

Well gratz on victory in the Battle for the Iron.
And an clear & enjoyable read too.

In the graph-post turn 76 you posted crop yield twice instead of MFG, what are you trying to hide?

From the look of the map I'd say you've actually taken "azza's" iron, while "your" source is the one just to the west. Don't know how far apart map generator will put same resource...However it's very possible that he will have either copper or iron somewhere southwards. So interesting to see how the map layout down there is. Also wondering how close Serdoa is, and how much he knows about what has been going on. If he managed to scout the battlefield/iron spot he should realize what the war was about?

Any thoughts on how you will handle the Azza-situation from here on? After the immediate entrenchment. Any Evil Grand Master Plan to share yet?

[Lewwyn]

Okay played. Not much to say. Working on the road system in the south with the two workers and avoiding the barb. I sent 2 workers onto the hill SW of Odyssey. they can both mine + road that tile. we don't need to worry too much about connecting our cow city right away since it will have water TRs. Also it will be working the corn first. So that means those two workers have time to mine and road before moving over to the new city to help pasture the cows.

Can we settle the cow city before sailing finishes? If we can run tech at 80% and still finish Sailing then we should be able to do that.

Hopefully that barb moves onto flat land and we can hit it with the C1 chariot to get to 5XP.

The worker that just finished the chop this turn... I think it should pasture the sheep. We won't be using it right away, but it will be nice to have that pastured for the future.


As for our plan to deal with Azza, mostly build units stack them in Beowulf and show him he can't break us and match his power. That way he won't attack and we can continue to build in peace. I do not want to engage in more war with him because its just a drain. Even if we now have metal and he doesn't, I do not think its worth it... Well maybe if Azza doesn't have metal it might be possible to take his capital. But I'm not sure he won't get metal. Okay, going to have to think about this some more.

[Bigger]

Okay played. Not much to say. Working on the road system in the south with the two workers and avoiding the barb. I sent 2 workers onto the hill SW of Odyssey. they can both mine + road that tile. we don't need to worry too much about connecting our cow city right away since it will have water TRs. Also it will be working the corn first. So that means those two workers have time to mine and road before moving over to the new city to help pasture the cows.

Can we settle the cow city before sailing finishes? If we can run tech at 80% and still finish Sailing then we should be able to do that.

Hopefully that barb moves onto flat land and we can hit it with the C1 chariot to get to 5XP.

The worker that just finished the chop this turn... I think it should pasture the sheep. We won't be using it right away, but it will be nice to have that pastured for the future.


As for our plan to deal with Azza, mostly build units stack them in Beowulf and show him he can't break us and match his power. That way he won't attack and we can continue to build in peace. I do not want to engage in more war with him because its just a drain. Even if we now have metal and he doesn't, I do not think its worth it... Well maybe if Azza doesn't have metal it might be possible to take his capital. But I'm not sure he won't get metal. Okay, going to have to think about this some more.

hi, I saw you played the turn and logged in. I'll post some more pictures. As you can see I have a lot of time on my hand today .

The Aenid (cow/wine) will settle in 2 turns, sailing is 3 turns out. oh, I see what you mean - will extra maintenence slow it down? no, I think we'll be fine. it is 3 tiles from the odyssey. our maintenece for our 3 cities are 1.04 (capital), 1.56, and 2.10. so i would expect it to be somewhere around 2.6. dropping from 90% to 80% saves us 4 cash, so I think we would be ok even if we were settling it this turn.

I'm fine with Briseis working the sheep next.

Question: we roaded the iron, and have iron in our cities. Yet Beowulf is still producing a warrior. When will that change to a spear? concerns me only because the warrior will complete next turn, and we don't need another damn warrior.
if it takes a turn delay, it wouldnt hurt to put a turn intoa granary and switch back. will still be completed long before peace treaty ends.

[Lewwyn]

Question: we roaded the iron, and have iron in our cities. Yet Beowulf is still producing a warrior. When will that change to a spear? concerns me only because the warrior will complete next turn, and we don't need another damn warrior.
if it takes a turn delay, it wouldnt hurt to put a turn intoa granary and switch back. will still be completed long before peace treaty ends.

It will upgrade as the turn rolls. The warrior won't be built. We can't build warriors anymore.

[Bigger]

Well gratz on victory in the Battle for the Iron.
And an clear & enjoyable read too.

In the graph-post turn 76 you posted crop yield twice instead of MFG, what are you trying to hide?

From the look of the map I'd say you've actually taken "azza's" iron, while "your" source is the one just to the west. Don't know how far apart map generator will put same resource...However it's very possible that he will have either copper or iron somewhere southwards. So interesting to see how the map layout down there is. Also wondering how close Serdoa is, and how much he knows about what has been going on. If he managed to scout the battlefield/iron spot he should realize what the war was about?

Any thoughts on how you will handle the Azza-situation from here on? After the immediate entrenchment. Any Evil Grand Master Plan to share yet?

thanks for the input I fixed the MFG graph (thankfully imgur is working again). the MFG comment stings, we've been well behind azza in that category, and recently serdoa has beefed up as well. we've made up for it with the whip. However, I think we're positioning ourselves well for land grabs, which is ultimately going to determine who has the most hammers in the mid-game when workshops start to rule the landscape.

Did you manage to read the early parts of this thread, or jump in near the end? Serdoa has actually scouted most of our lands. He went all the way west, with his scout, shadowing our scout. we attacked his scout with a warrior as it passed by our capital, but lost. his injured scout didn't bother to heal, went off to the peninsula to the east, but got killed by a barb (unsure how far he got as we didn't witness this, but he left us a hut so we know he hasn't explored as far east as we did).
So Serdoa would have vision on both the contested iron and the iron to our west - if he has iron working, which I can't imagine he does, unless he too was missing copper.

Azza, on the other hand, has probably not scouted the north as well as Serdoa. His initial scouting was all south of his capital (where he eventually settled). His scout appeared directly south on our southern borders after we were at 2 cities already, moved a couple of spaces, then promptly was killed by a lion. so he probably hasn't scouted the eastern peninsula much at all (although I wouldnt be surprised if he sends a chariot over there before too long). To the west I guess his scouting is limited to the stone area near where Billy Talent was, south of the capital (the horse/sheep site), and south of Iliad (probably has scouted most of the Odyssey). I could be wrong, but I don't think he's scouted the area of the west Iron or even knows that Iron is there.

Of course we have been unable to get any vision south of Azza's capital so can't tell the resource situation there. But I can only assume if Azza had another source of Iron we would have since spears and praets by now. Honestly with the Praet-nerf I am not overly concerned now that we can build axes. I feel pretty secure.

Long term - well I haven't discussed this much with lewwyn, but these are my thoughts.

Long term, I absolutely will want to fight him again. He has terrific land, and more importantly cuts us off from the rest of the world. If we have any chance of winning this game, we will *have* to absorb his entire empire.

Short term is a different matter. Could we take his capital if we re-engaged shortly after the end of the peace treaty? well, maybe. he doesnt have metal right now, at least. lets say we built a stack of 5-6 axes. we would need 4-5 spears to protect them from hordes of chariots. And a couple of spears at home in case he tries to flank us with chariots. we could send in our chariots to distract him and pillage, maybe draw out some of his chariots. but the stack will ultimately be slow 1- movers - chariots are not going to be able to assault his warriors with teh defensive bonuses of his capital (size 3 culture bonus, on a hill, plus 25% fortify bonus). His MFG is a lot higher than ours so he could stack a lot of chariots and warriors in his capital, and we might end up needing reinforcements. which means, for us - whips - and we've already beat theOdyssey and theIliad into the ground. The real problem, though, is all he would need to do to shut us down is research archery. I don't think we could get past archers without catapults. And the hammers we would have to put into attempting would knock us out of contention for all the upcoming wonders.

short term, I think we're better off going into build mode here. we have plenty of land to expand too - beyond the 6 we have planned immediately, I count 6 or 7 good spots on the eastern peninsula, plus another island east of the peninsula that we need to scout, 5 or 6 good spots south and west of our capital, plus some unknown land to our west that is blocked by a peak, so we haven't been able to explore yet. plus 2 medicore cities on an island east of the iliad, and who knows how many islands to our east. there is probably a large chain of islands out there past the peninsula, either due east or southeast. hopefully we'll be able to get exploring galleys out there before too long.

OTOH, if he tries to expand into an area we don't want him too (i.e. nab the city that chokes off the eastern area, or possibly the stone/horse site) I don't think it will be too difficult to raze that city, and probably worth the effort.

Long term, I think we should be able to launch a full invasion with knights. we'll have workshops in place by then, and probably using caste system to make them more effective, so our MFG will be much higher than it is at the moment.

[Bigger]

Question: we roaded the iron, and have iron in our cities. Yet Beowulf is still producing a warrior. When will that change to a spear? concerns me only because the warrior will complete next turn, and we don't need another damn warrior.
if it takes a turn delay, it wouldnt hurt to put a turn intoa granary and switch back. will still be completed long before peace treaty ends.

It will upgrade as the turn rolls. The warrior won't be built. We can't build warriors anymore.

ok.

btw, just noticed. I made an error earlier - in the rbmod, open borders (trade routes) come with alphabet, not writing. map trading comes with writing (tech trading would come with paper, were it not turned off).

This means we may need to settle one city on the island east of iliad pretty soon after we get currency.

Azza does not have writing yet. However, Serdoa does. Should I go ahead and offer a map trade to Serdoa? I think yes. he has scouted us pretty well anyway - he'll get a little extra info on the eastern peninsula and know we have stolen Beowulf from azza. But we should get a lot of info about azza's territory and know where serdoa's borders are. so it will probably be more useful to us.

[Lewwyn]

Well the trade off is that Serdoa could then turn around and trade our map back to Azza. Azza gets info on our second iron and the east peninsula. Is it worth it? Debateable. Probably.

Let me sleep on it.