Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[Brian Shanahan]

I'd concentrate two movers around the Gao stack, it'd be better for that one to be a bit more mobile in order to snipe cities to the east. In fact, if we could alpha strike Gao on the first turn of the war, moving in a few covering Oromos, Mansa could panic move his units into all sorts of opportunities for us.


But keep a few knights at red diamond to kill the junk city planted in the north above Ioi, we'll want to either resettle or ignore that spot (depending on which is more profitable).

Regarding Bagacum, there are more units in that town than there are in Bibracte, Boudica's mobile units were pushed into there once I moved up the stack, and have been pinned there ever since.

[haphazard1]

More courthouses would be good to have. I like building AP-boosted religious buildings, as they provide base hammers and will usually easily pay back (and then some) over time. But any cheap buildings due to traits should usually get priority. It sounds like those 8 cities without them could be saving 35-40 gold/turn, which would be a nice boost to your research rate. Still, you are teching fairly well and you have had quite a few distracions from Boudica. So prioritizing hammers was useful. And you can use the additional hammers to help build the missing courthouses.

That assumes you do not need the hammers for troops, of course. Always more things needed, especially siege units. If you are going to hit Mansa, especially from two points, then plenty of troops are needed. Cannon will help greatly if you can push through the tech; if you are going to take another city or two from Boudica remember that you will get some capture cash so you may be able to trim a few turns off your expected time to finish Steel.

Good observation to see that you can keep your trade routes going via the inland sea. Losing foreign trade routes can be surprisingly painful to your income stream; I have had that happen a few times and ended up regretting my decision to declare war, even though the actual fighting went well.

Good luck!

[RefSteel]

Friendly with Charlie and Izzy, Qin is on the far side of the world. I guess Mansa could bribe one of our pals, but they don't border us directly.

Civ4 AIs will not accept bribes (from you or from AI civs) to join wars with their close friends.  What "close friends" means varies from AI to AI (many won't declare at Pleased for love or money) but neither Izzy nor Chuck nor (almost?  I forget whether Cathy or someone is an exception...) any other AI will declare war on someone with whom their diplo status is Friendly.

If I keep BaS, CP and XP on military builds and switch every other city that's not brand new to wealth, we can up break-even to 9t. In the absence of objections, I may do just that: I feel that killing Mansa is that important.

That's a lot of production tied up in wealth builds to get cannons to the front in 15-20 turns.  I'm not sure what Mansa's defenses are like right now, or the details of the cities you'd be setting to wealth, but I wonder if (perhaps courthouses for longer-term economy and) more trebs + Oromos sooner might be a better choice.  (Also note that capture gold - as haphazard pointed out - will help fund your research, but additional maintenance from the captured cities will increase costs....)

Main strike launches from red diamond (note - that's still 100% our culture), pillages iron (red star) and advances towards the strike site (red circle); we have to risk a counter-strike from the city on flat land, but any garrisoned troops will have to attack across a river.

It's the AI, so you're likely correct, but note that in an MP game, a player who felt confident of wiping your stack could move each attacking-out unit 1NE and then attack without the river-crossing penalty.

More generally, your staging tile is far away from the core military producers.  If you road on the plains hill south of "After Timbuktu," you could stage in Brocken itself, using just (a couple of) ~sacrificial chariot(s) in the far north to pillage Mansa's iron (and the road beneath it) while the main stack moves 3NE to forest, then NE to the plains hill mine, then E to the pigs hill, E to the grassland (same flatland-across-the-river situation as your planned FP stopover) and NE to the red circle.

If this were an MP game though, five turns of marching (from either location) might as well be a lifetime, especially when you're exposed on flatland tile on turn 4.  I think in that case I would plan either to just eat the river-crossing penalty or to send in a stack of knights through (and/after overrunning) Gao to strike through the grassland SE of Timbuktu and/or fork Djenne. Of course, that's just theorycrafting, and a few turns of a crazy EitB game aside, I haven't actually played against humans in years....

[shallow_thought]

I quite agree that in MP the slow march across five tiles would be suicide ; of course a human would probably have fewer longbows sitting in cities (and probably wouldn't have Chitchen Itza either). It's pretty tedious against the AI, but the alternative is a single strike through Gao that risks having to either deal with any mobile stack on Mansa's terms or else delays at Gao to kill the counter-strike before heading for Timbuktu, which gives him even more turns to stack defenders.

As for the wealth builds, I need to check in detail what else would be built in the cities in question. Going all out is probably overkill, but there are some back-liners that are too far away to build many units and that already have key infrastructure where it might make sense. But anything that can actually deliver a knight, oromo or a treb to a launch point in 10t should probably do that instead. I'll take a look at your alternative launch point; there's a pike fortified on the iron (I needed bare tile view to show the land under city names), so I'll need a mace or a couple of axes up there to kill that befoe pillaging, but the point about not launching so far from home stands.

[haphazard1]

RefSteel makes good points about what would likely happen in an MP situation. (Not that I have much experience for judging MP, other than following a lot of games.) But you are playing against the AI here, so it is unlikely that it will respond that intelligently. Always good to think about shortening your march or finding another option, if possible, though.

It is Catherine who is (in)famous for being willing to be bribed to declare while at friendly relations. I believe she is the only AI which will do so. Your good relations with Charlemagne and Isabella will help protect you, but note that both are pleased with Mansa so your relations will take a hit when you declare on him. If that drops their opinion of you to pleased, then it might be possible for them to be convinced to attack you -- I can't remember their exact attributes on this point without looking at the XML. But +12 and +13 should probably be enough to have a little dlippage without losing Friendly.

[RefSteel]

Yeah, to be clear, I don't think you should treat the AI as though it were a human; it's not! (And even in MP, it's important to know your enemy. In this case, your enemy loves fortifying longbows everywhere and is tactically weak, so you can and should respond accordingly.) I mentioned the MP stuff only as a passing note, since I understood this SG is partly about practicing and learning for MP games, kind of like in my Adventure 59 thread where I repeatedly wrote stuff like, "By the way, don't try this against humans. They won't let you get away with it." But since the event was single-player, I went ahead and did all of it anyway.

[Zalson]

Adding the monasteries and temples gives us +4 hammers per turn, which means we can slow build a courthouse in 12 turns at size 1. So we should be able to get the missing courthouses up in no time. Also, if we can get UoS or SM (ideally both, although UoS looks unlikely), each city is more valuable. 4h/4g/4b is fantastic.

Who's the AP resident? Do we know when the next election is?

We've been discussing but spies might be a good choice. We can crank the espionage for 1 turn and then revolt some of Mansa's cities.

Any chance we can stage units in Isabella's territory?

[shallow_thought]

Adding the monasteries and temples gives us +4 hammers per turn, which means we can slow build a courthouse in 12 turns at size 1. So we should be able to get the missing courthouses up in no time. Also, if we can get UoS or SM (ideally both, although UoS looks unlikely), each city is more valuable. 4h/4g/4b is fantastic.

Who's the AP resident? Do we know when the next election is?

We've been discussing but spies might be a good choice. We can crank the espionage for 1 turn and then revolt some of Mansa's cities.

Any chance we can stage units in Isabella's territory?

AP resident is Izzy; I'm not sure when the next election is due. Sadly, we don't gain from staging in her territory - interesting idea though.

I'm not sure about Spiral Minaret; in itself it's fine but DR is a dead-end tech with little other value. Can be looked at in a post-Mansa world.

I'd not considered spies - cheesy but could be a really useful tool to crack Timbuktu. They could also be valuable as scouts and we may want to run some counter-espionage. We can 1t  alphabet out of our overflow, so I'm probably going to do just that.

I'm taking one last look at Bibracte. Pike, two Gallic warriors, 2 horse archers and a treb. We've got four knights (three discounting our medic) and four maces - I reckon I can take it before Boudicca can reinforce.

So, I'm going to play the turns right now. Wish me luck!

[Brian Shanahan]

Adding the monasteries and temples gives us +4 hammers per turn, which means we can slow build a courthouse in 12 turns at size 1. So we should be able to get the missing courthouses up in no time. Also, if we can get UoS or SM (ideally both, although UoS looks unlikely), each city is more valuable. 4h/4g/4b is fantastic.

Who's the AP resident? Do we know when the next election is?

We've been discussing but spies might be a good choice. We can crank the espionage for 1 turn and then revolt some of Mansa's cities.

Any chance we can stage units in Isabella's territory?

AP resident is Izzy; I'm not sure when the next election is due. Sadly, we don't gain from staging in her territory - interesting idea though.

I'm not sure about Spiral Minaret; in itself it's fine but DR is a dead-end tech with little other value. Can be looked at in a post-Mansa world.

I'd not considered spies - cheesy but could be a really useful tool to crack Timbuktu. They could also be valuable as scouts and we may want to run some counter-espionage. We can 1t  alphabet out of our overflow, so I'm probably going to do just that.

I'm taking one last look at Bibracte. Pike, two Gallic warriors, 2 horse archers and a treb. We've got four knights (three discounting our medic) and four maces - I reckon I can take it before Boudicca can reinforce.

So, I'm going to play the turns right now. Wish me luck!

I know it's kind of buried in my report but Mansa's got the Minaret, and looking at the save again he's also got Sankore. In fact I'll do up a pic showing all the wonders:


He has a lot.

Regarding taking Bibracte, keep mini-stack outside Bagacum, and it'll not reinforce.

[Zalson]

My reading comprehension ain't been good for the last week or so. If he has Sankore and Spiral minaret, then we are coming for you, Mansa!