It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[Brian Shanahan]

We seem to be missing Jails. That'll help with WW.

Also, since we have the Kremlin, we should have gone back to slavery -- or maybe even uni suffrage? Who cares about emancipation anger?

We also have, perhaps, built too many courthouses too soon. For new cities that can grow (ones that will never get above size 4 or 5, who cares), we want granary, then forge, then whatever else.

There are a lot priorities to address here. I went through and put everything on economic buildings. Then I realized that this game is toast. So tomorrow, I'll put in the toast outlook. Spies and cavalry pretty much only. Except for Cholo. Commando Rifles are the order of the day.

I had completely missed the fact that Julius has built the Kremlin for us . Are jails actually that useful? They're pretty pricy for a building that tends to sit around doing nothing a chunk of the time. As for the rest of it, baer in mind that we were down to 10% break even at one point during the last turnset - I reacted to that.

Oh well, as you say, this game is toast. As soon as Julius bites it, maybe it's worth eating the anarchy to get into slavery again. Rep is giving us a lot of beakers and we still want railroads.

If you're doing an espionage heavy game, they're amazing (I think they've one of the best ep/hammer ratios in the game), if you're doing a lot of warring and are in slavery whip them, but otherwise they're very situational.

[shallow_thought]

I'm a bit surprised that I didn't build Jails - I usually resort to them in SP if it gets that far. Probably theatres were giving more bang for buck at the time and I was waiting for us to have dyes before committing. Our real happiness problems in my set were mostly in cities that were building Unis, so finding spare hammers was hard.

I do really like the way this game has been different. Barb stress, tech trading keeping the AI up but us not being able to exploit it, difficult terrain. Might suggest a similar variant to Sullla to do on video if he ever finishes the always war game .

[haphazard1]

The tech trading variant rule has made this game quite different. Add the barbs, the map script, and a very strong Rome and this one has been memorable.

Good luck!

[Zalson]

About halfway through. Rome is dead and at war with Mansa (who is now three turns out from rifling)

[haphazard1]

So our long, long conflict with Rome finally ends. Hopefully this has helped our war weariness.

Good luck against Mansa!

[Zalson]

T311
Crank EP up to 30% to knock down both of Julius's cities next turn.

T312
Golden age done. Gilgamesh wants military science for divine right. No.

Moving soldiers into position. Cancel some deals; Zulu can’t declare war on us for at least 5 more turns because we’re selling him spices.

T313

Military Science comes. Looking at the tech tree, I pick Steam Power heading to Rail Road. Railroads + commandos are pretty incredible.




At Antium: lose a rifle against a cuirassier. The rest is a cakewalk and gives us another general.



At Neapolis: Cannon withdraws at 41% odds. No losses.

Goodbye, Rome!

I missed the screenshot but when I went to say hello to Mansa (and declare war), he hadn’t decided on his new worst enemy. I pick us!



Outside Gao: which I had had the time to upgrade the cannon.



Niani.



Walata.



Tadmekka



Taodeni and Wadan




I don’t plan on turning on science; I’ll just upgrade our units.

T314
Mansa makes a bit of a strategic error. These units are dead but cost us 330 hammers at a much lower cost. However, he should have left them in Gao.



Gao didn’t even have a castle! Which means that I can rip it to shreds with my catapults and shred the units with collateral — at not losses!





Use the great general for a military academy in Goldeneye; that’s the wrong choice but oh well.

At Tadmekka, cannons shred the defense. One wins at 40% odds and that is it. This is also the first action for our commando rifles.

Lose my first offensive action of the war against Wadan: a cannon at 32%. Then a rifle at 85%. And then I stupidly lost a samurai against Taodeni (I think).

I consider revolting to Slavery. So let me see.

Emancipation gives you +1 unhappiness for each civ running emancipation. So, for us, that’s +2 unhappy. However, without war weariness, we are running a major happiness surplus.

So I think that slavery is worth it. However, now comes the question is slavery worth the cost of two turns of anarchy?

We produce 740 hammers per turn. So for the two turns of anarchy to be worth it, we would need 32 whips (since Kremlin makes each whip create 50% more hammers, essentially).

We only have about 13 cities I’d like to whip at this point, so I don’t think I’ll swap out of emancipation. But we can do it later if we want. Probably alongside state property. We probably want that — but maybe not uni suffrage. Someone will have to count how many towns we have.

T315

Taodeni.



Wadan burned and precious Satsuma founded.





T316
Not really any attacks to make.

T317
Niani. Mansa has rifles. This is make this a slog.



Djenne. No rifles here! And sorry, Mr. Eiffel. Too bad you can’t capture great people. (actually, after bombarding the city, I’ll take it next turn. So rush the statue of liberty there!

315



Kumbi Saleh. I wasn’t planning on taking this one but I managed to drop the defenses with a spy. Should have done that first to save some movement.

T319
Shaka is attacking Mansa Musa.



I am also attacking Mansa Musa and should be complete before Shaka can get to the field.

T320
I’ve started building buddhist temples in advance of our acquitistion of the spiral minaret and the university of sankore. We will have maybe 10 turns before we can get into position to hit Gilgamesh. He needs to be next because he’s the biggest threat.






We’re threatening Timbuktu, Agades, and Tekedda. We probably want to run 1 turn of espionage against Mali, this turn, to prep us to take all 3 threatened cities next turn.

Then I think there needs to be a little planning against Gilgamesh. I don’t know where his stack is but we should probably try to tank it and then rip him apart.

[Zalson]

Roster
Zalson (just played)
RFS-81 (up)
haphazard1 (skipped)
Brian Shanahan
shallow_thought

[haphazard1]

All sorts of good things happening. And lots of nice infra in the captured cities. Always nice to get lucky and keep some of the buildings when you take a city.

Hmmm, Mansa with a mix of rifles and old stuff (swords, longbows) means we caught him in the process of upgrading his old units. The Ai gets big discounts on upgrades so this is very good news for us. If we can finish him quickly before he comes up with enough money to upgrade the rest, we will face fewer rifles.

Shaka's stack is all older stuff, and should get shredded by cannon and rifles. If he was sending his force to attack Mansa, could we catch it away from his territory and kill it? Or is it inside our territory, and would get teleported if we declared? If we could trap his stack it might be worth wiping it out before trying to deal with Gilgamesh.

I now have taken possession of my new place. But there is stil packing and cleaning to finish at my old place, and then waiting for everything to arrive at the new place. So please continue to skip me for a while longer. This one may be over before I am available again, but maybe not. We will see.

Good luck, RFS-81!

[shallow_thought]

Shaka's stack is all older stuff, and should get shredded by cannon and rifles. If he was sending his force to attack Mansa, could we catch it away from his territory and kill it? Or is it inside our territory, and would get teleported if we declared? If we could trap his stack it might be worth wiping it out before trying to deal with Gilgamesh.

This can be an excellent way to gut the AI; it's almost a shame his stack won't get anywhere near Mansa before Mansa dies. If we can predict roughly where he will teleport (into Gilgamesh territory - we have open borders) and have a stack on hand with some combat workers, I'd be very tempted. Although Gilgamesh makes more sense as a strategic target.

Actually (rambling now), the one thing we may _not_ want to do is kill a huge stack of obsolete units miles away from his territory. While he's got them, he will be building fewer modern replacements.

Either way, good turns. Just a massive unit shuffle now, then death.

[haphazard1]

Mansa is upgrading to his new rifles, but still having swords and such in 1900 AD? And Shaka as well, with war elephants and medieval stuff in 1900 AD. Barbs, lots of warring, and a tough map script certainly have slowed down the overall tech pace of this game.