Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[suboptimal]

War Weariness was looked at by Victoria over on CFC:  https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/h...ip.623207/. 

One of the interesting findings is that a founded city cannot accumulate more war weariness than the number of amenities it would require.  For example, a pop 7 city can never accumulate more than 3 points of war weariness.  A city that you captured can accumulate 4x this amount, so that same population in a captured city can go as far as -12.  WW points are assigned to foreign cities first, largest cities next and then randomly after that and WW is assigned to a single city until it's "full", at which point it starts to accumulate in the next city until that's "full", etc.

Rome may be suffering far worse than England as a result of their sizeable foreign holdings vs. England's foreign holdings (do they even have any?).  Because of how WW works under the hood:

- a founded city that had sufficient amenities to be content before a war will most likely not suffer rebellion or serious unrest unless it's large enough to require 6 amenities (Pop 13 or higher) and another city sucks all the amenities away.

- captured cities are going to be an immediate WW liability in any protracted war as they will accumulate WW first and go to 4x the limit, probably pulling amenities away from other cities as the amenity balancing routine tries to mitigate the WW.

[Modo]

I can see what they tried to do with WW but it also seems to penalize expansion and large empires...which is again against the idea of an empire building game.

[Singaboy]

Very interesting and very disheartening. This would meant that England currently gets away with the effects despite losing a gazillion of units.

[Singaboy]

Turn 152 (Rome and China)

The sea battle that simply cannot be won against the Arsenal. I bring in all I have and attack all the way



After all attacks, there is a mere frigate left for England. Since I know England doesn't even suffer from war weariness much, this will not do a thing to them. People in SP complain how weak England is, but in a multiplayer game with Oceans, they will win if they can net the Arsenal. PBEM4 was lost for Archduke merely due to him not getting the Arsenal (besides having a weak ally). This is seriously sick

It has to be mentioned that Germany took Bandar Brunei, impacting everyone on their income. Whether that was a good choice, I am not sure.

China has little action but a harvest of crabs for an added 360 gold. There will be another such harvest next turn to help upgrade some units. I am now waiting for Rome to get tanks so some action can be seen on the east. I think, simply for the fun of it, I will attack.

Oh and I got a spy which is sent to a Germany city which would give the best returns in terms of gold. With 50% success chance, I could net 600 gold (which he would lose). It will take until T160 to know the outcome of it.

I finally manage to convert Napoli to Marco Polo. The result is nice. If only Woden would dare to attack. By the way, Rome and China's power has dropped significantly to below 2000 while Nubia has 2400 and England has 2300 (they will never suffer a drop as long as they can build double ships almost everywhere). Our power dropped due to forming lots of corps.

[Sullla]

Hey, cheer up there Singaboy. Not only are you doing a fantastic job of sinking the English navy - repeatedly - I think that you've finally gotten through all of his ships. That kill score of 36-8 is just incredible. I believe that you've finally swept the eastern ocean clear of enemy ships and you can start taking the English cities there. With battleships to protect them from the seas, you may as well capture all of them. That way, they can serve as sinks for war weariness (better to have it pile up in useless captured cities than real ones, right?) and every English city has a Royal Navy Dockyard so you can get another trade route out of holding them. Valetta and the English city holding the Great Lighthouse (it's the city east of Midway) would be especially nice to capture. In an ideal world, we'd capture those cities and then get a peace treaty out of an exhausted Chevalier to allow Rome to turn and deal with Germany next. You have four more turns until a peace treaty can be signed with England/Nubia, and nine more turns until Germany/Russia can declare war.

Quick other notes:

* We have an archaeologist in production going to dig up an artifact. You can swap Rome off Combustion research and let the boost finish the tech. I'd head for infantry next at Replaceable Parts and then go for destroyers at Combined Arms after finishing Combustion. Combined Arms unlocks destroyers, and those things are absolute beasts with 80 strength. Ironclads upgrade into them and they will wreck anything pre-battleships. All of the surviving Roman ironclads would make extremely nice destroyers if you can get there. You may also want Rome to research through Flight -> Radio in the near future to land the boost for Mass Media on the civics tree.

* Be very careful about when to finish researching Electricity and unlock submarines. Privateers will upgrade into them, but once we have that tech done, we can't build privateers any more. Also, subs are extremely slow at only 3 movement points - we almost need to capture the Great Lighthouse for Rome to make them even somewhat viable. If possible, I would try to get 20-25 privateers finished before finishing Electricity and turning them into subs. Remember that Press Gangs will grant +100% production to privateers and ironclads but not to battleships or subs or destroyers, so be wary.

* Firenze has a battleship about 2/3 finished and a university nearly finished. You probably will want to finish both of them; I saw that it was working on a privateer and thought I should mention that.

* England probably has another fleet sailing around the southern tundra to attack us in the southern sea. We need to finish up business by taking England's cities on the eastern ocean and then get Rome's ships back into the southern ocean again to face Germany and any ships coming over in the deep south. Fortunately I think we'll have the canal city back up and running in time to defend down there. Obviously this is another place where capturing the Great Lighthouse city would be a huge benefit.

* Urbanization civic is almost done and then it's on to Mobilization, which even gets the boost things to all our corps/fleets. Once we get Mobilization, we just need to create one battleship armada to boost all of Rome's city defenses to absurd strength (ranged attack = 87). China can get a field gun army that's nearly as good (ranged attack = 77). For the city defenses, we'll want a tank army for both players, which has a melee strength of 97 and therefore grants cities 87 melee defense. And of course every city has 200 HP from Steel tech too. It will be essentially impossible to the other teams to capture anything without having tanks of their own, and TheArchduke is probably the only one who has the research rate to make it there in a reasonable time frame.

Future civics research will need to clear the useless Mass Media (try to have Rome get the boost for this by researching Radio at some point) and then Ideology, which at least is a cheap civic. Then there's only a few more civics we want deep in the tree. Totalitarianism is the big one: Fascism government has 8 policy slots and +5 combat strength for all units (!!!) Free Great General bonus for everything on the map, amazing for the game we have going on here. It's probably reachable in 20-25 turns at our current research rate. Beyond that, Cold War civic has International Waters policy which finally grants +100% production on Modern and later naval units. The designers put that policy waaaaaaay too late on the civics tree but we might get there if the game goes on long enough. I can't imagine us getting any further than that, although the Ecommerce policy (+5 production / +10 gold per international trade route) is simply incredible if we could ever make it to the end of the tech tree.

I hope you're still having fun with the game. I wish I could transport this game back in time to myself from 10 years ago, when I would have had plenty of time to keep going with this venture. I just couldn't stick with it right now, too many other things taking up my time in real life. I'll keep lurking you though until there's a final end to this game.

Oh, and the Venetian Arsenal is still broken. You've killed almost 2000 power worth of military units in 6 turns and England's power has gone from 2500 to 2300. It's freaking retarded.

[Modo]

Taking those coastal English cities will also shuffle the WW for them as well and make it sting.
Also, if that spy manages that great heist....

EDIT: it just dawned on me that founding crappy cities is a double whammy....you get to chop / harvest and redistribute WW, who knows what else. Was continuously ranting on about how this game doesn't encourage empire building but it kind of actively discourages it. This is not new but it makes you wonder what they actually intended / imagined for the late game to look like.

Also, now you have to think if it's possible to design some of your cities as WW sinks and wage wars based on WW alone; a more complicated Statue of Zeus in Civ4 type of issue.

[Singaboy]

T153 (Rome):

The situation that I knew via the Chinese at the sea is as follows:
England has formed a sea dog armada and was able to steal one of my battleship fleets. That hurts. What are the odds of that. Anyway, this means he used the second last GA to form an armada.

Luckily I still have sufficient naval units in the area though this loss hurts. I start by eliminating the heavily wounded battleship with a privateer.



When moving my units closer to the English, more ships pop up. How many units can this rubbish wonder/ chopping nonsense produce. All coastal cities look so barren already. Well, let the sinking continue. I attack the frigate covering the GA so we can removed that bonus. Battleship fleets prove essential for this with one shot kills.

I move in a normal battleship to teleport the GA to Lepanto. The sunken frigate still received the GA bonus as the GA sits in the harbor that is merely two tiles away.

While attacking, I am trying to keep the fleet as close together as possible as I might expect more attacks, though even England has to run out of ships one day. The fourth ship and last visible frigate sinks.

It then takes two battleship attacks to sink the sea dog armada. Well, it did a fine job of stealing a battleship fleet, so most likely it was worth forming it.

I still have two ships ready to attack, but the battleship is enough to sink that last visible unit here. The good thing here is that Rome's ships earned a lot of promotions which can make them stronger and heal them next turn (unless more nonsense shows up)

The situation at the end of a somewhat satisfying 'Rome against a billion'. I am hoping not to get into counterattacks this time and then advance on Lepanto first. It will take both ironclads (btw the extra healing of the GS seems still in effect) two turns to be able to conquer Lepanto. I will use some shots next turn to soften up the city and then take it hopefully on T155. I could then take Valletta a turn after (that city is in fact pretty nice and would benefit us immediately since its a CS).

After that, the question will be whether to turn the fleet around to sail to German waters or so simply hang on here and remove every single English coastal city. Mind you, that in two turns combustion will be done (Sulla, the archeologist still takes 5 turns and I can't afford to wait that long). Electricity will be done after this (4 turns) to get to submarines and then I would head to infantry etc.

Urbanization is close to finishing and Rome switched to Scorched earth for more envoys and other bonuses. I will switch back to urbanization next turn though and think hard of inserting the policy that gives gold for defeating units from earlier eras (now that I have killed so many of their units, it might be a little late). The kill count stands at 42-9.

Tanks come in two turns and I requested the one oil source from China as China can immediately connect their second source the turn it gets combustion itself. I am not sure how viable it is to get 20 privateers as it takes a long time for each city to produce them. I now have 4 privateers, this is really slow going. By the way, the moment frigates became obsolete, the production in Firenze was reset. It would take 18 turns for a battleship. yeah right.

An additional trader is done and will enter the service next turn after transferring it. The settler from Rome will be done in three turns to create a passage for the fleet.

Oh, on the other side of the land, the embarked scout spots two English frigates attempting to sneak into our waters. We got to be on our toes here, though I have been trying to keep the navy close to the cities to have city defense support if they decide to attack somewhere.

[Modo]

So if I understand correctly a Sea Dog has to attack a ship in order to capture it and that ship, once captured, can't move or heal until the next turn is that correct?
If this is the case then yes it eliminated a battleship fleet of yours but it lost too much in the exchange....which I suppose is another effect of having VA, winning by losing. All in all, still a good exchange for Rome.

You intend to liberate Valletta?

[Kerberos]

Have you considered using their own chopping tactics against them ? You could still chop Privateers out. Albeit only at half efficiency of the English VA chops, but still, there are couple forests at Bologna, couple at Palermo, etc.

I don't know if it would be cost effective to even purchase few more forested tiles for chopping purposes. Maybe with Press Gangs policy card that gives +100% production to privateers ?

[Singaboy]

It is true that there is some room for chops and maybe founding such cities. However, Rome has zero builders currently and is working on some.

T153 (China)
China finished banking and urbanization, passing the Inspiration to Rome. I did not change any policies as I still have to upgrade a ton of units especially in the west. Research is set to ironclads for a turn (takes 3 turns), then on T154 China will follow Rome to finish combustion the same turn. Mobilization is next as the civic and it takes 5 turns to get there proving Levee en masse and armadas and armies.
Another crab was harvested for more gold (now 1300). This should be good for the promotions in the east and then for all those ships in the west.

T154 (Rome)
Well, I thought one of the privateers would be safe from an English attack in our waters but it seems the frigates and most likely, sea dogs are well within our waters. I have to play really careful here not to lose more of the precious few units we have. One knight is moving into Venezia to be upgraded to a tank and thus increasing the defensive values next turn.

Next turn is a big turn as I will get urbanization and of course, combustion to upgrade those knight to tanks. I will also swap out Professional army for now as I hope to upgrade all knights to tanks and then enable to policy to get gold from defeating units from earlier eras.

In the east, there is no longer any English navy present. I have actually managed to defeat them there. If he has 40 ships in the other sea soon, I am doomed anyway. However, for now, it is time to plan a proper strategy to take those cities and then move the navy into other waters. Rome will finish a new settler in 2 turns making a passage viable in about 5 turns. This is getting pretty tight with regards to Germany attacking us.
Lepanto's health is blown away while I ship in an ironclad and promote all those ships that can be promoted. Two battleship fleets are equipped with +7 attack strength versus district, which will be important when attacking cities.
I have two ironclads to take Lepanto and hopefully Valletta next turn. The fall of Lepanto is a foregone conclusion. However, it will be interesting to see how long it will take to conquer Valletta. It's wall have 100 health. I can attack with three fleets, two have 87 strength. Those two should be able to eliminate the walls. I can then attack with a fleet and a normal battleship, hopefully taking the city with the second ironclad.



Let's have a look at the bigger picture in the east. If I can take Levanto and Valletta next turn, I would like to move south the take Actium and Midway. Actium would give us the Great Lighthouse for faster movement. It would have to be a swift action so that my fleet can sail to protect Rome's western flank.

At the same time, knights are being upgraded to tanks next turn. The plan is to take Hathor from the north while China is providing support from the west. If there is good progress, Jutland could be taking via land forces rather than keeping the fleet busy for too long. Hathor having a defense value of 86 doesn't make things easier though