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

[Zalson]

Roster

Zalson
RFS-81 (just played)
haphazard1 (UP)
Brian Shanahan (on deck)
shallow_thought

Our muskets are going to be significantly stronger than Julius's: all ours have drill 1, combat 1, and city defense 1. If we can get Theocracy, that's C2 pinch muskets. Or drill 3 muskets. Or CG3 muskets. Super powerful.

Muskets are good defenders because they have no weakness with contemporary units and they're a higher base strength and stronger than all medieval units.

From now on, we should mostly build muskets.

I tend to build windmills when a location is low food and mines when a city has a food surplus. As we get into the later game, mines and production become much more powerful.

I noticed that we whipped Super Mario Bros. When these cities get to a high size with a low food surplus, whipping them costs a lot. We should do it if we need it but Super Mario Bros is such a powerful, mature city that we should only whip it when we have to. (Like if there are enemies knocking on the gates). We should borrow some tiles for other cities while it regrows.

We also probably want a castle in Sonic. The extra defense will give us some time to pick our spots. Don't whip it though; it'll get one in 2 turns.

We also want a bank in Advanced Wars; we should whip it too. That's +13 gpt!

Finally, let's keep up binary research; it's a lot more efficient and let's us upgrade units if we need to. And remember to work as many improved tiles as you can. A very good set, RFS-81.

[haphazard1]

OK, I see the save. Will take a look at it this evening and post some plans, but it sounds like more war turns fighting Julius. Wasn't I doing this exact same thing last set?

As Zalson said, muskets have high base strength for their era and are not vulnerable to any specific unit type. They also are eligible for the same lines of promotion as archers and longbows, so they can take city garrison, hills defense, etc. This makes them good for defense. They can be used in an offensive role, and their base strength makes them reasonably good for that, but they are not eligible for the offensive promotions like city raider.

It sounds like Julius is going after Sonic again. That is the city he has been focused on for a long time -- it is the one he demanded for peace right from the beginning. For whatever reason (something in the AI war logic, I guess), the AI tends to get locked into one particular city as its primary target and will continue attacking it until it either takes the city or the war ends by other means. If the AI does manage to take the target city it may then change targets, so if we should ever lose Sonic to Julius he might suddenly alter his behavior. So be careful and look out for attacks elswhere if that ever happens, but otherwise the AI will probably keep trying to force its way into Sonic.

[haphazard1]

Hmmm, lots happening. Some initial thoughts:

- Julius has Nationalism and Military Tradition. He will probably build the Taj Mahal and get a golden age shortly. Also, this means he has cuirassiers. None on the front lines yet, but he has one in Rome (our spy can see it) and might upgrade/build more.
- We need more pikes, for his knights, elephants, and those cuirassiers.
- I see some possible trades with Gilgamesh, we can offer our spare resources for his gems and sugar to boost happiness. And we can pick up Mansa's spare gold/turn as well.
- Where has Shaka been focusing? We do not currently see any of his troops, but we are still at war.
- Literature due next turn will unlock the Heroic Epic. Looks like Cholo has our settled GGs and pretty good hammers, so I will put it there unless someone has a better idea.
- After Literature, we need to research Nationalism to unlock the draft. Muskets would be our draftable unit, at one pop/musket.
- Still some barbs around causing trouble. Wonder if we will ever get this map settled enough to end the barb spawning?
- Spy specialists! Ick! Will reassign those. Sadly, the game loves to auto-assign spy specialists. Watch cities carefully when they grow, or you end up with these mostly useless idiots instead of useful tiles or a more useful specialist type.
- Our economy is not great, but we are not actually on the verge of bankruptcy. A nice change from my last couple turnsets.

So we need to smack down Julius' latest invasion attempt, research a bit more tech, and then possibly go into total war mode and finally put an end to our more annoying neighbors. Might take a while....

[RFS-81]

- Spy specialists! Ick! Will reassign those. Sadly, the game loves to auto-assign spy specialists. Watch cities carefully when they grow, or you end up with these mostly useless idiots instead of useful tiles or a more useful specialist type.

Damn, that's why I like MOO's sliders. (Of course, then I forget to dial down ECO or DEF spending ) I'll make sure to check next time.

Relatedly, I think I saw an Engineer in some city, I think our capital. I left it because I thought someone intentionally placed it.

[Zalson]

The AI likes engineers and spies. Engineers are fairly useful; spies have the greatest economic output (1 beaker, 4 ep) which is why it prioritizes them.

[Zalson]

The more I think about it, the more smack down we need to play against JC. Let’s pillage him back to the stone age.

[haphazard1]

Actually, I think the game assigns spy specialists just because they are first on the list. Or maybe because when they added spies in the BtS expansion, they just put in logic to assign tons of them because it was the new thing and they wanted to showcase it, even though it is usually the wrong choice.

Anyway, tons going on -- these turns take a long time to play. I crushed Rome's stack advancing on Sonic, but it cost us most of our catapults to soften them up enough. Cleaned up everything but one elephant without losing anythinig other than cats, though.

Made peace with Shaka; we can not afford a two front war. He wanted Guilds, but was willing to take Aesthetics instead. It is widely known and the wonders are already built, so not giving him much of real value.

And now (1 turn later) Julius is back with a new stack near Flimbo's Quest. About 10 cuirassiers plus muskets and other assorted stuff. We do not have much that matches up well against cuirassiers. He does not have much siege with this new stack, fortunately, but dealing with it is going to be a problem. We need more units, lots more units.

We need to do something about Rome, certainly, but right now he is pillaging us, not the other way around. Hopefully we will not lose any cities, but fighting against superior tech is costly.

[haphazard1]

Question for the team: now that we have Literature, what do we want to do about the National Epic? Heroic Epic is being built in Cholo, but I am not sure where would be best for our GPP booster. Thoughts?

[Zalson]

Were it not for all the cottages: Football Manager. Maybe Gauntlet? Or a new city in the north?

[haphazard1]

We do not have to build it right away, obviously. Maybe putting it in a captured Roman city would work? Might be a while before we reach that point, though....