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

[shallow_thought]

I'd love to get a few CR3 Sams so we can upgrade them to CR3 rifles (it's not an especially good move in MP but CR3 rifles and later infantry absolutely murder other units in SP).

Absolutely. Trebs and CR may be situational in MP, but in SP they do the job. As said earlier, given enough GGs a small core of highly promoted CR units can be good against AI. If we're doing enough fighting to generate the spares.

Good luck.

In other news, my in-laws arrive on Sunday (just as I get back from hols) and are staying for a few days. I doubt I'll have a play window before Wed. Depending on how things go for Brian, I may need to slip in the roster. Sorry.

[RFS-81]

I think spies can steal from any city, not just Rome. is there a specific reason we dispatched a spy all the way to Rome?

Rome had the lowest tech steal EP cost.

Ok I've had a look at the save and everything looks good so far.  I've looked at the espionage situation, and we've enough EPs to spy bonk 1 1/2 Roman cities into revolt (if a spy was sitting in the city at no discount).  I switch all focus onto him for now,  if I got enough for two or even three revolts that'd probably be enough to turn the tide from a slog to a strong victory.

Revolts get rid of culture defenses, right?

[Zalson]

I think spies can steal from any city, not just Rome. is there a specific reason we dispatched a spy all the way to Rome?

Rome had the lowest tech steal EP cost.

Ok I've had a look at the save and everything looks good so far.  I've looked at the espionage situation, and we've enough EPs to spy bonk 1 1/2 Roman cities into revolt (if a spy was sitting in the city at no discount).  I switch all focus onto him for now,  if I got enough for two or even three revolts that'd probably be enough to turn the tide from a slog to a strong victory.

Revolts get rid of culture defenses, right?

Strange that Rome would have the lowest cost to steal; learn something new every day! I figured there was a reason so thanks for explaning.

Revolts do get rid of cultural defense for just 1 turn (or longer if it is a culturally-induced revolt).

I'd love to get a few CR3 Sams so we can upgrade them to CR3 rifles (it's not an especially good move in MP but CR3 rifles and later infantry absolutely murder other units in SP).

Absolutely. Trebs and CR may be situational in MP, but in SP they do the job. As said earlier, given enough GGs a small core of highly promoted CR units can be good against AI. If we're doing enough fighting to generate the spares.

Good luck.

In other news, my in-laws arrive on Sunday (just as I get back from hols) and are staying for a few days. I doubt I'll have a play window before Wed. Depending on how things go for Brian, I may need to slip in the roster. Sorry.

We can swap if you'd like?

Regarding the offensive weaponry situation: if we get to Theology (or Vassalage), CR1/Bombard trebuchets reduce our required numbers to just 20 to take down a Chicken Pizza Castle!

Or more realistically: just 10. and take 2 turns.

Also CR2 trebs are much more likely to survive attacking a city. If we build them out of the HE city, we might even be able to get CR3 trebs!

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm going to hold off on playing this tonight. They're doing a big job at work, reconstructing the cells and the noise of the construction work unfortunately gave me a bad headache.

Will play this tomorrow.

[haphazard1]

Hope things quiet down at work, Brian. Feel better soon, and good luck wtih the turnset when you get to it.

Not like I am in a position to complain about taking a while to finish a turnset.

[Brian Shanahan]

I just had another look at the game tonight, and looking at it Rome is too tough at the moment to attack. He's got a unit power advantage and most of our units are in the medieval period where attacking cities is simply suicide. Before rifles and cannons we'd need way too much siege to take even a single city.

I'll take peace at the first good chance I get and look to tech up the line.

I'm sorry but I'm not going to slog into what Julius has at this stage in the game. It's frankly suicide.

Will report tomorrow.

[shallow_thought]

Normally I'd expect to be able to make progress against the Monarch AI at medieval tech parity. Kill their offensive stack (done?), secure your other borders through diplo (um...), use your superior land-grabbing and builder skills to establish a production edge and hack on through. With Julius ahead in tech (I've said it before and I'll say it again - this tech trading on but you can't initiate variant is a genuinely fresh challenge) and Shaka lurking, I'm not sure the "normal" rules apply.

The reason to hit Julius now is if
a) He is the runaway, and if we leave him at peace he will gain on us.
b) OR he is the only strong AI left and focussing on him will win the game sooner than picking up the scraps first.

I've not checked the saves for a week, so am not in a position to judge. But if those don't apply and waiting for the post-castles/longbows era puts the attacker at an advantage, then  yes - identify the beeline that gets us an edge and push it.

[haphazard1]

I favor hitting Rome, because I think both of shallow_thought's conditions apply. Condition A (Julius is the Runaway AI) is very much true -- he is leading us in tech and is teching faster than we are. Time is on his side, not on ours, and he has already demonstrated that if we make peace he is just going to come back for more in 20 turns or so once he has built a fresh stack.

Condition B (Julius is the only real threat to us) is also true.  Shaka is lurking but he is not ahead of us in tech and his empire is small, plus he has chosen to go after Willem. Mansa has some tech but is also small and not militarily a huge threat. Willem could be a threat longer term, but is busy fighting Shaka. Gilgamesh could be a problem, but our relations with him are decent and he has not shown much desire to fight so far.

I think we need to hit Rome. I destroyed two large Roman stacks during my turnset, so he should have less troops available at least for a while. It will take a lot of siege, yes, but we can build a lot of siege quite rapidly if we choose to do so.

If we do not attack Rome, then what do we do? Just let him keep sending stacks at us while he techs faster than we do? That is not going to win the game for us. More cities in the north will help a bit, although the time frame for payback on that investment is fairly long. We could pick a side in the Shaka/Willem war and try to grab some territory that way, but committing our military in the west when we know Julius is going to show back up again seems risky to me. We could annex Mansa, although that has some of the same risks as getting involved in the war in the west.

Attacking Rome will be a hard slog and will cost us a lot of dead siege units. But if we don't do something to slow him down, I think we will see Roman rifles and cavalry inside our borders before we reach Rifling ourselves.

[haphazard1]

Normally I'd expect to be able to make progress against the Monarch AI at medieval tech parity. Kill their offensive stack (done?), secure your other borders through diplo (um...), use your superior land-grabbing and builder skills to establish a production edge and hack on through. With Julius ahead in tech (I've said it before and I'll say it again - this tech trading on but you can't initiate variant is a genuinely fresh challenge) and Shaka lurking, I'm not sure the "normal" rules apply.

We do not have tech parity with Rome, unfortunately. And are not likely to any time soon. We need Nationalism + Military Tradition to match what Julius has right now (and has had for at least 5 turns), and that is likely to take 10-12 turns at a minimum. He will be teching during his double golden age during that time, so we are not catching up and likely are falling further behind.

Kill offensive stack: killed two offensive stacks during the past 10 turns, so hopefully check on this one.

Secure other borders through diplo: Gilgamesh our diplo is decent; Shaka and Willem are fighting each other; Mansa might be a problem but is not a huge military threat. Sort of check, maybe?

Use skills to build a production edge: Well, if Rome was not in an extended golden age we might have an edge here. Maybe.

Hack on through: I think it could be done. It will be costly and messy, no question.

And I have to agree that the variant with allowing the AIs to trade techs but not us is a tough one. It shows just how much advantage the human player can usually get from tech trading, being better able to use beelines and things like bulbing to grab key techs that can then be traded to multiple AIs to backfill. I am definitely not used to facing AIs with superior tech at Monarch! Immortal and Deity, yes, but not at Monarch.

[Zalson]

We don’t have a production edge in the golden age but our gnp and and production are close. With our food edge, we can probably draft our way to superior power.

Rope a dope until cannons, keep expanding north, and then drop the hammer.