I'm just going to amuse myself and guess based on his post in the general thread before I get the turn that waterbat was aiming for Music and Azza sniped him.
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[SPOILERS] In the beginning...
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September 20th, 2012, 11:55
(This post was last modified: September 20th, 2012, 14:47 by superjm.)
Yeah that ended up being it. Sorry waterbat, you never had a chance once Azza had it pre-researched :<
Also ![[Image: iK5Io.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/iK5Io.jpg) I was afraid of this. Unless Azza goes there now Catwalk will get Taj Mahal easily. If he does then things get really good for him. This would be about the time I'd try to strike militarily but that's just not feasible for me. Someone has to at least try to slow him down. Either way, it's clear that I MUST invade Sareln (and maybe Xenon too) and take his land if I want any chance of winning this game. EDIT - One interesting thing is whether Catwalk has engineering or not. He might have been able to bulb it already with an engineer he got a few turns ago. If he doesn't have it and doesn't go for it later, I could research it right after guilds is done and get Notre Dame almost immediately from Kirby (2turns with chops+slaving+some micro), finishing it on T103. It's an option if viable. Gonna depend on what Catwalk has researched, and I won't know that until I get Alphabet after Guilds. On another note, doing some calculations, I can have a force of at least 15 knights built by T104+enough money to upgrade three chariots by then. The actual attack will occur depending on how quickly they can be massed near Icarus. If I elect to hold off engineering after guilds and run full gold slider instead until T104 I can do 8 upgrades. My hope is that one of either Xenon or Sareln will not have the units needed to defend against Knights or at least won't be anticipating an attack. If I do catch Sareln off guard, I can possibly kill him outright before he has a chance to defend himself. Or, at the very least, I can take most of his land and cripple him for the rest of the game. I'll have a more concrete idea of what I'll do as we get closer to the attack period.
Finished Alphabet on T94, going for Guilds next which should take three turns.
Finally have a complete tech breakdown on everyone. The beaker count, not including techs in progress/overflow, is: Azza - 6655 Catwalk - 7128 Xenon - 3431 Waterbat - 3519 Me - 6226 Sareln - 2684 I could try and show a spreadsheet of who has what, but that's boring, so instead I decided to do a visual image of who has what. I'll likely be updating this every so often so I have a clear idea of the tech picture without having to keep going back to F4 all the time. Linked cause it's very big So, highlights: * Tech-wise, looks like this game is a two-tiered affair. Catwalk, Azza, and Me are pushing ahead techwise, with Catwalk set to have a clear advantage soon. The other three are lagging behind and in some cases missing some key techs. Xenon just recently got stuff like Currency and he doesn't even have Code of Laws yet. Waterbat and Sareln are missing Civil Service. Sareln doesn't have Metal Casting and Waterbat hasn't done Iron Working yet. * As for the others, Catwalk decided to very aggressively push towards Nationalism, and unfortunately it looks like he's going to get Taj Mahal uncontested. I likely wouldn't have been able to stop him even I switched gears and beelined, not if I weren't still expanding anyway. I can only hope that my war succeeds and my landgrab + focus on infrastructure lets me overcome his rampant wonder-whoring in the long run. I'd set up to attack him, but Knights will do jack against fortified Praetorians and he still has plenty of those, not to mention I'm not even bordering him yet. I can only hope one of Azza or waterbat (or both) tries to slow him down. Azza's been playing a great game, parlaying several key wonders and GP to maintain a strong tech pace. He switched to Pacifism and Caste System this turn, which means there are going to be more GP on the way. * On the bright side, no one is particularly close to Engineering and I'll likely make it there before anyone else despite the delay. And even if someone does reach it when I do, I doubt they're planning to chop out Notre Dame in two turns. * Tweaking some micro and getting rid of some infrastructure builds means I can probably get around ~20knights mobilized by T104. If enough are in position by that point I'll attack Sareln and gather my forces towards that direction. The one way to drive me off would be to research Feudalism and mass-whip some longbows, so I'll be keepign an eye on him. Worse comes to worse, I attack Xenon instead, which will be harder because he has a ton of troops to mow through. Point is, I need to play to win and with Catwalk set to GA his way to tech dominance making an aggressive landgrab is my best shot of putting myself in a position to win. Knights aren't ideal for this purpose, but cuirs are too far away and CKNs/maces are too slow. One potential wrinkle I can employ is trading in some knights for CKNs. I can attack the lightly defended borders with Knights and then have the CKNs catch up to collateral any highly fortified cities. I'll decide what to do as we get closer to prime time.
Well, things are getting interesting now.
I haven't received T98 yet, but I have been busy in diplo matters. First, a few turns ago Quote:Greetings Superjm of the Mushroom Kingdom I have an NAP till T110, mostly cause A) Since I don't border Catwalk yet and even if I did I'd have to go through that jungle area or the ocean where he has his island cities to do anything meaningful, I don't think a war against Catwalk would be viable with my current forces and tech path. B) For my invasion on Sareln, I want to ensure that I don't receive any aggression from other players. I'm certainly not interested in doing anything else to help Catwalk's cause, so I ignored the message which would signal an implicit "no" Then a turn ago was waterbat Quote:Diplomatic Proposal #1 The wrinkle here is that I can't attack Catwalk on T106 regardless, and for the reasons above I don't think it's in my best interests. At the same time, I did want to make it clear to waterbat that I oppose Catwalk, so I negotiated a compromise that I'd send him two Knights for three fast workers by T106. I don't know how much that'll help him but there we go. And now the past turn. Quote:Azza: Looks like Azza and waterbat are attempting a dogpile. If Catwalk doesn't anticipate it it may end up being beneficial to them since, as far as I can tell, Catwalk has been wealth building for a while now to get to Nationalism/other techs. He can still raise a pretty substantial army if he wanted to, but any time when he's busy defending himself and not teching is fine by me. Sadly, I'll probably have to either deny Azza's diplo straight up since I don't want to afford any more of my potential Sareln invasion forces, especially since I'm already sending Knights to waterbat. Catwalk has been trying to get me to close borders with Waterbat and Azza for a while now, and even ignoring the loss of trade commerce, I certainly don't want to do that. So yeah, trouble is brewing on the horizon and I feel like I'm in the middle of it all while attempting to do my own thing 
So with 100 turns played as of today, I guess I'll just do a general overview of how I'm doing so far and how I may have done things differently.
* Catwalk has a pretty advantageous position now, having the strongest economy and the most cities. Me and Azza seem to be roughly even, and waterbat, Xenon, and Sareln are very behind (waterbat DOES have a ton of cities himself though. I wouldn't count out him parlaying that land into an advantage later on, but he's so far behind in tech it may not help him anyway) * I don't like how my opening turned out. I made the play to go worker-warrior-worker-settler and was able to get my second city planted before anyone else, but then sort of meandered slow-building a work boat, some miltary, and granaries before getting my second settler out, even building a library before doing so, and before long many players planted their third and fourth cities before I had. This is an especially bad decision in hindsight because there was a lot of land (so rushes weren't really viable this early) and no barbs, so I had pretty much free reign to expand as I pleased in the early game. I have the second or third strongest economy right now, but I know I could have done better if I had expanded earlier to get the snowball rolling sooner. Definitely a live and learn deal * I'm generally happy with my tech path. Going for Code of Laws instead of Metal Casting I feel was the right decision, as it got me right on track for early Civil Service and forges are pretty expensive investments in the early game. Looking back, going for writing early was symptomatic of the previous point. If I had went for expansion rather than going for libraries I could have held off on writing until after Animal Husbandry, but even then by that point I wasn't going to take advantage of early AH either since I was busy hooking up copper and building my first cottages at the capital. If there was one thing I'd do differently, it's to do Currency before Civil Service and maybe hold off on Calender instead. The whole purpose of getting calender that early was for the incense happiness (which was another error, already detailed earlier in this thread) * The lack of rivers made cottaging a less profitable endeavor overall, but in this case I think prioritizing cottaging was a good decision, as it sets up my current economy for the mid game and allows me to keep a good tech pace even as I'm whipping my cities for military. * This may seem pointless given what's happening now, but even at this moment I'm not sure attacking with Knights is a good move. Archduke botched his entire game, but even in his incredibly backwards position Sareln can still stall me out pretty badly if he worked at, and it may take quite a bit of additional whipping/military for the campaign to be fully worth it. I'd much rather dogpile Catwalk before he could parlay his inevitable MoM-boosted Taj golden age into an even bigger lead, but I already explained why that doesn't seem viable. Maybe in hindsight people will point out why I could have/should have went that route. Regardless, despite my misgivings, I'm going to go for the attack as planned. Even if I can't eliminate Sareln if I can make headway into his land and give myself another avenue for further expansion while Azza/Catwalk/waterbat are busy fighting each other, I may be able to create a much stronger position. * I'm not convinced my worker micro was optimal, and trying to plan worker turns farther than a few turns ahead is a major headache. I can only hope that I improved my land about as efficiently as necessary. * I've completely neglected my navy up to this point. It hasn't come back to haunt me yet but considering how much of my food is sitting in the water it might have been prudent to make a bigger investment in this area. Regardless of everything that's happened I'm having a lot of fun in this game. I fully expect people to rip me apart after this game is done (if enough people care that is...) but until then, I'll just enjoy this as much as I can :P
Well well. Catwalk just declared on Azza this turn (T100).
That should make things interesting. Wonder if Azza is prepared to deal with it since my understanding is T106 was their target date to attack him. Waterbat has been massing axes and catapults at his border city, and with him researching Machinery (I have research visibility on everyone now. Early investment in courthouses pays off!) and hoarding gold I'm expecting a mass upgrade to maces once he gets there. Sareln finished Civil Service and immediately triggered a GA to switch into Bureau/CS/OR/HR (I thought he was already in HR?) I imagine he'll switch back to slavery before the GA finishes. If I attack early with light forces I could maybe catch his southern border city without the ability to whip a defender inbetween turns, but looking at how my forces are amassed I probably won't have enough time to do that. Everyone else is researching Engineering. Fortunately I just got there first, and I'm pretty confident you can't finish Notre Dame with only one engineer, so I should be able to get the wonder. As far as the upcoming war goes, Sareln doesn't seem to have a lot of spears though he could obviously whip them if needed. Non-fortified spears shouldn't be a problem on his low-culture cities. Taking his capital will prove difficult without cats unless I have overwhelming force. I am more than willing to lose out in hammers if it means taking Sareln's land, so I will likely continue whipping out knights as long as I can. Techwise, I'm going to cover the Aesthetics line quickly (need Music anyway) and then get to Military Tradition/Gunpowder ASAP. I've been holding off on longterm planning until I get a better idea of how my attack will progress, but I have specialists working in Bowser (westernmost city) which should result in a great person roughly 14 turns from now? The plan is to trigger a golden age, switch to Caste System+Pacifism and starve several of my cities to generate GPP quickly in the five turn window, which I will (hopefully) use to pop several useful rennaisance techs. The exact composition of these great people will depend on which tech path I plan to utilize and the timing. I'm going to have to study up on bulb order and time everything as well as I can. Also figure out the formula for how many beakers a GPP gives towards a tech.
Long story short, I declared war on Sareln on T102. I only have one unedited screenshot though to sum it up, since I forgot to take more and it's far too late at night for me to be doing image editing. In the end, things went smoothly.
I was planning on waiting until T103 or T104 to do so, when I had more Knights in position, but Sareln's golden age gave him a pretty significant GNP boost, enough that he was one turn away from Machinery. Getting maces/xbows in his cities would make him significantly harder to crack with just Knights (maybe it would have been better if I teched to Gunpowder/MT first, but it's far too late to be worrying about that now), and getting Machinery means he can immediately beeline Engineering for pikes to cut off an attack from the start, so with 5 knights and 4 chariots within striking distance, I decided to press the attack now. Those 9 units were stationed 1SW of Icarus on the previous turn. From that spot I could immediately attack Antioch which was defended by an archer and two warriors. Two of my knights had 5XP, one had 3, and the others had none. In addition, he had a spear and axe fortified on the wines for a while. Therefore, there were two tricky battles here: Killing the spear on the hill and the archer in Antioch. a C2 Knight gave me 90% odds on the archer which I won, and another C2 Knight gave me roughly ~72% odds on the spear. I took it and fortunately won with only ~10HP to spare. From there it was easy cleanup of the warriors and axe. Of note is I used a chariot to beat the axe and then upgraded it to another knight using the capture gold. Decided to keep Antioch. I'm going to get some CKNs over to this side of my empire, which should be good enough to defend against anything Archduke can counterattack with, provided I'm able to get enough of them over there in time. Once he gets pikes it's going to get pretty difficult for me since I focused on a mobile force. My hope is that I can take Adrianapole on the next turn (it's defended by an axe and warrior) and make a bit more headway into his territory and raze his cities closer to his core to give me some room to expand into his area. I'll be teching Gunpowder during this time so I can get muskets online ASAP. In other news, Notre Dame was completed successfully, a very useful wonder to that gives me some breathing room for all my whip unhappiness. Catwalk finished Taj Mahal and started his second 9-turn golden age. Unfortunate, but hey, what can you do :/ I have some units near the Azza/Catwalk border that I can use to observe their conflict, more as a curiosity than anything else. Waterbat is still readying his forces for an attack on Catwalk, and Xenon is still idle. I'm banking on this war being a net positive for me. If I can cripple Sareln, get some additional land to expand to, and Azza and waterbat slow down Catwalk somewhat, I may be able to catch up. The one bad part about this war is that it makes it pretty difficult to plan too far ahead like I have been all this time, so I'm going to have to be flexible and respond to how things are going.
War situation at end of T103. One useful thing I realized is that I miscounted the turns since his golden age, so he was actually stuck in caste system when I declared war on him. He should be able to switch back next turn though.
Sareln abandoned Adrianople and is presumably setting up to fortify Thessolonica. Thessolonica has a spear and warrior, and the axe and warrior will be there to fortify it. 12 knights and 2 chariots are within range to fork Angora and Thessolonica on the lower forest in that image and strike either one on T105. One of those cities is doomed for sure. 5 more Knights are on route to Sareln's territory, 2 more will be given to waterbat as per our agreement, and I've started queuing/upgrading CKNs as an auxiliry force to go against Constantinople if it ends up being too hard a nut to crack (it'll have 80% cultural defense+plains hill+river penalty unless I maneuver to position). Hopefully I won't need them and I can use the CKNs to fortify my position and/or garrison new cities. I'll begin queueing settlers within a turn or two to finally fill in the remaining space in my territory and, if things go well against Sareln, to expand quickly into his territory. In other news, Azza/Catwalk border F also has two units that I don't remember. Also not shown is a potential naval battle near Dinky Dingo. Azza with 2 triemes/2 galleys and catwalk with 3 triemes. If the galleys are loaded with good enough units he could actually attack Dinky Dingo next turn. Catwalk researched compass this turn, so I'm expecting Optics next turn so he can upgrade to caravels and stymie any other potential naval invasion from Azza's end.
I've been real busy lately, which sucks cause this war has been pretty eventful. With how long it's been summarizing everything that went on will take some time.
War is still going on as of T110, except it's not just with Sareln, but with Xenon as well. When things quiet down and I can sit down and make a large update again to get up to speed.
Man with how long it's been since my last (actual) post it's crazy that only 26 turns have passed. In lieu of a bunch of screenshots and because a bunch has happened, I'll just give a summary of how things went since my last post. Anywho this is as of 129
*A few turns after T103 Xenon declared on me. Fortunately, he telegraphed his invasion allowing me to divert some of my military and production towards defending that front. He attempted to attack with a small stack which I was able to deflect easily. As a bonus, thanks to some spare workers I had nearby after chopping out Notre Dame, I was able to make a road connection to his border city (defended by a single Axeman) and use a Knight to take the city and raze it. Xenon backpedalled afterwards and later brought a pretty substantial stack with a smattering of Pikes, axes, swords, some cats and mounted units. He parked on the hill SW of Ridley and fortified, content to bombard my defenses down. Fortunately, I was able to whip out walls and a castle before this, buying me enough time to fortify the city with newly acquired muskets. Soon enough, Xenon made an error by attempting to move his stack south (going after my other city in the area? who knows) nullifying his fortification bonus. I used this opportunity to attack with my stack, using CKNs and a cat as collateral, hoping to eliminate most of the stack. I got pretty good combat luck (only lost four units I think) and succeeded in crippling the stack, forcing a retreat from him. Of course, what he didn't know was that I had some fast workers I got from waterbat nearby, and as soon as he put himself in a vulnerable position while attempting to retreat to his territory, I roaded a hill tile and annhilated the rest of his stack. I formed a new city on a riverside hill to try and exert some cultural pressure and made peace with Xenon a few turns later. I suspect he may try to attack again, so I've kept a substantial garrison in that city since. * On the Sareln front, I learned quite a few harsh lessons on how to perform war in this game. I was able to break through into his territory and raze both Angora and Thessolonica after he abandoned them, and razed a few more cites around his border. Unfortunately, I made my first crucial mistake in taking Trebizond (his city above his capital) and not razing it. I had planned to use it to heal my knights quickly while bringing some CKNs to the area to assault the capital. Sareln responded by quickly assembling a large stack of cats, horse archers, maces and spears to attack my wounded knights. I abandoned Trebizond and retreated back to a new border city I made along with the CKNs. He attempted to attack this border city, but I was able to cripple it by sacrificing my CKNs for collateral and killing a good portion of his units while flanking his cats. He was left with nothing more than an injured mace and several injured Horse Archers. Then my second huge mistake: I left my border city lightly defended for a turn to handle happiness problems in my newly acquired cities in the tundra strip. I thought that I had vision on all possible spots that Sareln could station his HAs at, but apparently I didn't. Sure enough, he killed my supermedic and defenders in that city with his healed horse archers and took the city, razing it, merely a few turns before I could get muskets there to fortify the city permanently. After that setback, most of my knights were gone, and I went onto the defensive. Sareln made a new city near the border to exert cultural control. He stationed a dozen horse archers with a few melee units and started putting catapults in that city, and due to cultural borders he had a roaded path 3 tiles away straight to my city with 5 muskets and some knights. Worse even, the roaded tile next to my city was forested, which means I couldn't pillage the road with any normal unit since he could simply kill the unit before I did anything. Doing some simulations in a sandbox, I determined that as soon as he had engineering (2 turns away at that point) he could easily sacrifice his cats and use his stack to take the city. With that in mind, I made a rather difficult decision that I'm still not sure was the right one. I had another supermedic with the morale promotion and decided to use that to pillage the road, essentially sacrificing it. He was quickly killed of course, but I think he did the job. As a result of that pillage, Sareln could no longer threaten the city without first becoming open to counterattack. This bought me a few turns, which I used to amass more defenders in that city. He actually DID attempt to take the city, moving his stack on the forest next to it. I counterattacked and killed about half the stack with minimal losses (being mostly HAs against muskets and knights, it was easy once the melee defenders were out of the way). He sacrificed his cats the next turn but apparently did not like his odds after the strike, so he retreated into the city. Using more muskets I had sortied, I quickly went on the offensive and forced him to abandon the city, allowing me to raze it. A few turns afterwards he offered a white peace. I attempted to negotiate terms in my favor for peace, but when he decided not to negotiate I simply took the white peace: I was starting to get into some major happiness issues at this point and not enough units to go around to keep it in check without sacrificing my border units. And besides, I only just finished Rifling and any stack substantial enough to take his capital would take a long time to mass and at least 5 turns to even reach the capital. I had another idea instead, which I'll get to... * In news not related to my warring, Catwalk, as expected, went into double golden age. Waterbat must have quickly gone down as it wasn't long until he made peace with Catwalk, leaving Azza on his own. Catwalk amassed a huge 50-unit stack of maces and muskets and easily took F, using an artist to immediately assert border control. He attempted to go deeper into Azza's territory with his remaining muskets and some rifles, but was eventually rebuffed when Azza managed to get enough knights, longbows, and other assorted goodies to defend his city. As of this turn, slowcheetah razed a coastal city with an amphibious assault but otherwise has retreated into his territory. I had made an NAP with Catwalk to turn 131 and extended it to 150 as of this turn. I have no interest in attacking Rome while he's in a position of strength. If I'm going to win this game, I need to outexpand Rome, and gunning for Sareln followed by Xenon is my only route to that end. Of course, slowcheetah started yet ANOTHER golden age using the Communism spy last turn. That's going to be 36 turns of golden age production up to this point when he's finished to that. And now I know my MoM is banned in most games  * Even with Catwalk using his double golden age to pull ahead, I had my own plans up my sleeve. I started a golden age using only my second great person, an artist, and used the GA to tech to Economics while running all specialists in a city to generate another great person, immediately using that and the free Great Merchant to start another GA, giving me 12 turns in all. It's certainly not 36, but I was able to use the opportunity to switch to Confucionism and organized religion (long overdue in hindsight) and then later to free market, while using the extra research and production to beeline to Rifling and quickly produce muskets and universities. Oxford is currently being built in the capital, due in four more turns. I've started to pull away technologically from everyone sans slowcheetah, and that's only going to get worse as I get more universities/observatories/banks up and expand further. * After making peace with Sareln, I beelined straight to Astronomy and am now quickly producing galleons. I've started producing rifles and have enough muskets to upgrade in the area. The plan is to load up four-five galleons with rifles/muskets/maybe collateral and immediately land right next to his capital. The original plan was to tech straight to steel and upgrade some trebs to cannons to bombard the capital, but those plans changed after using the espionage slider to gain city visibility on Sareln's cities. Turns out he has nothing but HAs and catapults massed in his capital along with a lone spearman and a GG cataphract, and based on his power rating doesn't have much of anything else in his other cities I don't have visibility on. A stack of rifles and muskets should be able to take him down even if he gets some more phracts up, and there's no way he can get to gunpowder and muskets quickly enough to counter. If I take the capital and use other units on the border to take his other cities, I can finally make short work of his territory and start to expand quickly. slowcheetah has started expanding the empty stretch of land leading to Sareln's territory, but if I play my cards right I should be able to box him out and get free reign on Sareln's entire territory. By that point I should finally get to military tradition and assembly line, eventually get to railroad to ensure slowcheetah can't do anything to me, and then go straight for Xenon next. From there we'll see what happens. Sorry if my descriptions aren't enough to give a clear enough picture. As a consolation, here's some screenshots of my entire empire as of EOT 129. If anyone wants, I archive every EOT save file I make, so I can attempt to get screenshots of previous turns to better illustrate exactly what's been going on. |
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