Josh's Civ 4 memoir. Chapter 2

[Tarkeel]

In my opinion I the only difference I would have made was going for medic rather than morale Praetorian. Apart from that all the moves would be the same with amicalolas advice. 

Going with a medic instead would likely have cost you two cities, and have chariots still rampaging in your backlines. It wouldn't have been possible to make the other moves the same in that game state.

Having a strong turnplayer at times of war is a huge advantage, especially in seeing which options are available. Personally I wouldn't hold anything back, but I also wouldn't try too hard for devious solutions either. Amica has already shown Jesse the power of combat-workers and morale promotion.

[joshybravo963]

Well I'm happy to wait , I will be back this Sunday

[Amicalola]

I'm also more than happy to wait until Joshy returns, and I'll wait an hour to play now in case anyone else wants to chime in. But excluding that I guess the vague consensus is to keep playing as normal, since Joshy would be attacking anyway?

[Amicalola]

T107
We kill Jesse's archer on the hill with an axe, and moved forward. 



Munich still has no troops in it, so unless he whipped something this turn we can take it on the next. I was ridiculously overzealous here, because I wasn't thinking properly. Our 2nd stack is super weak, and if Jesse has any units in reserve he will do serious damage.



I set our research back to Calendar, because it looks like we won't need HA's or WE's as badly as I thought we did. That might be seriously overconfident though. Next turn we attach our Medic GG, and will try to heal after taking Munich before advancing. That was why I moved the troops overzealously - I was thinking 'we can heal in Munich' without considering that first we have to actually get to Munich.

[civac2]

HBR would be somewhat helpful but you really don't need it.

[Amicalola]

T107
For some reason my pictures didn't save this turn. Not much happened, so it shouldn't matter too much. Basically, we turned Zhuge Liang into a GG-Medic and took the turn to heal, other than moving an axe/spear into Munich, and the same towards Cologne (mostly for scouting. It's hard to know what Jesse has). In this case, Cologne has only an archer on defense, so if we pessimistically assume 3 units whipped over 3 turns, we might still be able to take it with the help of the catapults that are trundling along. 

The city to the east, I believe is Jesse's capital, due to 3rd-ring borders. He's probably concentrating his defense there, since we haven't seen much yet. I'm not sure whether or not it would be a better idea to go for Cologne first, straight for the capital, or even be extra greedy and try to do both. We would almost certainly need to wait for more catapults to take the capital. So my gut is the take Cologne while we wait. Let's see what unit appears there next turn to decide. 

My last image did save, which was that these workers were going to finish a chop here, which my axe/spear saw. I decided it was worth a 0.2 health chariot to whack them and disband, for a) stopping the chop, b) stopping future chops, and c) the scouting information. I'm curious to know if better vets would have done the same thing, although obviously the context affects the decision. 



As a note to Joshy, I have made a massive mistake already in this war, which was promoting all of our chariots to combat 1 or higher. I think you could learn from this, as in: never make this mistake. We really, really, really could use a sentry chariot or three right now. I'm having to guess where the cities are, let alone what's in them. D'oh.  

HBR would be somewhat helpful but you really don't need it.

Yeah, that was my eventual conclusion as well. I appreciate the advice though, always. The good news is that the capture of Munich gave an absurd 185(!) gold, so we can get started on Calendar right now. Thanks to our academy, we're a lot better at spending gold than making it, so these captures are actually going to be really helpful, assuming I don't screw it up somewhere.


Edit: Oh, vanrober has also been sending lots of diplo. It varies in the intelligibility. This turn it was him attacking Rekenner (great, makes sense) and us joining him (sorry, what?). More likely, I am misunderstanding something. At least it does seem that he is not planning to attack us, for now. I would be very concerned about that while we attack Jesse, and afterwards, because we will have a very long and unstable border.

[El Grillo]

Trading a chariot for 2 workers deleted? In a heartbeat. Not only do you get all the benefits you listed, you prevent combat roads, keep pillaged tiles bare longer, and inflict some morale damage too.

And yeah, sentry chariots are sweet, especially with spies disabled, get them while they’re cheap/available!

[Amicalola]

Trading a chariot for 2 workers deleted? In a heartbeat. Not only do you get all the benefits you listed, you prevent combat roads, keep pillaged tiles bare longer, and inflict some morale damage too.

And yeah, sentry chariots are sweet, especially with spies disabled, get them while they’re cheap/available!

Preventing roads is a really good point, yeah. I hadn't thought about that. I guess workers are just really valuable, huh.

Yeah, 'get them while you can' is something to remember. In PB60, I had to get Guilds faster than I was originally planning, and basically didn't think to make them before it was too late. They're that good, that I'd want them in my medieval/renaissance mounted stacks. 3 sentry chariots is SO much better than 1 sentry knight.

[civac2]

Ah yes, that would be an advantage of HBR. You can produce sentry chariots with a stable.

[Amicalola]

Ah yes, that would be an advantage of HBR. You can produce sentry chariots with a stable.

For sure. I decided it wasn't worth the cost of the beakers compared to +3 happiness everywhere from Calendar, but it's definitely a big advantage.

I also wonder if it might have been better to settle the 2nd GG (Zhuge Liang), instead of make a Great Medic. Partly because 2nd promos are good in general, and partly for specifically sentry units. A turn saved in healing at Munich probably isn't worth that, although I guess the medic will add up over time as well. Luckily, because we're IMP, this war should give us enough exp. points for 1 more GG. When Jesse starts whipping hardcore, there's going to be a disgusting number of PRO archers to kill.