Learning Capria FFH SG

[kjn]

Markets are half the hammer cost of courthouses, so on a per-hammer basis they may still be competitive in some cities. It is worth it to check each city before deciding.

Yes, but it's not so much what the city looks like now, but what it will look at when the improvement is finished.

[quote=haphazard1]The question is when do we make that shift? We do still have several techs we want first, plus grabbing the rest of our available city sites. So I think we stay in our current civics for at least one more turnset, and maybe two more. This will delay serious progress against Auric, plus leaving us weaker than I am really happy with. But I just don't think we are ready to go all-out war mode yet.

No, but I think we should do a switch to Theocracy+Empyrean+Conquest soon. Maybe not build much military (though we need to spread Empyrean and Order around), but draft all our Empy cities at least once (except maybe Tartu). Praha, Basel and Wien can probably be drafted twice.

Do we actually have any siege workshops built, much less catapults? Siege is slow, even in our own lands using roads. On the attack in foreign culture getting them where we need them will be horribly slow. And against Jonas and his stacks of Haste shamans...not good.

That's why we need Radiant Guards with Blinding Light. We don't have any Siege workshops yet - I plan to put one in St Andrews. What about putting another one in Åbo? Finish the courthouse, build the workshop, and catapults all the way.

Some Ice I adepts to slow our enemies, in addition to Radiant Guards or Rathas, will certainly help. But something with some stack effect or area effect damage would certainly be useful. I have gotten spoiled with my (whole two ) personal games having the edge in arcane units.

A good reason for not going that route!

Ah, OK. Noob learns something once again. This makes more sense with why Crusade gets referred to as a "trap" civic, along with the demagogs.

That's more why Crusade is so bad a trap. However, it's a trap because it reduces war weariness with 75% (since we have free dungeons, we won't never have no war weariness in our empire during Crusade) and gives lots and lots of free units, but you can only have it during wartime, are blocked from diplomacy with enemies (ie can't make peace), and can't switch out since that would crash your economy hard due to war weariness and unit upkeep.

That it's a hard civic to go into and probably leave if no-SPI makes it even tougher. If we pull it, we don't stop until Domination or Conquest.

Just noted something:

Crusaders are disciple units. That means our Crusaders will get M2 for free, and gain a modest amount of free XP! They can't get the higher-level situational promos (CR2, Shock 2 et c), but have easy access to March. It also means our enemies have to deal with three unit types (mounted, discipled, melee) instead of one or two.

[kjn]

And another thing. We should take advantage of being able to hurry production in gold, especially in developing cities and Paris.

Markets and courthouses make for especially good hurry targets. Once we get Guild of Hammers, hurrying becomes less interesting (since we get more out of our hammers).

[Brian Shanahan]

Had a look at the save, eventually. Was up the walls last night with training, &c.

Looking at the game, we should go to a war footing fairly quickly, but not yet. Auric can be dealt with (slowly) with what we have, but Jonas needs proper preparation. But the reason why we shouldn't switch right now is that we don't have enough cities free to really pump out the units until near the end of my set.

So for my set I'll use what we have (repositioning some of our units from garrison to attack), draft R.Guards, build some more when the opportunity arrises, and look towards whittling down Auric.

Empy is the religion of choice for my set. For techs I'll think I'll go with Fanatacism, to open up the Bannor goodies. After that we can go stirrups to get HAs to put a bit of speed and hit-and-run into our war efforts.

Play later this evening.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I'm not up to a full report tonight. So I'll just post the save and a quick precis.

Everything was going welll. All wonders built on schedule (Mengagerie, Nat Epic, Tower of Eyes, Guild of Hammers), and with courthouses and markets going up everywhere we were dramatically improving our gold count (not quite good enough for 70% but close, +40odd gpt @ 60%).

However on turn 278 Jonas, Flauros and Amel all declared war.

We finished Fanaticism so crusade is open if we want it. I finished at the start of the turn. Review all my builds as I pulled a lot of bad builds just to get through them (sorry, bad form, but I'm tired and I wanted to cycle through to troops). Some units are on the road, though their movement is stopped and they are free to move elsewhere.

The save.

[haphazard1]

However on turn 278 Jonas, Flauros and Amel all declared war.

This is what I was worried about -- the AI would force the issue at a time not of our choosing and on multiple fronts.

Flauros doesn't worry me much. Amelanchier could be a problem just because he is right next to our core and has Raiders. Jonas of course has size and numbers and is the primary threat.

This seems likely to get messy, very very messy.

[kjn]

People, we're in trouble.

Main trouble is that a lot of our experienced forces are up by Garduk, and seriously out of the action. I'd have loved to have them available to smack that large exposed Clan shaman stack. The stack is also too small for a proper assault on the Illians. It should've been twice as large, supported with upcoming garrisons and workers to road.

Around Coimbra our trouble is that the tiger wasn't caged or a bard run once we got the Grand Menagerie, so we don't have control over the tiles just to the north of the city.

And why hardly any engineer specialists? They're almost as good as working a mine. We have free forges and carnivals everywhere - use them as appropriate!

First thing, switch to Conquest+Theocracy+Overcouncil, so we can draft 2 XP Radiant Guards (they should get Mobility 1).

Second, draft some more RGs. We have plenty of surplus happiness, so can stack the draft unhappiness.

Third, get the 2 hunters and the Stonewarden back to København. Have they been stuck there the entire turnset?

Fourth, frigates won't finish since we will lose access to iron. Go for privateers instead if you want navy, but land units are more needful right now IMO.

Fifth, look for good builds to hurry, that you can't get to finish in 1t otherwise.

Sixth, hire some mercenaries.

Seventh, start Donal in Bologna.

Rathas are good, but quite expensive. I'd rather draft Radiant Guards with Mobility to get Blinding Light. Then we can switch to Order after drafting a bunch of RGs, and start building Crusaders.

Crusader: 120H, S6 + 1 holy, starts with Mobility 1, Medic, and Potency
Ratha: 180H, S5/3 + metal, M3, blinding light

Coimbra can finish its Ratha since it has quite a bit invested in it (can be done in 3t with an engineer specialist and working the crappy GH mine eating into the stockpiled food), but Praha should build something else - a horseman or an Ecclesiastic are both decent builds. I'd have loved to have access to a Vicar or two, but I'm not sure we can afford to wait for them to finish if we are to switch to Order.

[kjn]

Just checked, and if we hurry a courthouse or harbor in Crusade, it will still finish. Probably the case for a workboat too (if we want one from København).

But otherwise, once we pull crusade, it's all about the military.

[Brian Shanahan]

Looking at my notes, there isn't really enough to do a full report. But a quick recap of builds and drafts may be in order.

Main builds were:
Tower of Eyes in St. Andrews turn 270 followed by the siege workshop on turn 277.
Grand Menagerie in Oxford on turn 271 (should have run artists in at least a few places after this), mage guild followed after (IIRC near completion).
Guild of hammers in Bologna turn 277, followed by the Temple of Temporance (probably better to be put in abeyance).

Other than that it has been mostly courthouses and markets in developing cities, and a combination of stables or siege workshops in more developed cities.

I drafted Coimbra, Praha and Wien on turn 269 for 3 radiant guards. Other Empy cites were either too undeveloped or too small to draft, and I didn't want to draft our non-Empy matures as they were doing other important things.

As regards the force in Garduk, my apologies on that. My thoughts were to whittle down Auric, while moving up more forces from the south until I could take out cities in one swoop. Jonas' war-dec was kind of from left field and caught me with my pants down.

As regards the frigate, the one by former Domir (Kobenhavn I think) is the only one I was building on purpose. The main reason was because we had barb trireme trouble and the only proper cover was a privateer a number of turns away (and better off harassing an AI) and a galley which was sunk. The others were placeholder builds put in the turn of the save.

[kjn]

Main builds were:
Tower of Eyes in St. Andrews turn 270 followed by the siege workshop on turn 277.
Grand Menagerie in Oxford on turn 271 (should have run artists in at least a few places after this), mage guild followed after (IIRC near completion).
Guild of hammers in Bologna turn 277, followed by the Temple of Temporance (probably better to be put in abeyance).

Yeah. We should probably build Donal Lugh in Bologna. Then he can cast recruit in the largest city in the world, and if Amelanchier sends any undead against us, he can cast recruit again

Between Donal, demagogs, mercenaries, and drafting, I think we can make our power explode. Of course, the units will have very few or no promotions, but we will have a lot of them. And spreading Order can spawn Crusaders...

We can also get so many stack buffers in place it's silly:

Shield of Faith
Morale (from Flag Bearers)
Courage (from Spirit mana, extra healing)
Loyalty (from Law mana)
Bless (+1 holy, once we switch to Order)

Checking things about using our gold, we get more out of the gold by upgrading units (2xhammers+5) than by hurrying or buying mercenaries (3xhammers). Ie, we can probably get one or two Vicars in play in three or four turns by upgrading an Ecclesiastic. Though hurrying and hiring means you get the unit NOW.

Other than that it has been mostly courthouses and markets in developing cities, and a combination of stables or siege workshops in more developed cities.

I've been thinking about the city specialisation and buildings, and I think we've been overbuilding.

Ie, each city should be focused on one specific unit type. Exceptions can be the capital and the heroic epic city. Cities should only get harbors if they are so large they need the health or the harbor will pull them over the next hundred percent bonus. We've all been guilty in that.

I drafted Coimbra, Praha and Wien on turn 269 for 3 radiant guards. Other Empy cites were either too undeveloped or too small to draft, and I didn't want to draft our non-Empy matures as they were doing other important things.

Yeah, I saw that. Basel is also a good draft target, with a sick food surplus. But we should try to be able to get 2 XP on the drafts, so they get Mobility 1. Makes them much more useful out of the gate.

As regards the force in Garduk, my apologies on that. My thoughts were to whittle down Auric, while moving up more forces from the south until I could take out cities in one swoop. Jonas' war-dec was kind of from left field and caught me with my pants down.

Yeah. If you had made sure you had a road in the neutral land, things would be much easier. But getting the logistics and reinforcements right in a large campaign is often the hardest part...

As regards the frigate, the one by former Domir (Kobenhavn I think) is the only one I was building on purpose. The main reason was because we had barb trireme trouble and the only proper cover was a privateer a number of turns away (and better off harassing an AI) and a galley which was sunk. The others were placeholder builds put in the turn of the save.

Well, we'll have to see if we lose the iron. Jonas hasn't declared on Ethne, so our trade routes might not close.

If they stay open, we shouldn't ask for help from Ethne. Better to have her neutral and get her iron. Ie, we're Germany and the Elohim are Sweden during WWII. Or something.

[haphazard1]

kjn, do you want to take the first turns of the war? I do not feel very confident of handling things properly in this rather critical situation, and would prefer to see you take the next turnset.

Also, do we want to move to shorter turn sets for the war? War turns are usually much more time consuming than peacetime turns, at least they are for me.