[Spoilers] AW with highly promoted LB!! (Liz of North America)

[AutomatedTeller]

In a nutshell, pretty strong. I don't know if I'm up techs or how many I am up, but I am pretty sure I am.

Just finished Machinery and will 2 turn theo for happy and theocracy - 10 XP x-bows doesn't hurt.

Just built HE, too, so that's 1 turn 10 XP xbows.

Here is my military city. It's making a base of 25 now, which means 50 total for units and since no current units cost 50, I'm just building up overflow. With Guilds, I can easily get over 30 base, which means 1 turn knights.



My current military:



That is clearly a defensive military - spears and archers.

In 10 turns, it'll be an offensive one - HA, cats, maces, pikes for stack defense, x-bows.

Science center capital:



I'll be starting to use specialists - merchants have first priority, then scientiests

GP Farm/extra science



Forge overflows into NE. Then it's something like 82 GPPT.

Everyone's power:



With AW and AI diplomacy, it's hard for people to get a dogpile. I'll take on Serdoa once I get enough pikes that his keshiks' dont' rip apart my stack - a bunch of them get odds on spears even now.

[NobleHelium]

Why the preference for merchants over scientists?

[AutomatedTeller]

I don't think I'm generating another GP in the cap - McHale's navy is going to have something like 80 GPP in a few turns, dwarfing the 10 or so I'll get in the cap, so I don't think it will affect anything.

2 merchants will get me 7 or 8 gold (with the market), which pays for more units.
2 scientists only gets me and extra 10 beakers.

My expenses are about to skyrocket - I think I'll probably build 15-20 units over the next 10 turns, which will probably double or triple my unit costs. Plus, that army will be operating outside the borders, which is very expensive.

I want to get to maces or maybe knights - I think maces is a hard to beat advantage and knights impossible to beat.

I'm done with wonders, I think - time to just go kill people.

Serdoa is probably the first target, since he's weakest. He does have a lot of keshik's, though hopefully, Zero is winnowing those down some...

[Square Leg]

I think T-Hawk has some pretty interesting analysis on his website on Merchants vs Scientists. The general rule is that in any city that has a science multiplyer higher than your civ-average science multiplyer, run scientists, and run merchants everywhere else as the gold they provide converts into more science by running a higher slider civ-wide.

[AutomatedTeller]

And, as it turns out, there's another reason to prefer merchants:

Bulbs.

A Merchant will bulb Civil Service next (once I can get it), at least after I 1 turn sailing.
A scientist will bulb alphabet, compass and calendar before anything militarily useful.

[AutomatedTeller]

Time to make the units...

[AutomatedTeller]

One more reason to like merchants - I need cash for upgrades. I have a bunch of units that can become pikes, crossbows, etc.

[AutomatedTeller]

Not very interesting turn - got the NE in, get a GP in 2 turns. Could be a:
GE
GP
GS
GM

A GM I'll hold to bulb CS
A GP or GS will probably be used to kick off a golden age and I'll ignore the artist from Music.
A GE will be used to rush MoM - I'll switch research to Sailing->Calendar and I'll kick of the golden age with the artist from music.

I'll get Theo in the interturn, in ParishsFort.

I handbuilt one x-bow, but I won't build more unless I have to - I'll build HA and cats and upgrade the rest.

I have 7 archers, 9 spears and a warrior for upgrades.
archer->xbow is 92, archer->LB is 71. spear->pike is 71, warrior->dog is 59 - warrior to pike is 110.

Right now, I make 67 GPT at 100% gold - that'll go up a little, with maturing cottages, but not much, and it will go down as I add units.

I'll probably have money for 1 upgrade a turn when I turn off research.

I won't build any pikes from scratch. I might build another couple of x-bows and upgrade the archers to LB (my thread IS called "War with highly promoted longbows" - I guess I should have some)

[AutomatedTeller]

ok - I'll get a scientist. Guess I'll kick off the GA, switch to theo, finish music (I put a turn into it), use the GA from music for a 2nd GA with the next GP. This should allow me to get cats, HA and a few maces in, plus accumulate gold for pike upgrades.

[AutomatedTeller]

Kicked off the golden age: Music in 2, Feudalism in 3. Switched in Theo, for 9 XP HA and 5 XP cats from everywhere else. I can make 10 xp xbows in parishs fort, too, if I want. Feudalism will be for vassalage, which will give me 10 xp xbows and longbows from everywhere, plus 10 xp HA.

With some MM, I think I can get 2 more GP's during this golden age - 1 in 3 turns in the capital, one in 4 (or 5) in McHale's navy. Hopefully, one will be either an engineer (for MoM, cause I don't have enough wonders) or a GM (for bulbing CS).

The outside world:

Serdoa is still fighting, but he's going after TT (or TT is going after him)



Hanz Guderian was born for TT a few turns back.

Zero re-settled his city:


The future:

Here I am roading to Drugs up north. I should probably figure out what I'm going to do in my assault, so i can plan for combat workers.

I think it's Serdoa->Zero->TT. Keshiks are an enormous pain in the butt and I'd like to get them gone. I dunno how far Zero is from cho-ko-nu, but they are a pain in the butt, and he's probably the stronger of him and TT.

The assault doesn't go until I get a couple of pikes, which are 3 techs away. Thought, I suppose I could go after Zero some now. his army seems to be heavily foot based and I have the counter for melee, in x-bows.

My demos (in a golden age, at 50% science)