Zara, The Newly Minted System Lord(TBS)

[The Black Sword]

Meh, trying to plan out a path to communism is too difficult at the minute, and it's not the only tech worth getting either. I think I'll just go with the following more short term plan:

1. Throw the 1-man GA

2. Research Paper, Bulb Edu, Chem and Astro

3. Delay this GA as much as I can, the limiting factor being fitting in the astro bulb in around my peace treaty expiration.

4. Just grow my cities as high as possible in the mean time. I'm ok with drafting, but try not to whip unless necessary for Azza war. Drop my production into pre-building grens and boats.

5. Pick up Military Science and either Theo or OR as well. I can sort the rest of the tech plan out after this lot. Probably grab Economic GM for denial.

6. I can sort out exact GP cities when I throw the GA. I'll need to generate the 3 bulbs and enough GP to throw the second GA a little bit later. In general, as much GP as possible is good, PP, Lib, Sci Meth, Physics and Biology are all GS-bulbable.

7. I can run some specialists in some cities to finish their GP during the second GA.

8. Schedule the 3 person GA around when I hit Assembly Line and factories? Still thinking too far ahead .

[mackoti]

Meh, trying to plan out a path to communism is too difficult at the minute, and it's not the only tech worth getting either. I think I'll just go with the following more short term plan:

1. Throw the 1-man GA

2. Research Paper, Bulb Edu, Chem and Astro

3. Delay this GA as much as I can, the limiting factor being fitting in the astro bulb in around my peace treaty expiration.

4. Just grow my cities as high as possible in the mean time. I'm ok with drafting, but try not to whip unless necessary for Azza war. Drop my production into pre-building grens and boats.

5. Pick up Military Science and either Theo or OR as well. I can sort the rest of the tech plan out after this lot. Probably grab Economic GM for denial.

6. I can sort out exact GP cities when I throw the GA. I'll need to generate the 3 bulbs and enough GP to throw the second GA a little bit later. In general, as much GP as possible is good, PP, Lib, Sci Meth, Physics and Biology are all GS-bulbable.

7. I can run some specialists in some cities to finish their GP during the second GA.

8. Schedule the 3 person GA around when I hit Assembly Line and factories? Still thinking too far ahead .

I dont think you manage to bulb astro,cause of bulbing prference ..I want to say i enjoy your reports and you game.

[Commodore]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...e_tech.php

I live it.

[The Black Sword]

I dont think you manage to bulb astro,cause of bulbing prference ..I want to say i enjoy your reports and you game.

Thanks Mack. I remember checking before that I couldn't bulb Astro, then I had another look before that latest post and thought I could. I was thinking skip Alphabet, so PP and Sci Meth can't show up, but of course Alphabet is before Astro on the bulb list too.

Back to the drawing board ...

[The Black Sword]

Dtay flipped his 2 people GA and went into Caste + Pacifism himself. I guess that's why he accepted the peace deal.

My GG reached the battle-field to sprinkle xp for 8 promos and an upgrade:


Hawthorn is definitely falling next turn:


I'm hoping it doesn't force my 1 move stack to sit still for a turn though. 3 Maces and the 5 HAs in the capital.

I could have sent some knights threatening this city btw:


But I decided not to split the stack up. It's his newest city so hopefully it can't help his war effort too much. Once I capture his capital it should fall easily anyway, but before that I can't really hold it without tying up a lot of troops.

The coast:


Freemantle and Sydney are both defended by a mace and an ancient unit. I'm pretty sure I could have taken Freemantle this turn but again I don't think I could have held it and I want to gain cities here not raze them. So, I settled on continuing my fork to keep units away from the capital and put a bit more pressure on Geelong. This all feels awfully slow though.

New city next turn:


I'm probably going to found in place for the hill defence bonus. Founding on the plains hill annoys Dhal instead of dtay, so I won't do that either.



Nice haul.

Demos:


(Dtay getting no pre-reqs)

Looks like there's some land in the centre too:

[The Black Sword]

Hawthorn had an extra Crossbow in it, but was still no match for my Knights:



First crossbow fell at 78% odds to a C3 Knight.



A 1xp musket cleaned up, intending to give him CG and leave him in the city. That is some nice buildings left over.

Here's how things ended:


Again my Knights had some forking options but I decided to stand still and finish healing them. I teched alphabet so that I'd know when Azza got Engineering ... he already does .

That could be a nasty mistake. 2 maces and an ancient era unit in all of his coastal cities now. If he wants Hawthorn back he can definitely take it. Still, he'd need to pull units from cities to attack and I'm threatening all of them, so hopefully it will create opportunities elsewhere if he does.

That GM signals the start of my GA next turn. Looks like dtay used his latest GS to bulb Sci Meth. I thought he might hold off that path, having TGL, Parth and Paya. So, I'm miles off Communism, have to assume I lose any race for that or Physics. I have a good chance of rolling a Great engineer from my next batch of GPs though and could possibly steal the Kremlin. On reflection though, Merc seems very competitive with State Property, so I'm not sure I want to go through all these crappy techs Lib and Sci Meth just for a shot at the Kremlin. I'm thinking of heading up to Rifling instead. Dtay going up the Sci Meth route puts him further from proper military techs, so I'll try to hit him with drafted rifles and Cavs ASAP. That will also unlock Steam Power, which will be great and put me closer to Assembly Line. If I'm going for Assembly Line btw, I need to pick up Constitution, so I think Democracy and the SoL will be worth it then. If I roll my engineer, that's what it will go on.

[The Black Sword]

It seems Azza didn't like his odds and didn't use his Engineering knowledge to hit me anywhere. So, I continued to push up on his capital.

The 2 defense stacks in Azza's cities:



I felt I had to upgrade a skirm to that crossbow in case he attacked with his Collingwood Garrison, which consists of the following:


My two stacks block off the roads to Hawthorn, so his maces can't reach so hopefully that will be safe too. I really hope he just stands at his capital next turn and I can wipe out his troops. It's taking me so long to slog through his culture that he has a sizeable army if he puts them all together. Fortunately no cats though.

My siege stack beside the capital and Sydney's garrison:


and the stand off outside Gee-long:

I unloaded the rest of my troops from the boats. I had room for 8 units though, not 6, so hopefully he still thinks there's 2 unit in the boats and feels compelled to keep 2 units in each of the other coastal cities. I needed more units to defend in case he attacked with the garrison of his southern city as well and I felt my fork had mostly played itself out, the units can't defend the capital next turn.

It took me a while working through the war stuff, but the rest of the turn took ages. I had to leave in the middle as well, and then come back and re-check all my calculations. But, I finally came up with a plan for the next few turns:


I might very well pick up Astro next turn instead of Mono, not sure yet. I needed 2 small stuff to research before Paper so that I don't break my Chem bulb and Drama and Mono fit the bill. I'd like some religious civic to revolt into after the GA because pacifism is very expensive(~40gpt), Mono works nicely. I'll have Oxford and the Globe to build so it should get some use. Theo would require dropping Drama and I just wasn't sure how much it would be worth. It's hard to value promotions. Additionally, Mono will allow me to build missionaries, instead of the slow supply from the 1 monastery I currently have, and my religion is currently spread to more infra places than military ones. As for Drama, I've come back around to the idea of the Globe. I might be able to manage drafting unhappiness via rotation, but it's a bit awkward when you jump by 3 happiness you need to fill out. I think just needing to find 2 drafts per turn will be beneficial. And with the path I've chosen, heavy drafting looks likely.

I'm cutting the GP margins very close, but I'll be getting GS out in these 3 cities:




along with most of a GP from Apophis:

This guy will be combined with the Economic GM for my next GA. I should have plenty of warning if dtay gets near to competing for Economics, but hopefully I can delay it until after Rifling.

The capital will go back to growth after the brief Bureau spell ends. I finally feel like more workers are catching up to the cities' needs btw, not that I've built anymore.



I forgot to whip the Knight here before I converted:

Might actually be a good thing I suppose. I did manage to find 3 last drafts though.

Demos:

[The Black Sword]

The Battle of Collingwood

Azza has added a single pike since last turn. I bombard it from 60% to 20% defences and then send in 3 cats, leaving him with the following garrison:


My plan was to go in with the last cat too, but looking at his units, his maces have taken more collateral than expected, the only problem is the pike. I have 2 options for the pike, a valuable C2 shock knight at 55% or ...


These guys are going obsolete fairly soon anyway. The last cat bombards to 13% and I send in the poor sacrificial HA.

Pike is left with 0.4/6 .

This might go better than I expected. First knight goes in with some nice odds:



Win.

Shock Knight at 89% -> Win.

Shock Knight at 90% -> Lose.

C1 Knight at 85% -> Lose.

Guess I took slightly more losses than expected after all. Still, at least he didn't retreat. Now Azza is left with:



That's just clean-up, no further losses, got a promo on 2 drafted muskets.



Scorched Earth here. 133g though.

We finished like so:


And on turn end, I got a second war weariness unhappiness point, plunging a couple of cities to unhappiness, including:



Damn, Yu was going to hit 402/402 GPP IIRC. I'll probably have to run some culture slider next turn.

I decided to pick up Astro now, I'm afraid I'd have too much overflow from Monotheism and would waste a bit putting too much into Chemistry before my bulb. The problems of a specialist econonmy . That looked like it outweighed the Colossus benefits for a turn. So, I took some cities off coasts and onto specialists, to make the next GA a bit easier:




During my 2 person GA, I'll want to generate a GS, GM and Great Artists for the next GA, so some city needs to run an artist pool. Might as well be Amataseru who can steal the deer from the neighbouring dtay city.

[The Black Sword]

Mechanics question: I'm before dtay in turn order, I offered him the peace treaty and he accepted. Do I get first strike due to turn order?

[The Black Sword]

Looks like I remembered incorrectly in Yu, it had 1 specialist turn spare, so I could afford to lose it. And then, after I clicked end turn and checked the specialist total, I realised the city starves first, which makes it happy again, and the war weariness didn't have an effect after all. I did suffer 1 unhappy in 2 other cities though, but next turn I'm connecting some incense from ex-Azza lands to deal with it.



All my healthy knights positioned to join in the naval raiders in the assault on Geelong next turn. Then each of Azza's remaining 3 cities gets 2 catapults and some split of my troops headed their way. The only place I'm worried about is his south western city, which I can't take before the dtay treaty wears out, so it depends if he interferes.

Dtay's power is still really low though, here's some defences:



He finished off Sci Meth so Communism is probably next. He's still Construction -> Eng -> Gunpowder away from Chemistry though, so I hope to punish him with frigates if he goes there directly. That GNP ain't pretty though:


No pre-req bonus either ...