CR helps survival, barrage helps collateral. Surviving more rounds does not increase collateral, iirc.
I usually go CR for the first few, and barrage once they have good odds anyway. But with cats against a higher number of longbows I would have gone barrage cuz they're all dead anyway.
also, first Harbour is done. This city went from having a pair of 5c/4c trade routes, and now has 8c/7c, for a total of 6c/turn for 40 hammers. who needs courthouses!
We got gold! Popped 1NW of Carnival, so its already hooked up even. With this, I canceled my silver for gold trade from Xenu; tough luck for him, given his war, but I have WW starting to pile up bad.
All quiet on the Bacchus front, although I'll start advancing soon. Also, Xenu and CH are apparently tearing into each other; more on that later.
Overview screesnhots:
The war, as seen via Sentry Knight, me then him:
I have 8 Knights, 5 cats, 4 pikes, 2 swords, a spear, and a longbow, with 2 knights and a cat arriving via ship next turn, against his 4 knights, a GG, 3 cats, 4 CG2 Longbows, 2 Immortals, and an Archer. Unfortunately, between his roads, his cats, and his GG (I'm sure he'll make a super Knight again out of one of the Immortals), advancing on the city while maintaining the safety of my stack AND Persepolis requires more units than I have. I thought about razing roads, but, unfortunately, he could use his two workers to pull the same trick he did before and hit me anyways. I think I'll need to leave a garrison of at least 2 pikes, a longbow, a knight, and a cat. That leaves, IIRC, 5 cats, 9 knights, 2 pikes, and 2 swords for my seige, with 3-4 additional knights that could catch up by the time the city is ready to hit. Hmmm... either way, it would be nice to upgrade that spear to a pike. Assuming he stuffs a few more units in there in the next couple of turns, that's looking at 15 units, for which I'd like at least 6 cats to assume that I get at least 2 collateral hits on every unit in his stack.
My core:
Demos:
The graphs other than power just look like a damn mess; thought I grabbed a SS there but I forgot to save it. GNP is completely unreadable. Unfnortunately, my eye-in-the-sky logfile parser doesn't work anymore since we lost a dozen turns in the log due to repeated server crashes, so no more fancy cheaty plots.
Cool City Showcase:
Zoo is still spectacular, close to finishing up a bank. Stony Point is looking good with some workshops and Moai, Cedar Point is growing one more pop to grab another plains workshop for its HE, and Moonshine is doing the same except without an HE. Two great hammer cities. Hayride is my other main commerce city, building a bank while growing onto its last few tiles. It's third-ring culture will push back Xenu and CH's footholds in its BFC within the next few turns. Carnival is our confused hammer-city-turned-commerce-city-turned-NE. What a freaking mess; the gold pop makes this city even more confused. I need to think about how to get the most out of this goofy city; its gonna pop my GP for my GA in about 10 turns, but I'll also want it to pump at least 1 more during the GA. But then what do I do about all these great tiles? Hmm... speaking of tiles, I'm working nearly every single every single non-tundra, non-ice tile in my empire, including a few tundra tiles and a plenty of coast. Need more of Bacchus's land so badly if I want to keep growing...
Infrastructure plans:
Not a lot to catch up with right now in my core right now. Harbors in my coastal spots are finishing up, except for the ones able to relevantly build military (SP, PP, and Clambake being the main ones ignoring Harbors for a bit longer), and I have only a single city, an iceball fishery, still missing a Barracks, which I guess I should build considering that it will be one of my hottest drafting spots. I also have three more relevant cities I'd like forges in, Peewee's Playhaus and my newer cities of Chicken Coop (behind because of that nasty culture-flipping business) and Paintball. Culture with TBS has stabilzed, and I'm pushing back Xenu's single tile near Hayride and CH's culture near Chicken Coop and Clambake. Markets and Grocers are done where they should be, Banks are finishing up in Zoo and Hayride, and I'd like to queue a theatre in HT once its harbor finishes. Other than that, its all military all the way - I want to continue dumping out knights and cats, mix in some longbows so that my army can more aggressively move forward. Once Nationalism+Gunpowder is in, I'll be drafting 3 Jans a turn for at least 6 turns, a cool 144k power for free. I produce an average of 20k-25k as it is, so I should be hitting around 1M power even considering decent losses from continued grinding on Bacchus.
I also need brand new stuff in my holdings in former Bacchus-land; getting only a single market from his capital was pretty tragic, as delighted as I was to have finally taken the city, and none of his other cities had anything at all. I've also got a settler that I've had banked for close to 40 turns now ready to fill in some holes in his land, once I push him back a bit more.
Expansion plans:
I'd like to either capture or raze Bacchus' city directly east first (although there might be a forking opportunity depending on what he does this turn), and then, either way, hopefully heading back south towards HAK in time for my Jans to come up. My medium-term goal (next 20-30 turns) is to conquer Bacchus and HAK, perhaps take a bite out of CH, at least to surpress his annoying culture, and then get ready to hit Yuris, who is presumably just beyond Bacchus in the east.
There's also another filler spot opened up, 3N of Stony Point, taking the Pigs and working nothing but coast. Should be pretty solid if I can get it just a granary and a harbour.
Tech plans:
I need a lot of techs all at once. I'm actually kind of behind now, partly due to upgrading 8 horchers and 3 pikes, 140*8+95*3 = 1405 gold, worth around 4000 raw beakers, and partly due to sinking an extra 40 gold a turn during my long ass seige of Bacchu's capital, worth another ~1400 raw beakers or so. Blugh. I also sidelined into 4 non-key techs, Aesthetics, Literature, Compass, and Drama. I don't regret the first 3, as I'm getting a lot out of my Epics and will soon get a lot out of Compass, but Drama ended up being unnecessary due to that amazing random event in HT. (which, again, cost more gold) I don't even have the spare hammers to get started on a Globe Theatre... oh well.
I want Philo as a prereq for Nat (have both Drama and CoL, so that's a nice discount), Education, Nationalism (won't have DR, so very pricy), Gunpowder, AND Economics all before the end of my upcoming GA in 10T. Taken at the scaled tech cost and factoring out rereq bonuses, that's about 13k raw beakers, which would take 18 turns at 100% research at my current rate! I only have ~1400 gold banked as of this turn, only enough for 6 turns. However, this doesn't count any of the KTB, which can scale as high as 1.5X in this era. Now, I don't think I can manage that, but I bet I can average around 1.3X across all those techs, considering that least 1 person knows all of them already, with most being at least 2. (Phi and Edu are both at 3) That drops us down to just 14 turns of 100% research. So, combine that with the golden age and the gold I've already banked, I think my plan is to do Philo->Education->Gunpowder->Nationalism->Econ, with Nationalism needing to finish by no later than the 2nd turn of my GA so that I can still revolt into FM by the end of it with 6 turns still available to draft as many Jans as I can manage. Assuming that my break-even rate during the GA will be roughly equal to my 100% right now, which is a pretty reasonable assumption especially considering I have a bank coming in Zoo in 4 turns, then I need only 10T of "100%" research before I need to revolt into Nationhood.
TL;DR, I'm gonna bank gold for 1 more turn, fire off the GA 1 turn later than planned (at T161), go Philo->Education->Gunpowder->Nationalism->Econ, and cross my fingers that its enough.
Foreign Overview:
Essentially, I break the current scoreboard into 5 groups: Contenders, Strong, Relevant, Weak, and Dying/Dead, kinda like this:
Basically, the redder you are and the bigger the contrast you have against your neighbors, the better your position will be in the next 50 turns. Eventually, the whole map will become red, one way or the other. Beyond that, I have my thoughts broken down by civ:
Thoughts on Contender civs: (I forgot to write down all the city numbers when I played last night, unfortunately, so some of these are off the top of my head. Now updated correctly.)
dtay (Mao of Ethiopia, 35 cities): The clear frontrunner. He has what, 32? 52? cities, after taking about a dozen from Whosit and CH, the Oracle, the Colossus, and the Jewish shrine. They're probably all out of revolt by now and growing. Currently in a GA (not sure if his first or second) and FM as of like 5 turns ago, and is probably still the only civ with Education besides Finharry. His peak GNP was nearly 2300 last turn, about 2.5x higher than the previous known max of a few turns ago, so who knows what the hell he's getting next; Compass (he's expansive), Literature (he's surely got a HE unit by now after 2 wars), Gunpowder+Nationalism (Ethiopia has Oromos), and Astro (for further expansion, assuming he's basically conquered his whole damn continent already) should all be pretty lucrative for him. His shrine has got to be pulling in about +100 gpt raw, meaning about +200 gpt assuming he built cheap Exp markets and grocers and whipped in a bank. That's half of what I can pull in at 0% slider. Wall Street should be soon around the corner... Anyways, he'll be hitting his last power phase of the game here just as he's finishing up consolidating his latest war gains. Being able to draft Oromos, one of the game's best 1-movers due to their near-immunity to collateral, should be able to win him another easy war if he's got any other weak neighbors nearby. And, in that case, he's probably got this one in the bag. (dota joke)
Finharry: (Victoria of Azteca, 35 cities): Third place in score, second place in position, these guys have almost as many cities as dtay. Their score is lower, but not inflated by wonders at all; as near I can tell, they have nothing except for National Wonders. They've been beating up Azza and Mardoc by seemingly whipping tons of units, according to their continued score drops - indicating a plethora of 1-pop whips mitigated by Sacrificial Altars, essentially giving them the full power of slavery in a mod where noone else has it. Even still, the era of slavery is fading with 5 hammer workshops available. As Fin, their peak GNP has got to be huge, especially since they're the only other civ with Education, a massively expensive tech. (almost 4k beakers here!) They don't have a shrine like dtay, nor do they have any cool new UU or UB available, but they still have some serious trait power remaining in half-priced banks (and Fin coast) and half-priced Custom Houses, both of which should be coming in about now considering they just revolted into FM this turn. Banks speak for themseves, and Custom Houses should be RIDICULOUS on this map; a city with a harbour, corp, CH, and FM will probably bring in about 60 commerce per turn, about double what I'd estimate what a city would bring in without the harbour and CH. That difference is about the amount of commerce an average city would bring in from tiles. I'd expect them to focus on getting Wall Street and the Epics up around now
BGN (Pericles of Russia, 26 cities): A dozen turns ago, I'd have said his score was highly inflated from bulbs and wonders (he's got TGL, Ankgor Wat, Taj, SoZ, and the Parthenon), such that his actual position was closer to mine. In fact, I remember saying exactly that. Well, not anymore. First of all, he landed the Taj. Fantastic for him, I think this is his 3rd golden age already, and, with Phi, its likely he still has another easy one in him. Next, his MFG is HUGE even without a GA; I've been 4th or 5th in this category for awhile, and his MFG w/o a GA was comparable to mine in it just a dozen turns or so ago. Yeesh. Finally, his power is insane, higher than even plako's, and he's beating up Caledorn, a player whose civ was probably in the "living and/or actual dead" category even before the war. If he has any more weak neighbors around, he'll get stronger exponentially. His GNP hasn't been as impressive, especially considering he's Cre, but he's also got more trait power in this era. He's got half priced Observatories AND Research Institutes (his UB University, which has fabulous synergy with TGL and Phi in general) available to him soon, and he'll probably aim for a fast Oxford. He'll catch up there fast. Lets also not forget about his UU, the Cossack, one of the few later-game UUs that are worth a damn. His continent had better watch the hell out!
Krovice (Willem of Babylon, 24 cities): Despite recently being much lower on the scoreboard than the other leaders (although, not as of this turn, as it appears they just bulbed Education!), I put these guys up with the "contenders" because despite all of dtay and Finharry massive war gains, and despite taking but a single city from Whosit themselves, these guys are still #1 in land. WTF. How the hell could they expand that much peacefully??? Either there was a big oversight on this map or their non-dtay neighbors really dropped the ball. Maybe they got the entirety of some kind of inner island that was meant to be shared between 2 or 3 neighbors? TBS has something like this to his north, for example, I think that's probably near dazed, which I know about due to ICTR, and I have these islands between Bacchus and I. Meanwhile, plako/Xenu/Oxy were all crammed together in an asshole's worth of land and Hashoosh's capital was like 11 tiles from TBS's. Yeesh. Anyways, Krovice have the mids and are using it to catch up on tech after their early overexpansion. Its a little less powerful than usual though, considering how much better Free Market is than Merchantalism on this map. They've also thrown down a massive Education bulb and launched a GA. They seem to be rivals and possibly now neighbors with dtay, considering that they took a few cities off of Whosit around the same time dtay did. Perhaps Whosit was the pickle in the middle here? Krovice still has some trait power available, with half-priced Observatories and Banks coming online soon. They'll probably look to continue expanding elsewhere rather than pick a fight with dtay, so I'd watch out if I were their other neighbors.
Thoughts on Strong Civs:
Pin (Qin of China, ? cities): Haven't met; has the Hindu shrine, very likely ToA (should be awesome for this map), and probably the University of Sankore (why rush this?) and the Hagia Sophia (again, why?). Wrecked Barry early in the game, which probably kept him from leveraging IndInd into any great wonders, but probably at least has forges in like every single one of his cities. He doesn't really have any trait power remaining, but his shrine should keep him near the top. I'd expect him to get the Epics soon if he doesn't have them already. Can't really speculate beyond this as I haven't even met him...
Me: (Shaka of the Ottomans, 20 cities): I think I've said enough about me!
TBS (Ghandi of Native America, 20 cities): Has the AP and the Confucian Shrine. He was in a pretty bad situation before, caught in the middle of the continent like this, but did very well with his war with Furungy. He's now ahead of me in city count, and I bet 1/3 of his cities aren't little iceball fishing villages or culture-crushed conquests. His CY is higher than mine, with a higher slope to it, too, as my core cities have been pretty much topped off on pop for some time now. He's just won a big war against Furungy, Hashoosh's replacement, splitting the spoils with dazedroyalty. I'm sure he's got some consolidation work planned right now, for which he's thrown his first GA. Although he doesn't seem to have a stack near my border, at least that I can findwhat worries me is that, with our the southern continent going bananas, his only two options for expansion are to take out either me or dazed. dazed is much weaker, more backwards, and has the MoM as a potential prize, but I bet he has all his military pushed up too, unlike me, who has most of his military on another continent.
WilliamLP (FDR of Mongolia, 20 cities): His score has been stagnating lately, despite his huge rush forward earlier, I guess during a GA. He's Mongolia and has been conquering MYKI, so what I'm guessing is that he's leveraging Gers + Vassalage + Theo for 11 XP Knights. Should work out pretty well, and he's got some decent lategame trait power available with Org. Interestingly, he's the first civ to gunpowder...
Thoughts on a few Relevant civs:
Zanth (Joao of HRE, ? cities): Haven't met him, but he's probably peaking in power about now unless he has some easy military prospects available. Joao is still mainly about fast expansion, and we've been past that stage for awhile now. However, he's still got a couple aces up his sleeve: the Rathaus and cheap harbour+CH. Rathaus will be great if he can push his city count up to 25+, which means a successful conquest - haven't seen anything register on the scoreboard from him though. Cheap harbour+CH may mean up to +30 commerce for every coastal city for only 130 total hammers, which is an incredible bargain.
dazedroyalty (Elizabeth of Khmer, 20 cities): dazed has got a surprising amout of cities now, despite being far behind earlier, possibly party due to having some tundra backfill available like TBS, Bacchus, and I had, but probably mainly due to taking at least half of Furungy's empire in his joint war against him with TBS. Lets hope there's some border tension there, as I want TBS to stay the hell away from me as I focus on expanding to my east. Dazed is the owner of the the MoM (which he ground out from scratch without marble or Ind!) and is Phi, but, near as I can tell, has yet to actually throw a GA. So, some wasted potential there, but still a lot available too. I think he's pretty behind in tech, given his score despite his city count, but Fin's also got some serious late game GNP power, and so he could catch up quick with that and RtR's absurd Known Tech Bonus.
Plako/Xenu/CH+BaII (Cre + Ind/Cha/Imp of France/Germany/Greece): All three of these Cre guys on the continent south of me have been stunted at 13, 11 (after CH razed one worth 11 score points), and 11 cities for a very long time. However, I think that will soon change. The first thing you need to know is that Plako's power is completely insane. BGN and him are very neck-and-neck, but I think they're above #3 by around 100-150k at least; somewhere around 900k power this turn, going by Demos. And he'll get Musketteers soon! The second thing you need to know is that Xenu and BaII+CH are no slouches when it comes to soldiers, with powers around 600k a piece themselves. However, CH, just taking over for the very passive Oxy and BaII, immediately invaded Xenu hard enough to generate GG on both sides. Xenu responded by whipping off 40 score worth of pop (out of 11 cities, I remind you), so shit is for sure going down over there. Xenu seems like the type that will absolutely not let CH get away with this unprovoked aggression, even if it means sacrifcing his west. That means that Plako has a huge opportunity to invade Xenu and get himself back into the game, possibly being able to take that whole damn continent. (although perhaps TBS and I might be able to get little pieces ourselves, depending on how things play out) Why CH didn't just build some ships and go take an easy war with the severely battered and bruised HAK I really have no idea; for whatever else you can say about him, he's certainly not a passive player like Oxy and BaII are. Anyways, if Plako does indeed take a huge chunk out of Xenu, he could be a big player in the game moving forward. He's still got the GLH, worth a huge amount of commerce on this map, perhaps 7-8 commerce per city once he gets into FM, and he's still got a bit of trait power left with half-priced Observatories... Cre is great for conquest too.
All those words, but really, the only two civs I really need to worry about right now are TBS and Bacchus.
I took a look at this filler spot again, and decided that I should go for it. I had totally forgot that there was a crab there that had previously been occupied by Bacchus' capital's culture. With that gone, this spot is actually excellent, with 2 food sources (including the now-useless pig) and 9 other workable tiles, including 2 land spots across the straight that I can put workshops down on. With a granary and lighthouse, this spot will be excellent.
I head out to lay seige to Pasargadae next turn; my advancing stack will have 11 knights, 8 cats, 2 pikes, and 2 swords, with 4 additional knights able to hit by the time the city's walls are knocked down. Should be enough, I think.
(October 22nd, 2014, 20:12)GermanJojo Wrote: Any questions?
What about thoughts on Bacchus?
Where are you going next (in the Bacchus-invasion tactical picture, that is)?
Good questions... well, he's been a huge pain to deal with. CG2 longbows on a hill city across a river are an invader's worst nightmare. Jesus christ that river geography... I don't think I've ever had such long, grueling seige in all my years of playing civ4. He also had soooo many trash units, outnumbering me handily. I guess horchers really don't show up well on the power charts. I wasn't really able to use the mobility of my knights to any effect at all. I wish RtR let you continue to build swords after Macemen were available; I'd much rather have had, say, 9 Knights and 11 Swords instead of 14 Knights in my initial attack on Persepolis, for example. His GA also threw me for a loop; I had not anticipated him getting Knights, and then so many knights on top of that via horcher upgrades. His GNP has been so below mine that I thought he was a lot more backwards than he ended up being, but the RtR mod KTB is really no joke. At least all that GA gold went into upgrades and not Engineering, I guess. Rather trade Knights than have to deal with pikes and, worse, 3-move cats, on top of all these longbows. At any rate, he's defended really well. The one thing I can criticize I guess is that I'm surprised that he didn't whip more; he did some big dry whips early in the war, but hasn't whipped much at all since. Wasn't Bacchus the guy who spite-whipped all his stuff down to size 1 and then razed all his own improvements in PB13, or am I thinking of someone else?
Where do I go next? My plan is to advance on Pasagardae, which is the city 3E of Persepolis. Next turn, I move 1E, then the turn after, 1E again onto the mountain, next turn I bombard defenses, next turn I hit. I'll have more than enough hitters and seige to wipe the city, I think. A big fear of mine is a guerrila attack, wherein he suicides his remaining mobiles to bypass my stack and raze his former capital. I plan to leave at least 3 pikes, a longbow, and a knight in order to mitigate this possibility; I also have reinforcements streaming in every turn. I had been considering razing the roads around Persepolis, but, again, he has a stack of workers available to ensure that he can still hit the city despite that. So, I'd rather keep those villages and towns intact if I can.
Capturing this city should ensure that I have his whole capital's beautiful BFC to work with as well as enough space to plant another city northeast of it. That should also be pretty much the last of his army; maybe after this I can start using my Knights as true 2-movers, heh. Anyways, after that, I'd like to start advancing south, towards HAK. Beyond capturing Bacchus's land, my other main goal for this invasion is to capture a port directly facing HAK in order to invade him once I have Jannisaries. HAK is SUPER weak, both in score and in power. A dozen jans, cats, and knights should be all I need to take his whole continent, I think.
My one last consideration would be to find his second iron, so that he can no longer build knights and never build a single pike, but I haven't a clue where it might be.
He has 2 additional longbows on that hill, while I've got 3 pikes, 1 archer, a longbow, and a knight garrisoned in Perseopolis. The longbows on the hill this turn were obviously bait, as only my knights would have been able to hit it, and without pike cover I'd be victim to a brutal counter-attack. If he leaves them there next turn, however, I should probably take it.
I think, however, the biggest potential news of the turn, is this:
Duncan's still only got a single, unpromoted phalanx as a garrison. Please, PLEASE let this galley have some knights or some such on it... rootin' for you, Xenu! CH's taken a city, but neither side's power graph has really budged, so it seems like a stalemate. That said, Plako declared war last turn, so I presume Xenu's days are probably numbered.
Also forgot to mention this: I switched tech from finishing Philosophy at 20% research to Education at 100%. Edu is now known by 4 people (Krovice did indeed bulb it last turn, even though it didnt show up in the techs they knew immediately), and it doesn't look like anyone else will get it soon (as pretty much noone else has paper besides TBS, and I can see that he's going Nationalism), so +24% looks to be the max I'll get. OTOH, I have a bank finishing in Zoo in 2 turns, so it doesn't make sense to save gold now instead of then. More efficient to turn on the jets this turn and then save gold again afterwards... this lets me get started on a University in Zoo sooner, too.
As I was writing the last turn report, I realized that hey, even if I don't want to kill both longbows, as I'd be vulnerable on the hill, why not at least take one, right? 78.5% odds, about as good as I'd get in the city, one less top-defender for my cats to trudge through, so why not? So I did it, and I won, and got a Great General for my troubles.
I wonder what to use him for? I already have a super medic, and the rest of my army is pretty much modern already, so no extra chariots or whatever lying around for free knight upgrades... Maybe put him on my CR3 16XP sword, give him amphibious or command or morale or something??? He'd get a free upgrade to Janissary too.
I know direct suggestions are forbidden, but can anyone think of any posts people have written in past games about cool/optimal things to do with extra great generals?
![[Image: kSx3YAg.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/kSx3YAg.jpg)
Now updated correctly.)
I only have ~1400 gold banked as of this turn, only enough for 6 turns. However, this doesn't count any of the KTB, which can scale as high as 1.5X in this era. Now, I don't think I can manage that, but I bet I can average around 1.3X across all those techs, considering that least 1 person knows all of them already, with most being at least 2. (Phi and Edu are both at 3) That drops us down to just 14 turns of 100% research. So, combine that with the golden age and the gold I've already banked, I think my plan is to do Philo->Education->Gunpowder->Nationalism->Econ, with Nationalism needing to finish by no later than the 2nd turn of my GA so that I can still revolt into FM by the end of it with 6 turns still available to draft as many Jans as I can manage. Assuming that my break-even rate during the GA will be roughly equal to my 100% right now, which is a pretty reasonable assumption especially considering I have a bank coming in Zoo in 4 turns, then I need only 10T of "100%" research before I need to revolt into Nationhood.