Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[Brian Shanahan]

Dry whip a warrior, it'll appear before the battle. There's a chance you'll lose both battles. Though there's also a chance that those chariots are set to pillage rather than capture. Run away the worker for now, just in case.

I'd look to see if you can pillage the roads around Gergovia with the scouting chariot, if you can make it harder for Boadicea to get units over you make it easier for us to possibly snipe it in the war (though the city is in a bad spot looking at it). Apart from that I wouldn't worry about this one.

Anyone willing to be bribed in against her?



Thinking long term

Spies are very good for revolting cities we want to attack. I've not used them much but if you focus spending for about ten turns leading into a war, you can often get enough to completely remove all defences from at least two cities you're attacking. It is worth thinking about.

Regarding our National Wonders, where do we put the Heroic Epic? At the moment I'm thinking Bean a Sidhe is our best spot, it'll be a strong city for production and we'll be focusing only one city on units in peace (and as T-Hawk says, the HE effectively doubles your army in those conditions).
We also need a National Epic and Globe draft camp. The NE will need lots of food, whereas the Globe will need to be able to grow between 6 and 10 fairly quickly (not exactly the same thing). By the time we get to Rifling, a draft camp will make us an army out of thin air very quickly (I discovered this in a Monarch SG where we played Rome, years ago. I lead a whipping frenzy of Legions and then a drafting frenzy of Rifles to conquer the world).

[chumchu]

I'm starting to sound like a broken clock but I think the game calls for it. You do not need catapults to take Celtic cities at the moment. Gergovia can be taken with 3 horsemen no problem. They have 75%+ odds against archers in a flatland city. Until they get stacks of defenders and good city defenses you want horsemen for mobility and strength. The option of waiting for catapults is probbaly much more expensive as you give them time to build units and strengthen their defenses that you later have to pay for later with dead catapults.

HBR is cheap, you already have the strategic resource and they get into the action quickly. Once there they kill everything in the field that is not spears. The AI builds lots of archers, swords, axes, chariots but rarely that many spears. If you can pillage their copper you should stomp them to bits.

[shallow_thought]

On military for the early barb cities, I actually like swords more than horse archers. Mostly because you need IW anyway for clearing those tasty jungle locations (and maybe finding some iron if you are lucky), while HBR (and Archery, can't forget it) represent a significant chunk of beakers at this point in the game. Horse archers are excellent units, but the tech required usually means you have to decide early on using them and then build your strategy and tech path around them. Swords will be available (assuming there is some iron somewhere, of course) on your main tech path.chumchuI'm starting to sound like a broken clock but I think the game calls for it. You do not need catapults to take Celtic cities at the moment. Gergovia can be taken with 3 horsemen no problem. They have 75%+ odds against archers in a flatland city. Until they get stacks of defenders and good city defenses you want horsemen for mobility and strength. The option of waiting for catapults is probbaly much more expensive as you give them time to build units and strengthen their defenses that you later have to pay for later with dead catapults.

HBR is cheap, you already have the strategic resource and they get into the action quickly. Once there they kill everything in the field that is not spears. The AI builds lots of archers, swords, axes, chariots but rarely that many spears. If you can pillage their copper you should stomp them to bits.

We're about 12 turns from HBR and archery together; this is sooner than we'd get masonry->construction for cats, but Boudicca has duns on hills in some places. We may have to go with archery ASAP anyway unless we're lucky with iron placement ... full reports follow.

[shallow_thought]

T81: Finish settler in Yaqob Marley; switch to a chariot to grow. Worry that I might be building too many chariots (future me laughs).
In south east, decide it's worth using a worker from the finished pasture to road to the Celts (future me shrugs).
Other workers in SE keep roading towards Orange or mining gold.
Last pair of worker heads for spices; will road from there to copper city plant.
We can trade along the rivers with Mansa, but have no city trade routes. Will hawk gold around when we have a second connected (one by capital is not roaded).
Settler heads off for Orange in SE.

BaS is building a worker.

T82: Oracle built in a distant land. Mansa has a score jump, could be him (later scouting of his capital suggests not). We get graphs on Celts, I switch EP to Monty. Forget to offer Celts OB, again (future me wonders if maybe Boudicca had a point in being angry).

T83: Currency in. Switch to Fishing; I need to one turn it to start a work boat in next turn at new city. I fiddle tiles (work gold at XP) and sliders to make this work (may have lost a beaker through inefficiency). Perhaps wasn't necessary to do this as I make a nasty hash of worker micro plan for this turn and next, forgetting that tundra is slow to work, so chop is delayed anyway.

YM finishes a chariot, which is moved to the SE (future me nods approvingly). Start another settler, because I want that copper (future me continues to nod). We need workers more urgently, but YM has the oomph to build settlers; workers are planned elsewhere.

We have two gold. Mansa is not stupid enough to trade for ivory, and I don't want his pigs. Could consider a trade just to butter him up?
Celts can't afford our gold. My notes suggest that I still don't offer them OB ; but I do note they have more cities than us.



BaS is taken off worker and starts a chariot so as to grow, keeping open option of whipping worker once unhappiness from previous whip is off.


T84: Fishing, and a new city. First coastal has to be Flying Dutchman; starts a workboat. I don't take a screenshot of the new city because something even more exciting has been seen - a food resource! Off the coast of the ice wastes there are fish to go along with silver and furs.



Switch to IW and turn off science.

T85: Christmas Past builds a chariot; starts a warrior to act as garrison for copper - will finish just before growth, plan is to get a worker out next somehow.

I note our break-even tech is now at 40% and twitch. Actually, this is a low point; we get plenty of new commerce in next few turns (grow onto gold mine, coastal clams, cottage growths).

T86: BaS builds a chariot. I have a note that I'm happy building so many because I don't want the Celts getting frisky . Switch to barracks to allow food bar to fill; worker still sitting in queue.

I um and ah about 2-pop whipping settler at YM. With silver about to come online we'll end up well below happy cap, but we're only whipping off a grass hill mine and a hamlet, and will grow back onto hamlet next turn. I whip .

Finally get around to offering Boudicca OB - she accepts.

T87: workboat chopped out at FD. Start granary; will also chop into this. Begin to feel lack of workers - would have liked to be chopping granary at XP as well.

I select market for hammer dump at YM. This is questionable (gold at city, furs and silk around, but is YM going to grow fast enough for us to care for a long time?). Alternative was barracks (future me suggests more chariots, but I'm not listening).

XP finishes warrior, starts much needed worker.

EPs to Izzy - I now have all other graphs








T88: Science back on, IW is coming in much quicker than I though (I should have checked last turn rather than just keeping on to my gold target from several turns ago).

Either this turn or last turn BaS got to a full food bar and swapped back to building worker (even although it's not at happy cap - at this point I'm thinking 1-pop whip on T90 because we need the worker).

What a nice, quiet turn. Only two more to go.

Also did a pile of scouting. Here's Mali.

[shallow_thought]

T89: The war.

Having asked for advice, I ignore half of it. I decide that the grassland to the north is too valuable to give up for plains shared with XP, and found Brocken Spectre on the red circle. 5T to copper .

I whip worker at BaS; overflow will 1T a chariot next turn (got the maths right this time).
CP switches to a chariot; whippable next turn
YM switches to chariot.
FD can 1T a chariot with the chop that should have gone into the granary. Sigh.
XP Dry whips a warrior.

Take Brian's advice to pillage roads.

T90: The chariots just sit there. They don't even pillage the sheep .

That's the end of the good news. We have three barb archers wandering around (one a long way to the N). Two of them are injured though. This threatens to slow reinforcements reaching the front.





But the real kicker - Boudicca has a Gallic warrior in Gergovia . She only went into slavery two turns ago, but has iron working. I wonder if she was the Oracle? I can't see it in her cities, but she does have marble. My city founding last turn is looking rather dumb now.

We have two hopes :
1) She doesn't have iron hooked yet, and her copper is down south, cut off by last turn's pillage.
2) We have iron sitting somewhere we can get hooked fast.

I retreat our pillager, but mess up - he can be hit by Celtic chariots next turn. Focus, focus...

Our new worker heads north. Chariots head southwards, one into XP. The new one from FD has to hang back to cover the barb, as does one near CP.

I whip chariot at CP. I chop at XP, into a chariot.

I hire two scientists at BaS and work gold at XP - we now get IW next turn. There is another possibility to consider - get archery instead next turn so we can defend a bit better without metal.

Brian, you've got chops, whips and overflow going into three chariots next turn. All of this can be changed to something else if you want. You may also want to check what I'm doing with EPs - they probably need to go onto the Celts.

Obviously the war is the big news. Other than that, hit most of my objectives (scouting, new city, currency, fishing, IW) but got only one worker out. Even without the war it would only have been two at most - target was three, and we would still have needed more.

Sorry guys, got cocky with that copper city placement. Hope we don't pay too heavily. That said, have a great Christmas everyone; I'm not even going to hint at a deadline for the next turnset; definitely no rush.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the detailed report and screenshots -- very helpful.

I would not worry too much about the copper city placement -- if 2 turns ends up making that big a difference, then the real problem was almost certainly larger (and happened earlier) than just where that one city was placed.

The gallic warrior could be a problem. City attack bonus and STR 6 is tough to stop right now. Archery is an option, but the GW would have pretty solid odds on a brand new unfortified archer. Going for metal and trying to get an axe ready seems like the better option to me. How quickly can the copper be mined and linked up once the borders pop? Fortunately the AI does not tend to be smart about pillaging roads to cut off strategic resources, although they will go after the reosources themselves.

Oracle BIAFAL...hmmm. IW is not generally a target for the Oracle grab when the AIs build it, usually they like to go for religions or something like Metal Casting. If Mansa got a score jump then it might have been him, maybe not in his capital?

Charlemagne's power graph is rather scary.

[Zalson]

Scattered thoughts in no particular order.

Great report! Tough war!

Don't feel bad about not getting enough workers. You put your hammers into cities instead -- and now into units. While we definitely want more workers, we also want to make sure that this war is nothing more than an inconvenience.

Being at war with Boudica is good for a Civ4 MP prep state: we now have to be super wary of her movements. That's the essence of MP decision making. In general, though, we shouldn't focus on offensive action until we can get an 8-9 unit stack. To do that, we'll probably want to whip out horse archers or catapults. We're going to stack up some whip penalties and that's fine. That was the biggest thing that my public game showed me. Happiness gets pretty cheap. And we have a happy cap potential of what, 10, right now? (4+gold+silver+furs+silk+spices+ivory). With a market and forge, that's 16. With religion that can get to 18.

A city 1E of the silver looks really strong and like that should be our next priority.

Nitpicks:

I'd have founded to get the copper first ring, reason being that: we didn't have iron working when the city was founded and it gets a grassland copper tile right away. 2/4/0 is really strong.

Are Boudica's chariots promoted? Did you consider attacking?

Larger Strategic Considerations

Let's go iron working -- there's no threat and we have more than enough chariots coming out. We probably now have enough units for the early game (I know we're at war) but we probably want to work on some positions.

Brian, can you whack any of the Barb Archers? Might as well get some experience?

I think we send our chariots on an expeditionary mission to pillage metal and horses.

And now I must go because my daughter is interested in \what\ ai\ am typing.

[Brian Shanahan]

I won't see the game until tomorrow, on me phone. Will look at it then and see what I can do. Gallics are a bit of an issue, we need axes so I'll prioritise thar.

[RefSteel]

How long the copper city's location actually delays axes will depend on how many workers are ready to mine when borders pop - and of course where iron turns up! If by a lucky chance it's already mined and comes in next turn, no worries! If there's no iron in Ethiopian borders, hooking that copper for axes and spears becomes a very high priority. For the middle case though, where iron is available but not yet mined, worker placement could be important: Do you remember which apparently-resourceless tiles have never had a forest (nor jungle nor floodplain nor oasis) at any time in the game? Those are the candidates.

Also note: Archers in hilltop cities are good defenders against Gallics (and everything else Boudica has right now) from a hammer-for-hammer perspective, though not unit-for-unit the way axes are. Note as well for planning purposes that warriors will not upgrade into axes in the build queue: On the interturn after metal is connected, any warrior with hammers in it will become a spear with the same number of hammers invested.

Finally: I'm glad people liked my game-irrelevant quotes and pictures for the cities! Here's the next pair:

City 3, going back for the gold that the second city left behind, is Christmas Past, depicted here in a painting by PJ Lynch:

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them:
...
"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked Scrooge.
"I am!"
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature.
"No. Your past."

- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, from Chapter 2


But in the present, one city is the focus of the game: City #4, Xmas Present, is under siege! It's also a lush and well-fed city by this game's standards, and vitally important to the empire, so it's a good thing it's holding for now! In this painting of it, also by PJ Lynch, it looms as large as in the Present game:

In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see: who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in. and know me better, man!"
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!"

- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, from Chapter 3

Side note: Lynch is probably my favorite living illustrator, particularly for children's books. Yeats, quoted above for Bean a Sidhe, is probably my favorite post-Shakespeare poet. His Irish Fairy Tales is not poetry of course; it's a collection of exactly what it says on the tin! The edition we have in our library system is illustrated by PJ Lynch, and the result (in spite of the fact that Lynch is at his best when doing full-color oil paintings, and the internal illustrations are all black and white line art) is an absolute delight.

[haphazard1]

If the city is on a hill, then an archer would get good odds against a gallic warrior. Fortified on the hill/city would be very good, although obviously that would take several turns.

Also a very good point about queued warriors turning into spears if metal is connected. Since Boudica has chariots, this is not exactly a bad thing, fortunately. When you are facing axes that particular upgrade path can be extremely annoying.

Re attacking chariot vs. chariot, I think the issue was a potential loss would have left the city with fewer defenders than Boudica had units present. Holding the chariot back and whipping the warrior guarantees the city can not fall this turn, allowing time for reinforcement chariots to arrive. (At least this was my understanding.)

More outstanding art, RefSteel, thanks!