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

[haphazard1]

What does your victory screen look like at this point? I am not sure what the land distribution is with Charlemagne, Qin, and Izzy. Domination is presumably faster than Conquest (unless there is another continent lurking out there somewhere ), but how much more land do you need?

Nationalism and drafting -- powerful mechanic for raising an army fast, IF you can afford the happiness hit. Cities have to be a minimum size to draft (exact threshold depends on the unit being drafted; I think it is 5 pop plus the draft cost of the unit), and must have a certain percentage of your culture. Note that dead enemies' culture vanishes, so you can probably draft Mansa's former cities if they are not too close to another civ's culture; you would need to build up some of your own culture first if they are influenced by someone else. Your captured Celtic cities, however, may not have enough of your culture yet. Another wrinkle: a city that gets ceded in a deal has all its culture reset, so getting a city via a deal can sometimes make it instantly draftable. Boudica could probably draft Isca, for example, since you gave it back via deal.

The drafted unit depends on your available tech. Since you have Gunpowder but not Rifling you should get Oromos. Drafting is most efficient in terms of population with rifles, as all drafted units up to rifles cost 1 pop to draft. Infantry cost 2 pop, mech inf cost 3 pop. So if you plan heavy drafting pushing through to Rifling tech is recommended as you get the stronger unit for the same pop cost.

Hmmm, what else? The number of cities you can draft per turn depends on map size. Standard maps are (I think) 3 cities per turn, really big maps can get up to 5 per turn. So for a really big empire it can take multiple turns to draft all your cities, but with the draft anger taking time to fade this is usually not a major problem.

[Brian Shanahan]

We're at 41.86% of 64% needed for Domination, we've already blown past the population requirements. From eyeballing the map, we'll need Boudica, Izzy and part of China to win domination.

While looking at the Dom figures just now, I noticed some of our Oromos can get the Ambush promo against tanks. We seemed to have already figured out countertactics to a weapons system the world hasn't yet figured out

Edit: Nationalism takes two turns to revolt to, same as taking two new civics. I didn't adopt it yet, as our army is probably large enough to take on any two of the remaining civs. We could go Nat, Theo for the XP boost. Most of Mansa's cities are either culturally ours or pushing very closely to the limit as is, so if we do adopt Nat, we have plenty of candidates. Giving back Isca put the kibosh on having a draft camp though.

[shallow_thought]

What does your victory screen look like at this point? I am not sure what the land distribution is with Charlemagne, Qin, and Izzy. Domination is presumably faster than Conquest (unless there is another continent lurking out there somewhere ), but how much more land do you need?

Nationalism and drafting -- powerful mechanic for raising an army fast, IF you can afford the happiness hit. Cities have to be a minimum size to draft (exact threshold depends on the unit being drafted; I think it is 5 pop plus the draft cost of the unit), and must have a certain percentage of your culture. Note that dead enemies' culture vanishes, so you can probably draft Mansa's former cities if they are not too close to another civ's culture; you would need to build up some of your own culture first if they are influenced by someone else. Your captured Celtic cities, however, may not have enough of your culture yet. Another wrinkle: a city that gets ceded in a deal has all its culture reset, so getting a city via a deal can sometimes make it instantly draftable. Boudica could probably draft Isca, for example, since you gave it back via deal.

The drafted unit depends on your available tech. Since you have Gunpowder but not Rifling you should get Oromos. Drafting is most efficient in terms of population with rifles, as all drafted units up to rifles cost 1 pop to draft. Infantry cost 2 pop, mech inf cost 3 pop. So if you plan heavy drafting pushing through to Rifling tech is recommended as you get the stronger unit for the same pop cost.

Hmmm, what else? The number of cities you can draft per turn depends on map size. Standard maps are (I think) 3 cities per turn, really big maps can get up to 5 per turn. So for a really big empire it can take multiple turns to draft all your cities, but with the draft anger taking time to fade this is usually not a major problem.

New house rule: we are never mentioning my liberating Isca again (it never happened, there was never any such city, all evidence to the contrary will be gone real soon now). Other than that, thanks for the advice and explanation.

We're at 41.86% of 64% needed for Domination, we've already blown past the population requirements. From eyeballing the map, we'll need Boudica, Izzy and part of China to win domination.

While looking at the Dom figures just now, I noticed some of our Oromos can get the Ambush promo against tanks. We seemed to have already figured out countertactics to a weapons system the world hasn't yet figured out

Edit: Nationalism takes two turns to revolt to, same as taking two new civics. I didn't adopt it yet, as our army is probably large enough to take on any two of the remaining civs. We could go Nat, Theo for the XP boost. Most of Mansa's cities are either culturally ours or pushing very closely to the limit as is, so if we do adopt Nat, we have plenty of candidates. Giving back Isca put the kibosh on having a draft camp though.

Got it.

Shame about losing the Taj. I was actually thinking about taking an eight-pop whip to secure it, given the value our huge amount of land would give a GA, but then checked the event log . Bah. Izzy will pay. Our power graph says so ( I really like our power graph), as does the fact that she lacks guilds, and thus gunpowder - she does have Mil Trad I think looking at the techs.

I think we're just going to have to soak up some anarchy at some point. Then yeah, I fancy Theo for the home stretch. Merc would have been a nice-to-have but probably not worth an extra turn of anarchy (unless we're keen to get out of slavery as well? I can't see caste or serfdom being any use, so I probably wouldn't change). We might get lucky with great people from Mansa's old cities, but I wouldn't bet on it (2GP is most likely as far as I can see, and the second not for 15+ turns [currently 13, but that will, of course, change]). That might be in time for Rifling though, as we're currently looking at 20t to get there. I'm not going to rush the switch unless we somehow come under pressure.

The other thing likely to slow us is geography. Anything used against Boudicca is out of place against Izzy and then Qin. But I don't think I'll need too much more to kill Boudicca. I want to hit Izzy and reduce the value of her GA if possible, but I don't think we've quite enough for need to think about whether we can sustain a two-front war away from our core just yet (I looked at our two-movers first, and didn't realise quite what a horde of Oromos we have). I may crack the whip a couple of times in the core early on and try to get into position to hit Izzy no later than 5t into the set; with any luck Boudicca should be dead around then.

It'll be a day or so before I can play, but I'm going to start planning the bloodshed.

[Brian Shanahan]

OK I'm not going to do a turn by turn report because that'd be mostly Turn 211 built cannon in X queue cannon in X, built oromo in Y queue oromo in Y. So it'll just be highlights.

Mansa War
I decided to get my ducks in a row on this one, and they all lined up perfectly on turn 213.

First I captured Awdghost without losing a single unit, though there were a couple of closeish shaves.
Second I captured Walata using the siege and Oromo stack Zalson had south of the previous capture. I lost two trebs from this stack as I had no favourable odds on the Longbow without siege.
And finally I took out Mansa's final refuge of Niani with a stack of French Knigechts. I lost two because instead of using their lances, they attacked by calling the defender's mothers hamsters, for some reason.

Pics


I forgot to take one of Niani.

Founding Cities
I founded Aksum in the gap in the middle of our territory

And Gondar where Zalson had a settler missionary pair travelling to (probably shouldn't have grouped them as you were wasting half the settler's movements every turn)

Gondar was a good call actually, it gives good coverage over the other new captures putting a bit extra pressure on Spanish cultural creep. Though Niani is in trouble, we could transfer some units into there during the Celtic War.

Edit: You can also see the Ambush promo which cracked me up earlier today.

Celtic War
This started on turn 216, but I was unable to take anything as a stack of Medieval junk came at Bibracte forcing me to pull my attack stack back to face off against it. It kamikazied into my stack killing nothing at all, I pulled the stack back into Bibracte to heal, and I currently have spies in Isca and the current Celtic capital, about 440 EP to revolt the capital and almost 610 to revolt Isca. We're well placed to push here, just will take time to get the units to cities.

Ivan IV was born as a GG during the war, I settled him in Bean a Sidhe, the extra XP is the most useful at this junction.

Tech
I hit Nationalism, and as Shallow_Thought suggested I took the time to take Mil Trad, and upgraded four Knights in Bibracte to Cuirs (could have used that money to bribe Izzy into war against Boudica, but it's not useful, Charley mabye if he peaces Qin). And I've set a five tech queue to Rifling, most of which are two turn techs at our current be rate of 50%+

Rome
On turn 220 the Apostolic Palace looked to stop the war against Boudica (the only valid reason for bribing in Izzy would have been to prevent this), I voted no, and I expect our votes on their own should be enough. If not we can go FR and attack Izzy, as the bulk of our forces are north of the central sea.

Post set Pics




Frankly these show that we don't even need Nationalism to put this one to bed, our biggest choke point will be walking to each city for captures, maybe go more heavy with spies and Curiassers?


And when I was done I went off to chop some wood:

[haphazard1]

Your power graph is looking very good. I agree that you don't need to go into draft mode if you do not want to; it tends to be more important if you need a defensive army in a hurry, or if your civ is not really set up for ongoing military production and you want to produce a large force quickly after reaching a new tech threshold (usually either Gunpowder or Rifling).

Sorry if a lot of this info is obvious or already known; since this game has been about learning and improving skills I am just info dumping on whatever relevant topic comes up. Hopefully at least some of it is useful.

I am curious about your mix of 1-mover and 2-mover units in your attacks -- there has been mention of a knight stack and also an oromo/siege stack. How much siege do you have at this point? I am assuming the spy revolts are opening the way for the 2-mover stack? It is sometimes tricky to follow everything going on.

Isca? Never heard of it!

[shallow_thought]

This may delay things a little, but I think it's worth me reporting on the current situation in detail - it will help me get things clearer in my mind. Any note saying "action" is for me to remember to do before EOT or straight away next turn!

There may also be a small delay because of RL issues, hopefully to no later than Sunday. I'll update if it looks as if things are going to slip further.

We have lots of troops, split into several mixed stacks across the two (potential) fronts, which are separated by the inland sea (its at least 11 tiles to move through our territory between the SW edge of Spain and the NW edge of Celtia).



We have a lot of Oromos and shiny modern siege but two of the knights are medics, so I think I want to invest primarily in Cuirs for a little while to up the number of two movers. I'm going to need to swarm Boudicca's more distant cities to finish her off in good time, and it's probably going to cost us a few units to do it quickly.

On the active front, we have the stack that got scratched killing Boudicca's mobile army, healing up in Bibracte, and a smaller stack heading for somewhere whose name I can't be bothered to remember.



Some of the cannon claim they need 3t to heal. Getting one of our two medics down here is a priority (action A), but even with Morale will get they wont get here for 2t. There are three undamaged cannon, one undamaged pike and four undamaged Oromo's along with a wounded pike and Oromo (all with moves left). Boudicca still doesn't have knights so I can start marching on Bibracte safely right now with the undamaged cannon and some escorts (action B). I'm seeing 5 units in Bibracte and 3 in the nameless hell-hole; if that carries though to the other cities, we should work our way through them quickly, if I can run another few 2-movers up.

The smaller stack just south of Bibracte has our shiny new Cuirassiers. Four + the spy could conquer the city we never mention before the EOT (action E), and it's tempting. I would certainly be able to reinforce with a couple of medieval units from Camulodunum.

Here's what we've got near Spain:



This is a mix of Oromos and older stuff - few cannon and non of our brand new Cuirs. Even this could seriously damage Izzy, but she is now the number 2 power and is not at war with Qin, so a little caution is in order. We have 4 cities on or one tile distant from the Spanish border, plus Timbuktu only 2 tiles distant (also Awadagost 2 tiles distant but completely screened by peaks, so not a problem). Some of these are very valuable - Djienne has two shrines and is right on the border. When I checked, it's only 4 turns for a 1-mover to get from BaS (our HE city) to Djienne, which isn't too bad.

Plan is to go pretty much full bore military; it's 20t to rifling at break even, but Taj failgold and the printing press boost should help bring that in. I will look at getting banks in shrine cities and maybe YM and Brocken (less likely). Otherwise, I'm thinking of switching most builds in mature cities to Cuirs this turn (action c) and 2-pop whipping one out of each of them as soon as I can (action d). The unhappiness should wear off in time for the next player to repeat the trick with Cavalry.

I want to get some pure 2-move stacks rolling if possible for the faster kill. We'll lose some going forward (even with some spy support), but we can afford it, and promos on the survivors will help. I guess I could use that failgold for knight upgrades; it's 50g a pop (and it's more efficient to wait and upgrade them to cavs if possible, isn't it?). Will wait to see how much gold we actually get...

I'm thinking of dragging most knights down to rampage across the further Celtic lands, while concentrating new Cuirs up north. Does mean a few turns delay before hitting Spain; I'm worried I'm being over-cautious and should be striking ASAP to hinder the GA. Not that waiting is going to do anything but slow us down a little - even if Izzy gets muskets and Conquistadors (ugh - defensive bonuses), cannon + our manufacturing still give us a massive edge.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the overview! Very helpful for us following along.

You are building up a nice number of cannon. Should help a lot. You do have quite a lot of front to defend, as you note, so things are likely to be chaotic for a while until you can smash the enemies' mobile reserves. If your recent conquests have not gotten more than a first (or possibly second) border pop to reduce enemy mobility, that makes the vulnerability worse.

Getting a healer to the second front should certainly be a priority. Wounded siege can still be used to reduce defenses (often while other wounded units heal a bit), but healing in enemy territory without a decent medic along is so slow it really hinders a campaign.

How much gold can you poduce if you shut down research? You have a lot of units that could be upgraded, including a lot of older siege; cannon are so much more effective that I often find those upgrades worthwhile even though it takea a fair bit of gold. Knights -> Cuirs is also pretty good, since it not only gives the strength boost but shifts the unit into the gunpowder category for things like walls/castles.

[shallow_thought]

Woke up early, grabbed , played turns . It was fun!

Headlines are:
- Boudicca is dead
- We have two Spanish cities, and are in position to take Madrid next turn
- Rifling next turn (Brian's estimate was more accurate than mine - failgold, capture gold and printing press pretty much halved the time).
- Our southern army is now our eastern army and is poised on Spain's eastern border for a massive pincer movement.
- Qin is seriously hurting Charlie. Those cho-ko-nus, I guess!
- 50% land area (we need 64%)

Will hope to report later today, but might be tomorrow.

[haphazard1]

Sounds like nice work.

The annoying won't-go-away Celtic pest is finally dealt with. Spain is being hit, your active front should start consolidating significantly. And rifles are about to arrive for another strength boost.

Interesting developments with Qin and Charlemagne. Do you have much visibility on Qin's lands? How good are they? I am curious what is driving his success.

[shallow_thought]

I don't have much visibility on Qin's lands. He just seems to be exploiting interior lines, initially picking off cities far to the east, then launching a stack into the HRE core - they share a long border and HRE has no depth protecting the core there. There's a little bit more info in the report below.

Sadly, the turnset opens with a blunder. I carefully work through my prepared list of pre-EOT actions, which ends with me capturing a certain Spanish city. So I use the spy to trigger the revolt, click on the cuirassier and ... realise that they have only one move left. FFS. I'm getting a strong "silly ghostly kniggets" vibe from the defenders of the city right now. How did I not notice this during the work-up?

Anyway, other than that I started by moving some knights and one medic down to the southern front at their best pace, switching a lot of builds to cuirs and by moving what I could out of Bibracte and heading for Vienne.

T221: Banks->Paper. AP vote to stop the war fails - we have a comfortable veto. Where 2-pop whips are available at cities that can afford them, I take them, for a mix of Hindu temples and cuirassier. We're now doing a pair of slowish marches through Celtic lands, but should be able to deploy more 2-movers soon to mop up.

I decide that the failgold (about 380 I think?) is best spent on tech and up the science slider.

T222: The city of Rawbones is ours; no losses (slightly lucky with the single cannon). Rumours that there was ever a Spanish city here are ruthlessly quashed (tempting as it was, I didn't actually go for a raze and replace). Some more whips.

T223: Start a settler or two in low-priority cities on the west coast. Zalson has marked up some spots, and I've deployed workers to prepare them for lack of anything much else to do for a few turns. Once we have broad swathes of new land, they'll be needed elsewhere.

T224: Printing Press is in for a nice econ boost. Start Replaceable Parts.

Vienne falls. Plenty of siege means never having to say you're sorry. I start some 1-mover troops moving from the Celtic front to Spain. Job is just about done; 2-movers (a bunch of knights have just arrived to back up the cuirs) can rip through what's left of the culture nice and fast. So, time for a new job: I pull the trigger on Spain to mess up the tail end of their GA. Plan is Salamanca->Madrid.


T225: Spanish caravel appears off our NW coast, but that's the only military Izzy flashes. Onwards!

I decide to mass troops for a second push in Spain, against the northern city of Allemanni. It's going to be pretty much straight Cuirs, so we'll lose a few against garrisonned flatland pikes / longbows, but we have enough, and more coming.

In the South, top Cuir loses at Verlumamnium at about 48%, but the knights then clean up. Following cuirs leapfrog on towards the last Celtic city, catching up by sprinting through lands that aren't under Celtic culture any more.



The one-movers deep in Celtic lands start heading east around the inland sea, to hit Spain in the back or start getting involved in China.


T226: Still no sign of a serious stack from Spain. I get a bit unlucky at Salamanca, losing two cannon at 90%+ odds, but there are lost more, and the city is ours.

And finally, Boudicca is dead. I get compensating luck and win a series of 65-75% battles without losing any of our mounted troops. There was never any chance of her surviving the turn, but it's nice to be able to swing the rest of the troops to the north-east without further delay.


T227: In the interturn, Izzy counter-attacks at Salamanca with ... a single treb.

Replaceable parts is in, start Rifling (5t at break-even). We pick up a Great Scientist at Timbuktu. Djienne will be the next great person, and it won't be a great scientist. I fancy a 2-man GA with all our land, so set Djienne to slowly starve, with great person (probably prophet) coming out in 6t (we won't actually lose any pop, just the food bar).

A Spanish stack finally turns up.



One cannon and some Cuirs get some exercise and and it's gone again. Our older siege (which is uninjured, as I used it to bombard Salamance), escorted by Oromos, sets off for Madrid.


T228: Charlie loses Vienna to Qin. This is a suprise to me. I've not been following this, but Vienna is the second HRE city. I decide to send a cuirassier to have a look. I make a mistake: thinking he has 5XP, I promote him to flank intended to go sentry, but he only has 3. Distracted by this I mis-click and send him one tile too far north, where there are no roads. So he's stuck, right next to Vienna, which is full of Chinese pikemen and cho-ko-nus. I compound this little but of by forgetting to take a screenshot.

I cheer myself up by noting Izzy's tech path. She is researching Democracy rather than Gunpowder Guilds. Give Boudicca credit; at least she was researching Guilds when she died. Qin is also being sensible; he's 4t from Gunpowder.

I brute-force Alemanni. I get quite lucky, with a 12% win and a withdrawal in there, and lose two cuirs for the city, pike, wellie, treb, cat and 2 longbows. Plenty of Oromos can now march up to act as garrison.

I promote one cuir to sentry (successfully this time) and take a look at Madrid.



This must be pretty much everything Izzy has left.


T229: One of spies gets caught wandering around in Spain. I pick off a wandering war elephant and cozy up to Madrid.

Banquo is founded to take advantage of pretty much the last forests in our empire.



Hey; Qin didn't kill my cuirassier. His stack must have another target in mind. Charlie doesn't have lot in Aachen...




T230: Izzy tries a "Stop the war" vote - I vote "no".

My random cuirassier picks off the top maceman in Qin's stack for fun (88%). Got to help our allies out! He then retreats far enough to be out of range if Aachen falls on the interturn...

I bombard with the cats/trebs at Madrid. The cannon catch up and will be ready next turn. That should be enough to take the city. After that it should be mop-up.


Notes:
- We have a spy in Mainz; they are intended to be en-route to either China or eastern Spain.
- I have a few cities on wealth builds. It's plausible that they could be on something more useful.
- I've been shipping workers across to the new lands, but have not made any particular plans on what to do with them now that they have arrived.
- Djienne is force-feeding a great prophet. A GA would be huge for us (albeit unnecessary). I've not switched any civics, with a GA hopefully in soon.
- We have a force just about ready at the point where HRE, Spain and China meet. Can either hit Qin (could be fun to kill his big stack) or catch what's left of Izzy in a pincer.
- The missionary in former Mansa lands is for Alemanni. Was originally supposed to be for Banquo, but decided larger, captured city was higher priority (and was suprised that Izzy hadn't spread to it already)
- I've not built many banks; one in Djienne (shrines), on in YM, Timbuktu already had one, Brocken didn't seem to me to have enough production
- The grocer in Camulodunum (Globe city) is for health; if we do switch to Nationhood, hopefully it will help us regrow after drafting.

- I haven't generally renamed captured cities. I don't think it's fair to RefSteel - he'll never catch up! There are a couple of new names mentioned in the report.

Overall, a fun few turns. Was nice to be the one declaring war, for once, and very satisfying to kill off Boudicca.

We have this far left to go: