All right, with the game on pause while Japper sorts things out, I want to stop and think about Woden and I’s play so far, and make sure that we’re re-oriented and in the right headspace moving forward. This, uh, wound up being longer than I intended, clocking in over 3,000 words. In my defense, I wrote it over a couple of days while waiting for the turn to start moving again.
Our game so far:
Right now, I’d rate Woden and I second or third, approximately equal with Emperor and Archduke, behind Rome and China, but ahead of Khmer and Kongo. That seems like a solid place to be. We don’t have strong early game advantages like Rome or China do, no Lavras, like Emperor, and those are the only 3 players dramatically ahead of us in score. As we get deeper into the game, Nubia’s archers will be superseded by his pyramids, letting Woden build more districts faster than anyone, while my RNDs will generate a massive gold income for us while letting me dominate the seas. Russia and Germany will get more advantages coming online then, of course, too, but we have kept pace so far and I expect that to continue.
We have done a great job scouting - Woden uncovered most of our starting continent, mapped out the critical frontier with Molotov-Ribbentrop, and has been doing fantastic work fogbusting and barb-smacking. My own lone scout has revealed 4 city states, mapped a large part of Japper and Cornflake’s continent, and done a better job contacting players than apparently anyone else. Japper, Mike, Singaboy, and Sullla didn’t prioritize scouting outside their own continent at all, and Emperor’s scout wandered aimlessly around Woden and I’s lands for a long time. I’m not even sure if Emperor’s met Kandy or Valetta yet! And he won’t meet Cornflakes, if I can help it.
Domestically, we’ve expanded decently, I think. Rome/China were faster, but they had strong culture and early access to Colonization. They’ve also incorporated a city-state already. After a slow start, Woden has caught up to me, and I say we’re a bit ahead of Molotov/Ribbentrop and massively ahead of Relic in terms of settlement. Our weakness has been infrastructure - I have no buildings in any of my cities, and my builder improvements are lagging slightly behind population. I am the only player with no districts yet, but I’m planning on a big wave of 4 once I finish CN in a few turns.
Abroad, the two main areas of focus are our frontiers. The eastern front is a mixed bag - we landed the awesome iron & wine city on the central isthmus, my personal highest priority, and the northern isthmus is up for grabs. However, it looks like we never had a chance at the nearer isthmus - Emperor’s settler is in that area, and my own settler would still be 10 turns out even if I’d marched straight there. Still, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad - if Woden can grab that last site, and we lock everything down with DOFs and fortification, I think we’ll be set on that front to develop without molestation from Germany or Russia (until the Cossack army comes to wipe us out in the Industrial era, but we have lots of time to prepare for that).
The other front is more successful, I think. After an unexpected - to both players - forward settle by Mike, we launched a successful attack (due in no small part to Woden’s eagle eye catching Mike’s cheating) and razed Khmer’s second city, a big blow. My second city in the area is 5 turns from settlement and will lock down the frontier (if Jutland is available and I have the military to guard it, I will settle it in my next wave). However, Mike was replaced by Cornflakes, keeping the game going at the cost (to us) of replacing him with a much more capable player. We’ve got to be careful not to underestimate this team - they still have a nasty bite and could seriously harm us if given half a chance.
Overall, I’m satisfied with our land grab and our expansion, and dissatisfied with internal development. I know, I know, you can’t do everything - focusing on internal develpment would have meant yielding a valuable city-site to a rival, or letting Khmer set up shop on our doorstep. But as the frontiers settle down I’m feeling the pinch, particularly after making contact with Rome/China and their impressive demographics.
Missteps
The move I’m least certain of so far is building a larger military, instead of more builders or monuments. The lack of monuments has meant the slowest-growing culture in the game, and unless we can turn that around in the next 30 turns or so, we’ll probably be reduced to the status of also-rans. Did we build too much military?
I’m not certain that this was an error, though. First, it’s not like support costs are crippling us. The only units that cost any upkeep are the galleys and Woden’s archers. Income is low, but once I can get RNDs finished and trade routes flowing, we’ll have plenty of gold (Archduke’s income was insane in PBEM4 once he got his RNDs in place).
Second, opportunity cost was low. We would need to build the units eventually, after all, and our city-state finds meant emphasizing units over buildings. Building a monument while benefiting from both Kabul and Valetta would have meant squandering that bonus, leaving us only with Kandy’s faith generation. Had we had Seoul, or Nan Madol, or Lisbon, on our continent, we probably would have played the opening slightly differently. As it was, I think going military-first was the correct move to fully leverage the local geography.
Third, that military has enabled us to acquire our fair share of territory. From my scouting so far, we alone had a forward settle barely 10 tiles from my second city. Consider the other frontiers we’ve explored: Emperor/Archduke, and Japper - Sullla. Sullla’s borders lie on the far side of a complex system of lakes from Japper’s SECOND city (a city he planted a scant few turns before Aranyaka was razed). There’s no settler race in that area at all. Emperor’s borders STILL aren’t visible to us, though his third city should be founded soon (looks like he’s headed for the western canal spot). And Singaboy/Archduke haven’t met, as far as I can tell, which means that they also aren’t settling near each other. No, the only territorial clash that happened was Mike plopping his city down right around the corner from my empire. Now, he didn’t do that on purpse - his scout warrior never made it further north than Actium - but still, we were pinched for land in a way that other teams, so far, haven’t been (the vast desert next to Trafalgar plays into this - instead of having freshwater areas to expand into alongside Lake Malta, there’s just empty waste, pushing my settling south to the coast and towards the landbridge).
The ONLY reason we were able to raze Aranyaka and prevent us being bottled up was because of the large militaries both of us fielded. That enabled Woden to keep Archduke and Emperor temporarily cowed in settling (until they built up their own armies), while also providing fire support, while I had enough muscle nearby to rush Aranyaka while still defending my own land from barbs. It was Mike’s bad luck that he settled next to us and not, say, next to Emperor or Singaboy, neither of whom had any military to speak of at the time. As a result, our military buildup was able to deal a crippling blow to another team, which is still only on 3 cities total - ie fewer than either Woden or I has alone, let alone together. By the time they get back on track, we’ll each have added a few more, as I expect to have 6 cities by turn 70.
Other mistakes: Not sure. My cities are productive but slow to grow (Actium) or quick-growing but limited in production (Salamis). Down the road, once I grow onto all the good tiles, they’ll be strong cities, but in the near-term they’re not as strong as my capital. I’m still working out the best spots to plant cities, and I think I need to re-evaluate my criteria. That said, I’m not sure what BETTER sites would have been for either city (note that Actium was primarily dictated for strategic reasons, as is Leyte).
One final mistake: I’m wondering if City Patron Goddess was the best choice. I wanted super-cheap RNDs to combine with our knowledge of district-discounts to make me a mini-Nubia in terms of economy, but I haven’t gotten the chance to leverage that yet. Oral Tradition would boost all the tea, silk, and bananas on my lands, and cover my cultural weakness. I don’t know if I made the wrong choice or not, but it’s something I wonder about.
Successes
Like I said, grabbing the most desirable canal spot on one front, and settling the bottleneck on the other are two of our biggest wins. Leveraging Kandy to get both of us the pantheons we wanted, even though we’re two of the weakest civs in the game in terms of faith, was nice. I think we’ve done a great job scouting - I’m pretty sure no other team can rival our map knowledge, and my score-tracking has kept us abreast of foreign developments pretty well. I think we have the most complete picture of the current game state, as a result.
The biggest win, though, was the Battle of Aranyaka. At the cost of a single Nubian archer (<50 hammers to replace) we razed Khmer’s second city (60 hammers just in terms of settler cost, plus all the missing science, culture, and production that city would have gotten, plus the strategic position). Our battle plan was good, exploiting our nearby position and relatively powerful forces to raze the city just before Cornflakes could scramble reinforcements there (the warrior and archers we spotted rushing up the road in the final days of the battle).
Here’s a question: Were we right to make peace?
I think so. Here is my reasoning:
1)Our military edge over Khmer lay more in a war of attrition than in any single campaign. Warriors and archers are cheap, even without militaristic states, and as you can see, Cornflakes and Japper were quickly expanding their troops. We could win on the frontiers, but pushing towards the capital we’d have long supply lines with no roads stretching all the way back to Amun, meaning our warriors and archers could have been quickly attrited away and our advance stalled.
2)The timing of the tech was not good for an advance. We were fighting with units on the brink of obsolescence. Woden can trivially grab ironworking, I need only 10 turns, and Japper/Cornflakes had the best science in the game thanks to double Science cities. Any push with our units would have seen us arriving at the gates of Khmer’s capital just in time for Ngao Mbebas to swarm through the jungles (no move penalty), shrug off Woden’s archery (bonus against archers), and massacre us. We’d then have no military at all and nothing to secure the disputed territory. Attacking the capital could not work, and a choke strategy offers little more prospect of success, since we could not outrun Kongolese units.
3)Our army wasn’t properly outfitted. It would have been a long time before a battering ram could be ready for battle, and Cornflakes could certainly rush walls before our advance made it to his capital.
Basically, there was no chance of achieving more than we did in that war, except perhaps killing more units on both sides. Since Woden has encampments, and we should start to pass their tech rate soon, it was wiser to take peace, develop for a bit, and then come back with teched-up units and a GG to better fight on our terms. They can use this time to build an army, too, and I have no doubt we’ll not find Cornflakes as unprepared as last time, but with our bigger civ I think we can build and tech faster than they can.
Moving forward:
Grand strategy
Our overall strategy remains the same: Using Woden’s cheap districts and powerful ranged units, and my multiple trade routes and powerful navy, we will secure more land than our rivals and give it good internal development, which in turn will translate to a science lead, domination lead, or both, which we can leverage to victory.
Steps towards this end: Right now we’re still getting cities down. Soon, I’ll be planting my RNDs, which will work towards both of my goals, while Woden will soon have his steppe pyramids.
One way to early leverage our advantages will be to return to Kongo/Khmer and finish the job. Woden will have an edge from the Great General, we can build and support a larger army than they will be able to, and if we wait for the medieval period to hit, Kongo’s UU will be obsolete, and Khmer’s is more suited for offensive warfare than defensive.
Tl;dr:
Woden and Chevalier’s Path to Victory!
Step One: Build lots of ships and districts!
Step Two: ?????
Step Three: Profit!
Development
Celestial Navigation is due in about 10 turns. I am pre-building military units in each city, then I’ll chop out the districts ASAP using Agoge and Maritime Industries for max overflow (I will probably swap to Autocracy). Then, Trafalgar can start to crank out traders.
I’ll use the newly built military, plus whatever I can spare from the front, to take Kabul, while settling Leyte and Aboukir Bay, pushing me up to 6 cities and rough parity with Rome again (albeit with much less development).
Going forward, in addition to district and trade route development, I want to rectify two weaknesses: Growth in my cities apart from Salamis, and culture. Monuments are a quick 5 turn build for the most part, and I think if I can build those plus secure Nan Madol (big if on that second one, I know), I will close most of the gap. 6 cities with monuments, plus 5 RNDs and 4 coastal city centers, comes out to ~30CPT, and that’s not counting population. That will last me until Meritocracy, I think.
Civic-wise, after I grab PP, I need to push for Defensive Tactics. That gets me Limes and more potential chop bonuses, and it opens up the first wonder I want to build: The Mausoleum of Helicarnassus. Singaboy is going to beat me to this civic by a fair number of turns (one reason I need to catch up in culture), and I’ve got to hope he doesn’t prioritize this wonder. He has no Harbors...yet. With Defensive Tactics in place, I want to harvest the stone in Salamis through a Limes-boosted Ancient wall and into the Mausoleum. Then I’ll dump a second stone harvest into it. I THINK that give me a fair shot at the wonder. Again, counting on China to have other priorities.*
Once I get trade routes and harbors up, it’ll be time to take stock. If my military is lagging compared to Kongo/Khmer, I’ll need to be careful to maintain parity. Ideally, though, I can then swap back into Colonization and churn out another wave of settlers - Syracuse, Lepanto, and Jutland would be my targets in that wave, pushing me to 9 cities.
*It really makes you appreciate how powerful China is. Can China get EVERY wonder? No, not unless you’re Woden, but the fact that he can cheaply get ANY wonder cramps everyone else’s game. No one wants to try, since to try and fail means you’re out a BUNCH of hammers. No failgold in this version of Civ! China can’t get Petra AND the Coliseum AND the Pyramids AND the Great Library AND the Oracle AND the Mausoleum - but if you try for any one of them, that very well might be the one that China DOES build. It’s a really powerful bonus, basically, and I hate playing against it. :P
Diplomacy
Archduke and Emperor are locked into DOFs until turn 85 or so. That’s a lot of time for them to build, but it’s also a lot of time for us. I really don’t want to fight this team, ever, if I can help it - if we’re fighting in their territory, we’ve got DOTF to contend with, and if they’re fighting in ours, well, shit, we fucked up. So cultivating good relations is a goal. Later on I might try some resource deals or mutually beneficial trades.
Kongo/Khmer probably hate our guts, but we’ve knocked them down a bit, and if it’s a one on one fight, that’s a fight we probably win. However, all the reasons I listed for making peace above still apply - I think it’s to our advantage to have peace with this team until we tech past Kongo’s super-swordsmen and Woden’s great general is ready to go. Plus, I’d love my military to be free from garrison duty to take Kabul, and I’d like to not have to chop my walls but instead exploit them for the Limes bonus to chop out some nice buildings. As such, I think, Woden, we ought to send them a DOF when we have the opportunity. Peace helps us more than it helps them, I think.
Singaboy/Sullla are powerful, and China in particular is an annoying neighbor to have with his ability to grab wonders (the naval wonders are a bit niche, and require a harbor, so I’m hoping I can land the Mausoleum and the VA since China ought to have other priorities - keep your fingers crossed for me). I rejected one DOF from them, but that’s mostly a cheap way to mess with them a little - they don’t know that I’m not their neighbor, and signalling possible hostilities could cause them to divert a little bit of production into military builds. The only downsides I see are the possible murder of my scout, who’s more than repaid his cost already, and I guess they could build a bigass military, march/sail all the way here, and murder our entire civs - but I don’t think that’s likely.
It’d be nice to have guaranteed peace with every civ at once, and I want to set up our DOFs with each team so they never expire at the same time, making coordination against us hard (witness the clusterfuck of the world war in PBEM4, as Archduke fought Singaboy before his DOF with oledavy expired, who had an alliance with Woden due to expire fifteen turns after THAT). Therefore, down the road, I plan to send them a DOF, maybe once Japper starts to scout up that way or they send a scout his way.
Long-term, we want to be friends with Molotov-Ribbentrop, murder Relic, and play our relationship with Empire by ear.
Bonus: Cheeky plays I’m considering
Leveraging the British Museum: Archaeologists seem like a lot of micromanagement, and come very late in the tech tree. However, if the game reaches that point, I could potentially use archaeologists as scouts with a DOF (no open borders necessary!), and they could be used to stop a push for a culture win from Kongo’s Nkisi or Russia’s Lavras. Do you get culture from artifacts? I messed around a bit in single player, but I was concentrating on theming museums, and forgot to pay attention to culture generation.
This almost certainly won’t be relevant, but I’ll keep it in mind.
Gar, Matey: Sea Dogs didn’t get a chance to shine in PBEM4, since Archduke raced to Electricity. I think they can be used to wage a more limited war, though. I share coasts with Rome, Khmer, and Russia. If I can get a city onto Kandy’s coast, then I can add China to that list, so I could access everyone but Kongo and Germany by sea. Sea Dogs can invisibly raid coasts - like Japper did - but a)I won’t be as easy to counter-attack via land invasion, and b)if they try by sea, I can use the sea dogs to capture their ships instead. These will be a great way to project power without having to commit to total war.
Two If By Sea: Redcoats are super badass, but tough to build. Still, if I can sneak a naval task force to basically any city that’s not my own in the Industrial age, I can start spawning an army of Redcoats there. If the enemy’s army is caught out of position, I could take multiple soft cities, each one giving me another badass unit capable of going toe to toe with infantry and tanks. Redcoat Armies could be viable through the end of the game.
It might be worth, at some point, hoarding gold and faith, then using theocracy to crash out an army of these if I take a foreign city. This play would make maximum use of my naval power and mobility, and leverages all of my uniques well, I think.
Just possible plays I want to keep in my back pocket on the off-chance they become handy down the road.
Our game so far:
Right now, I’d rate Woden and I second or third, approximately equal with Emperor and Archduke, behind Rome and China, but ahead of Khmer and Kongo. That seems like a solid place to be. We don’t have strong early game advantages like Rome or China do, no Lavras, like Emperor, and those are the only 3 players dramatically ahead of us in score. As we get deeper into the game, Nubia’s archers will be superseded by his pyramids, letting Woden build more districts faster than anyone, while my RNDs will generate a massive gold income for us while letting me dominate the seas. Russia and Germany will get more advantages coming online then, of course, too, but we have kept pace so far and I expect that to continue.
We have done a great job scouting - Woden uncovered most of our starting continent, mapped out the critical frontier with Molotov-Ribbentrop, and has been doing fantastic work fogbusting and barb-smacking. My own lone scout has revealed 4 city states, mapped a large part of Japper and Cornflake’s continent, and done a better job contacting players than apparently anyone else. Japper, Mike, Singaboy, and Sullla didn’t prioritize scouting outside their own continent at all, and Emperor’s scout wandered aimlessly around Woden and I’s lands for a long time. I’m not even sure if Emperor’s met Kandy or Valetta yet! And he won’t meet Cornflakes, if I can help it.
Domestically, we’ve expanded decently, I think. Rome/China were faster, but they had strong culture and early access to Colonization. They’ve also incorporated a city-state already. After a slow start, Woden has caught up to me, and I say we’re a bit ahead of Molotov/Ribbentrop and massively ahead of Relic in terms of settlement. Our weakness has been infrastructure - I have no buildings in any of my cities, and my builder improvements are lagging slightly behind population. I am the only player with no districts yet, but I’m planning on a big wave of 4 once I finish CN in a few turns.
Abroad, the two main areas of focus are our frontiers. The eastern front is a mixed bag - we landed the awesome iron & wine city on the central isthmus, my personal highest priority, and the northern isthmus is up for grabs. However, it looks like we never had a chance at the nearer isthmus - Emperor’s settler is in that area, and my own settler would still be 10 turns out even if I’d marched straight there. Still, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad - if Woden can grab that last site, and we lock everything down with DOFs and fortification, I think we’ll be set on that front to develop without molestation from Germany or Russia (until the Cossack army comes to wipe us out in the Industrial era, but we have lots of time to prepare for that).
The other front is more successful, I think. After an unexpected - to both players - forward settle by Mike, we launched a successful attack (due in no small part to Woden’s eagle eye catching Mike’s cheating) and razed Khmer’s second city, a big blow. My second city in the area is 5 turns from settlement and will lock down the frontier (if Jutland is available and I have the military to guard it, I will settle it in my next wave). However, Mike was replaced by Cornflakes, keeping the game going at the cost (to us) of replacing him with a much more capable player. We’ve got to be careful not to underestimate this team - they still have a nasty bite and could seriously harm us if given half a chance.
Overall, I’m satisfied with our land grab and our expansion, and dissatisfied with internal development. I know, I know, you can’t do everything - focusing on internal develpment would have meant yielding a valuable city-site to a rival, or letting Khmer set up shop on our doorstep. But as the frontiers settle down I’m feeling the pinch, particularly after making contact with Rome/China and their impressive demographics.
Missteps
The move I’m least certain of so far is building a larger military, instead of more builders or monuments. The lack of monuments has meant the slowest-growing culture in the game, and unless we can turn that around in the next 30 turns or so, we’ll probably be reduced to the status of also-rans. Did we build too much military?
I’m not certain that this was an error, though. First, it’s not like support costs are crippling us. The only units that cost any upkeep are the galleys and Woden’s archers. Income is low, but once I can get RNDs finished and trade routes flowing, we’ll have plenty of gold (Archduke’s income was insane in PBEM4 once he got his RNDs in place).
Second, opportunity cost was low. We would need to build the units eventually, after all, and our city-state finds meant emphasizing units over buildings. Building a monument while benefiting from both Kabul and Valetta would have meant squandering that bonus, leaving us only with Kandy’s faith generation. Had we had Seoul, or Nan Madol, or Lisbon, on our continent, we probably would have played the opening slightly differently. As it was, I think going military-first was the correct move to fully leverage the local geography.
Third, that military has enabled us to acquire our fair share of territory. From my scouting so far, we alone had a forward settle barely 10 tiles from my second city. Consider the other frontiers we’ve explored: Emperor/Archduke, and Japper - Sullla. Sullla’s borders lie on the far side of a complex system of lakes from Japper’s SECOND city (a city he planted a scant few turns before Aranyaka was razed). There’s no settler race in that area at all. Emperor’s borders STILL aren’t visible to us, though his third city should be founded soon (looks like he’s headed for the western canal spot). And Singaboy/Archduke haven’t met, as far as I can tell, which means that they also aren’t settling near each other. No, the only territorial clash that happened was Mike plopping his city down right around the corner from my empire. Now, he didn’t do that on purpse - his scout warrior never made it further north than Actium - but still, we were pinched for land in a way that other teams, so far, haven’t been (the vast desert next to Trafalgar plays into this - instead of having freshwater areas to expand into alongside Lake Malta, there’s just empty waste, pushing my settling south to the coast and towards the landbridge).
The ONLY reason we were able to raze Aranyaka and prevent us being bottled up was because of the large militaries both of us fielded. That enabled Woden to keep Archduke and Emperor temporarily cowed in settling (until they built up their own armies), while also providing fire support, while I had enough muscle nearby to rush Aranyaka while still defending my own land from barbs. It was Mike’s bad luck that he settled next to us and not, say, next to Emperor or Singaboy, neither of whom had any military to speak of at the time. As a result, our military buildup was able to deal a crippling blow to another team, which is still only on 3 cities total - ie fewer than either Woden or I has alone, let alone together. By the time they get back on track, we’ll each have added a few more, as I expect to have 6 cities by turn 70.
Other mistakes: Not sure. My cities are productive but slow to grow (Actium) or quick-growing but limited in production (Salamis). Down the road, once I grow onto all the good tiles, they’ll be strong cities, but in the near-term they’re not as strong as my capital. I’m still working out the best spots to plant cities, and I think I need to re-evaluate my criteria. That said, I’m not sure what BETTER sites would have been for either city (note that Actium was primarily dictated for strategic reasons, as is Leyte).
One final mistake: I’m wondering if City Patron Goddess was the best choice. I wanted super-cheap RNDs to combine with our knowledge of district-discounts to make me a mini-Nubia in terms of economy, but I haven’t gotten the chance to leverage that yet. Oral Tradition would boost all the tea, silk, and bananas on my lands, and cover my cultural weakness. I don’t know if I made the wrong choice or not, but it’s something I wonder about.
Successes
Like I said, grabbing the most desirable canal spot on one front, and settling the bottleneck on the other are two of our biggest wins. Leveraging Kandy to get both of us the pantheons we wanted, even though we’re two of the weakest civs in the game in terms of faith, was nice. I think we’ve done a great job scouting - I’m pretty sure no other team can rival our map knowledge, and my score-tracking has kept us abreast of foreign developments pretty well. I think we have the most complete picture of the current game state, as a result.
The biggest win, though, was the Battle of Aranyaka. At the cost of a single Nubian archer (<50 hammers to replace) we razed Khmer’s second city (60 hammers just in terms of settler cost, plus all the missing science, culture, and production that city would have gotten, plus the strategic position). Our battle plan was good, exploiting our nearby position and relatively powerful forces to raze the city just before Cornflakes could scramble reinforcements there (the warrior and archers we spotted rushing up the road in the final days of the battle).
Here’s a question: Were we right to make peace?
I think so. Here is my reasoning:
1)Our military edge over Khmer lay more in a war of attrition than in any single campaign. Warriors and archers are cheap, even without militaristic states, and as you can see, Cornflakes and Japper were quickly expanding their troops. We could win on the frontiers, but pushing towards the capital we’d have long supply lines with no roads stretching all the way back to Amun, meaning our warriors and archers could have been quickly attrited away and our advance stalled.
2)The timing of the tech was not good for an advance. We were fighting with units on the brink of obsolescence. Woden can trivially grab ironworking, I need only 10 turns, and Japper/Cornflakes had the best science in the game thanks to double Science cities. Any push with our units would have seen us arriving at the gates of Khmer’s capital just in time for Ngao Mbebas to swarm through the jungles (no move penalty), shrug off Woden’s archery (bonus against archers), and massacre us. We’d then have no military at all and nothing to secure the disputed territory. Attacking the capital could not work, and a choke strategy offers little more prospect of success, since we could not outrun Kongolese units.
3)Our army wasn’t properly outfitted. It would have been a long time before a battering ram could be ready for battle, and Cornflakes could certainly rush walls before our advance made it to his capital.
Basically, there was no chance of achieving more than we did in that war, except perhaps killing more units on both sides. Since Woden has encampments, and we should start to pass their tech rate soon, it was wiser to take peace, develop for a bit, and then come back with teched-up units and a GG to better fight on our terms. They can use this time to build an army, too, and I have no doubt we’ll not find Cornflakes as unprepared as last time, but with our bigger civ I think we can build and tech faster than they can.
Moving forward:
Grand strategy
Our overall strategy remains the same: Using Woden’s cheap districts and powerful ranged units, and my multiple trade routes and powerful navy, we will secure more land than our rivals and give it good internal development, which in turn will translate to a science lead, domination lead, or both, which we can leverage to victory.
Steps towards this end: Right now we’re still getting cities down. Soon, I’ll be planting my RNDs, which will work towards both of my goals, while Woden will soon have his steppe pyramids.
One way to early leverage our advantages will be to return to Kongo/Khmer and finish the job. Woden will have an edge from the Great General, we can build and support a larger army than they will be able to, and if we wait for the medieval period to hit, Kongo’s UU will be obsolete, and Khmer’s is more suited for offensive warfare than defensive.
Tl;dr:
Woden and Chevalier’s Path to Victory!
Step One: Build lots of ships and districts!
Step Two: ?????
Step Three: Profit!
Development
Celestial Navigation is due in about 10 turns. I am pre-building military units in each city, then I’ll chop out the districts ASAP using Agoge and Maritime Industries for max overflow (I will probably swap to Autocracy). Then, Trafalgar can start to crank out traders.
I’ll use the newly built military, plus whatever I can spare from the front, to take Kabul, while settling Leyte and Aboukir Bay, pushing me up to 6 cities and rough parity with Rome again (albeit with much less development).
Going forward, in addition to district and trade route development, I want to rectify two weaknesses: Growth in my cities apart from Salamis, and culture. Monuments are a quick 5 turn build for the most part, and I think if I can build those plus secure Nan Madol (big if on that second one, I know), I will close most of the gap. 6 cities with monuments, plus 5 RNDs and 4 coastal city centers, comes out to ~30CPT, and that’s not counting population. That will last me until Meritocracy, I think.
Civic-wise, after I grab PP, I need to push for Defensive Tactics. That gets me Limes and more potential chop bonuses, and it opens up the first wonder I want to build: The Mausoleum of Helicarnassus. Singaboy is going to beat me to this civic by a fair number of turns (one reason I need to catch up in culture), and I’ve got to hope he doesn’t prioritize this wonder. He has no Harbors...yet. With Defensive Tactics in place, I want to harvest the stone in Salamis through a Limes-boosted Ancient wall and into the Mausoleum. Then I’ll dump a second stone harvest into it. I THINK that give me a fair shot at the wonder. Again, counting on China to have other priorities.*
Once I get trade routes and harbors up, it’ll be time to take stock. If my military is lagging compared to Kongo/Khmer, I’ll need to be careful to maintain parity. Ideally, though, I can then swap back into Colonization and churn out another wave of settlers - Syracuse, Lepanto, and Jutland would be my targets in that wave, pushing me to 9 cities.
*It really makes you appreciate how powerful China is. Can China get EVERY wonder? No, not unless you’re Woden, but the fact that he can cheaply get ANY wonder cramps everyone else’s game. No one wants to try, since to try and fail means you’re out a BUNCH of hammers. No failgold in this version of Civ! China can’t get Petra AND the Coliseum AND the Pyramids AND the Great Library AND the Oracle AND the Mausoleum - but if you try for any one of them, that very well might be the one that China DOES build. It’s a really powerful bonus, basically, and I hate playing against it. :P
Diplomacy
Archduke and Emperor are locked into DOFs until turn 85 or so. That’s a lot of time for them to build, but it’s also a lot of time for us. I really don’t want to fight this team, ever, if I can help it - if we’re fighting in their territory, we’ve got DOTF to contend with, and if they’re fighting in ours, well, shit, we fucked up. So cultivating good relations is a goal. Later on I might try some resource deals or mutually beneficial trades.
Kongo/Khmer probably hate our guts, but we’ve knocked them down a bit, and if it’s a one on one fight, that’s a fight we probably win. However, all the reasons I listed for making peace above still apply - I think it’s to our advantage to have peace with this team until we tech past Kongo’s super-swordsmen and Woden’s great general is ready to go. Plus, I’d love my military to be free from garrison duty to take Kabul, and I’d like to not have to chop my walls but instead exploit them for the Limes bonus to chop out some nice buildings. As such, I think, Woden, we ought to send them a DOF when we have the opportunity. Peace helps us more than it helps them, I think.
Singaboy/Sullla are powerful, and China in particular is an annoying neighbor to have with his ability to grab wonders (the naval wonders are a bit niche, and require a harbor, so I’m hoping I can land the Mausoleum and the VA since China ought to have other priorities - keep your fingers crossed for me). I rejected one DOF from them, but that’s mostly a cheap way to mess with them a little - they don’t know that I’m not their neighbor, and signalling possible hostilities could cause them to divert a little bit of production into military builds. The only downsides I see are the possible murder of my scout, who’s more than repaid his cost already, and I guess they could build a bigass military, march/sail all the way here, and murder our entire civs - but I don’t think that’s likely.
It’d be nice to have guaranteed peace with every civ at once, and I want to set up our DOFs with each team so they never expire at the same time, making coordination against us hard (witness the clusterfuck of the world war in PBEM4, as Archduke fought Singaboy before his DOF with oledavy expired, who had an alliance with Woden due to expire fifteen turns after THAT). Therefore, down the road, I plan to send them a DOF, maybe once Japper starts to scout up that way or they send a scout his way.
Long-term, we want to be friends with Molotov-Ribbentrop, murder Relic, and play our relationship with Empire by ear.
Bonus: Cheeky plays I’m considering
Leveraging the British Museum: Archaeologists seem like a lot of micromanagement, and come very late in the tech tree. However, if the game reaches that point, I could potentially use archaeologists as scouts with a DOF (no open borders necessary!), and they could be used to stop a push for a culture win from Kongo’s Nkisi or Russia’s Lavras. Do you get culture from artifacts? I messed around a bit in single player, but I was concentrating on theming museums, and forgot to pay attention to culture generation.
This almost certainly won’t be relevant, but I’ll keep it in mind.
Gar, Matey: Sea Dogs didn’t get a chance to shine in PBEM4, since Archduke raced to Electricity. I think they can be used to wage a more limited war, though. I share coasts with Rome, Khmer, and Russia. If I can get a city onto Kandy’s coast, then I can add China to that list, so I could access everyone but Kongo and Germany by sea. Sea Dogs can invisibly raid coasts - like Japper did - but a)I won’t be as easy to counter-attack via land invasion, and b)if they try by sea, I can use the sea dogs to capture their ships instead. These will be a great way to project power without having to commit to total war.
Two If By Sea: Redcoats are super badass, but tough to build. Still, if I can sneak a naval task force to basically any city that’s not my own in the Industrial age, I can start spawning an army of Redcoats there. If the enemy’s army is caught out of position, I could take multiple soft cities, each one giving me another badass unit capable of going toe to toe with infantry and tanks. Redcoat Armies could be viable through the end of the game.
It might be worth, at some point, hoarding gold and faith, then using theocracy to crash out an army of these if I take a foreign city. This play would make maximum use of my naval power and mobility, and leverages all of my uniques well, I think.
Just possible plays I want to keep in my back pocket on the off-chance they become handy down the road.
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
