Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

By the way, Sulla, are you sure you can get the battering ram next to Seoul on T118. I count 5 turns to get there (2 moves in water), since the ram is getting done on T115.

[Modo]

I am a little glad I am running a commercial project for the added income of 8gpt. Every bit counts. Beijing wouldn't have been able to produce another builder anyway as it is producing one that is on hold for Serfdom.

A bit of a payback there even if the pay is not getting back any time soon :D

But seriously, if that gold ultimately buys security then upgrades can be postponed. And imagine whoever is watching the GPP scratching their heads trying to figure what convoluted Great Merchant plans are afoot...surely, you wouldn't need just the gold from that project right?

[Singaboy]

Of course the other idea is to be in the race for a potentially better Great Merchant along the way to be purchased with faith.

[timmy827]

Who might you have your eyes on?
My impression of the Great Merchants is that they are mostly all useful (better floor than Great Engineers which have some real duds) but for an MP game, I'm not sure which one is a better faith buy than more units.

[Modo]

I think he's talking about just having that faith / gold reduction in place with some GM points invested already just in case. Even if they don't plan on getting one for themselves the denial value is still there, either forcing the opponents to concede or rush one. It's a distant possibility atm, just another potential option in hand.

[Sullla]

The request for 1000 gold was just to make sure that I had enough for upgrades, I don't expect to need anywhere near that much money. I'll send you back a good chunk of money on my turn for China's own upgrades. Just trying to be careful since I'll only be in Professional Army policy for a pair of turns (end of one turn and the beginning of the next turn). You should have plenty of money for all of the upgrades detailed in your post, more than enough with several hundred gold left over.

Khmer hung on for another turn, excellent. The longer that Cornflakes can hold out, the better it is for us. If he could somehow sit there for 25 more turns, keeping the Nubian conquests under the occupation penalty, that would be a dream scenario for us. (I'm pretty sure that the occupation mechanics are per-civ and not per-team. We'll find out the answer pretty soon.) At the very least, it doesn't look like my knight on the Campus district has to worry about getting attacked by the Khmer units this turn.

Pagan: I like the eastern chariot spot better. It still denies Germany a canal city while being a safer/easier location to defend and also having better terrain too. At this stage of the game, a new city needs forests or jungles to chop to get up to speed quickly. The eastern chariot location has a lot of forests available, plus stone to harvest (shared with Pagan) as necessary. I'm sorry about missing this discussion, there was so much going on the last few turns that it slipped my mind. Too much focus on killing Kongo units.

I also think that we're going to need another missionary for the new cities in the near future. Don't forget that Rome is also going to build three settlers over the next dozen turns in addition to the new cities down in the former Kongo territory. It's your call when the best time for that would be. Side question: how much more expensive is an apostle as compared to a missionary? If they're pretty close to the same price, it might be worth going for an apostle and seeing what promotions we roll. Apostles have the chance to get bonus spread charges or the amazing Proselytizer promotion for potential Crusade abuse down the road. (Elsewhere, Kinchassa has flipped back to Marco Polo as its official religion - yay!)

For the battering ram movement: into the water on the tile next to Savoia (T115), then SW-W-SW to the tile west of where your chariot is currently standing (T116), then SW-SW-SE onto the tile north of the sheep resource in Seoul's borders, and then E-E next to Seoul itself on Turn 118. We already confirmed outside The Jungle Book / Savoia earlier that a battering ram will do its job if it's embarked in the waters next to a city center tile, and that should be enough for the caravel to knock out the walls. I will double check in a Single Player game to make sure that battering rams (as a support unit) will still get 3 movement points while embarked. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't, but better safe than sorry.

I still don't agree with the whole Commercial district project but I don't see the need to argue. The current Great Merchant (Jakob Fugger: 200 gold and 2 free envoys) is certainly nothing to write home about. TheArchduke is going to claim him eventually barring something big changing. Perhaps the next one will be Adam Smith (1 additional Economic policy slot) and we can make a run after him, assuming the game lasts that long. The Industrial Great People cost 420 points and that's not cheap.

Looking forward to seeing what's in store for us later today when I get the save.

[Sullla]

Turn 114:



No attacks from Japper between turn. In fact, none of my units saw combat at all on the interturn. This turn wouldn't have as much fighting as the last one, but it was still pretty busy. Note that the 1000 gold I requested from Singaboy came in between turns. That treasury was going to see some use.



First things first, I needed to swap policies before I could play the rest of my turn. I dropped Limes in favor of Professional Army for the unit upgrades, Natural Philosophy for Land Surveyors to save a little money, and then Diplomatic League for Merchant Confederation to get the 2 for 1 deal at Geneva. I'll be swapping into Theocracy government next turn and dropping all three of these policies to go back to my normal policy setup.



I started out by dropping an envoy into Geneva for the doubling bonus, then the additional envoy that I picked up from finishing Naval Tradition civic to hit the 3 envoy tier. As I've been saying, if I can get a kill with a musket and add the two envoys from natural government generation, I'll be able to reach the 6 envoy tier for another big surge of science. Don't be fooled by the next few screenshots, my science rate went up by a lot, from the 86 beakers/turn shown here to 103 beakers/turn. And that's without Natural Philosophy running this turn, which was worth another 8 beakers/turn before I dropped it. If I hit the 6 envoy bonus at Geneva, I'll be tied with TheArchduke in science. He's only ahead right now because he has 9 total Scientific city state envoys for +6 beakers per Campus while Rome has 6 total envoys for +4 beakers per Campus.

Long story short: I am outscaling him with more cities and more total districts. TheArchduke only has 5 total Campuses while I'm currently at 8 Campuses (including Heart of Darkness under the occupation penalty). Get out of the occupation penalty there and capture Seoul, and I should take a clear lead.



Next I went to upgrade my legions into muskets, only to find that I lacked niter. Oh yeah, that's why I needed Land Surveyors this turn. I had to purchase this niter tile for 160 gold; we definitely need sources of niter for both Rome and China, and this was the only one that I could connect in any kind of reasonable fashion. The best I could do was save some money on the tile purchase. At least the tile itself is a really strong one for Ravenna at 2/4 yield. Ravenna is starting to become a really nice city - it will reach about 20 base production/turn when the two grassland hills are mined.

I also purchased a forest tile in the third ring at Firenze for Venetian Arsenal chopping purposes. That was 320 gold spent, argh. But it would have been 400 gold without Land Surveyors in place; I was doing my best to save gold here. I do wish that Land Surveyors offered more of a discount than 20% though. If I were making suggestions to Firaxis, I would have bumped that up to 33% or maybe even 50%. Why not, right? We would certainly use the policy a lot more if it had a larger discount, and players should be rewarded for lining up discounted tile purchases with smart play. (This is also more proof that Russia's extra tiles on city founding is an amazing ability. We've had to spend a lot of gold on tile purchases.)



With niter in hand and Professional Army in place, now I could begin upgrading legions into muskets. Going from 40 strength to 55 strength will make a gigantic difference against Japper's remaining units, far more than the minimal change in numbers would suggest. Adding +15 combat strength causes a unit to deal about 85% more damage and take 85% less damage, changing an even 30 damage against 30 damage fight into a 55 damage against 15 damage rampage. These units should give me the power to break through Japper's defenses and take his last city.



I also had the chance to promote the knight that captured Heart of Darkness / Napoli. There's some really interesting choices here for the heavy cavalry line. I ended up promoting this unit with "Charge" because Japper has been fortifying his units in the jungle and this promotion will be perfect for killing them. However, Barding is a really nice option as well, and I plan to get some knights with both promotions to have some options on hand when attacking. Pretty much everything on this list would be great to have, with Breakthrough a really cool promotion if a unit could ever get there. Get on top of a ranged unit and attack it twice in one turn? Yes please. It's doubtful anything will ever get there though. I think Japper will be mighty surprised to find units that actually get STRONGER attacking his fortified units.



My only fighting was on the western side of the formation, where this Ngao Mbemba remained in place. I happily obliged by shooting it with my two crossbows in range. While they didn't do much damage at such terrible odds, 32 damage is better than nothing and these two guys kept racking up the XP. The highlighted unit is pretty close to hitting a third promotion, only one away from the godly "can shoot twice per turn" at the bottom of the ranged tree. The other injured crossbow at the top of the formation healed this turn by using a promotion. I also had my knights spend this turn healing, with the Great Scientist strategically placed to reach three of them at once. There's one knight at 60/100 HP who will be back to 95/100 HP next turn thanks to the Great Scientist. That guy is amazing, my knights are going to be back in the fighting almost immediately.



Elsewhere, I was also upgrading my galleys into caravels at the pricey cost of 135 gold apiece. Uh, that treasury dropped pretty darn fast. I upgraded 5 legions at 100 gold apiece, 4 galleys at 135 gold apiece, and then had to purchase those two tiles. That made for a grand total of... 1360 gold. Ummm, I'm sorry Singaboy? Don't kill me. On the plus side, we now have a top-rate navy at our disposal and control of the seas for the time being. This caravel will go help us capture Seoul along with the battering ram coming out of Savoia. I'm going to send two of the six caravels off on deep scouting missions, exploring the two oceans we haven't reached yet to scope out where the cities of the other teams are located. We'll want to know that for potential use later on. The other four caravels can stick around for control of the seas. Hopefully we can add 10-12 frigates to join them in the near future, post-Venetian Arsenal completion.



I also harvested this wheat resource for a population point at Siena. I was only going to place a Commercial district on this tile anyway, and the extra population point can go right into the library next turn as a Scientist specialist. Now check out something else in this screenshot: my income has cratered all the way down to 21 gold/turn, yeouch! Military units are expensive, y'all. The good news is that it's not quite as bad as it might seem here. I'm not in Merchant Confederation policy at the moment, which is worth 14 gold/turn at the moment, so the drop is really from about 55 gold/turn down to 35 gold/turn. Not great but not as disastrous as it looks here. I will make more gold when Napoli comes out of resistance (it's a nice city for gold generation with those cocoa plantations), more gold when we capture Seoul, and and we're also close to unlocking Triangular Trade policy for 4 gold/turn on each trade route. I also have two Commercial districts queued up for my next forest chops, hopefully arriving in the next 5-10 turns. So it will get better, but my income is definitely shabby right now.

China is going to have to keep carrying Rome economically for the forseeable future.



Overview for Turn 114. I love the way things are set up at Milano and Siena, with two libraries finishing next turn and allowing Milano to swap onto a settler as Colonization gets slotted in, while Siena uses the library for a Scientist specialist. Venzia is still chugging along with its university for the Printing boost (with Roma finishing the other university). I'm going to go over 50% beakers on Printing this turn and then swap off it, which is slightly wasteful but I wanted the boost to finish the tech instead of just getting me close. Pretty much every coastal cities is queuing up a quadrireme to finish after Venetian Arsenal (hopefully) completes. The ETA is down to 7 turns now, still looking on pace for a mid-turn Turn 121 completion.

Roma is also still on pace, with the Campus district project 2 turns from completion. Here's a quick look at that race:



TheArchduke makes 14 Scientist points/turn so he will claim Emilie du Chatelet on his turn. Then it gets interesting. Woden only gets 10 points/turn so he will not be able to claim the following Great Scientist on Turn 115, and his team is broke and therefore won't be able to claim the dude with gold patronage. Roma's district project will finish Turn 116 and we will hopefully snipe the following Great Scientist, whatever it may be, away from Woden. Of course, then he'll simply get the third one unless the era advances, and who knows what's going on there. We still have exactly 4 players in the Renaissance era, one away from advancing the Great Person era. Hang in there Cornflakes! You just need to survive two more interturns for our team. The other one to watch is Woden, who may be deliberately avoiding an era advancement to keep the next Great Person in play for his team. It's also possible that EmperorK could advance to the Renaissance era as well, although he doesn't have as much science or techs discovered as Woden. This is getting to be a nervy few turns here.

*REALLY* hoping that we land this Great Scientist and hit the jackpot by winning the 50/50 chance for Isaac Newton to appear. I could use him for the Campus district in Genova, where I'm working a pair of 1 food / 1 gold water tiles right now for lack of anything else available. A free library and university in that city would be amazing, +6 beakers from the buildings and +2 beakers on the university per Newton's ability and +4 beakers from the Scientist specialists. A lot would have to go right for that to happen, but I can dream about it.



Here's the front lines in the south. All six of my knights will either be full health or over 90 HP by the start of next turn, amazing stuff. I'm going to send most of them around to the east of that mountain and try to flank Kinchassa from the west. I'll keep one or two in the center and help the muskets and crossbows push north through the jungles. Japper's westernmost Ngao Mbemba is going to die next turn if he doesn't move it. Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll keep it in place, even setting me up for a musket kill to earn the Square Rigging boost. We'll see what he does. His eastern crossbow is also very exposed, I'll be able to move a crossbow of my own forward and get in the critical first attack to chunk away 2/3rds of its health. What I wouldn't give for Logistics policy to give me +1 movement in friendly territory right now. That might be the next target after Humanism finally finishes soon, since Triangular Trade is also available at the same civic.

I'm going to poke around some more in the numbers tonight and see if I spot anything else interesting. I do have one important message for Singaboy: I sent China all of my remaining money at the end of my turn, 300 something gold. However, I still need to upgrade 2 caravels and 1 legion which will cost a combined 370 gold. If at all possible, I need you to send me 370 gold again on your turn to finish the remaining upgrades. With my traded income and your natural gold generation, you should have about 1000 gold at the start of your turn. I could really use 370 of that back again on my next turn if you can spare it. I know I've been pretty terrible when it comes to borrowing money, but I think it's been working out for our team with Rome supplying most of the tech/civic boosts and China supplying the gold/faith income. At the very least, I REALLY want 100 gold to upgrade my last legion. I'd like to upgrade the remaining two caravels as well for a beefed up naval presence, but I pretty much have to upgrade that legion to help push on Japper's last city.

Oh, and we also picked up the boosts for Rifling, Replaceable Parts, and Exploration as a result of all those upgrades - you're welcome. Good luck Singaboy.

[shallow_thought]

Hang on - Sullla is Mr Economy, while Singaboy is a former "Always War" expert, but you've got China carrying Rome economically and Rome doing all the fighting. Something, somewhere has gone slightly wrong...

[Singaboy]

Turn 114...what an eventful turn indeed.

There is quite a bit to remember to do this turn. However, the first messages of the turn bring up stuff I didn't expect. Rome sending 300 gold and asking for 370 gold is little weird. Anyway, I will try to send the gold that is necessary for 2 caravels and 1 musket.

Though the message doesn't appear, England has accepted my luxury exchange and comes with a DoF request. Of course, I did not accept it as we can discuss this before they even see their saves again. This is the beauty of China getting the proposal not Rome. Nubia has not taken Khmer's last city yet (their power rating has dropped dramatically though) and it does seem, that they fear a Roman/Chinese attack. This is a tricky issue indeed. Do we fight them or do we sit back and hope they attack Russia (with DotF seems unlikely). The issue I have with an attack on Russia and Germany is logistics more than anything. How would Rome's army get over there? If we decide to fight, I prefer us to fight Nubia and England with our naval superiority and hopefully cavalry, while securing the west.

Diplomatic Service is done while the increase in happiness slightly increases research etc. Most important here is the gpt at the moment for all the money we use for unit upgrades etc.



Just to get an idea of my city happiness, here we go. It would be great to have 2 additional amenities from Rome as well as maybe toys from a Great Merchant.

It is time for a policy swap of course. Professional Army and Serfdom are inserted for one single turn. I will have to bring back Limes for some additional wall chops at Kashgar and Pagan. The question is, should I then take Urban Planning yet again or a district multiplier. I will need to think about that. It would be great if one could get an indication what the effects really are before enabling such a policy card.

The issue on the agenda is my empire management. The rain forest at Tianjin gets chopped for 48 hammers and food and the result is city growth to 4 and the campus almost done. Of course, I immediately lock the next campus there for Beijing. Sulla is correct, once Tianjin gets two mines, the city production will look much better.

The core of China needs very close micro management as I swap three cities back to builders. Now, the issue is that the cost of the builders will range from 114 to 122 hammers. I honestly have no idea which order the production completion will follow, hence I will need to make sure that all three cities can achieve 122 hammers. This is no issue for Shangdu. However, this is not as straight forward for Hangzhou and Beijing, especially without Urban Planning (one hammer can make some difference here). The good thing is that Hangzhou gets additional 2 hammers via the grass hill that is mined this turn. Beijing needs to get the sheep tile from Kashgar back to ensure that I will get all three builders.

In fact, there are a lot of items finishing next turn. Two campuses, 3 builders, 1 trader and a monument in the east. The new trader will get us additional 6 gpt from a route to Rome and I will chose Shanghai for that. Pagan locks the harbor as I am hoping to be able to build 2 additional wonders there in time. The builder there will harvest the stone next turn with a wall being built.

Looking at the district situation, in a few turns China will have 4 Holy Sites, 3 campuses, 3 CH, 1 theatre, 1 entertainment district, 1 industrial zone. If I can manage to build 2 harbors and 1 encampment, I have 16 districts and all those single districts should get a discount. That might be a good time to lock the encampment for Tianjin.

As for the builders, Hangzhou's builder will move towards my new holdings in the east while chopping/mining a forest at Hangzhou along the way. Shangdu's builder will move west to improve tiles at Quanzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin while the third builder will be bust at Beijing/Kashgar/Pagan. It is good to have builders with 7 charges

With all the management of cities done, it is time to go after units and attack planning. It is time to upgrade two archers. I upgrade an archer in the east and one near Germany to show some muscle. Germany has to understand that any attack would be a bloody endeavor. Of course, this triggers the Eureka for metal casting. Prefect timing here. I can upgrade more units next turn before swapping out of Professional army. Thanks Sulla for Naval Tradition inspiration.

I still upgrade a chariot so that the knight can move in for the attack. Next turn, I am planning to upgrade 2 swordsmen and 2 catapults, but it will all come down to gold. If I am short of gold, then only 2 catapults and 1 sword will be upgraded. As the battlefield is sufficiently crowded, I decide to retreat one catapult. The city attack on T118 is planned to get carried out by 4 units as indicated. I am hoping that one caravel, 2 knights, 1 crouching tiger and 1 horseman are enough to take the city right away and gift to Rome. The additional units (2 muskets, 1 horseman and bombard) will be supporting the attack to remove any enemy unit in the field.

Last item on the agenda for this turn. Sending gold back to Sulla. I took out the calculator to make sure that Sulla has 370 gold next turn (having 6 gold in the kitty +23 gpt), I sent 342 gold over (some minimal buffer here). This leaves China with 372 gold, which should increase to 491 next turn. Two muskets and 2 catapults cost 250+235 gold, which should just be enough. This is what I call a really optimized economy. Let's hope this really works out that way.

Anyway, I did not draft any horseman this turn. I am not sure what our action with regards to England/Nubia and Germany/Russia will be and drafting of horsemen will really depend on that. I reckon my estimate of 10 turns was wrong as I missed the fact that I still need to research 3 techs with siege tactics next. This will mean and additional 260 beakers, which will translate into roughly 4 turns. I should be reaching Military Science in roughly 15 turns, which will coincide with the expiration of the DoF with Germany/Russia.

[Modo]

Hang on - Sullla is Mr Economy, while Singaboy is a former "Always War" expert, but you've got China carrying Rome economically and Rome doing all the fighting. Something, somewhere has gone slightly wrong...

Well, Brick couldn't hold it so they ended up like this

And Singaboy is more like a mother now with his calculator "You get that much and nothing more, I can't take care of you forever"