It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[haphazard1]

Good luck with step 4 of the plan.

I was building economic infrastructure everywhere, even if the benefit was marginal; our economy was just too close to the edge. Might have gotten a bit carried away, but we needed all the improvement we could get to turn things around.

I did very little whipping on my set, so you should have pretty open options re whip anger.

Since we have iron and horses, we might get some use out of knights or curassiers. Depends on how quickly our economy recovers and how the diplo situation shapes up, but the possibility is there if we want it. I think a lot is going to depend on what Julius does: he is the tech leader, and rarely stays peaceful for an entire game. Hopefully he does not decide to come after us. If he picks someone else as a target we might get an opportunity to join in the fighting and claim some territory.

[Brian Shanahan]

First item of business: I'm still having trouble with flash so my screenshots will be attached at the end as a zip file.  Sorry. Anybody know a picture hosting site I can use without flash applets on the site?

Second order of businesss: I managed the first three steps but it seems the other civs are exclusively employing Devils in Skirts for their soldiers, no opportunity to carry out step 4

Ok to the game:

turn 160
I whip many cities, seeing as they could be.  Have to reorder tile improvements but get back to breakeven at 30%.
At Streets of Rage a chariot crosses the river and wins flawlessly against an archer.

turn 161
Only excitement this turn was an axe beating a sword outside landstalker

turn 162
Julius declares war on Musa
<insert pic here>
Axe beats warrior near Sonic the Hog

turn 163
Calender finishes
Set research to Civil Service, and kill science to build gold.
I spot some praetorians in a Roman city down south
<insert next pic here>
And I spot an opportunity, Macchu Pichu is showing black borders, as a barb axe wandered in and captured it fairly recently.  Scramble a few units to take it (beware the revolt risk, we may need to take some archers over there).
Chariot barely beats an axe over by Cholo, at 97% odds no less.
Buddhism spreads to Flimbo's Quest (was thinking on this one, Flimbo's could be a great missionary centre down the line, build up the monasteries here).

turn 164
Mali wants an alliance. Sorry but no, Musa. I'm not sticking my neck out against a civ with Strength 8 city busters and catapults. Your Skirmishers should keep you safe enough if you concentrate your forces.
J Edgar Hoover (G Spy) is born in Sumeria, so no chance to spy on them for the foreseeable future (of course they've got super duper early courthouses too).
Silk comes online


turn 165
Golden Axe whips it's granary

turn 166
Super Mario builds a Buddhist temple

turn 167
Take Macchu Pichu with sacrifice axe and chariot. Rename it Inca Gold and start building a monument.
<insert nother picture here>

turn 168
Nothing to see here

turn 169
A big turn
First Mansa offers Masonry and 310g for Code of Laws.  I take it, it's a backwards tech, but from keeping an eye on our science rate the 310 gold and our c350 gold saved is enough to get Civil service.  It's now due in four turns.
Found Gauntlet
<insert picture here>
On reflection I probably could have settled 1 east of the actual spot. Less overlap.
I also lose my first unit in any of my sets. A chariot at Streets of Rage loses at 98% odds to a barb axe.  Luckily I've another axe floating around who kills the redlined barb.

turn 170
Huayna demands we close borders with Musa.  Since Huayna's pathetic I say no.
I go on a whipping spree. At Contra my idea is to whip the queued Market into the Mausoleum next turn and keep chopping the wonder.
Sonic's Settler is meant for X (it'll complete next turn) near Mali.  Flimbo's Settler in the queue hasn't a destination set.

I've included a few empire wide shots, and demographics.

And I also included a shot of the five greatest cities.  Huayna has the Mahabodhi,  which with all the spreading being done should be pretty valuable.  And he's pathetic being hammered pretty badly by barbs I think.  What say we research Machinery, and show him the way of the blade?

Other thoughts, we should get Literature soon for the HE and NE.  Both of those will be useful.  Apart from that we're in good shape, at least 30% on science, 66gpt or thereabouts at 0% and strong research at 100% (Civil Service in 4 turns at 2nd civ prices). We could burst out this game in a couple of ways if we wanted to.

On micro, watch my tile assignments, I just did a whipping spree and also look at the espionage situation (we're currently not focusing on anybody)

[Brian Shanahan]

And I probably should post the turn order:

haphazard1
Brian Shanahan
shallow_thought (UP onto the plank, ye scurvy dog)
Zalson (swabbing the decks)
RFS-81

[haphazard1]

Lots of interesting stuff happening, Brian. Looks pretty good.

So Julius went after Mansa Musa? At least he did not come after us with his praetorians and cats. Yet, anyway.

It does seem like the civs out on the flanks (Mansa and Huayna) have taken quite a beating from the barbs. We know Mali lost a core city, and now the Incas did as well. Ouch. But if we could pick up the shrine city for Buddhism, that would give us a decently spread religion to build up and gain cash flow from.

[Zalson]

I agree with the killing Huyana Capac plan. He only has 2 cities!

after CS: I think we go Metal Casting, Construction, and Machinery. Hell, maybe we just go Construction and kill him with cats and axes? It looks like we are maybe 25 turns out from those techs -- and 2 cities will be wonderful. Does he have metal?

It looks like there are 3 filler cities on the border with Mansa, plus the incense filler. Firming up that border should be a priority, but I think we also want to try to spread to the area to our southwest: there is SO much room between us and Gilgamesh. There's also a sheep to the north that we probably want.

Bureau-cap should really help us pump our economy up (it'll add maybe 30+ beakers a turn) and we can probably afford these wonderful cities.

Any chance we get some exploration to the north, too? That'll be useful to know if there are spots to claim there.

Shaka's power is spiking: do we know where he is?

What do we want to do when JC invites us to attack Mansa?

Good luck, shallow_thought!

[Brian Shanahan]

On JC inviting us in it depends. He hasn't made an aggressive move so far and the power differential isn't so bad that Mansa's definitely in trouble (from espionage we're 1:1 with Mansa and .7:1 with Caesar).

I'd say unless Julius gets his units killed before inviting us in, a phony war at least is to our advantage.

And on Huayna, he's got one HA at least, so Samurai and siege would probably be necessary.

[shallow_thought]

Got it.

I was going to ask about what we should be doing strategically, by which I meant who should we kill first, but it sounds as if the team has already picked out HC as the weakling in the herd. Sounds good to me . With only two cities, we might even be able to just swamp him with Horchers. I'll try and get more eyes on his units (maybe a spy?).

It's a holiday here so I'll probably try to actually play later today.

Oh, Brian, as for images I use Imgur and I don't think they use Flash - at least, I'm able to use it no problem through Firefox with NoScript having given the site itself and Google APIs Javascript permissions. They seem pretty solid, but I suppose there's no guarantee they wont suddenly change policy and hide all the pictures unless you pay.

[shallow_thought]

I thought I'd (double) post my notes, as I had a few things to think about.

Things are looking good in the land of games. We're at 10x the income we we're last time I picked up a set, and it will get even better if we can get in Bureaucracy. Speaking of which, we ought to be trying to get a GP out for a Golden Age to enable the switch. One question is whether we want to pick a religion and get Monotheism for OR as part of said GA. Am I right in assuming that we've not fired a GA yet, so only need one GP? I could push for one out of FM or Flimbo.

Alternative is to just switch into the big B and eat the 1t anarchy. Our cap can keep growing nice and tall for a bit, and should make it worth it.

Another thing to do is to try to set up an attack on HC. We're well ahead of him in power, but a lot of that is cheap archers acting as MP in our core and axes on barb-watch. For an actual attack, we have one horse archer. No swords, no cats. We have OB, so we can take a look at what he's got and decide.

Finally, we can still  keep expanding peacefully. We've got a couple of settlers coming out that in the SE corner of our empire, and a bunch of "city" and "x" signs. None of these sites are obviously exciting, but a couple look OK (rivers, grassland). Was there somewhere specific in mind? I think I prefer to go for sites "A" and "B" in that order, but I could try reaching for the "E" area - there's no resources as such, but the land is OK.




There's also a potential city site to our north with a single 4f tile, some forests, some river plains and one flat grassland. And that's it. We haven't scouted much to our N though, and I should try to do something about that. I doubt there's much else up in the sub-arctic, but we should look.




For scouting out the north, can I use spies? Barbs can't see them, right?

Defensively we have a couple of barbs coming in. Brian has left a chariot moving to cover against one (I approve) and the other is heading towards a highly promoted axe.

So, for tech path, we do want MC->Machinery; aside from anything else I can see us actually building windmills for some of these cities. But we may want Construction first, and possibly Monotheism if we want OR.

[haphazard1]

Construction is a critical tech if we want to go to war with the Incas (or anyone, really). We will need cats to handle city defenses, unless we plan to just swarm the target with units which would likely be rather expensive. Metal Casting and Machinery are also good goals for our samurai and crossbows, but we probably do not want to wait that long.

Shaka is somewhere to the west, I think. I don't believe we had found his borders, but we met him to the west and he knew everyone but Mansa. So most likely he is somewhere west.

Exploring the north would be good, although it may be tricky to keep our explorers alive given how many barbs are spawning up there. Settling the north would help cut down that constant flow of barb units, so if there are any decent sites we will certainly want them. We know there is that one sheep, and the arctic regions often have deer, furs, iron, and silver. So we might find some useful places to put cities.

Preferably we do not plant so many new cities that we crash our economy again, however. Once is enough.

I am not sure how helpful Bureaucracy civic will be. Our capital is decent but it is not a classic cottage cheese bureaucracy capital, and our empire has expanded enough that our capital is not generating a huge portion of our empire's total research or hammers. The expense may not be worth it. Bureaucracy is not always the right move.

[Zalson]

I'm down for scouting with spies.

haphazard1 makes a good point: Bureaucracy is a great tech -- but is it the best legal civics choice?

I took a look at the save:

Bureau costs us 6 upkeep over our default legal civics. It will provide us 18 raw commerce at the cap and 3 extra hammers, currently. So that's +16 gpt at 100% cash and +31 bpt, -6 gpt at 100% science. Plus there's the hammer bonus for build wealth and build research.

Vassalage (the other option at this point) costs the same amount and gives us support for 11 units. That will give us back ... 11 gpt (not sure how free units works).

So I think bureau is better, economically. But eventually we will just want nationhood.

I'm ok with scouting via spies; big issue is that they can only move one tile.