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

[Zalson]

Also, I'm playing through start 5. I am at 23 cities at T200. No wars yet. Although about to smack down (you guessed it) Inca. Because they keep stealing wonders.

[RFS-81]

A question for team discussion: what to do with our second great general? He is currently snoozing in our capital. We could make a second super mcdic, but probably would get better use from a military instructor. I was looking at our cities, trying to decide where we might place our Heroic Epic, and would like to get thoughts from the team. For now I will leave the GG asleep -- delaying placing him does not cost us much, and it is an important decision so I don't want to make it without getting everyone's input. I see a couple possibilities for the Heroic Epic, but there are different ways to use it; make a good city great, or make a so-so city into something good. What do people think is best?

He's the third, actually! I made super-medics in Inca-land and at Sonic. I placed him at the capital together with a chariot, in case you want a third. I forgot to mention that.

Another thing, Zalson IIRC said that Morale is a good promotion for a super-medic, but I don't understand why. Being able to move faster than the units he's supporting doesn't sound very useful to me.

[Fluffball]

Another thing, Zalson IIRC said that Morale is a good promotion for a super-medic, but I don't understand why. Being able to move faster than the units he's supporting doesn't sound very useful to me.

He can flit around wherever he's needed that way. If you have 2 stacks he can heal both. 

Medics generally (pun intended) want to avoid combat, so the other promotions aren't as useful.

[haphazard1]

What Fluffball said; sometimes you need to move your healer around, so the extra speed is nice to have. And you are correct, this is actually our third great general. Ivan the Terrible and Geronimo are super medics.

I prefer military instructors over creating super combat units with extra great generals; the extra promotions rarely make that big of a difference, and they tend to end up dying in combat if you actually use them for difficult attacks. Getting more XP on units out of a top military pump city is (usually) more helpful.

I was looking at several cities, including Sonic (too much commerce to be turned into a military pump), Streets of Rage (not enough food to really max out potential hammers), the capital (commerce, probably better uses), and Contra (a couple cottages but enough food to work a lot of hammers). None is truly an ideal military pump, but I think Contra would be the best choice of what we have now. We could always hope to turn a Roman city into our Heroic Epic city, though.

This is all going to be well into the future, so maybe we just want to do something short term with the GG? I have tentatively selected Engineering next after Machinery for pikes, castles, and road movement. But research is minimal at the moment anyway. But I wanted to get people's thoughts.

Julius split up his stack, and I was able to nail one of the knights by itself with a spear. Hopefully the AI will keep making stupid moves.

[shallow_thought]

Against the AI a serious CRx+retreat chance unit can be useful. Just chops through that top defender every time ... until it doesn't. That said, if we can identify a city for HE then I would settle one there. 5XP is a big leap over 3XP. I guess we can also expect to get more.

I can't fault Engineering as a choice of tech. That extra movement is priceless, for workers as well as military units. Pikes too.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'd settle in our HR city to be honest, more long term value.

And I've a request, skip me next set please. I'm going to get hammered at work* next week, and won't be interested in doing thinky stuff in my down time.

*My primary role at work is dealing as a conduit between Tusla & the guards for child welfare stuff, my second is figuring what the Chief Superintendent wants in reminders and, if possible, answer her. I'm alos being trained up in the Finance Officer's role so as I'll be able to cover her. Tuesday I'll be doing finance, and Wednesday will be me catching up on Friday and Tuesday (took Friday off, remember). I like the work, but sometimes it's a bit overwhelming.

[haphazard1]

Taking charge of our Video Game Empire in 1400 AD, we face several challenges:

- Completing our so-far very successful war against the Incas
- Holding our cities against the attack from technologically superior Roman forces
- Sustaining our struggling economy

And of course we can not forget our good friends the barbs, who continue to send units to harass and threaten our cities.

Let's start with the first item, as finishing off the Incas will help with the other two. Huayna Capac does not have many units left at his final city of Tiwanaku: a couple archers, a cat, and a quechua.

Unfortunately, the city has walls, 60% culture, and is on a hill. Those archers get defense bonus for hills, city, cultural defense, and fortification and are effectively over 9 strength. The quechua should not be a problem for our axes, and the cat does not get any defense bonus, but this is probably going to be bloody.

I send in the flanking 2 horse archer first even though it is wounded, as it has by far the best odds of retreating. We get lucky and it does, managing to cut the first archer's health in half. The next horse archer lives to retreat but does zero damage. Third horse archer actually wins at less than 10% odds! We are getting very lucky here so far.

Final horse archer takes combat I rather than flanking and gets 80% or so odds, and wins. We have an axe with the anti-siege promotion (don't see that one too often, but useful here) and I send it in against the catapult. With another 80% chance, it also wins. Now there are is only a quechua left, and a shock axe has no trouble dealing with that. Fantastic combat luck overall, we did not lose a single unit. Getting those retreat rolls on the first couple horse archers made a huge difference; flanking promotions likely helped a lot keeping them alive.

Tiwanaku is ours, and the Incas exit stage left. We pillage 157 gold and the city even comes with a granary, very nice. It will be in resistance for a while (6 turns), but will soon be a useful addition to our empire. We also captured two workers, who I name Inca Slave 1 and 2.

Our spy north of Inca Gold finds another barb warrior, and also some city ruins -- most likely a former Inca outpost. Looks like Huayna lost at least one city to the barbs, much like Mansu Musa did. Helps explain his very poor showing this game.

There is some nice land in this area, which we should plan to claim once our economy is a bit stronger. Iron, sheep, corn, and maybe more resources in the fog -- this should make for at least a couple of strong city sites one day. We can not really afford it just now, particularly while fighting Julius, but we want this land before anyone like Gilgamesh gets any ideas about poaching the territory.

With one issue dealt with, time to take care of the barbs infesting our territory. A barb trio of sword, axe, and warrior are threatening Gauntlet and
Inca Gold, with only an axe and an archer present to defend the two cities and their pigs tile. Some of the Inca expeditionary force will move to reinforce, but we may not be able to prevent the pigs from getting pillaged.

On to the economy. I call up Mansa Musa and offer him our spare deer for his 5 gold/turn. He also agrees to open borders once again, which should provide some much-needed foreign trade routes. A call to Gilgamesh and our spare sheep nets us another 8 gold/turn, and suddenly we have some positive cash flow. Once the former Incan capital comes out of revolt with the Buddhist shrine and settled great prophet, we will actually be doing pretty well.

The gold we captured with Tiwanaku is enough to boost the science slider to 50% for a turn, which should finish Machinery. This will unlock our unique samurai units and also protective crossbows, which will help a lot with our military situation. Since we do not have Feudalism, we will still be able to build cheap archers for MP duty if desired.

On to the Roman invasion. Many units from around the empire are ordered south to meet the incoming Roman forces. With Julius bringing knights, elephants, and crossbows we are going to need a lot of units to have a chance of crushing his forces. We have nothing that can get odds on knights. Fortunately they are expensive units, so if we have to we can trade units at 2:1 and still come out OK on hammers.

I go through our cities and shuffle tile assignments and builds. We need more spears, and with Machinery due next turn I try to set up overflow where possible to go into samurai and crossbow builds immediately. It will take some time to get these new units into the field and to the front, but we need to get them into action as quickly as we can.

One item that requires thought: what to do with our great general? We have a super medic, and while we could make a second one it is probably not the best use right now. (I later realized this was actually our third great general, and we have two super medics already.) Settling him as an instructor seems best, but where? We do not have Literature and won't for some time, but ideally we want him in our future Heroic Epic city. We have a few high hammer candidates:

- Sonic the Hog has too much commerce potential, so even though it is a good hammer city I don't think it would be the best place for the Heroic Epic.
- Streets of Rage has decent hammers right now, but is already badly limited on food. It will never be able to work all of its hills even with windmills.
- Our capital has too much commerce and is likely to be useful for other things.
- Contra is a possibility: solid hammers, enough food with farms to work another mine if we steal it from the capital, could get up to 25 hammers/turn or so. It has a couple grass cottages but will never be a true commerce city.

Well, this does not have to be decided immediately. I put the general to sleep in the capital until the team can discuss where best to use him.

OK, finally done with the inherited turn. It always takes a while to get a handle on everything that is going on. Time to advance the clock and see what happens.

T201

The Venerable Bede presents us with a list of the wealthiest civs. Not surprisingly, we are NOT at the top. But we are not at the bottom, either.

Mansa shows up with an intriguing offer:

On the surface this looks like a terrible deal. But I suspect that Mansa has been researching Metal Casting (several other AIs have it, and techs beyond it, already). So we are really trading him part of the tech for gold plus Monotheism. I decide to take the deal. As I expected, our "fair relations" bonus does not shift so we did not give away much value in the deal.

Our own research also completes Machinery, and we can now build samurai and crossbows. I select Engineering next but drop the slider to zero to conserve cash; we are at +3 gold/turn right now. Once Advanced Wars comes out of resistance we will be able to afford a little research maybe, but still not much until our economy improves.

Someone builds the Mausoleum.

Julius moves his forces north onto a hill. Those crossbows stacked with the knights and elephants are a problem. Nothing can get odds on this stack, even samurai. We will have to either turtle and hope he throws his troops into our defenders, or else slam the stack with a bunch of cats to soften it up and then try to clean up.

The barbs are also threatening us. An axe and a warrior move onto improved tiles at Gauntlet/Incan Gold, and we do not have much available to respond. A barb horse archer appears north of Wolfenstein, not a good match up for our axes in the area. I start a spear in the city just in case. More barb archers emerge from the fog in various places.

At Incan Gold, our archer attacks out of the city and kills the barb warrior on the horses tile. I take the unusual stap of sending our catapult against the barb axe threatening Gauntlet; it has better than 60% odds of retreating, but dies. The damage done is crucial, however, as our axe trying to clean up barely survives with 0.2 health left. Without the cat sacrifice we would have lost. Still painful, but necessary.

I adjust our EP now that Inca is out of the game so that we are not spending anything against Gilgamesh; with his heavy espionage spending (probably from settled Great Wall great spies) there is no way we will catch up to him anyway. Everyone else we can see graphs and have some hope of being able to see research as our courthouses add more EP/turn.

T202

More barbs appear, including some swords and axes. Just no end of trouble from these annoying pests.

In an interesting development, Rome splits up its forces. Some of the elephants and all the crossbows turn back into Roman territory. And the knights split up, probably looking to pillage. We may be able to hit them while they are not protected against spears, which would be very good news for us.

Using a pair of workers to move and build a road so we can reach the Roman knights, a combat 2 formation spear attacks! Even with these promos it only gets 37% odds -- this is the difficulty of facing combat 2 knights. But it is the best odds we can get, and other units will clean up if needed. Fortunately we win.

I have to shuffle our units a bit to cover the exposed workers and the now badly injured spear, but getting an open shot at one of Julius' knights was worth it. His faster units may try to bypass our stack and head for Flimbo's Quest, but if they do the same workers can move and put a road under our stack so it can respond. Always have a couple combat workers handy.

Elsewhere I move units to counter barbs near Gauntlet. Our exploring unit in the far west has reached Willem's territory, and he has workers out building a road that may connect us for trade routes. Good work, guys!

T203

Our partial build of the Mausoleum at Contra (had no idea this was even being built) converts into 151 gold. Well, the gold is useful. The wonder would have been nice, but without marble it was not likely we would get it. A check of the wonders list shows it was Gilgamesh who built it. Well, he is the strongest civ not currently fighting a war.

Two great scientists are born somewhere.

Gilgamesh shows up with an offer:

It will wipe out most of our available cash, but this is a pretty fair offer in overall beakers/gold terms and most of the AIs already know Metal Casting. I take it. We now have the option of going for Guilds rather than Engineering next. Knights of our own would be very useful, plus grocers will boost our economy and add health from spice and wine. For the moment I am keeping the slider at zero; we need more cash before starting seriously on whichever tech we decide on next.

Julius throws his stack at ours, opening with his one catapult for collateral; it managed to retreat. . His knight also retreats flanking our cats, but we kill an elephant and a couple horse archers while losing a couple axes to elephants. We need more spears! And some samurai would also help. Well, they are bring built, but it will take time to get them to the front.

We do better against the barbs, killing the horse archer and a couple swords while defending.

Against Rome, our spears are heavily damaged, but one can take a promotion to partially heal. It manages to kill the remaining elephant, which is Julius' strongest defender and the main obstacle for our horse archers. I send in the catapults, and get a lucky withdraw on the first. From there the odds tilt heavily in our favor, and everything goes our way at increasingly favorable odds. Ivan the Terrible finishes the last Roman unit off, and Julius' invasion force has been crushed.

We were fortunate that the AI turned the crossbows and some of the elephants back, and then split the stack. We took some losses, but overall came out well ahead. Rome lost a couple knights, three elephants, two horse archers, and a cat while we lost a spear and a couple axes. Not bad at all. We have a lot of heavily injured units, but Ivan the Terrible will fix them up in a few turns. Then once our first samurai start arriving at the front, we can think about offense.

In the west Willem's workers finish their road, and we have a trade connection. I take the opportunity to trade our spare pigs to Willem for his spare marble. Not sure we will build any wonders just now, but it could be useful to have. And trading resources will slowly boost diplo a bit.

Willem is also sending some Jewish missionaries our way. Mansa has been sending Hindu missionaries, which are more useful since the AP is Hindu. We would like to get Hinduism in as many cities as possible, and maybe even build some temples and monasteries for the AP bonus hammers. Not an urgent priority, but something to keep in mind.

More turns in a while; need to stop and get something to eat. Hungry.

[haphazard1]

I'd settle in our HR city to be honest, more long term value.

I am drawing a blank on HR city? (This is probably really obvious. I blame hunger! )

And I've a request, skip me next set please.  I'm going to get hammered at work* next week, and won't be interested in doing thinky stuff in my down time.

Will do. Hope the work stuff goes smoothly, Brian!

[haphazard1]

T204

Mansa's missionary spreads Hinduism to our capital. Thanks!

Our first two samurai complete, from axe builds that auto-upgraded in queue. More are being built.

The barbs are busy once again, with two swords, two axes, and an archer threatening our cities. This is after we kill an archer and a warrior.

Willem has ivory in his territory, but has not hooked it up yet.

Advance Wars comes out of resistance, and the Buddhist shrine and its settled great prophet give our finances a welcome boost.

I check with Julius just to see what he is thinking. He will talk, but he wants Sonic for peace. Uh, no. We just smashed your stack, and are thinking about counter-invading. Not going to give you a major city, or any city for that matter. Ask for 50 gold for peace and I would probably go for it, but not much more than that.

T205

We kill a barb axe and a sword, but lose a wounded axe to the second sword at 36% odds. The two barb swords were moving together, and even a shock axe on a hill did not survive both. Well, we have a new samurai in that area so the sword will get cleaned up before it can promote.

Mansa spreads Hinduism to Goldeneye. Keep it up, big guy! We appreciate it!

Mansa is accumulating troops including a catapult in Tadmekka, but he also has a settler there so I do not think he is planning to attack us. He does not like us, but he currently dislikes everyone. And he hates Julius. So hopefully this is just gathering anti-barb guards for his settler. I will keep a careful watch on him, just in case.

Julius is also starting to gather more troops in Setia, including some more cats. Once our troops are finished healing I will advance to the edge of our territory; there is a handy forest tile where we can defend against further incursions. And if we decide to attack, we will be in position to do so.

T206

The furs at Wolfenstein are camped, improving happiness thoughout our empire.

The usual barb stuff happens: kill a couple, several more emerge from the fog, etc. It is endless, even if I don't mention it every turn.

Julius moves a big stack out of Setia towards us. 2 knights, 4 elephants, a praetorian, 3 crossbows, 6 cats. Pretty strong force, and a tough mix of units. I could hit him now, in the open, but many of our units are still moving to the front including our new samurai. I decide to fall back and wait; Julius only has one path north, and it goes through flat ground between the mountains and the lake. I can hit him there with more of our strength, and since he will be in our territory he won't be able to retreat quickly to heal. I would love to hit him now, but we just are not quite ready and he has too many troops.

In the far west, our explorers find Shaka's borders. Along with double gold resources. Well, maybe if we can get a link he would trade us one?

T207

Julius does not do what I expect; I hate it when the AI gets smart. Most of his stack heads west into the hills south of Flimbo's Quest. He could be trying to work around to the city without coming into the open, or he could be trying to go further west to Kyoto. (We need a themed name for this city as well as Tiwanaku.)

Hmmmm. I can move to cover the city easily enough, although we will not be able to hit the Romans in the open. Or I could just march south and siege Setia, which is now defended by only a handful of units. Julius might turn back with his main force to counter, or he might keep going and we would have time to take Setia. Not sure what to try here.

I am tired and need to think, and hopefully get some input from the team as well. So I will pause here and play the rest of the turns tomorrow.

Julius' main stack is on the desert tile just inside our border. Including the stuff coming along behind he has: 3 knights, 4 elephants, a praetorian, 3 crossbows, 6 cats.

Our army within one turn's move of the 'rally here and wait' sign (farther north by the copper) has 2 samurai, a crossbow, 6 horse archers, 2 chariots (regular), Ivan the Terrible, 10 cats, 3 axes, and 2 spears with more units trickling in steadily from around the empire. I am working on more spears for anti-mounted duty.

Setia has 2 longbows, a crossbow, a praetorian, and an axe defending.

Thoughts and suggestions?

[Zalson]

I don't think we need more spears; I think we need more samurai. They have higher base strength. We want pikes, not spears.

EDIT: not the most helpful commentary. We're at +46 gpt: any efforts to build the forbidden palace anywhere? What's our power at relative to Caesar?

Any additional exploration in the North? More screenshots, too!

I'd say: let Caesar come. We can take his attack, I think.