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

[Zalson]

haphazard1 has the right mechanic for walls. They also add to reduce the efficacy of bombardment: walls -50% and castles are an additional -50%.

Let’s not wreck our economy just because we have a momentary benefit. The other AIs have quite a lead in tech. We also have a really big empire. It’ll take some time to get units across the field.

The tundra cities should be a secondary priority behind taking Roman and Malinese cities, of course. We should also prioritize filler sites in the south. But that 140 hammer investment will pay off. This game is going to go longer than 140 more turns, I think.

[shallow_thought]

Thanks. My understanding of the mechanics was actually right - sadly we don't suddenly see a huge benefit against mature cities just because we have more guns .

I'm still having nightmares that RFS-81 is going to hit "next turn" and Julius wipes all our trebs with flanking curassier, BTW .

[Brian Shanahan]

Thanks. My understanding of the mechanics was actually right - sadly we don't suddenly see a huge benefit against mature cities just because we have more guns .

I'm still having nightmares that RFS-81 is going to hit "next turn" and Julius wipes all our trebs with flanking curassier, BTW .

Yeah, you don't really see a drop in defences until cannons roll onto the scene, because a) they only have to deal with cultural defence, and b) the wall & castle malus doesn't apply to them.

[Zalson]

Thanks. My understanding of the mechanics was actually right - sadly we don't suddenly see a huge benefit against mature cities just because we have more guns .

I'm still having nightmares that RFS-81 is going to hit "next turn" and Julius wipes all our trebs with flanking curassier, BTW .

That's not going to happen. We have too many units.

And if he does that, we'll just kill them all next turn. I'd take having no pawns for in exchange for all the more valuable pieces.

Also: we should burn this horse pasture we're standing on. Then the best unit that can be built is muskets.

[RFS-81]

I looked at the save. There's a note on the mine next to Can't Get Ye that says not enough food. But I can work the mine if I stagnate the city, or wait until it grows another pop. Am I misunderstanding something, or is this note simply outdated?

[Zalson]

That was a note to self. I was going to mine everything and remove the cottages—but there isn’t enough food without chain irrigation.

[RFS-81]

I'm through with the greater part of my first turn. We have Aretium! I started the attack with some sacrificial siege units, but I kept the ones with the bombardment promos out of it because there will be more walls to take down. I followed up with the lower-level muskets and then mopped up with samurais, knights and our stronger muskets. I also managed to feed Ivan the Terrible another easy kill.

Losses: 7 trebs, 3 cats, 7 muskets

[haphazard1]

Taking cities away from Julius is good news. One by one we will annex his empire and make it ours.

One thing to consider with the more highly promoted siege units is that you can send them in for additional stack damage and XP once the top defenders have been injured/killed. Usually there will be a point where the odds start to tip heavily in our favor, and then you can harvest some easy XP for the better siege units with minimal risk while adding some more stack damage to the rest of the defenders. Similar idea to getting some easy XP for our GG, just for the siege units.

How many Roman units were in Arretium? And how much does Julius have left? We keep killing large stacks of his troops, eventually he has to start running out of units to put in our way.

[RFS-81]

Sorry, I'll answer that later, I just wanted to ask another question before going to bed: Pillaging the pasture at Aretium would still be a good idea, right? It'll belong to us at some point, but I assume we're better off with denying Julius horses in the meantime.

[haphazard1]

If it is Rome's only source of horses then it would help to pillage it. He might be able to get horses elsewhere, or by trade. But it is worth doing. We can always replace the pasture later; worker turns are not all that difficult to come up with.