It's Chevalier's Thread and He Can Do What He Wants To

[Grotsnot]

Re: city sites: Is the clay south across the sea from Cain not tenable? I remember it looking more fertile than the northern part of the home continent. If you think Archduke or Emperor will eat em then sure, needs must, but if you were able to hold onto a claim might it be better to get it in sooner rather than later?

Also, didn't like the odds of the barb quad wandering off while waiting for galley 3?

Edit again: Also also, since we're opponents now in PBEM 13 am I supposed to buzz off?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Re: city sites: Is the clay south across the sea from Cain not tenable? I remember it looking more fertile than the northern part of the home continent. If you think Archduke or Emperor will eat em then sure, needs must, but if you were able to hold onto a claim might it be better to get it in sooner rather than later?

Also, didn't like the odds of the barb quad wandering off while waiting for galley 3?

Edit again: Also also, since we're opponents now in PBEM 13 am I supposed to buzz off?

The nearest island south of Cain is Archduke's home island, but it might be possible to maintain a toehold there. It'd take a lot of military force, though, since any city would be terribly vulnerable from both land and sea. There's another island, seemingly uninhabited, beyond that, but it also will take a strong navy to maintain.

Right now, I think I want to expand on my home island, get my religion and science up and running, and evaluate how things stand from there. More on this in my report.

As for buzzing off, please don't! It gets so lonely in here by myself, and as you can see I'm quite a chatterbox. If I ever post something about PBEM13 I'll hide it in spoiler tags, so you needn't worry. As long as you accept that our friendship here will do nothing to stop my trying my best to burn your entire pathetic civilization into the ground and salting over the earth as I hear the lamentations of your women in PBEM13, of course. :D 

Anyway, Turn 61 arrives, and it's probably a sea-change in Arabian strategy thus far. Let's dive in.

Turn 61

[Edit: Embarrassingly, I ran out of time to write the update itself. I'll deliver by tonight].

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 61

Shoulda done this report BEFORE my errands, since a lot of what I wanted to talk about ahs been driven clear out of my head by now. Anyway, I will explain the current situation. No, there is too much, I will sum up.




We successfully reach the Classical Era without crossing our threshold for triggering a "normal" age. Now, the only penalty, near as I can find, for triggering a Dark Age is that our cities have decreased loyalty pressure, and we don't get the sweet Golden Age dedication boni (remember how Archduke's culture skyrocketed with pen, brush, and voice in PBEM8?). So, mission accomplished and we can finally clear that annoying barb camp, which I believe is responsible for the Quad which is causing complications for my conquest of Grenada. 

We get a cool 3 era points for that and we're already well on our way to the next age:




What a goofy mechanic. I don't this worked out really well. 

Anyway, we can choose a dedication, and here I realize that I misunderstood quite how Dark Ages worked. See, I thought that you got to make TWO dedications, essentially - a normal one, and then you slotted something like Monasticism or Isolationism or something with the second, which gave you a reward and a penalty. But, I only get normal dedications:




I opt for Exodus of the Evangelist. With my religion coming in during this era, we'll hopefully be able to trigger this one for every city in the empire using my stock of saved faith from Earth Goddess. I add a shrine to the mental build queue at Escobar, and need to think about Holy Sites at Zobrist and Cain. Anyway, we should easily net +12 alone just from the 4 cities on our island, which well get us damn near a Golden Age by itself. Add in incidental points (consult my tables at the start of the thread) and a Heroic Age is easily within reach. 

So much for the good news. The bad news is that the damage to our ships is going to make Grenada a tough nut to crack:




I cleaned out the quad, but even a victory at Grenada is costly, taking off what looks like a quarter of the galley's health for only 1/8 of Grenada's. We're losing 4 combat strength from our damage, unfortunately. If we had 3 fresh galleys, this would be relatively straightforward. Can I do it with 1 fresh and 2 damaged ships? Hmmm...

My fresh galley will pit 25 strength against 18. That will be ~39 damage, reducing Grenada to 161 health. Do cities lose combat strength as they get damaged? Not sure. Let's assume not. Next galley swings at 21 vs 18, for ~34 damage, twice. Grenada is reduced to 93 health, heals back to 113 after a turn. I get in 3 more rounds at ~33 damage apiece, MAYBE, if I'm lucky - and we come up JUST short. 

Damn. A 4th galley will seal the deal, and I have another coming out soon. Should I wait, pull back and heal? I think so. Rushing things with the odds not in my favor couldcost me a galley and end any chacne to take the city easily. We can wait another 10 turns or so without serious ill effects. I'll even make peace, if I can. Ugh. What a mess, but let's not throw good money after bad. 

I also discover that I can change governments - because Dark Age policies, are, in fact, policies and not dedications. I can give up a government slot to run Monasticism. That's fine, it gives me some flexibility. For now, I swap out Urban Planning for Colonization. I really, really need a better government - but I'm going to have to hard research it. Poor scouting or poor luck? Probably a bit of both. I took a perfect path to meet both city-states near the Archduke - except that he already conquered BOTH near him by the time my galley - which was the first ship in the water in the whole map - got there. :/ I was stuck in a dead end with nothing to show for it, and the only other nearby island is empty. Again, contrast Archduke finding a city state close enough over the water that he could already assault and capture it. Maybe I should have sent my brute squad galleys out in other directions to find city-states, but that in turn meant giving up on Grenada -and I couldn't knwo that that they'd be so thin on the ground, could I? It's a huge setback for me, one I'm a little bit resentful of. Ah, well. I did say I liked a challenge.

Okay, so let's talk long-term strategy. My cities are finishing up builds soon, so it's a great time to make a settler push - but there are some issues with that. 

First, what am I hoping to achieve? 

Right now, my biggest area of lag behind my rivals is total population and cities. That, in turn, is producing lag in science and culture. I trail by 3 points in culture and 7 points of science at the moment. I considered trying to build a massive army and unleashing it at Archduke, banking on him having a stronger navy and not a strong army to stop Mamluks. That's still on the table, but it's premature to plan for. I need quite a bit more science and culture to get there, and it's no damn good to get there 20 turns after the Archduke's already built muskets. So fix my empire first, and try to catch up that way. 

My cities are sort of well-developed now, capable of buidling settlers in less than 10 turns with Colonization slotted in. So, with Grenada, by turn 80 I could be up to 7 cities, with a plan to throw up holy sites/harbors/campuses whereever I can. Every religious city I have gets me +10% science, and I plan to have a LOT of campuses. Plus, Jesuit Education is available (Japper took Choral Music/DOTF), so that's another cheap way to boost science. I'm thinking JE/Church Property. With any luck, I'll be close to Archduke's total cities, and tied or pulling ahead in science with that in place. 

The main problem is maximizing Efficiency. I started the Plaza at Zobrist:




Cheap to build, but the Ancestral Hall is not. It costs 150, which is 15 turns for Zobrist (which is growing next turn). 22 turns total, looking at the time to build the plaza, too, and that's without even building a single damned settler. Now, Magnus obviously is the road to speed that up, but he's committed at Escobar for a while, and I don't want to move him until the campus and 1 settler are done. 

Towards that end, I went ahead and chopped 1 settler with Magnus and colonization in place. That drops the finish time to 1 turn after pop growth, which is fine - then I can chop the last forest for a campus.

But every settler I build before finishing the Ancestral Hall is a wasted builder, basically. I also need builders - at least one - to chop with Magnus. So, when do I move Magnus to Zobrist? And when do I get those settlers finished - do I delay settling long enough for the Hall to finish? I think I should - the benefits from a free builder up front will snowball. I can build earlier monuments, for example, and get the cities improved tiles to work right away. We'll finish one from Escobar, then start another with +100% in a little while. We'll move Magnus in 5 turns after chopping, and in 10 turns be ready to chop at Zobrist - so we need to grab a builder there, and save up to buy a forest to chop. 

Zobrist cannot boost its chop. It sucks, but only settlers or ships can be boosted, and Zobrist has no harbor. It'd be efficient to build a settler and chop that at Zobrist, but I'm not sure it'd be faster. I guess I could look at the numbers, though. Anyway, I need 3, maybe 4 things out of Zobrist:

1)The Plaza itself (7 turns)
2)The Hall (15 turns)
3)A builder (8 turns)
4?)A settler (11 turns!)

That's rough. My timeline for settlers is looking unachievable. Hmmmm...

Well, I'll figure it out. My brain hurts for now. 

Grotsnot, here's the land south of Cain. 




A short sea voyage away, there's a decent site. However, it takes absolute naval superiority to maintain. Any land advance in either direction towards Archduke's core to the west will be slaughtered by ships on that narrow neck of land. That goes both ways - he would need a navy to capture the city, not an army. But it's provocative, and would almost certainly lead to me facing 7 Provinces down the raod. I'd like to avoid that. If it's still available as a site once I have shipbuilding and a decent parity with Archduke, then it's definitely worth thinking about. Right now, though, I need to set my own house in order. 

Scores:

[williams482]

Too late now, I guess, but I thought the Granada assault plan included a warrior or two so you could put the city under siege?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

If I could spare the units, but unfortunately my small military has been fully occupied by barbs. I've got another scout north of Zobrist and another wave coming in from the east now. That's FOUR camps on my island so far, keeping me very active indeed. I've never had so many, in fact.

Anyway, I've played the turn and taken some screenshots, but y'all will need to wait a few days for a proper update. All will be made clear in time.

[Grotsnot]

Ah, didn't realize that was Archduke's home continent. Too bad, I remember it looking nicer than most of the home island's tiles In that case I think I like Perez as an important naval base but it's hard to make out how much food it would have.

You beelined right for PP, right? So I think a chop's base should be 38 right now unless we have a gross number of techs. Will be 42 once PP finishes. Magnus is multiplicative with policies, right? If you get chop * 1.5 applied at 1.5-2x from policy, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 - not quite a Hall all by itself but gets a lot of the way there.

Zobrist cannot boost its chop. It sucks, but only settlers or ships can be boosted, and Zobrist has no harbor. 

If it takes 10 turns for Magnus to be ready in Zobrist that'll be around the time PP finishes - could slot in Agoge long enough to chop the hall? The screenshot suggests it already has a Warrior mostly prebuilt. Though that does still leave the part where it needs a builder ready to chop... Which sucks because I would definitely lean toward delaying settlement until the Hall is done, but can't get away with that if it'd take too long. Hmm, IIRC you need PP before you can start on the Hall, so might be able to squeeze out the Builder in the intervening turns. That still leaves it somewhere around 20 turns to finish up though Current settler will be stuck builder-less so maybe should stick to the home island for support and have Perez be the first Ancestral city?


Anyway, I'm rambling and going nowhere (and probably wrong about at least two things). How did everyone else do age-wise?

As long as you accept that our friendship here will do nothing to stop my trying my best to burn your entire pathetic civilization into the ground and salting over the earth as I hear the lamentations of your women in PBEM13, of course. :D

I'll bite your legs off!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Actually, that's not a bad idea. The main limiting factor is the builder, but I can get around that.

So here's a new rough plan:

1)Let's only build two settlers now - one from Escobar, one from Cain. Zobrist works on the Plaza.
2)At PP, we take Ilkum over Colonization. I've got Military Tradition and Mysticism both at 2 turns apiece, easy to grab for policy switches.
3)Build a round of builders from every city with Ilkum.
4)When Zobrist's builder nears completion, we queue up Military Tradition, swap into Agoge, then chop the Hall.
5)After the chop, Magnus goes to Cain to chop out a Holy Site and Campus there (Cain's builder will have been sitting tight), while I swap into Colonization.
6)Everyone builds a wave of settlers now.

In the base game, settlers tend to stop being economical around your 10th - 12th city, I think. They just get too expensive. But I'll have settlers costing 50% of normal, with Colonization + the Hall. That alone puts my self-founded city limit up to around 20 cities, if I can find the space for them. Then throw in a free builder and even marginal cities like Morales and Hosmer become viable.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

you need Masonry to harvest stone :3

why do I keep doing this

Anyway, full report tomorrow most likely.

[Grotsnot]

D'oh... At least they aren't hugely better than forests. I think stone is 25% more ?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It's nbd, it just delays my campus for a turn since I can't chop. I'll work on my granary instead while I move the builder to a forest, then chop that for the campus.

The stone can be chopped into a +100% settler after the Hall is done.