The Way of the Civ Player - Ichabod and Wetbandit's PB13 Spoiler Thread

[wetbandit]

dtay does have a far flung empire, for sure. Not really sure why he's at war with Slow though, it's very far away from his capital to pick a fight. If he does come over here in force, the cats can eat him up just as well.

The demos still look good, although I was surprised that we aren't #1 in pop. Just eyeballing from the map, it looks like Commodore has a ton of pop and I'd figure he's #1.

Like the war builds, the sooner that land up north becomes Musashi's proving ground, the better.

GNP at 7 at 100% gold is still great and you've done well to turn the economy around from 30 or so turns ago.

[Ichabod]

YuriMack likely captured the Colossus city from mostly_harmless, that and another city. Like I said previously, they are also at war with FinHarry, yet they are still being successful in the war.

This game is really, really interesting. Lots of players can win it, from what I can tell. My bet is on plako, he has TGLh and MoM, loads of room to expand, he's near easier competition and he's about to surge ahead in score (he had >600 gold accumulated, likely waiting for beaker multiplyers - I expect him to rush to key techs and get key wonders pretty soon). Well, let him build his wonders, I'll go capture them later.

[Ichabod]

Actually, YuriMack captured the S. Paya city, not the Colossus one. Coming to think of it, WE could try to take that Colossus city for us, if YuriMack cease the agressions and m_h doesn't add much defenses...

Hm... I think I'll invest EPs in m_h starting now...

[wetbandit]

GtG is working a grassland cottage over the corn? I get that you're trying to grow the cottages for commerce city, but that seems like it's too much.

That's quite a reach to grab the Colossus.

[Ichabod]

GtG is working a grassland cottage over the corn? I get that you're trying to grow the cottages for commerce city, but that seems like it's too much.

That's quite a reach to grab the Colossus.

GtG will grow in 3 turns by working cottage, corn, corn, same as 3 corn turns. But the cottage, corn, corn gains more from the granary when the city grows to size 2 (because the granary finishes this turn). At least I think it will... Should have probably tested it, I now realize. But, don't worry, even if my math is completely wrong, my heart was in the right place - the idea is to maximize food as normal and work the corn whenever possible. We start working cottages after that.

Yeah, Colossus is really far. I think I even kept the EPs on dtay after I realized that.

I think I'll get a quick scout built and unload it on FinHarry's land to meet YuriMack, suttree and others.

[Ichabod]

Quick question. If I end a granary on the turn the city reaches 20/22 food. Next turn I work 5f to get 25/22. When I grow to size 2 at eot, will I have 5/24 or 8/24 food next turn?

[Ichabod]

Well, I have been talking about declaring war on half the players in the game, like plako, m_h, WLP, dtay, FinHarry and slowcheetah. I think this is starting to sound like a dog that only barks but doesn't bite, so I'll talk about the Slow attack plan, the one that is likely to actually happen.

Let's analyse the domestic stuff first and the attack plans later.

1. Domestic Stuff:

I'm really unsure about how to best utilize the whip in RBMod. I gotta be honest, I don't see how the slavery nerf affects things that much, but, mostly based on what I've read on other threads, I'm using mostly 1-pop whips and, even those, scarcely (mostly barracks/granary whips and defensive ones). Anyway, I'm working more hill tiles than whipping stuff, but I'm close to go on a whipping spree. Let's take a look at the domestic screen:




As you can see, there's a lot of military builds going on in our empire. All the already developed cities are going military (usually this means culture - barracks - and granary, but some of those have way more things going on), with the exception of DP, the commerce capital, that's working to increase its happy cap. Some of these cities deserve a closer look, because they are the more important ones, military speaking.




BoM is almost where I want it to be, still need to finish a mine on that hill tile and get it to 22h per turn. I was thinking about getting some 5xp catapults from here, but I think getting some formation spears from it is a prudent move, if we decide not to go to HBR. You see, I have HBR selected as a placeholder while we accumulate gold, but I'm not sure if we want to go there. There's one big problem about not going to HBR -> Keshiks do flank damage against catapults, unlike HAs. So, we really don't want Keshiks attacking our stack, trying to withdraw. Will formation spears be enough to deter possible shock Keshiks? That is a big question. Elephants would deter those attacks completely, what with 7 strenght and +50% against mounted...

I won't be whipping BoM, it'll stagnate at size 10 working the last plains mine instead of a cottage.




TFH will 1-pop whip the catapult with 20/50 hammers invested and will "stagnate" from than on, working 17 hammers per turn. The idea I have is to whip the coastal tiles that I spent the last turns growing into, while keeping strong hammer and surplus food tiles. It remains to be thought about if I'll do some last minute whips to get a few more troops, not sure if I'll need those (Slow's power graph isn't that scary... Should have taken a picture).




BGA will 2-pop whip the catapult at 19/50 hammers, going down to size 6 and losing 2 coastal tiles. The last coastal tile will be replaced by the Copper mine, which will be whipped away from RatT. City will keep growing for more whips, while doing a healthy 16 hammers per turn - this is a pretty good food city, so I think it can be whipped a bit more.




RatT will be 2-pop whipped at 19/50 production. The copper mine will go to BGA, as stated above, and I'm unsure if the city will work two mines or a mine and a farm (it'll keep the 2 food tiles, that BoM doesn't need). I think I'll get some more units from here, but later it'll need a lighthouse...




This is my current army. There's a lot of defensive units there (the attack force is something on the lines of 4 phalanxes, 2 swords, 1 chariot and 2 spears right now, + the catapults), so we really need to boost this to make a successful attack. We need to be pretty decisive, even if it means having more units than needed later. It's good to have a standing army, we can start bullying people...

[Ichabod]

2. Attack Plans:

I realized that I never actually posted a picture of Slow's explored land. Since I think Slow is not updating his thread much, maybe this will be new for the lurkers.




Here you can see the overall lay of the land: Slow's 5 cities and our newly settled city of Gateway to Glory. I'm thinking of doing a attack in 2 stages -> getting Turfan, Beshbalik and Karakorum first and, later, getting Old Sarai and Ning-Hsia. The idea would be to destroy Slow's productive core first, leaving him with 2 sitting ducks, waiting for us to go capture them.




This would be the initial attack plan. The blue lines are the path my units can take to Slow's Capital, our first target, always standing on defensive terrain. It remains to be seen if all those woods still exist, though... The red dots are what I want to do with a sacrificial chariot, pillaging Slow's copper.




This is another possible attack route for us to take. Attacking or sending a pillaging expedition to Old Sarai would mean no more Keshiks. We could also send a small, more defensive, pillaging force towards the copper too. That would give slow the option of only building archers, which will be easy preys for Catapults + whatever.

I need to think about what path has more merits to it:

a) Beeline to Slow's Capital, pillaging copper.
b) Beeline to Slow's Capital, pillaging copper + pillaging expedition towards Old Sarai's horses.
c) Beeline to Old Sarai with main stack + pillaging expedition towards the Copper.

Note that Old Sarai is not on a hill, making it pretty easy to capture. The problem about capturing it is dtay and that annoying West City, he may think it's a fun little thing to do razing my city, so we'd need to keep heavier garrison there.

---

What we'll gain from this attack is not only land. We'll get silks, furs and silver as happy resources, giving us the 3 forge ones and 3 of 4 market ones, which means everyone swimming in happiness (and it means we won't depend on our current foreign politics to remain happy).




Besides, we get access to some interesting islands up there, like this potential Moai spot:




Annoyingly, the city spammer to our east will likely want to contest our claims in that islands. Well, he's welcome to try. He'd need a iceball city to get a way across our lands to that island (no, he won't, there's coastal access there), while we'll have a very productive Slow core.

Interesting times are ahead...

[Rowain]

Thanks a lot for those 2 interesting and detailed posts

[Ceiliazul]

great plans, a good read. thanks for the pic of slowcheetahs core. the granary question: 8f.