[SPOILERS] Roland and Suboptimal Team Up

[suboptimal]

Victor might work. OC's Harbor is completing this turn and a lighthouse is following. It'll be 10-12 turns to get that done but after that I'll be getting a trader for another route from Good Time. Might send it to Shikishima or one of yours, depending on the net yields.

[suboptimal]

Turn 80

Construction complete. Horseback Riding in three. Warrior was pinged by the quadrireme and China has some storm issues.

To the mainland….I thought OC was finishing the Harbor this turn...nope, next turn. The lighthouse will take 12 turns to complete after that. The good news is that the Harbor will be worth some era score as it’s a +4 adjacency. Builder reaches Al’s Holy Site. Wheat farm in two turns. I’m sending my galley to poke around at Shikishima, it’ll be in the area next turn. I also see that I forgot I had the queue open so the temple didn’t start last turn (put a second in the queue, in fact). I make the switch and it’ll be 15 turns to complete. The decision here is to work the tea for and or work a regular forest for and a temple 3 turns quicker. I decide to get the temple a little quicker, especially with the Harbor coming online next turn.

On Big Island the warrior and swordsman trade places. I’m going to use the latter to do a bit of degfogging and looking around for any Russo-Australian units. Confucius heads back to shore and will work his way along the coast for a bit. Settler repositions and the gods place another one in Graceland. That one will settle B in six more turns and I send the uninjured slinger in that direction as a midpoint escort. It’s four turns to settle A and five turns later I’ll have the settler for C out.

Warrior on Midway moves out of sight of the barbarian quad. That Japanese city is not a forward “outpost” – it appears to be at the furthest reaches of the Japanese mainland:




Other galley moves past Hattusa unimpeded.

Kaiser’s gone cash positive, likely because he’s lost a unit or two with maintenance. Archduke appears to have lost a city – his empire score has gone down by 9. Ljubljana’s empire score went up by 8 so I guess he’s the one that took it. Marcopolo recruited Aryabhata. Up next is Euclid and Kaiser is due to get him in four turns. I’ll get Hypatia unless Kaiser takes a pass (which, given the bonuses, he likely will).

I check the gossip.






That will surely get Phoenicia/Woden the enmity of Archduke for the rest of the game. That or put him on tilt. That’s likely good news for us because it means that they’ll be occupied when jongs come out. Speaking of which, I’ll be completing Mercenaries in 14 turns. That’ll be enough time for four jongs. Looking at that I think OC is going to not build the lighthouse next. Instead I think a couple of heavy chariots are in order – I can complete two in that time frame and then send two warriors and two chariots with the jongs.

Roland, if we limit our spending we should have enough to upgrade four quadriremes to jongs when I complete Mercenaries (740 total). I make the queue changes at OC and Diamonds, will use the builder at Al to put in a camp and I’ll plantation the tea at OC for more . I’ll need 16 per turn income to maintain the jongs, which I’ve got now. That’s good. Al could continue building jongs once the first four quads are out but I think I’ll need to get the districts built out (and accumulate some ). If it looks like we’ll have excess I’ll likely want to upgrade at least one warrior.

[roland of gilead]

Turn 81

I guess at least I am not The Archduke but i am not much better off



lost another pop and my truffles plantation.



this has been devastating.

I harvest the swamp at my capital and will rebuild my Lumbermill. that takes me from 3 pop with 3 turns to grow to 5 pop next turn. I just couldn't be at 3 pop in cap this late in game for that long. Mahabodi is probably 10 turns away now but i can't start on it for 5 turns anyway.



Up in the north things get tasty but i have nice choke point and lots of troops. As well as strength advantage. Will kill something with the spear.



I put the first charge of 6 into Jebel. That is Key to getting growth going.

settler due in 1 turn from tav and probably 5 from Goldson.

no longer even sure i will get a golden age here though i think i can.

[roland of gilead]

We need to sort out our strategy over the next 20 turns.

I can sure get my gold up but i need to spend a bit of money to do that.

I have 230 gold and making about 22 a turn. need to buy at least the petra tile.

i need to get the truffles back the second chocolate online. The tea up at Tav.


can you lay out what you think our plan should be as best as possible and time line it and i can see what i can contribute.


If i can get TOA at goldson i can switch over to working diamonds and copper. but that is buying 2 tiles one 3rd ring.

to get petra up and running that is 3 2nd ring tiles.

[suboptimal]

I'll work on a time line in a few hours (my lunchtime) but likely won't have a full plan fleshed out until tonight and I get a chance to look at the saves again. I've got 263 and am pulling in 17 per turn (and going up). I'll likely need somewhere between 200 and 250 on Turn 95 in order to upgrade the quads.

[roland of gilead]

I'll work on a time line in a few hours (my lunchtime) but likely won't have a full plan fleshed out until tonight and I get a chance to look at the saves again.  I've got 263 and am pulling in 17 per turn (and going up).  I'll likely need somewhere between 200 and 250 on Turn 95 in order to upgrade the quads.

no huge rush mate. I know what i am doing for next 5 turns. Just recovering faith and culture numbers. 

I am sure i can get that across to you. There may be some consequences like getting TOA a bit later but that's all fine. 

At your leisure have a think where you need me to be by then. Ie mideival walls in place? Swords on the map? etc etc. 

I am sure i can be supplying you cast from around them with growing success.

[Bruindane]

This is a great read so far-- setbacks create interesting stories for us lurkers. I can't wait to read the other threads to see what's going on, but I imagine they must be equally perplexed on China's empire score drop due to the population loss

Is there a clarification on the city gifting (aka gifting to China on Indonesian conquest), and is there any civ specific oddities about that?  I recall something about Russia getting expanded borders.

[roland of gilead]

This is a great read so far-- setbacks create interesting stories for us lurkers. I can't wait to read the other threads to see what's going on, but I imagine they must be equally perplexed on China's empire score drop due to the population loss

Is there a clarification on the city gifting (aka gifting to China on Indonesian conquest), and is there any civ specific oddities about that?  I recall something about Russia getting expanded borders.

it's just so huge. i lost 6 pop in a 7 pop city over 2 turns. can't say i enjoyed it.

i think you can one time gift on conquest. 

I seem to recall someone else dropping 3 era score in 1 turn as well. 

we though 3 settlers but a disaster now seems more likely. might have been lubijana.

[suboptimal]

Ljubljana had a three point drop from T61 to T62. He appears to have founded at least one city within 10 turns of that. Would need to go back through the saves to check.

Cities can be gifted once, within one turn of conquest IIRC.

Regarding plans, I think at a minimum you should have ancient walls at Allan McGregor and something like a sword or horseman (ie 36+ CS) in Borna Barasic for defense. If we can find Machinery (and you can complete it) and upgrade one archer to a crossbow that helps your defense against retribution - your cities' ranged attacks would be at the crossbow CS.

My plan is to have four jongs, two swordsmen, two chariots and a battering ram (just in case) make the initial attack. It's a small force but that should work - jongs at CS 60 vs. city defenses will make quick work of things. The timing works out something like this:

- Mercenaries completes T94
- Upgrade navy & warriors on T94 & 95 (710 for the navy + 55 or 110 for the warriors depending on if I pull the sword off Big Island)
- Sail for the channel west of Borna Barasic with the above plus a galley. It's five turns to reach the small island between BB and Wodin with one turn of "slop" to maneuver. Call it Turn 101 to be in position to allow one turn for maneuvering - can't go in ocean tiles, after all.
- Declare and attack on my turn. If he doesn't have walls up three jongs and an amphbious swordsman should be sufficient to take the city. Walls might take another turn to knock down.

I think the best way to do this would be to cede Wodin to China as soon as I take it. In that case you'd want to be following with two Classical land units (horse/sword) and perhaps an archer or crossbow. You would want to have a governor available because there will be loyalty issues. If there isn't one available then I'd keep the city, move Reyna over and then your land troops would defend from ground attack while I move onto the next one and hopefully relieve some loyalty pressure.

Woden's got four cities that he's founded, plus two city-states. I have to assume that he and Phoenicia are tied up with the happenings at England/Japan. He has not been building districts - only Frigga has a Holy Site and there appears to be a placed district (Campus?) 2SE of his capital. Ljubljana, likewise, has only built Cothons and Aqueducts. I have to wonder how much of their milpower is land units. His 28 CS for (W)odin is 25 from longships and 3 from the palace. He's got nothing better than warriors for melee/anticav. They may have taken a gamble that they could use biremes and longships to wipe someone out early and piggy back off their opponent's development. They may have also been counting on Mercenaries not being "easy" to get to.

Beyond the initial four jongs getting additional ships out will be slow going. They have a construction cost of 300 (so a cost of 600) though by the time they unlock I should be able to faith purchase one every ten turns. The +100% bonus for jongs isn't available until I complete Exploration so I'm not counting on building any. Another option would be for me to hold Mercenaries for the additional time it will take to build two more quadriremes as spares. I'm currently completing quads on T83, T88 and T93. I could get out one more on T98 and another on T103 if we wanted to wait. I could hold Mercenaries to T98 and I shuffle everyone down the coast to Borna for jong upgrades there. However, you'd need to get another coast tile to speed that process up so I can upgrade two ships per turn.

One thing to perhaps get done sooner rather than later, if you think it'll be fine to do so, is to embark the warrior at Borna Barasic and defog the area immediately southeast of the island. That'll tell us how wide the channel is and whether or not Woden is maintaining any pickets in the area. If he is then I'd either have to take it out OR sail past it and declare once I'm by it.

Thoughts?

[roland of gilead]

i don't think we need to check back on Lubijana but it does seem likely he lost pop.

I will be making 2 archers in Tav starting next turn and upgrading a slinger so we will find machinery and i can look to go get it. Walls at Al are no issue. A Sword should be fine.

I will go scout out of borna carefully.

will also put together a small force of strong units to hold Woden. I can put a quadrireme in there as well to shoot out the way. Have one partially built.

a lot of my problem right now is my culture has dropped back so far I don't have the policy changes i want.

can get a governor no problem.


so short term plan.

recover faith and culture. that will jump over the next 5-10 turns.

get my gold up.

improve defenses and small attack/defense force.