Regarding Kaiser's scout, he's likely on the tile 3N (to the west) of Hard Rain. So he'll likely not see our settler before 3rd city is up and I think we can beat him to the unguarded camp (the best outcome would be a new barb guard appearing on the camp, but I doubt that'll happen).
Oh wow, if Kaiser pink dotted us and is buidling a monument instead of military ... maybe we don't even wait for heavy chariots and instead just go for him first then take Yerevan at a later time. What is Kaiser's military power? We should start monitoring that closely to determine just how vulnerable he may be.
As for taking over all city states, I think Geneva should be kept around for us to be Suzerain over. Perhaps Kumasi too, but that may just be greedy to try for both. But they both have top - notch suzerain bonuses. Geneva is just overall good for science, and Kumasi is good for trade routes, which I'd we're going to building a lot of Royal Ports then we should have a lot of traders too.
Barbs look tricky. Good job navigating them so far
Played two more turns, but it seems I messed around and only the latter turn screenshots worked.
Anyway, the former turn was the one where I took a screenshot of Kaiser's military power. It's very, very low. He's at the bottom place in military score with 31, while we have 70 or so. And that's just the few warriors we have right now. I'm strongly considering going for Kaiser, especially in light of this:
His second city has horses. If we get that, we'll have 2 horses, he'll have none. That means we can get horsemen even without encampments. Besides war, there's also two more ways for us to hinder Kaiser out of horses: I'm pretty sure getting an envoy in Geneva will make the city get that horse tile (we need a TR with them for the free TR from quest, or we could tech Mysticism for the free envoy the tech gives); or, we could buy that tile from our third city, if he doesn't do it. It'd need 150 gold, I think. Not easy, but doable if we can capture the barb camp. Anyway, denying horses from Kaiser seems to be a winning play, and I think we should be wary of our options.
The barb situation sorted itself out, with gains. On the missing turn, the barb HA went south to attack my warrior, which attaked back. I figured he'd take another attack, and then I could retreat it and surround the barb HA with 2 fresh warriors, with a slinger coming from behind to finish it off with an Eureka. Instead:
The barb decided to suicide. Great stuff. I softened it up with the warrior, and finished with the slinger, getting the Archery Eureka. I changed research ro finish archery, and we'll be producing them in no time. Ah, and the spear went back to the camp! Again, great stuff.
We have 4 warriors currently and 1 slinger. Hard Rain is working on a slinger, but I went for another warrior in the Capital. I think we need at least 1 warrior for each of the two cities that won't be our attack starting point and at least 3 for the attack. So, we need five, which means one more. The other bonus is that the warrior will take 3 turns, so the 3rd turn will be almost purely overflow. We can decide what to do with that production, as we see fit. Likely just put it into an archer, but who knows.
I met Suboptimal and the war theater between him and Rowain. He's still at one city, but has a settler finished. You can notice that he has a Natural Wonder close to him, with the culture and science on the rice tile (that's Tsingy). Losing the horse city to Rowain will likely hurt Suboptimal a lot (just a note: Suboptimal's Capital is on the same Continent that Rowain is, I think - at least the same Continent as Rowain's second city). I wonder if he saw Tsingy with his initial settler. I think it was worth moving his settler down there if he did.
Ah, I forgot to look at what Pantheon Suboptimal chose...
Situation at the end of turn.
We can decide about the third city spot. I think the original idea, 1E of where the settler stands, is still the best one. I want that forest saved for early production + chopping into military. I think that, if we play our cards right, we can take Shido and severely hinder Kaiser. He's playing too careless here, going for this long term investments of monuments and TRs, while choosing a very poorly defensible spot (flat lands + wrong side of the river). Hopefully he gets worried about our third city, but not as a military threat, but as a "I'm expanding too slow" problem. Then, he'll be even more undefended. His current military score actually makes me think he's having some barb trouble, or at least going barb hunting.
Here's what I think we should do: move the injured warrior back to the Capital for barb protection (shouldn't have moved him forward). Use the healthy warrior in Hard Rain to try and capture the barb camp. The other warriors, start moving to Shido, likely going through 3rd city. We also move the slinger to the 3rd city, while waiting for perhaps 3 more archers (2 from Capital, one from Hard Rain). I think we'll have 3 warriors and 4 archers ready to attack Shido in about 10 turns. That's probably enough, I think, especially considering how hard it'll be for Kaiser to counter-attack our ranged units.
The other and perhaps more safe option is just go for the Yerevan plan. I think both have their merits and we won't be commiting until we move our archers to position.
Are barbarians arriving yet? Since our capital can 3-turn archers i'd send everything at the barb camp now, and remove that ADAP. Then move them all forward to whichever we decide to attack. I strongly recommend attacking Kaiser.
But notice how Shido only has 10 strength? No garrison. Archers would cut that city up right now to the tune of 43-65 dmg per hit if my math is right.
Kaiser finished a Holy Site in his Capital, which gives him 2GPP due to Divine Spark. Man, he's becoming a tastier target every turn. A district this early put him behind on military and expansion, and I'm betting that he'll work on fixing the expansion problem first, especially seeing my third city on his face. It's a relief that he went for a Holy Site, since I feared he'd go for an Encampment.
A religion would open him up for taking the +10 combat strength belief, but that's still 30 turns away, and it simply won't matter if he only has his Capital to work with (in case we only manage to take Shido and besiege his lands).
Anyway, it's decided that we are going to attack Kaiser, so lets get things ready for it.
New city, All Along the Watchtower. It's currently building an archer, because I figure it'll be more useful than a builder in 18 turns. I'm considering the idea of building a builder in the Capital to chop the two forests in Watchtower for Heavy Chariots, but that's a bit away for now (we could buy the Builder if we capture the barb camp + pillage Kaiser's TR, but that's too much of a dream).
That plan kind of depends on un managing to clear the barb camp near Hard Rain. It's trivial to just clear it, what makes me scared is the chance that Kaiser's scout will steal it from us, after I attack the Spear once more. It's a risk, but I'll try to lower it (good thing that the warrior can stay there, since I don't think we need more than 3 to attack Shido). Getting that camp will give the Inspiration to Military Tradition, that we need to get the flanking/support bonuses in our units + the policy card for Heavy Chariot boost. Next turn, I'll switch civic research to Military Tradition, trying to get it before the war starts. Putting 3 warriors side by side near Shido will give interesting bonuses. It delays PP, but winning an early war is more important than getting PP some turns earlier.
The warrior in Watchtower has the barb scout surrounded, I think. If we kill this scout + the spear on the camp, we also get the BW Eureka, which is pretty nice.
I'm not sure what Kaiser's warrior is doing there. But if he's scouting with that warrior... Man, he's pretty brave.
Our scout keeps going. He has done a lot of work already and managed to dodge barbs so far. Lets see if I can bring him to explore a bit of Kaiser's land before we attack him. Probably not, but I'm bringing him in that direction anyway.
First to 3 cities? I think so! And hopefully also first to 4 and 5!
Is it too much of a dream to imagine us taking his holy site and getting to pick the religion?
I am worried about our lack of archers though. From your screenshot it only looks like we're going to have 2 available and more warriors than we'll have room for. Well, the logistics just need to be sorted out for how to converge all those warriors in on the city at once.
When Watchtower his size 2 I'd set it to max hammers so we can get that archer out as fast as possible
I think getting another builder out after the main military push is good. We are going to want to hook up horses, copper, and either chop a forest/jungle or maybe even plantation the bananas for some extra gold income. Have we unlocked the policy for +30% to builders yet? It would be nice to use that if we can but we might not be able to balance it out.
The other thing is we may just want to push out units from now until Kaiser is completely eliminated.
(July 25th, 2017, 13:59)pindicator Wrote: First to 3 cities? I think so! And hopefully also first to 4 and 5!
Is it too much of a dream to imagine us taking his holy site and getting to pick the religion?
I am worried about our lack of archers though. From your screenshot it only looks like we're going to have 2 available and more warriors than we'll have room for. Well, the logistics just need to be sorted out for how to converge all those warriors in on the city at once.
When Watchtower his size 2 I'd set it to max hammers so we can get that archer out as fast as possible
I think getting another builder out after the main military push is good. We are going to want to hook up horses, copper, and either chop a forest/jungle or maybe even plantation the bananas for some extra gold income. Have we unlocked the policy for +30% to builders yet? It would be nice to use that if we can but we might not be able to balance it out.
The other thing is we may just want to push out units from now until Kaiser is completely eliminated.
Rowain and Kaiser are at two cities. Suboptimal still has only one. I'm not sure about Bacchus, since I didn't meet him yet, but his score leads me to believe he's at 2 cities still. The 4th and 5th city will be harder, due to our investment in military. So, I decided to make the following: lets try to attack Kaiser. If he is able to defend, we sign for peace before any meaningful combat, and we go for Geneva, since our units will be close. That'd give us a new city, a district and a new luxury, at cost of 2 science per turn. Geneva suzerainity is pretty nice, but it's too clunky to maintain. I'm pretty sure Bacchus (or anyone far from us) would just declare war to block it.
After we take Geneva, we go for Yerevan.
We have the +30% builder policy, which was avaiable at craftsmanship. I'm considering getting the builder after the second archer from the Capital, since it's likely we'll be finishing Military Tradition by then, enabling the change. But here's a big question: do we wait to finish The Wheel with the builder mining the Copper for the Eureka? I was thinking to use that builder to pasture the horses and chop two forests into HCs, which would mean already having The Wheel ready. We need about 5 turn to get the builder into the copper, mine it and getting him back, and that delays the chops too much.
Then again, chopping HCs only make sense if we are sieging Kaiser's Capital and need the extra boost. But we need to take the decision about teching The Wheel right now, since next turn we'll actually be a little past 50% of the tech. Perhaps I wait until we finish BW, which hopefully will be soon, so we reveal iron for a possible easier TW Eureka.
Anyway, here's the turn.
Crossing rivers is a big pain in Civ 6. As you can see, I finally remembered to take a look at Suboptimal's pantheon, I don't like his choice. Sacred Path means +1 faith from rainforests adjacent to Holy Sites. Too late of a payoff, if you ask me. This leads me to believe Suboptimal is new to MP games, so I'll take that into account going further.
Military situation at start of the turn. The warrior killed the scout for our second barb kill. I'm hoping the spearman will not attack Kaiser's scout and Kaiser's scout will go away from the camp. Right now, Kaiser's scout has 21 strength, due to Japan's ability and +6 from terrain. I think a 10 strength scout couldn't take out the spear after my warrior attacked it once, but I didn't want to risk it because i'm not sure if a japanese unit attacing from a coast tile would get the strength bonus or not. Hopefully Kaiser leaves and we finish the Camp without interruptions.
Anyway, I have a basic plan for a Kaiser attack, which I'm attaching to this post, since I can't edit my steam uploaded screenshots. The plan represent the first turn of war. Blue arrows are warriors, red arrows are archers. The initial wave will have 3 warriors and 3 archers. As you can see, 2 warriors will start on Watchtower, the one who's currently moving there and the one that's already there, but needs healing. The third one was built in the Capital last turn and it's also on his way. My idea is to fake that we are exploring with them, placing them at points to later converge into Shido.
The 3 archers are the slinger that will heal and be upgraded. He's the one that will be on Watchtower. The two other archers are the ones from Hard Rain and Capital, which showed 2 turns until ready, this past turn. We need one more turn to finish them and we need 4 turns to put them in position, meaning the war can start in six turns.
It's a pretty simple plan, but if everything works, we'll have 3 warriors surrounding the city and supporting themselves, with 3 archers ready to shoot (including two shots already taken on the first turn of the war). We'll also have a 4th and 5th archer, coming from Capital and Watchtower. If Kaiser has units on our side of the river, we try to focus them, if he doesn't, we occupy the positions. Considering Kaiser's current military score (32), he can have 2 archers/warriors ready in 6 turns, from his Capital. Three at best, i'd say. And he'd need to bring them to Shido and cross the river... I'm actually starting to become pretty confident. Kaiser's military score is so low, that he likely only has the scout we can see, the warrior we saw last turn and a slinger, at best.
In fact, Kaiser has 8 technology points right now. Considering he has Astrology (Holy Site), he has only 3 more techs. I'm willing to bet it's Pottery, AH and Mining and that he's waiting for Eurekas for the rest. Which means it's very, very likely that he doesn't have archery. Next turn I'm checking his gold, but I know it's not very high, because I think he bought the Trader. He probably has enough for 2 slinger -> archer upgrades, but that's yet another turn he loses, having to upgrade the units. And if he is indeed waiting for the Archery Eureka, he probably has a slinger out of place/damaged (due to barb hunting) and, if he doesn't get it, he needs to tech the rest of archery, which is likely at least 4 turns...
By the way, I'm keeping check every turn of Kaiser's military strenght and Empire points, to see if he gets a drop that shows a settler built. That'd be absolutely wonderful.
*Kaiser might end up buying the horse tile with Shido, which will leave him no gold to upgrade his slingers. We can try and force the issue by buying the tile directly above the horses, whowing intention to buy it up ourselves and forcing his hand. That's actually a pretty interesting idea, because having that forest as our territory gives a bit of vision on Kaiser's city, which will really help. I think I'll do it! We'll have enough money for the slinger upgrade + buying that tile.
*We can declare war on Stockholm after moving units closer to Watchtower (not sure about the exact timing, the best one is probably a turn where his scout can see our northern units). That'll be a feint to try and justify our high power to Kaiser, that we want the City State, not him. It works pretty well, since it's a close CS and the one we have no Envoys in. And from Kaiser's perspective, it fits into out map, because it's closer to us than to him. It's pretty believable that we'd go for that CS, instead of Yerevan/Geneva (which we are gaining some bonuses from).
I wonder if Kaiser would get a notification that we declared war on Stockholm...
Be careful chopping both forests at Watchtower as there is a considerable lack of 2h tiles in the first ring. That would be another reason to buy the forest tile, I suppose ...
Buying that tile kind of seems dubious: I'd rather spend the money elsewhere on more important tiles, and if the main goal is to get Kaiser to maybe spend his gold on a Dubois decision, it seems like we're out thinking ourselves.
With +75% unit production and more cities, I'm really tempted to say we should just build units until we've eliminated Kaiser. Especially if we successfully capture Shido.
My preference for keeping Geneva is as much for the science boost to campus districts. But I certainly admit we can go different directions! I could even see the following scenario happening: completely conquer Kaiser and take his holy site, build a +3 holy site at the capital, and another +3 holy site at Watchtower, then keep Yerevan around to help generate a lot of faith. Point is, I'll try to be more flexible to changing plans.
I'm not sure declaring on Stockholm is worth the trouble. At this point if Kaiser is paying attention to / bothered by our buildup he's going to already be adding military builds.
I like the plan for converging the units on Shido. Last turn I thought we were keeping 2 warriors behind, but maybe I didn't read the details right. Regardless, I think just a single warrior kept at the capital would be enough to cover against barbs while the army is away. I don't think Hard Rain is going to see any barb activity after that camp is removed.
