GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[GeneralKilCavalry]

So I have a T155 NAP with superdeath - I'm mobilizing all troops available to attack Mr. Cairo before he gets muskets and starts stomping. We're actually doing pretty ok on the power graph!

Not managing our outermost cities very well but so be it.

Banking in 2 turns, mostly for a bank in the bureaucracy capital.

Actually a bit low on workers right now.

[thestick]

Logged in and checked around, queued up another cat in Arcole, accidentally dequeued the tech after Banking. I guess we're going Paper for Privateers?

What's the plan re: Cairo? Naval invasion? Knight swarm? Just waltz in and hope not to be flanked to death? Frankly unless SD has completely crashed his economy, he's going to win this thing, he's 1.5 times the size of us. Note to self: keep track of his GPT. He has ~1600 gold saved up right now.

Any news on the Raskol TBW war? I haven't been keeping track.

Are we thinking with regards to the long term, or are we just trying something in desperation before SD drops the hammer on us?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Waltz in pretty much, he has not really been building many knights. TBW seems to be slowly but surely crumbling. SD plans to stab raskol via TBW.

We're thinking on how do we get second place, or perhaps pull a massive upset with our islands, privateers, and maybe astronomy. SD knows Raskol won't be a trading partner sooner or later, and I'm better to trade with than cairo, and conquering us is not going to be like conquering gavagai, because of combat 2 pikes and castles and longbows.

[thestick]

Fair enough re: SD. Guess we have to hope we hit Gunpowder/Nationalism before SD gets Military Tradition for cuirs.

What's the rough launch date for the Cairo attack? We're still woefully short on Catapults (only 7, I think), and I'm wondering if we have time to hit Gunpowder or something. Is the plan the stack o' death, or a knight swarm?

Any way we could work with TBW or SD for info on Cairo's forces/map layout? Our intel is still really bad on that front since we never got OB.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Some more elephants marching up from the south with a few praets. This stack can easily take gemini, but I am not sure whether or not we should commit. Thoughts? My plan would be to engage in a limited conflict, taking gemini, while continuously militarizing and rapidly heading towards paper for privateers to destroy whatever Cairo has on the seas and give him the PB45 treatment that I gave to Magic Science and was about to deliver to Mr. Cairo himself.

We have a solid NAP with SD, btw, but I am not sure if he'll share or even has info on Cairo. In any case, we have a decent power lead on Cairo, and I think he has been slowly teching towards musketeers, but while they are strong 2 movers, are they really going to do anything against knights?

[thestick]

Well, I am not good at Civ 4 combat. See PBEM 54 where my neighbor was leaving cities undefended to defend against his other neighbor, and I was still cautious in taking them. And I am a known peacenik. But I still advice caution. Tactically, because we don't know if his knights will attack us on our long front, our unit matchups are terrible (little collateral, elephants/cats v. longbows instead of maces/trebs), and our intel is terrible. Strategically, we have nowhere near enough forces to get a knockout blow (our cores are about the same size), so we'll just be stuck in a morass. Plus limited wars often can prove hard to get out of.

I dunno, I'm just thinking of the Commodore doctrine. Land wars of conquest against a competent/non-crippled opponent are not a game-winning move.

I know we're in a bad situation. Wait, and we face Musketeers. But I still think we should wait and tech-up. Get to Military Tradition for cuirs. Or Nationalism for drafting. (Is the Music Great Arist still free?) Or Astronomy for a naval decapitation. Just, something to get a decisive edge, rather than ending up in a slog.

Feel free to ignore this. I know I don't have a killing instinct, which is one of the things I have to work on in Civ.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Praets with CR2 should crush longbows with the added city-attack bonus given to swords, no? I think our unit matchup is generally fine against an opponent behind in CY/comparable in MFG slowly stacking horchers to slowly upgrade them into knights. At least, that's what I expect from Mr. Cairo right now.

I agree with the rest of your analysis though, maybe because generally I am a very passive player, although I have delusions of grandeur and how I will invade everyone - look how long it took me to invade MS in PB45, or do anything against gira in PB51.

Waiting for astro is too long. As is waiting for nationalism + 2nd golden age. Going for a miltrad beeline though... that sounds reasonable.
We also need a proper GP city with national epic.

I do think getting privateers is the edge we need. It'll let us quickly punish Mr. Cairo and enact a military blockade, provide a bit of needed intel, and cripple him.

The other thing to consider is that the game is pretty much over by gavagai playing at a level far below his usual.

If we don't attack in 2 turns, as I had planned, we need to immediately switch out of military mode, finish infrastructure that our core desperately lacks (we don't have LIBRARIES) in some essential cities, and ferry all our workers over to the islands, since improvement-wise, we're nearly done.

We'll then need 5 settlers for the islands, caravels to scout out any further islands in the seas, all while beelining mil trad for cuirs. Cuirs+catapults can defeat even technologically superior rifles. Plus, this is not SD's tech path, so we'll be getting trading leverage. Finally, we could always go for nationalism and chain a golden age?

Edit: I wanted to add, this PB really does feel exhausting. Never ever should there be 48 hour turn timers.

[thestick]

T142 Report

No idea re: Longbows. I'm in favor of building up with the peace with SD and teching up to a more decisive edge.

First of all, no one has the Music Great Artist. I think we should try to nab it, a. because we'll need Music for Military Tradition and b. because we can force a Merchant out of Lodi for the two-man GA. Maybe we could build Temple of Artemis in Abukir after the National Epic to get prophet points for our shrine? Or just build a temple and force a Priest.

   

Doesn't Military Tradition require Nationalism? The Taj would be great. Hopefully we can play a double Golden Age into rifles/cavs against longbows...

The ideal, of course, would be that SD's aggression gets the better of him and his stab of Raskol just sets them both back. The worst case would be that SD is playing us for fools and wheels his knights around south, but we've done pretty much all we can on that front.

Good news, we have double the 0% gold of SD (he stopped researching a while ago). Bad news, he has 1.5 times our cities and crop yield. Hopefully we can hit Nationalism for drafted muskets on defence before he turns his knight/cuir army towards us. Plus that will dovetail nicely with a bunch of high food, low production fishing villages.

   

   

Our island. Shuffled the dots to make sure that they were at least 3 tiles from each other. So now we need 4 settlers?

   

As for the overview shots, too lazy to stitch them, but our border with Cairo:

   

   

(Yeah, Austerlitz has been our whipping boy for a while)

And with SD, the bear to the north:

   

Call us Germany because we're strong but surrounded by enemies, one technologically backwards but with huge land area/production, and one with a naturally defendable border so they don't have to worry about a two-front war.

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We could keep cranking knights out of Lodi or our non-commerce cities, then upgrade them to cuirs later. I think that upgrade is pretty cheap?

I'm still thinking about how Commodore said that naval combat is analagous to air combat: privateers can control the seas, but only galleons can 'bomb' enemy cities with units.

Any ideas how to get recon from Cairo? Try to negotiate with TBW? Extort a map off of AI Gavagai? (Actually, I like that last one.)

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I'm playing a bit of diplo game here. Remember my cozying to SD? I've ratted out all his plans to raskol. Otherwise, SD is going to win by domination in the next 50 turns, rollling over raskol, while teching cuirs to wreck TBW. Meanwhile, Cairo and I face off in a stalemate. Our GNP is doing pretty well, btw.

[thestick]

I guess it's time to build up for the inevitable SD attack in 5-10 turns. I wouldn't put it past him to say that this action renders the NAP null and void. If he brings the stack o'death, it should be slow enough that we can hold, though we'll either need a lot of cats/knights to make headway, or muskets since he can bring crossbows/maces to defend against our pikes. At that point, we might need Theocracy or Vassalage, to get 5 XP and Formation (since his knights will probably all be double-promoted). If he forks, there's no way we can stack up enough defenders to defend everywhere, so we'll have to try to weaken his knights by attacking into his stack. That will probably be easier to deal with, assuming we can predict where he strikes, which is the rub. We have a big flapping border.

Ulm is a lost cause, it's flatland and can be one-turned. At least we can workshop it later (obscene food, and we desperately need hammers, especially with the fishing villages planned) I want to say we focus our defences 2E1N of Marengo, and 2W1S of Marengo?