What's a Kanun?

[zippyriver]

background:
I am trying to move up in game level (using variations of my 10 step), but keep getting my hat handed to me very early by the excessively agressive AIs, and am working on early colony set-ups so that I can at least put up a goal line defense when sponge-brain-square-head comes knocking (again).

I got my brickworks in place. I even threw down a tool chain and have enough lumberjacks built to meet the needs. Then I built my shipyard. I know I can't build any warships yet as I don't have any cannons, and I am not at the level to research the cannon foundry yet. So in this first phaze I was going to follow some other suggestions and buy 12-24 cannons early so I can get a couple of tubs on the blue asap....... WRONG!

It's not an option yet. The space where cannons would be when you set up passive trading is blank.

From a calm perspective, I would like to know at what level, or how ever many settlers I need, to be able to passive buy cannons?

From a not so calm perspective, WTH!?! My people don't know what a cannon is? You know, those large iron noise makers you saw on the ship we came here in, ask the FT for some you flippin moron before I turn this settlement into my personal slave camp, starting with the warehouse manager!
(takes a deep breath)

If I can build a shipyard, I ought to be able to at least try and buy some "kanuns".

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/2171/screenshot0022rl1.th.jpg (http://img360.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot0022rl1.jpg)

[achkarou]

i know this is stupid but i think you have to be able to produce or require the good in order to be able to buy it...

so for example you woudl prolly have to reserach cannons in order to have them available for trade... i.e get to citizens and build a second fort and research cannons...

now this is really stupid because the main reason you wanna buy cannons rite now is that you can't produce them.... if you could you would make them (i know some people choose to buy tools and cannons but i like making my own with surplus through trader quests)

secondly its stupid that you have the small warship available to build at settler level (once you build small shipyard) but you can't actually build it untill cannons are research in citizen level... so its misleading

so my advice is advance to citizen level and get your cannons... and it will be challenging because the more time you spend on advanceing to the next social class the less time and money you have to build your armed forces and the closer you get to getting wiped out by one of the hard AI's :bash:

i haven't been able to win a hard game yet

i'm polishing my normal game with medium-level AI's rite now...

[zippyriver]

so my advice is advance to citizen level and get your cannons
That's the jist of the question. Was not sure if I needed to advance or just get more settler houses (I only have 15 houses at the moment). Obviously the construction plans will not be the same.

Advancing a level is going tick off the AI. And there won't be enough time to buy cannons, get stored the extra supplies for the build, plus the time required to actually build the ship, before the AI comes knocking. Not to mention any extra time needed to raise the coin for all of that (which will be harder because I already spent resources on a shipyard, that I can only use for scows, that I can't escort).

The whole game start and building progression was based around being able to get a couple of small warships in the water before pop-booming. (I have enough fish for 500, 3 wood, 2 cloth, 2 brick and the tools chain (1 tooler). Some of that would have waited had I known I was going to run into this absurd problem.

I, like you, prefer to be self-sufficent in meeting the needs of the people. I only buy things until I am able to produce them myself. Namely because too many times I have been left in the lurch waiting on whatever, while my colony self-destructs or gets invaded.

EDIT:
I started adding enough housing to unlock the things needed to advance but was no where near close to moving up, then it happened. Madame Nardinsky reached citizen level and the cannons unlocked. So the requirement for buying cannon is that SOMEONE in the game (not necessarily the human player) reach citizen level.

I still think this is silly, but I might be able to salvage the original plan given this discovery.

[achkarou]

Hmmm... thats excellent news!

Still I belive Igor attacks sometime before the end of 2hrs playing time... at least he did for me everytime and thats after i payed all the tributes he requested

So lemme know how the race goes and if u get enough strength built up to resist his envasion... he invades w groups of ship and some troops :S

[Eagleclaw]

Why wait? Use a preemptive strike against Igor and send him packing. The computer player buildup is very slow at first but then accelerates because they only pay 1/10 of the building costs. You can attack if the Queen is present and you have found Igors island very early in the game. Declare war on Igor, get help from the Queen and attack Igors island. You may even declare war on one of the nice cultures in order to get the warship before Igor gets his. I have not tried that. There may be complications, I don't know.

If Igors explorer ship is near your island he will attack your warehouse. You attack his explorer ship with yours and get assistance from the warship sent by the Queen. It may help building a canon tower when he has started shooting at the warehouse. He cannot resist to attack the canon tower. If you get the first shot in at the explorer ship he loses it. Your military forces will of course start attacking the town centre and get remove Igors control of the town. Often you even end up getting a free shipyard. You will need it. After the attck your ships are only hanging together by a thread. This attack must come very early in the game. If you have not found Igors island in good time before he gets to the settler level - well then you are in trouoble. If you get Igor in time you are better prepared for Madame, and she is a little less aggresive than Igor.

[achkarou]

very compelling strategy, will have to test it out when i am home

thx!

btw, this may sound like a dump question, but i havent done much warfare in anno yet... and so when u attack an opponents town, lets say Igors main island warehouse and destroy it, i know u can take the warehouse over by sending in a set of troops but does that result in u gaining control of his entire island or do u have to do that to each warehouse? and in that case do u get all the houses and production chains as well or do those have to be individually attacked?

Also do u have to send the entire unit group to gain control of a warehouse (using that wite flag button) or can u ungroup them and only send one guy? that way u loose less soldiers since they dont come out after takeover?

[zippyriver]

If you have not found Igors island in good time before he gets to the settler level - well then you are in trouoble.

This I know, and am trying to develop a plan that removes/lessens this factor. For this trial, I WANT Igor to attack, but of course I want to be prepared to absorb, and repel his initial thrust.

when u attack an opponents town, lets say Igors main island warehouse and destroy it, i know u can take the warehouse over by sending in a set of troops but does that result in u gaining control of his entire island or do u have to do that to each warehouse? and in that case do u get all the houses and production chains as well or do those have to be individually attacked?

Also do u have to send the entire unit group to gain control of a warehouse (using that wite flag button) or can u ungroup them and only send one guy? that way u loose less soldiers since they dont come out after takeover?

When you get the white flag (the capturable building can't be in the radius of another market), you can take it with a single unit. You only get the benefit of the area of effect of that building, up to the edge of the area of effect of the next closest AI market (talking single direction). (fairly sure on that border determination)

What I try to do on normal level, is after landing and placing troops in a safe zone (after initial thrust). I use a cheap militia to advance enough to get their attention then retreat. It does take a little damage at each manuver, but is of no concern. It tries to trigger a chase and bring whom ever is stupid enough to follow, in to the pre-set ambush point where the bulk of my forces are (just out side the "attention zone" of the AI). When that militia gets low in HP, I back shelf it and use that unit to capture white flag buildings. Then bring in a new militia and rinse/repeat.

This tactic also works with initial invasions (love using it on the pirate island). Only land a militia, and retreat to the boat before it gets killed (if it does, so what. bring more than one), drawing the enemy troops into range for shore bombardment.
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dunno, this might merge.

OMG! Talk about the fit hitting the shan! Igor sent me a nasty message about my second island so I decided to offer him a tribute (I always get attacked within a min or two from recieving this). Well, that didn't work. He immediately declared war. I ordered a small warship, which actually did get built almost as timely as needed, but not quite. Also, soon as he declared, I requested aide from the Queen but it was a good half a min before she agreed, and then of course the wait for it to arrive.... On the side of the map opposite where I was. Gee, thanks. It never made it to the battle zone in time.

I had my explorer and two small WS together for the soon to arrive enemy fleet. I knew it was going to be a tough battle. Igor arrives at my fleet (sitting between my two islands) and we engage. I managed to damage one of his ships enough to send it fleeing, but I also needed to send one to the ship yard for repairs. It should have arrived about the time the one being produced got finished.

Thats when things went screwy. One of my SW decided to break away and chase the damaged Igor ship, the other SW decided it wanted to follow my damaged explorer instead of continuing attacking the ship that was shooting at it, and I could not get it to turn around and re-engage :scratch:. This allowed Igor to contine chasing down my explorer and sink it. The first SW I retreated to the shipyard for repair but that was useless because I had a small negative balance.

Ships getting sunk from being misdirected (although I am not sure how I managed to screw up simple orders, but I do have an idea what might have happened).
Damaged ships not getting repaired because of BS! (excuse me, but if I am paying maint for an idle ship yard from the moment it's built, the damn thing better repair ships irregardless of my bank balance).
An AI that declares war for absurd reasons (I don't think having only two islands should be a trigger, nor should just playing for X# minutes.... Which BTW, he declared war 1:32 into the game.
Royal re-inforcements that enter the map at a point that makes it useless (in a pinch). Does the Queen's ship always appear from the NE corner? I never had to request aide at normal levels so I don't know. I knew Igor was about to make his play, and at about 1:10-15 time mark I requested aide and got turned down by the queen. (exposed map, so just knowing where Igor is is not enough to get help).
.
.
And whilst dealing with all that, my second island gets erased by a hurricane. :bash:

********

I still think I am on the right track for what I want to do, but it needs quite a bit more tweaking. Gonna try some different things next time. I am not gonna try and salvage this game as it is a wash. With no hope of defence, only chance would be if Igrid showed mercy and I seriously doubt that has been programed into the hard AI.

First time out: defeat

oh yeah, one more thing.... During one of the periods I didn't have anything to do I set the game to slow motion and monitored my tool maker. It ran on a 24 second cycle, using one raw iron and producing one tool each cycle. So the info in the numbers and statistics thread for tool production is incorrect. You do get 3T per minute.... EACH tools smith. (before begining that, I made sure I had a suprlus of raw iron in the warehouse so production would not be affected by journeyman travel. The iron mine was a bit farther away, but the smelter and tool maker shared a single road tile attached to the market). Makes one wonder what other errors are in that list.

[Reka]

It ran on a 24 second cycle, using one raw iron and producing one tool each cycle. So the info in the numbers and statistics thread for tool production is incorrect. You do get 3T per minute.... EACH tools smith. (before begining that, I made sure I had a suprlus of raw iron in the warehouse so production would not be affected by journeyman travel. The iron mine was a bit farther away, but the smelter and tool maker shared a single road tile attached to the market). Makes one wonder what other errors are in that list.
Congrats for noticing that :) In fact that would be rather 2.5 t/min, which is the number used in the tables on the german board. Alas many of the initial tables had mistakes in them, and quite often they have never been corrected, so any help by anyone really checking things is most welcome. The later posts on the german board contain more reliable data. Using google's translation service I'd expect at least the tables thread should be quite readable even for non-germans.

My signature holds some useful data as well.

[nullspace]

If you want to destroy Igor early in the game, here's a strategy that I posted in another thread:
A watch house rush is an easy way to remove one opponent early on. Advance to settler level quickly, and as soon as you upgrade your first settler house, build a warehouse and a watch house on your enemy's main island. Then attack them with militia, pikemen, and aid from the queen. If you do it quickly, your only resistance will be some pioneer houses. The tricky part is getting 12 wood, 8 tools, and 8 bricks (buy from Amin Sahir) to your opponent's island by the time you get to settler level. The watch house rush can destroy Yegorov before he becomes a threat, and it gets you a big island with a mostly self-sufficient city.

If you don't want to do that, you can expect a real battle at citizen level. Don't wait for him to attack you. Build some warships, move them near any isolated warships Igor has, then declare war on him and destroy the ships before they group-up. Fraternizing with the Asians can help here. Ambushing him like this gives you the advantage in the decisive battle, after which you have sea superiority and you can do whatever you wish. Conquer his islands, invade his main island, blockade him until he gives up, or let him pay you money for peace. Citizen level is the most important part of the game, so build your city on an island with sugarcane and tobacco if you can.