Civilization: Egypt
Opponents: Seven
Map Size: Standard
World: Continents 70% water
Climate: Standard
Barbarians: None
Rules: Standard, except for AI cost factor 50%
Victory: Any
Version: 1.29f

T-hawk is captaining this game. He will set the roster.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-start.jpg

RBE DSG4 - Start File (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-4000bc.zip)

Good luck.


- Sirian

Ooh, nice start, especially if we build a granary and clear & irrigate a couple of those game tiles for mega bonus food! :) I sense a settler factory coming on...

Edit: Roster here (Sirian, if you see this, feel free to edit it into the first post for easy reference: )

Urugharakh
Zed-F
T-hawk
Sulla
JMB

Iteean can be an alternate if we lose somebody.

Should be a heck of a ride, although I'm not sure how we can top the legendary RBE2; heck, that start all by itself might make this game easier :)

Ok, here is my confirmation.

Also confirmed (sorry Iteean!) With the two best civ traits in the game and this rather nice starting location, we should stand a pretty good chance at Beyond Deity.

PS - I like the smiley that Sirian chose for this game. :lol:

I assume we're planning to work toward a peaceful victory here. We need map info & contact, but don't need to worry about huts. Start with a temple while we research pottery, then some scouts & MP? A culture advantage may help keep the AI off our backs a bit longer. Using a forested game tile we should complete the temple as we grow to 2, where we pull 5 spt with 2 forested game, for quick warrior builds. Then it's a choice of settler/granary or granary/settler; I would tend toward the latter but it will depend on scouting results. There may be another high-food site nearby that needs quick settlement. Or, we could settle close enough that a new city could borrow the topmost game.

I'll volunteer to take the first set, unless you want a different order, T-Hawk. :)

I was going to let Urugharakh lead off, since back in Epic 12, he pulled off some great early-game management to turn in the only victory. We could use some of that here. :goodjob: I'll slot you in next, Zed, unless you don't want to lead off, Urug. :)

Here's my proposed order:

Urugharakh
Zed-F
T-hawk
Sulla
JMB

Should be fun! First time I've gotten to play with Sulla or Urug in an SG.

Urug, go right on ahead. Play twenty, thirty, or forty turns to start; then Zed play 20 if Urug doesn't go the maximum, and then 10 each from there.

Thanks for the compliments, T-hawk. I take the challenge and start tonight.

Sounds good to me. Go Urug! :goodjob:

Start: Moving the worker onto the hill would provide additional information but looses 2 worker turns. So I move worker west onto the game where I'll build a road anyway.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC4000.jpg

Moving 1 tile northwest will bring in one additional bonus grassland and 2 additional hills at the cost of the gold. Without barbs a capital on a hill is not necessary, but the improved shield production will be useful later. So I move.

We found Thebes in 3950 BC and start researching pottery at max science. A warrior is ordered.

3750 BC: We produce our first warrior and send him onto the hill. We spot spices. So the top spot was 1 tile north of our starting position and I opted for the second best.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC3750.jpg

We finish our 2nd warrior in 3550 BC and send him scouting. Hope for map information and contacts.

3400 BC: 3rd and final warrior from Thebes spots the sun. We start barracks as prebuild for granary. We meet Alex. His tech prices are ridiculous. He surely adds our full tech penalty to his prices.

3300 BC: Alex discovered warrior code as expected.

3050 BC: We discover pottery. I switch Thebes from barracks to granary. Worker will clear the first forest this turn to add 10 shields. Trade Alex masonry and pottery for alphabet and 10 g. Could have bought bronze working in addition, but this would have cost our whole cash for the next 20 turns. So I choose to wait until our 3 scouting warriors make more contacts. I start a 40 turn research on mathematics. Even with full research we can get to writing in less than 40 turns. This will drop probably after a couple of AI civs get writing and we get more cities. But I rarely wait 40 turns for writing. The AI usually neglects math. So we have a good chance of being the first discovering it and should gain some stuff for brookering it around.

2950 BC: Thebes finished granary. Time for our first settler.

2710 BC: Alex starts pyramids

2630 BC: Our first settler finished.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC2630.jpg

I start on temple to make use of the 10 shields from the second forset and to get some culture. Alex still lacks ceremonial burial. The unescorted greek settler in the north will found on the tile I planed as our third city. With this map I actually didn't felt like runing early game blockades for urgend spots, but that may change once our warriors are back home. Observing the minimap, it seems we are alone with Alex on this continent.

2510 BC: We found Memphis. Pharsalos founded directely north where I planed our 3rd city.

2430 BC: Thebes finished temple. I chopped 2 game forests for a gain of 20 shields, irrigated one and mined the other. So we are at +5 food/turn and grow every other turn which is optimum until we pass beyond size 6 or change goverment. Alex has writing. No chance to buy it.

2270 BC: Second settler finished.

2190 BC: Greeks start Colossus

2110 BC: All I did this turn was founding Heliopolis.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC2110.jpg

Thebes will build a settler every 4 turns. I have Memphis on warrior/worker cycle now, but we should consider an early temple there. Alex still lacks ceremonial burial. So we get a culture advantage, which is very useful in deity games. Unfortunately we are alone with him on this continent. Hence my math gamble failed. Buying @2nd is more expensive than researching ourself. Only trading might be useful, though here the cost difference hurts us. We might need a war with Alex. So researching bronze and iron working after the math gambit finished should be prudent. In case we have iron, we can upgrade a couple of vet warriors to swords with the cash gained from minimun research. We only need Pharsalos and anything Alex will found farther south. So a targeted strike should give us a chance against hoplites. On the other hand we might apply cultural pressure on Pharsalos as Alex still lacks ceremonial burial and we are already way ahead in culture.

There are lots of cows and silks in the north, not seen on the pictures. This will be a superb FP area unless we can capture Athens and eliminate Greece.



BC2110 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC2110.zip)

Urug, that was more than 40 turns... it was 41! :)

Got it. Will likely play tonight, will play to 1750BC to even out the turn numbers.

Stuck on a continent with only one AI opponent? :eek: That's definitely not the situation we would have wanted. The fact that it's the Greeks doesn't make things any easier either, since it makes early war all but impossible. I'm seriously worried that Alex will come after us as soon as the land grab phase ends, and we'll be hard pressed to stop him. At least his aggression level is pretty low though, so maybe we'll avoid war...

The first turn through the rotation will probably be the most critical in the game. Here's hoping that we all have good luck and don't get sneak-attacked. :D

On the bright side, it looks like the two of us have a fair bit of land between us. It's uncommon, especially for a low aggressor like Alex, for the AIs to go to war before they're done filling up the land. Making outside contact soon is going to be important, although I'm not sure how we're going to go about getting Map Making...

Early turns: We have another settler ready in our capitol so I send him NW. I want to grab the last bit of grass close to Athens and block Pharsalos off from the rest of the Greek cities. This will hopefully force Greece to settle in less desirable lands since he seems to have a lot of jungle to deal with. Our Thebes worker completes the road to Memphis and starts the road to Heliopolis. Our settler heading NW does a bit of scouting as he does so and spots a greek settler pair heading in that direction. Fortunately he is able to beat them to a prime spot with a bonus wheat tile, and Elephantine is founded. The greek settler pair heads back south.

Middle turns: We complete another settler and I send him north to grab some of the cows. I want some insurance that the greeks won't just bypass Elephantine and settle in our rear. Memphis completes a warrior and I send him in that direction as well, as only having 1 warrior up there for barb defense is probably too risky; Memphis is on our road net and Heliopolis soon will be, both will be able to turn out anti-barb warriors relatively quickly if need be and are relatively reinforceable, so I'm less worried about our south for now. We also have another lookout warrior down there at the moment.

Late turns: We complete a third settler. I'm a bit worried that Pharsalos at size 3 might spit out a settler and head north to claim some of our backlands but I'm also worried that if some greek settlers start heading south from their core we could lose all opportunities to grab some territory down there. Still, I want to deny as much food-rich land to the AI as possible, especially bonus resources, so I send the settler north. We should have another settler built in 3 turns which can head south. A greek worker is building a road right past Elephantine, looking like he's heading for Pharsalos. Thanx, Alex! :) Alex founds Mycenae near the end of our turn.

Alex is in a bit of a bind, he's short on good land. He's got lots of dyes, but Sparta, Mycenae, and Thermopylae are buried in jungle, Pharsalos and Corinth are pretty dry though irrigable, and Argos has floodplains but not many shields. Other than Athens, only Knossos has a half-decent amount of good tiles available, and it's a 3rd-ring city. At the end of my turn he still doesn't have Ceremonial Burial, but he does have Writing, as well as Bronze Working, the Wheel, and Warrior Code. We might be able to out-produce him, even with his beyond deity bonus, if he doesn't start putting a major focus on workers soon. We, on the other hand, are industrious, and so far the very first thing each of our cities has done is pump out a worker... we need a temple next at Heliopolis, however.

Here's a proposed dotmap. This includes keeping Pharsalos at its current location after we capture it. It wastes a couple desert and a forest between Elephantine and Pharsalos but otherwise looks ok to me, but doesn't put a ton of cultural pressure on Pharsalos. We have settlers on the way to Red and Blue dots, and our northernmost settler has his move yet to go this turn so you can decide whether to go after Red or Blue first, letting our straggler take the other. Yellow is another good city site up north but a bit far away to be useful right now, and Green and Light Blue are good spots down south. Green has the only Dye that Greece hasn't wrapped up already, and Light Blue is nice to fill in the gap between Green and our core. Both are jungle-bound other than a couple fish, however. Maroon dots are fishing villages and are not really important right now.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-1750bc.jpg

And here's the save file:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-1750bc.zip

Early war could be tough, we'd need swords at least. Still, if our advantage in land quality continues to hold (which it may not), it might be possible to wage a limited campaign and take a couple cities, then sue for peace. If you want to try the pressure route instead, you could move Red dot due south one and Blue dot SW one. That would make Red dot pretty dry, though.

Hey Zed-F,

If I remember correctly, there are no barbs in this game...

JMB

Ah, yes, we don't need the 2nd warrior north for barb defense. Right, well it shouldn't matter much where he goes then, feel free to redirect to Elephantine if you prefer. Also our lookout warrior could be moved elsewhere if necessary although it would be nice to keep an eye on where greek settler pairs head down south.

In case we own several warriors (at least 3) without specific task, we should block the greek settler pairs heading south.

Originally posted by Zed-F
Urug, that was more than 40 turns... it was 41! :)


That was with purpose to save time. I intended to found Heliopolis at the desired spot. It was late yesterday night and I had to get up early today. So there was no time for a dot map. Easiest way to solve the problem was doing one more turn. We should be flexible and use the rules to our advantage and not to our disadvantage. :)

Wow, this is going to be one TOUGH battle for you guys!

You drew the absolute worst choice for an opposing civ to sit with you on a small island, the Feud-defense Greeks! While that makes early war ugly, there are many benefits to a strike that hutrts him and takes Pharsalos and another city.

Let me give you some odds should you accept the mantle of war...
Vet horse vs fortified Reg Hoplite-win 25%, lose 40%, retreat 35%
Vet horse vs fortified Vet Hoplite -win 13%, lose 47%, retreat 40%
(That's if they're in a town or grass, it's about 25% worse on hill)
Expected Number of vet horses needed to take a city with TWO
hoplites on a single turn: 5 (losing 1) vs Reg, 6 (losing 2) vs Vet

Vet sword vs fortif. Reg Hoplite-win 52%, lose 48%, no retreat
Vet horse vs fortif. Vet Hoplite -win 33%, lose 66%
Expected Number of vet swords needed to take a city with TWO
hoplites on one turn: 3.5 (losing 1.3) vs Reg, 4 (losing 2) vs Vet
With their higher attack, you need less swords than horse, but due to slowness will lose more of them in the process.

If you siege instead of blitz, taking multiple rounds, and IF there is no barracks for them to heal, a 4 on 2 attack results are:
Vet horse vs Vet hoplites: win 37%, lose 60%, retreat 2%
Vet sword vs Vet hoplites: win 83%, lose 17%, losing 2 swords
For horses, chance to win goes to 55%/75%/87% with 5/6/7 horses.
If the silly hoplites are only regulars, not vets, and you have vets, your odds go way up! 4 on 2 swords wins 95%, 5 on 2 horses wins 88%. (Caveat - these calculations don't account for promotion on either side, which may be a factor)

Bottom line - with horses, attack with triple the number of defenders, and with swords, double the number of attackers.
Preferably in both cases, on a single turn, don't let them heal or reinforce.

(As an aside, Gallic Swords vs Hoplites or Numidian Mercs,
Vet vs Vet, win 28%, lose 40%, retreat 32%, number needed
to take in a blitz is 4.3 (losing 1.1), or siege wins 72% of 4 on 2,
but lose only 1 unit, compared to loss of 2 slower swords)

Those odds are really not THAT bad, considering the potential gain from going to war. It's all about concentration of power, if you can have 2-3 times the attackers at the spot you choose, you can overcome the hoplites. If they use non-vet hoplites, your vets will actually crush them, given a numerical superiority.

What about their counterattack? Let's say you're no dummy and have a rax and three vet spears defending, because you know when and where things are gonig to happen, while they're clueless.
Six regular swords will beat you, or five vets.
Nine regular horses are needed, or seven vets.
Eight regular archers will win, or six vets (if you don't get 'em first)
With the barracks on your side and this many attackers, promotions on your side definitely would be a factor. Conclusion from their counterattack: get sufficient numbers almost in place, and when you declare war, hit the cities quickly and deny their iron right away before they can make swords.

Regarding the 41 turns, the original smiley denoted it was a friendly ribbing :P It's standard practice in our SG's to allow one or two extra turns under extenuating circumstances, as long as one person doesn't invoke that too often. A good opening, Urug.

Charistatistician :crazyeye:

We don't yet have 3 warriors in position to form a blockade. We have one on his way north that could be turned around, one in the south on lookout, and one in the west finishing up exploring greek lands, and are about to produce one in Memphis, as well as one in the far north which is almost at Blue Dot. Most of our cities are undefended at the moment, with only Thebes having a single MP (we are running 20% lux to keep happy at size 6 -- with another MP at Thebes we should be able to reduce that to 10% now that we have hooked up our spice.)

Wow, what an interesting situation. Only one neighbor, and he's one of the hardest to fight -- but he got a low-food start and not much arable land.

As for the dotmap - I'd like to move Blue Dot one SE. Notice that will put the two middle cattle there within our borders via fill-in between Blue and Red, without waiting for either city to build a temple. That'll help the cities put out more settlers quicker for the northern area.

Do we know what's under that fog tile E of Pharsalos? If it's not a hill, the NE maroon dot becomes slightly more important since it's possible to get irrigation over there before electricity.

I'd suggest avoiding trying to flip Pharsalos; with his production advantage he'll cram dozens of units in there to suppress the flip. And once he gets Literature and Construction, we'd have to burn too many resources to keep our city ahead. Red dot where it is looks good.

Memphis may want to build a barracks, and start to be a military factory. I guess warriors for now is all we can do, though.

Oh, and one place we should almost certainly blockade: north of Pharsalos! In RBE2, the Zulu rushed a city into our lands and then BUILT A SETTLER with it. We don't want Alex doing that and stealing some of that fertile northern land...

Got it, will play tonight.

Yes, the smilie was meant to indicate a friendly jest to Urug. One turn difference is no biggie.

Moving Blue Dot one SW is fine with me, gives some overlap with Red dot but as you say gets the cows in play before a temple. Gives up an extra spice but that's ok, we'd need another city up there anyway to claim the 2 tundra forest spice up there (those ones must be 'shrooms, never heard of boreal forest spice before. :) )

Under the fog E of Pharsalos, I suspect is a grass. The borders of the tile look like grass to me, and it makes sense since Pharsalos has been able to get to 3 reasonably quickly; the only other tile with even moderate food they have in radius is a lake.

I would still vote for temples before barracks; Greece is playing into our cultural advantage by not researching Ceremonial Burial and we should take advantage of that, plus we get cheap temples but not cheap barracks. Literature is a low priority for the AI to research so it is quite possible that Greece will go culture-less for quite some time if they continue to focus on upper tree techs and ignore Ceremonial Burial. Moreover, the more we tie up Greece's time building units to suppress flip chances, the less resources he has available for expansion and infrastructure.

One possibility is to continue to build warriors out of Memphis until Heliopolis finishes a temple (which it needs anyway to get access to its best squares,) then switch warrior production to Heliopolis while Memphis builds temple and barracks, then swap unit production back to Memphis. Memphis has the potential to grow to a fairly large and productive city, and should be able to build a temple and barracks quickly.

Originally posted by Zed-F
Yes, the smilie was meant to indicate a friendly jest to Urug. One turn difference is no biggie.

Don't worry, thats how I took it in the beginning. My answer was simple ironical.

As for the dot map I support T-hawks shipt of the blue dot.

Incidentally, here's the flip chance rules:

The Factors:
N = number of foreign nationals (resistors count as 2).
S = number of 21 city squares under foreign control
C = City Culture factor { =2 if foreigners have more culture IN CITY, =1 if you }
H = Happiness factor { =2 if in disorder, = 1/2 for WLKTD }
T = Number of garrisoning troops
R = Ratio of NATIONAL Cultures (Foreign civ total culture divided by your civ's total)
D = Capitol distance factor { = Ratio of distance to their capital over yours, capped at 4 }

Chance of flip = {[(N + S)*C*H*R] - T} / (20*D) [percent]

Troops = {(N+S)*C*H*R} needed to completely prevent a flip

Thus, if we can jack R high enough quickly enough and Alex obliges by continuing to not research/build culture sources, it won't matter how many troops he piles in Pharsalos, it will eventually flip. We already control 3 of his 21 squares with Thebes' culture (albeit at 3rd culture ring so if they do build a temple there it will steal two of those squares back.)

Well, odds are that all Alex has to do is research Map Making and he'll very soon find someone else to get Ceremonial Burial from. We aren't going to get R above 3 or so; even if we pressure it enough for S to be 7 (and D is about 1/4), with T=5 it's only got about a 3% chance per turn of flipping. In that case, I'd wager that the city will expand borders (reducing S) and Alex will bring R back to even before the city would flip. It's okay for us to make an as-it-happens effort (using Thebes' culture, and Red Dot can build a temple first) but we shouldn't apply resources directly to it - we definitely cannot afford to waste a settler trying to flip Pharsalos.

No, that wasn't my intention. My intention was that our existing cities can build temples sooner rather than later, not that we should found cities located in spots to attempt to apply direct pressure to Pharsalos. I would dispute that we won't get R above 3, however -- all Alex has to go on is his palace, while we have both a palace and a temple. Even if Alex does get the tech for temples sooner rather than later, he still has to choose to and take the time to build them. Many of his cities are stuck in jungle and will take time to amass 60/2=30 shields, especially while in land-grab mode, while all our current cities are on good land and can come up with 30 shields relatively easily. Alex has about 80 (1*20+2*30) culture right now and will still only be amassing culture at 2/turn for quite a few turns yet. We have about 123(1*19+2*52) culture and are growing at 4/turn, soon to get a 1000-year bonus on our temple, and with the potential to build more temples soon as well. With 2 more temples and the 1000 year bonus, and assuming Alex doesn't/can't build any for a number of turns yet, we will be growing culture at 5 times his rate; it won't take long to beat R=3 under those circumstances. I would venture to guess that we can get R significantly higher than 3, at least for a while, and even once libraries become available it will take some time for Alex to catch up.

Ok, enough analysis. I'm not saying we should bend our civ out of shape in pursuit of the flip, absolutely we should not. But, squeezing in some temples definately has the potential to pay off if we get even a little bit of luck. This is even more true if Alex does pop a settler out of Pharsalos and settles somewhere in our rear.

Heh, had to dig around for a minute there to find the post with the save; we sure talk a lot :)

I veto the warrior in Memphis; what good would it do us? Changed to granary; the city's got the shields to build it fairly quickly, and it needs it to grow at any sort of decent speed. Also changed Elephantine to temple; they have good tiles they want to pull in Right Now. One worker at each city is enough while the cities are growing slowly without granaries (Thebes' worker is going to go over to Elephantine.)

(I) A Greek settler comes into view near Thebes. Heliopolis finishes worker, starts temple.

1725: Alexandria founded on the red dot. Our exploring warrior finds Athens.

1675: Thebes builds settler, which goes north.

1650: Yep, a Greek settler left Pharsalos. I'm going to try and run blockade as much as I can to get our settler to Blue Dot first...

London completes the Pyramids! That was, uh, fast. :)

And Paris completes the Oracle.

1600 BC: We connect the silks at Memphis.

1575 BC: I whip the temple in Elephantine. Getting that up brings the wheat in range (speeding its growth curve), and of course boosts our national culture. Our blockade has succeeded and we'll get the blue-dot cattle area. Thebes builds another settler, which I send north.

1550: I have to forget the dot and found Pi-Ramesses:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-dyes.jpg

1525: Mathematics finally finishes. I check diplomacy with Greece, and he has gotten Ceremonial Burial, but not Mathematics, but he has gotten Map Making (we can trade maps.). There's a number of deals we could make: we can offer our world map, Mathematics and our only silks; he's got Warrior Code, Writing, Wheel, Bronze Working, and Dyes. I'll wait for the group discussion. I set 40-turn research to Currency, although that might change.

1500: Greece has founded Herakleia near our Blue Dot site. I'll let Sulla decide whether to continue with our blue dot location (there's a hoplite standing on it right now) or move it, say, one NW. I'd move it; no way is our city going to be ahead on culture, unless it builds the Forbidden Palace and maybe not even then.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-1500bc.jpg

Memphis is working the silks forest in order to get growth the turn after the granary completes; make sure it continues to do that.

I don't know where the Greek settler at Pi is going to go; if it settles on the hill to the south, the city will eventually steal the dyes from us...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-1500bc.zip

My own plan for diplomacy would be this:

Trade Mathematics, our world map, and about 60 gold (I think it was) for Writing. Then cash in everything we've got, if possible, including our only silks (we'll have more soon and he'll have his own at Pharsalos soon too) for Map Making. We've got to make some more friends. Then Memphis could whip a galley fairly efficiently after it finishes its granary, and maybe Elephantine could build one too.

I expect Blue Dot to become our Forbidden Palace site, and I think Alexandria should help it out with workers to get the cattle squares improved for it.

I concur with T-Hawk on his trading plan. We need to contact the other civs ASAP, otherwise Alex will blow past us faster than we can blink once he gets cheap libraries. Mores contacts = good after all. :) We need to broker Mathematics @2nd right away before Alex starts researching it himself and lowers what we can get from it. I'll go back and re-examine the dot maps, trying to keep to them as much as possible but allowing for some change due to Greek settlements. The big positive in the game so far is that we actually are keeping pace with Alex on expansion, thanks to our awesome starting location and his poor one (thanks Sirian!) I'll have the game back within 24 hours.

I didn't do anything to worsen Alex's position. That's the situation the map generator created for him. Just be glad I chose not to put you at that start point. :lol:

We're not really keeping pace; there's at least two more Greek cities off the bottom of the map that aren't shown there, and they've got a settler right by Pi and I think another in the jungle somewhere. We've also got two settlers out there, but that's still a 10-6 city count in his favor...

(0) 1500BC Open up the game and spent a good 15 minutes just looking at our situation and reading the comments of others. The aforementioned blue dot in the north has got to change; I don't think we can win out a culture battle with Herakleia up there. I'm going to place the settler one tile to the west of the original location on the silks; it wastes a bonus grassland and takes the city off the coast, but it will ensure no overlap and still has a lot of very good tile. Minimal (2-tile) overlap with Alexandria. Next settler from Thebes has got to be light blue dot to claim the jungle in our southeast. Yellow dot settler is already on its way.

Diplomacy: I agree with T-Hawks plan to get galleys as soon as possible to make contact with the rest of the world. As a result, I immediately trade Mathematics + WM + 81g for Writing. Unfortunately, even everything we have (322g + 16gpt + silks) is not enough to get Map Making (wow...) We'll have to keep building up funds towards that (researching is folly at this point). Since it only costs 37g (2 turn's income), we found an embassy with Greece. Here's what a city under 50% cost reduction looks like:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4_athens.jpg

Notice that he just got Ceremonial Burial and is working on a temple. Not much hope to flip any Greek cities, if at ever we entertained the idea. Only two defenders in Athens is interesting though. With nothing else to do, I end the turn.

(1) 1475BC Thebes builds settler, Alexandria builds worker. I set Thebes to another settler, Alexandria to a temple that will presumably be whipped. BAD news: the Greeks founded a city right where we were going to put our light blue dot city. It has major overlap with Heliopolis, so there's almost certainly a hidden resource there. The settler produced heads east to found a fishing town.

(2) 1450BC Giza founded, set to worker, may need to be changed to temple.

(3) 1425BC When offering everything, we are now up to "close to a deal" on Map Making.

(4) 1400BC Memphis finishes granary, set to temple. Heliopolis finishes temple, starts on warrior (need some kind of defense), Elephantine finishes warrior, starts on granary. I'm starting several granaries in the expectation that we may want to change them to barracks, but either way we can use the accumulated shields. The Greeks complete the Colossus this turn in Delphi and start the Great Lighthouse there as well. A Greek worker is available for purchase; given the nature of this game, I don't feel bad at all about purchasing it for WM + 27g.

(5) 1375BC Byblos founded as a somewhat overlapped fishing town. It can grab one bonus grassland from Memphis though, and we can use that for whipping purposes. I have it set to temple for whipping at the moment, subjct to veto.

(6) 1350BC We get the Forbidden Palace message this turn. That's pretty darn fast to get to 8 cities. We're not doing bad - problem is that the Greeks are even faster.

(7) 1325BC El-Amarna founded in the north in a revised yellow dot location. It's set to worker, also subject to change as need dictates. Alex has founded a number of cities down in the south, and is close to filling up the continent.

(8) 1300BC Heliopolis borders expand so that we now have significant cultural pressure on Ephesus. A flip would make our lives so much easier...

(9) 1275BC Thebes produces another settler to send to the north, Greece has a settler pair headed up there as well. I set Thebes to barracks, since I don't think we can grab any more cities in the north. We'll get two more up there and Alex will get one more. I whipped a temple at Alexandria, as it can quickly grow back up to size and will give us another edge culturally. Memphis completed a temple and started on barracks for lack of other things to build. We can now get Map Making by trading away everything, but I will hold off to next player on that decision...

(10) 1250BC And a quiet final turn. But now we have some discussing to do as a team...

We really have two options, both of which have advantages and disadvantages. The first would be to buy The Wheel from Alex, find horses, link them up, have all our cities produce barracks, and attack with veteran horses before he has adequate defenses in his outlying colonies. Goal would be to capture the cities that overlap with ours (Pharsalos, Ephesus, Herakleia) and gain complete control of the north. Hold out for a couple of turns against his counters and get lots of tech for peace. Downside is that we have only 7 warriors for military at the moment, lack Bronze Working for spears, Iron Working for swords, Warrior Code for archers, and The Wheel and Horseback Riding for horses. It's entirely possible that Alex could be into the Middle Ages before we even assemble a decent enough force to attack. And if we screw up, we could be killed too.

The other option is to continue peaceful building, trade for Map Making now (it will cost us everything, and I mean Everything we have for it) build some galleys, and pray that we find the rest of the world ASAP. If we can broker contacts, we could get right back into decent shape on techs and possibly get by without having to risk war. The downside is that if we are in fact on an island separated from another landmass by ocean tiles, we might not be able to make contact anyway. And if we are stuck alone with Alex and no way to swing 2 for 1 tech deals until Navigation comes along... we're never going to win this game.

It's a tricky situation, but I'm confident we can pull it out. Some discussion is certainly in order at this point before the next turn gets played out. We can easily follow either route at this point, so there's a lot of options on the table.

RBE4 1250BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4_1250BC.zip)

And our map (I almost forgot to mention: since the game can only handle food consumption in rows of two, we are actually giving the AI a discount of 40% on food - look above how Athens only needs 4 food to grow to the next size! We've really got our work cut out for us here.)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4_1250BC.jpg

I don't want to butt in too much here, since this is your game and all, but research is NOT folly at this point. With only one other civ to buy from, it actually costs MORE commerce to buy than to research -- even at first civ prices.

In patch 1.29f, they introduced a "monopoly" factor that doubles the price for a tech when no one else has it (by "no one else", it only refers to civs that the purchasing civ has contact with, of course).

So, if the cost to research a tech is N, the cost to do second research is now about 13/14*N and the cost to buy it is about 13/14*N*3/4*2 (3/4 is the cash rate for tech) = 39/28 * N, or about 140% the cost of researching it yourself, in terms of pure commerce. That is not counting any AI "screw you" factor, which I'm not sure how to calculate (I think most of the "screw you factor" is absorbed by the huge difference in N for you and them).

To compare, let's say you know two other civs, both of whom own a certain tech. The cost to research is then ~6/7*N and the cost to buy is ~9/14*N or about 65% of the original cost.

Now, I'm not 100% certain of my numbers, but I feel reasonably confident. They changed three of the factors in this computation in 1.29 (which balances things pretty nicely, IMHO). Buying from a monopolizer is almost always a bad idea at this point.

I wish you all much luck with the game. On the plus side, you don't have to worry about being buried before you can get started. On the minus side, teching is gonna be tough.

I'll try to stay out of "what to do" decisions/discussions, but I did want to point out what I see to be a (potentially fatal) flaw in reasoning.

Arathorn

I'm just curious if anyone ever considered the military option, trying to curtail Alex's growth significantly, move toward making the island your own someday, and letting him play your researcher while he lived. (I know, I know, hoplites...) ??

Was my thinking *that* insane in the fighting w/stats post at the end of page one, or just that no one wants to pursue such a suicidal avenue at this stage?

(I'm guessing it's preposterous enough to get a: [phaser] )

Charis

Well, the advantage to buying, of course, is that you get the tech NOW, rather than 20-30 turns from now, which is when we want Map Making.

Re the food cost thing - I had mentioned this before in the DSG thread, and that happens because a granary splits one of the rows-of-two in half. Notice, though, that the city still says growth in 3 turns! Perhaps the food is tracked properly behind the scenes and just isn't displayed right?

Alex hasn't gotten any contacts yet, right? He's had Map Making for a good 12 or so turns now; no idea if he's gotten a galley out to explore (has Elephantine seen one sail by?) We may be alone until Astronomy; but we do have one BIG advantage: we know how to run suicide galleys...

It'd be impossible to get super-expensive techs from Alex for peace. But, do remember that we don't need Horseback Riding or Warrior Code with our UU. War might not be completely suicidal; a stack of 12 or so veteran war chariots could probably clear out Pharsalos and Herakleia. That'd start both of our Golden Ages, of course; and we could leverage the increased production towards aggression better than he could.

One other option is to do BOTH the Map Making and war routes; pay through the nose for it, and try to get him to declare by demanding withdrawal and recover our gold/turn payments.

But we're a couple of player turns away from doing any of that right now. JMB is up now; see what you can do...

BTW, I'd suggest taking Giza off worker and starting it on a Forbidden Palace path. Have it get a granary up (faster growth will in fact recover the 60 shields by the time it accumulates 200 shields for the FP). Also, Thebes can supply some more workers very quickly, since it seems to be done cranking settlers. We didn't need the workers back on the start of my turn, but we do now.

All in all, I'm in favor of not going to war just yet, but it might become so by my next turn...

If we ask him to leave, he might just leave, like the Iros in RBE2. Doesn't hurt to try of course. I'm not 100% sure about this, but I believe the only way we get the "leave or declare war" option is if he moves a unit next to one of our cities.

I checked the save and discovered, that we will eventually get at least one more contact:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_Border.jpg

There is a purple border near Pi-Ramesses.

Hence the question is, can we make contact before Alex does and get the brooker option gaining most of what we spend on map making or should we wait until Alex made the contact and buy it from him. Does anybody know if it is cheaper to buy the contact and then map making @3rd or 4th or is it cheaper to buy map making @2nd and make the contacts ourself with the additional possibility of trading contacts?

Concerning a war, I would prefer using swords. First it is more effective than war chariots. Second, I want our golden age under a better goverment. Using swords has another advantage: we can prebuild a couple of vet warriors and we can build some spears for defense. If we can some day kick Alex from our continent, we should do so, just for the fun. Of course only in case we would be successful.

WOW, good catch! :goodjob:

I'd say to buy map making and get the contact ourselves. ASAP. The contact itself will be good to trade to Greece for at least one tech. Too bad Pi will take several more turns to build a galley - 8 turns until it reaches size 2 and then the whip will only get 10 shields. I guess Memphis will have to, or maybe Byblos can whip one.

If our galley meets MORE THAN ONE civ over there, we're set. Buy techs at late-civ cost from over there and sell to Greece at monopoly.

When we get the contact, though, we should trade it to Greece for a tech or two right away, or as soon as our galley discovers all the other civs that the purple one has met. I am surprised Alex hasn't demanded tribute yet; he will soon, and he'll demand the contact if we have it. And we will not be in a position to refuse the demand yet.

This development makes peaceful building much more of a possibility, and immediate war less necessary. I'd still favor war chariots over swords if we do decide to; they're significantly cheaper and can retreat, which is very important.

I peeked at the save myself now too - Why is Memphis still working that forest? It was supposed to get back on all 2-food squares after its granary was built. :smoke:

Heck of a load on JMB's shoulders, but I'm sure you can pull it off. :)

I've got it. I am all for contact, but I'll aslo start beefing up our military in case the other civ(s) are as far behind as we are...

I'll post tonight or tomorrow morning.

JMB

Arathorn: I'm aware of the fact that buying into techs @2nd costs more than researching them yourself. I guess I should have phrased it as "researching techs is folly, but buying them @2nd prices is even more folly". :) What I meant is that we can't get better than a 40-turn rate even at 100% science, so doing "research" by turning up the science slider makes no sense. I should have been more clear.

I had no idea that border was there; to be honest I can't even see it right now! But I'm sure you guys have better eyes than I do for spotting those kind of things. If there's a civ there, it's not even a question: we buy Map Making ASAP and whip out a galley to find them before old Alex does! Even if they are also isolated, we can get a ton of stuff brokering contact to Alex. And since 3rd civ prices are so much cheaper than 2nd civ ones... it's well worth it. Keep in mind that right now it takes ALL of our gpt + our only silks to get Map Making from Alex. And if we trade away our silks, we will have to raise the luxury tax, which will require we end our 10% science rate. That's not a huge problem since we can make a scientist somewhere, but I just wanted to point it out.

And as to why we're working that forest in Mephis... it's a silks forest and pulls 3 gold. If you move that tile to a bonus grassland, we don't have enough gpt to purchase Map Making from Alex. So maybe it wasn't :smoke: after all! :lol: JMB - go make contact for us! :D

1250 bc - With Memphis producing 6 spt, it'll only take another 4 turns to produce a galley (it doesn't seem worth it to whip the galley...). I decide to wait a couple of turns before purchasing Map Making.

1225 bc - Begin temple in Giza.

1200 bc - Nothing much.

1175 bc - Damn. Greece has connected their silks. I decide to pillage the road that they built in our territory (on the trees 2 E of Elephantine). I hope that isn't against RB Epic rules... Map Making from the Greeks for our WM, Silks, 16 gpt, and 412 gp. Switch Memphis to Galley.

1150 bc - Alex wants to exchange his WM for ours and 2 gp. I agree.

1125 bc - The Greeks begin the Great Wall.

1100 bc - I see what looks like a sea lane outside of Byblos. I decide to chance it and on the first move, we see another purple border!!

1075 bc - We meet the Indians. Mathematics, contact with the Greeks, and our WM to India for contact with China, their WM, Bronze Working, Warrior Code, the Wheel, and Mysticism. Code of Laws from China for contact with the Greeks, WM, 5 gpt, and 62 gp. WM, and Code of Laws to the Greeks for their WM, Iron Working, and 113 gp. Begin barracks in Memphis. The Indians begin the Great Lighthouse. I didn't bother even trying because I seriously doubt that we would have had a chance as it is already being constructed by the Greeks as well.

1050 bc - Not much. I bring our galley back to our side because I think that there is another island to the NE of Byblos.

1025 bc - Not much.

1000 bc - I guess what I thought might have been land was not... Trade around WMs, and that's all she wrote...

JMB

Here is the file...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4-egypt-1000bc.zip

And here is a our WM.

http://www.stanford.edu/~jmb/CIV3/RBE4/RBE4-1000bc.jpg

Hi all,

I very much liked this thread and the previous RBEs. for a change I decided to take my shot at this game using the first save.

I'm not going to give you details but I want to commend Uru' for an excellent early start. I'll remember to research Mathermatics myself as that is what helped you A LOT in the negotiations with the Indians and Chinese.

You were also lucky to have Greece neglect the northern part of the map at the beginning. By the time I got my first settler they have already built a city close to your Elephantine and shortly afterwards built Pharsalos close to where you have it.

No more comments from me, oh only one, I also noticed that border in the exact same place, congrats again Uru'.

Please consider the AI 50% bonus before starting a war.

Yndy, you should looking forward to reading the Epic 17 reports on monday. I'm sure there will be lots of trading and researching hints.

Consider this my got it.

Well, so much for that plan. :) Alex decided not to cooperate with our cultural push and looks like he made temples a priority, so our hopes for a high cultural advantage have been dashed. :(

We have a temple going in Pi-Ramesses, which doesn't seem right unless we were planning to whip it, as it's stuck at size 2 and needs some workers to clear jungle. How many spt is it pulling in?

Does Giza really need a temple right away? A granary -> FP might be better. We can build temples in the surrounding cities to fill in culture.

Pi-Ramesses needs the temple to pull in the two fish squares. That'll ramp up its growth curve faster than clearing jungle to start. It's only pulling in one shield now, and that will be true until it gets at least two mined grasslands and maybe until we get out of despotism. So in the meantime, may as well ramp up the population and get that temple going. No need to whip it.

Giza should definitely, IMO, do granary first, then maybe a temple (the city will grow pretty quickly and may need the happiness), then the FP.

We may need a courthouse at Giza as well. Have to see how badly corrupted it is first.

I suppose Pi-Ramesses just grew to 2 recently if it has no good food tiles. We probably ought to have whipped immediately in that instance even if we only get 10 shields. Growth curve for whipping now versus not: well we are not growing at all now so that's 8 turns 'till the temple is built and another 5 turns waiting for border expansion of no food. Right now we have no food in the box (I assume) and are size 2. If we whip we will have no food in the box but will be growing again, 6 turns of 1 food waiting for the temple to be rushed and expand borders (that's including the current turn) and then 7 turns at 2 food will bring us back up to size 2. Plus we get the border expansion for possible dyes hookup and extra culture that much faster. I'd say rushing the temple is better, we wind up with the same food at the end (pop 2, no food in box) but have the temple sooner.

Courthouse before FP is only worthwhile if you're going to rush it (but it may be worthwhile to whip it using the cheap below-7 population and the granary). It's our 7th-closest city, which on a standard map isn't over 50% corruption out of despotism (that's the 8th city), and so the courthouse won't recover more than 3 shields tops. If the FP takes less than 80/3=27 turns to build (which should be the case), the FP comes online sooner without building a courthouse first than with. (The courthouse does provide marginal extra commerce in the interim.)

My point about not whipping the temple at Pi is that then we can save the whip for something else, like adding 20 shields towards a granary, without having two whip effects in place at the city. Getting the dyes within our borders early isn't going to matter, since we won't have the worker labor there for a while. But it's pretty much a tossup; Urug's call of course. (BTW, I'm glad to see Greece didn't settle a city with the dyes in its 2nd-ring; I was worried about that.)

Whipping a spearman and swapping to granary could be done after the temple completes if we wait, but if we whip now we will still have an extra 8 shields available from not waiting for the temple to complete and will be able to whip a second time without extra penalty sooner; i.e. whip now, wait 20, whip from 20 shields to barracks, and swap to granary. By then we should be about ready to buy into Republic anyway. We might choose to build something else there next anyway, since a granary there doesn't really help that much until we clear some of the jungle around there as there's only a couple usable food tiles even with a temple. Thebes might be able to fix that by being a worker factory, however. In any case, as you say, it's Urug's call. :)

I think the temple in Giza is more important (right now) than the granary. Also, I am not quite sure why we should build a granary in Giza (right now)... Currently, it can work 2 cattle tiles and will grow quite quickly as is. As we don't have access to a large number of luxuries, it would seem to me that increasing the population even quicker would be asking for problems (I am not quite sure how many citizens would be placated by raising our lux tax at this distance). Because of these factors and the fact that Giza has no potable water (and can't grow past size 6 without an aqueduct) I don't really understand the desire to build a granary in the near future...

WRT building a courthouse before the FP, because of our excess food situation, I think we might be able to complete the FP sooner if we grow to size 6 and then use entertainers to maintain WLTK days (to reduce the corruption rates)... What do you guys think?

I'm pretty confident we could combat happiness problems with sufficient lux tax, though building the temple after the granary would certainly help. We also get MP while in Despotism, so until we go to Republic, so we really only need 1 or 2 happy faces from lux tax after we get another spice hooked up for our use and the temple built. We should be able to get roads built up there fairly quickly for the required commerce to run the lux tax since we have a few workers in the area and Thebes can pump out more quickly.

Generally we want to grow as fast as possible to get people in the fields producing more shields, get more workers going, etc. and lux tax is a good way to keep them happy. As for WLTKD, it doesn't seem likely to me that that would provide enough benefit to be worth having the people not working the fields, but it's certainly easy enough in the game to try out once we hit size 6, and with irrigated cows we should be able to run with enough food to allow it.

Actually, you have a good point, JMB. I totally forgot the city wasn't on fresh water - it's rare for me to have such an FP site, but you're right. Consider that Giza is size 2 now, and will reach at least 4 before the granary completes. The granary then does not speed the growth to 5; it's only the growth to 6 that comes sooner, and that by about four turns. So, yes, skipping the granary gets the FP sooner.

As for happiness... we need 5 total happiness factors in Giza at size 6. Our own silks (that Zed keeps calling spices - put them on your meat and see how they taste) and two MP is three... you can't count on a city that far away without a river to have more than one happy face from lux tax (best guess: 8 commerce from six road tiles and the city square; 4 or 5 after corruption; would require 30% or 40% lux tax for 2 happy faces.) So yeah, a temple should be built before the FP.

WLTKD won't happen. We need at least five CONTENT faces, and we can only muster three: the temple and MPs. The city would require two specialists (not necessarily entertainers: we just'd need to make the unhappy citizens into any specialists) to get WLKTD, which won't be worth it.

Oh, one other thing: Get Heliopolis set to zero surplus food, if possible. If it can still finish the granary in 4 turns, it comes out ahead on food by finishing the granary before growth. (And Elephantine needs the same MMing.) And is that iron 2 squares south of Helio? Might want to stick another city in the jungle to lock that down...

I didn't say a temple shouldn't be built before the FP, I did think a granary would be a good idea though. However, analysis always beats gut feel and general rules, temple->FP for Giza it is. :)

Hmm, spices, nummy... what? These are silks? Whatever, they taste good to me. :) Comes from being raised by spiders, I suppose...

After no access to the forum for more than 24 hours I can finally post my play from yesterday. Nothing interesting happend during my last 10 turns. We start training some military and Giza started on FP. Thats basically all.

(0) 1000 BC: Checking our empire: delay granary in Elephantine by 1 turn so it grows the turn after granary completes. Don't do the same in Heliopolis, because it will grow next turn. Growth delay will delay the granary by one turn and will give only 4 additional food. Whip temple in Pi-Ramesses to gain expansion faster. Byblos needs a harbor, not a temple.

(1) 975 BC: Abydos founded. Byblos whips barracks and switches to harbor.

(2) 950 BC: Mao has horseback riding. Giza whips temple.

(3) 925 BC: Giza starts on FP. Nottingham completes Lighthouse.

(4) 900 BC: zzzzzz

(5) 875 BC: Alex has currency. Athens finished Great Wall. :(

(6) 850 BC: zzzzzz

(7) 825 BC: Mao sold horseback riding to Alex and Gandhi and got currency in return. Hire a scientist in Alexandria to prevent disorder. Set research to 0.

(8) 800 BC: Alex has philosophy.

(9) 775 BC: zzzzzz

(10) 750 BC: zzzzzz

Heliopolis is on barracks , which will complete next turn. The worker north of it will clear the forest in 3 turns. Make sure you use the 10 shields.

I started clearing some jungle near Heliopolis. The city needs a few more tiles and its on the way towards Pi-Ramesses and our dyes.

Thebes is currently on a spear-worker cycle, which is not optimal. We should consider letting it grow once we feel, we have enough workers (despite the fact that you can't have enough workers until all tiles are completely improved), though in this case it will face happieness problems soon.

Here is our current empire:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC0750.jpg

and here the save: BC750 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC0750.zip)

How are you planning to get some iron? You got the one south on the mountain and the other in the Greek territory.

Hasn't Alex demanded anything yet?

Producing workers from Thebes at size 7 is very very much non-optimal. The city can produce a worker every other turn staying right at size 6; let's let it do that for a while longer now that Heliopolis and Memphis can supply military. With that pile of jungle, we probably want about 20-25 workers total.

We can put in one more Eskimo village east of Abydos, since Abydos can't ever use more than two tundra tiles. Also, I still think we should put one more city in the jungle to claim the iron, since a Greek city will eventually get ahead of Helio. NE of the iron seems to be the safest spot (and no that's not a cultural push as long as the iron is unclaimed.) E or SE of the iron is also possible, but that (more) risks overlap and flip from Ephesus. Still, it's a low flip chance, given that our national culture isn't terrible and the proximity of our capital.

Our Map Making payments run out on Zed's turn; hopefully he can swing some brokerage deal on Philosophy and get us towards Republic.

Hey, guys,

I am quite busy this week and am leaving on Thurs for a week and a bit after that. I will have access to a computer but don't know whether I will have access to Civ3 (I'll try to find out.) Hopefully I will be able to keep contributing during this time but I might need to ask for a few switches in the schedule until I get back. If that bothers anyone, let me know and we can just skip me for a bit.

I can't play this evening, so I'd like to switch with whoever's next (T-hawk?) for this round.

I don't think I'll be able to play tonight either, actually. I'll claim it late Tuesday night (like 11:00 EST) if you haven't by then.

The way things are going it doesn't look like I will be able to play anything (at all!) until at least Thurs and more likely Fri, but I will have access to Civ3 where I am headed. Whoever wants to jump ahead of me is welcome to, or we can just skip me this round if we get far enough through the rotation before I can hop in.

Well, let's get moving again.

Checking out Giza - OUCH. It's losing 6 of 8 shields to corruption! That will require a courthouse before the FP, for sure.

Why's the worker just SE of Giza improving a non-bonus grass square before a bonus one? Urug, you're better than that ;)

Adjust Alexandria to finish granary before growing.

As I said, I want to ensure we claim that iron in the jungle. It's a third-ring square for both Heliopolis and Thermopylae; and we can't count on Helio staying ahead in culture. I swap Thebes to settler to do this.

Lux tax dropped to 10%, no entertainers required.

Diplo check: Gandhi's got Horseback Riding and we've got Code of Laws. No need to hoard the tech (China and Greece have it), so we trade.


730 BC: Buy a Greek worker.

English complete Great Library.

690 BC: Our Map Making payments run out, but it doesn't help us. Alex is four techs ahead of the rest of the known world.


630 BC: Argh, Giza is unhappy at size 5 and there isn't anything we can do about it. It would take 30% lux tax to get even one happy face here.

Asyut is founded in the jungle to claim the iron. Yeah, it's actually within Heliopolis' workable tiles. But Helio only has one other tile of overlap, and this is the safest way for us to claim the iron. Plus it gives us a link of our own territory all the way down to Pi-Ramesses, and it's also on fresh water.

610 BC: The three civs we know all got contact with all four other civs. We don't have anything besides cash to trade for any of it, though. We have one-beaker Currency finishing in 2 turns, and India hasn't gotten that yet...

590 BC: but then India gets Currency before ours finishes.

Contact with Russia is the cheapest; I buy it from India for 63 gold. Buying the cheapest contact is the way to go, since they're usually far enough behind that you can trade them some tech for the rest of the contacts. That holds true here.

Contact with France from Russia for Mathematics. We don't have any tech to sell France, though. So I trade Code of Laws to Russia for contact with England plus Russia's TM. The last contact is Germany, and I trade our WM to Russia to get it.

I want to finish brokering our world map, but the only one who will give anything for it is Germany. WM + 39g to Germany for Literature.

No further deals available until we finish Currency this turn.

570 BC:

Currency to France for Philosophy and her TM.
Currency to Russia for the full World Map.
Currency to Germany for his 40g and WM, which has some more map info.

England and Greece have The Republic, but we aren't anywhere near buying it (171 + 30/turn is "doubtful".) Buy it as soon as we can, of course, and it should be good to trade for Polytheism and/or Construction. We've got some marketplaces coming in, which will help.

Unfortunately, there are no sea trading routes to the new civs; trading with them will have to wait for Navigation.

Chop some of those forests for Giza to get its courthouse done, and maybe cash rush it if we get into Republic soon. Alexandria's building a settler to stick in one more tundra village next to Abydos, since Abydos can't ever work more than two land squares.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-550bc.zip

Sulla, if you're ready to go, take it and we'll bypass Zed this round; or you can wait for Zed, your call.

Why's the worker just SE of Giza improving a non-bonus grass square before a bonus one? Urug, you're better than that :)

My turn might not have been the best this time, but your question could be explained easily: The worker came from mining the grassland 2 tiles southeast of El-Armana and couldn't reach the bonus grassland you mentioned, and he was indeed heading for it. I decided letting him build a road on his current position first instead of letting him do nothing last turn. I haven't checked the save file, but I really hope he builds a road and is not mining the tile, which could indeed wait.

May as well skip me this time around, you guys ought to be able to complete a round before I can get some time to play. I'll jump in again next time.

No need to wait for Zed, I'll take it and have it back within 24 hours. I haven't been posting in this thread a lot, but I have been following the game closely. A great job from everyone on the contact trading; being behind by only a couple of techs at this stage of the game is nothing short of incredible. I'm glad you guys were able to see that purple border under the fog!

(0) 550BC Most everything seems to be running well when I pick up the game. I notice one interesting thing though, in that both Hieraconopolis and El-Amarna are building temples and can whip them if desired. Both are hopelessly corrupt at the moment (El-Amarna is only getting 1 out of 7 shields!) so it doesn't seem worthwhile not to rush them. They have enough food tiles not to need harbors, so it doesn't look like the plan was to whip a building and then switch over to something else. If it was, then I'm sorry but there was no note from anyone else. Both cities are whipped, getting 17 shields each (not quite a perfect twenty) for their temples. I couldn't find a convincing argument not to whip them, if this was a mistake I'll take the credit.

Diplomatically, I note that we are at parity technologically with Germany, Russia, and France. India is up Polytheism on us, China is up Polytheism and Construction on us, and Greece/England are in the Middle Ages with The Republic. With a marketplace completing in Thebes next turn, we will probably be able to trade for Republic @3rd and get the techs we need to enter the Middle Ages. Let's see what happens.

(1) 530BC Iron is hooked up this turn by El-Amarna. Even if we dial our luxury tax down to 0%, we still can't afford to pick up the Republic, or come even close to it. 201g + 41gpt is still doubtful to pick up the tech. Since we need to increase our luxury tax, not decrease it, I think it would be better to get what we can by popping into the Middle Ages now. Construction from China for 197g + 19gpt. Polytheism + 59g from India for Construction. We enter the Middle Ages in 530BC, not too shabby for a Deity game in which contact was delayed for some time. The tech laggards of course are too poor to give us anything for these techs and Republic remains insanely expensive. If we're lucky, some of the other civs will research Republic before Polytheism/Construction and we'll be able to get it relatively cheaply. We are down only Republic and the freebie tech Monotheism to the tech leaders at the moment and sitting in the middle of the pack where all of the brokering opportunities exist. A good place to be at this stage in the game. Luxuries to 20% to prevent rioting in Thebes and Heliopolis. Memphis and Elephantine both switched from markets to aqueducts so they can continue growing.

(2) 510BC Tech leaders grabbed Monarchy this turn. Maybe one of the laggards will get it and we can trade them Poly and Construction for it. That would be nice... I pull in extra gold trading WMs around like I will do every turn, since we really need that gold. I forgot to mention last turn that the 20% luxuries lets us get rid of the taxman in Giza, and we are now able to get 3 shields/turn instead of 2 towards our courthouse. :D

(3) 490BC Alexandria produces its settler, set to aqueduct. A quiet turn with nothing going on diplomatically.

(4) 470BC France picked up Polytheism this turn, the other laggards remain behind. No other new techs. Found an embassy with India because it is only 37g; Delhi has barracks, granary, temple, library, is working on colosseum, is garrisoned by 4 spears and an archer, and India is running 40% science. I also noticed something this turn: Greek workers clearing jungle unfazingly picked out one that had a bonus grassland under it from 5 or 6 that were identical. Seems like they can tell that as well as future resources.

(5) 450BC Memphis finishes an aqueduct, Byblos finishes its harbor. Some tiles are reshuffled between them to get Memphis growing once again. They are set to market and temple respectively. World maps get traded but no one has any new techs. Just for refernce, we are 6th in land area and 4th in population, 6th overall on the histograph. That's nothing short of remarkable for a game like this (though Russia and India really got abused badly to make them weaker than us).

(6) 430BC Asyut (T-Hawk's iron culture wedge city) hits size 2 and whips out its temple. We definitely need culture here ASAP, and the city's surrounded by jungle without really any good tiles to work. Russia picked up Polytheism this turn, but other than that no new techs. Of course it's possible that the leaders have Theology and we just can't see that, but I would expect a Sistine popup message if that were the case. Found an embassy with China for 47g, Beijing has barracks, temple, library, colosseum, four spears, and archer, 2 settlers (?) in it, running 40% science and working on Hanging Gardens (due in 24 turns even at only 6 shields/turn). We have embassies with all of our closest neighbors; founding them with the far away civs is probably not as urgent.

(7) 410BC Heliopolis finishes market. For lack of something better, I set it to colossuem, which possibly could become a cathedral if we're lucky and get Monotheism soon. Greece has moved two settler/spear pairs towards the Giza area; what could they be up to? All of the land in that region has been claimed. No tech progress as usual.

(8) 390BC Avaris founded in the northern tundra as another overlapped fishing town. Every tile counts, after all! Feudalism has been discovered by the AI civs this turn, though only Greece and England (the tech leaders have it). France also picked up Construction and jumped into the Middle Ages this turn while China picked up The Republic. The prices for everything are ludicrously high, and far out of our range. It's really a shame we can't trade our (many) excess silks around.

(9) 370BC The Greeks pulled something very clever this turn: they turned their settlers around and merged them into Pharsolus, increasing its population from 7 to 11. Not the kind of thing you would expect to see an AI civ do. Thebes finished a colossuem this turn, starts on library. It should be fine in terms of happiness up to size 12 now.

(10) 350BC Nothing of interest other than trading maps around happened this turn.

At the moment, we're sitting in the middle of a pack of AI civs. Greece and Egypt are out in front, and the buying techs at 3rd civ prices is prohibitively expensive. China has both government techs, and they refuse to sell them as well. No one else has any government techs. India and France have the exact same techs as we do, Russia and Germany are behind on Construction. We can't really move forward until we pick up The Republic; obviously that needs to be the next tech we acquire. Once more civs get it the price will come down; at the moment all our gold + 30gpt just gives us a "doubtful" message. In 10 turns we will get back the 20gpt I traded in order to get Construction. This wasn't a waste since we got Polytheism as well and were able to construct aqueducts in cities that were not growing before. We were nowhere close to buying Republic at the start of my turn. I'd advise trading world maps around every turn; while it's boring it nets about 7-10gpt extra, which is a lot when we only make 15gpt. And in this game, we need every advantage we can get. Good luck to the next player! :)

RBE4 350BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4_350BC.zip)

Map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4_350BC.jpg

Good turn. I would've held out to buy Republic instead of the other techs, but such is the fun of an SG; I can't ever call a 2-for-1 tech deal a bad move. :) And we do need the aqueducts.

I was doing world map sales every turn too, netting an extra 4-8 gold per turn; it does definitely add up.

JMB - Up Now
Urugharakh - On Deck

Got it. Will post tonight.

JMB

350 - Everything looks good and there is nothing to change... Elephantine completes aqueduct, starts marketplace. Giza completes courthouse (we are now getting 6 spt), begins FP (we also need an aqueduct, but since it will take 17 turns to complete, if the next player wants, they can change it...). Our first palace expansion!

330 - Move warrior from Byblos towards Asyut to help protect against flips. I move several workers down towards Pi-Ram to clear jungle... I want to get our dyes online asap. China declares war on the Indians.

310 - Not much. Elephantine grows and needs a scientist to prevent disorder. Greece demands our TM and 28 gp. We cave. Memphis completes marketplace, begins Spearman.

290 - Not much. Thebes completes library, begins spearman. Greeks begin the Sistine Chapel.

270 - Not much.

250 - Whip temple in Byblos. Chinese want an alliance versus the Indians. We don't accept. English are beginning the Sistine Chapel. The English complete the Hanging Gardens. Greeks cascade to Sistine... The Greeks might be getting aggressive (a few units enter our borders and a couple mass around Asyut). Everyone except France has gotten both Monotheism and Republic this turn.

230 - I decide to protect our workers with warriors to hopefully discourage the Greeks... Realize that I forgot to try to buy Republic. An alliance versus the Indians is worth about 400 gp to China. Alliance versus the Indians, 277 gp, and 14 gpt to China for Monarchy. Monarchy, 3 gp, 5 gpt to Germany for the Republic. Monotheism and 3 gp from Russia for Monarchy and 8 gpt (I dropped our lux tax to by 10% to be able to make this deal...). I decide to revolt this turn (many of our cities would go into disorder this turn anyways...). Because we are broke, we will probably end up selling off something this turn... Fortunately, we didn't.

210 - We sucessfully weather the storm and are now a Republic. I really think we are going to get attacked by Greece within the next 2 to 3 turns (they moved in more troops... They are however polite towards us...). They seem to be heading towards Pi-Ram. I try trading them 12 gpt, but couldn't get anything for it. Pretty much everyone has Feudalism now.

190 - Nothing much. More troops move towards Pi-Rameness... There must be some resource within its radius...

170 - I trade the Greeks 4 gpt for 62 gp. As expected, the Greeks declare war. We lose Pi-Rameness. The Chinese begin Sun Tzu's.

150 - Troop shuffling. We lost our source of iron (for our lower cities) so I moved a bunch of workers onto the mountain outside Asyut to build a road. Boy am I am glad that I get to pass this game off... *smile* (actually, I'll probably shadow along for fun...) The two Greek galleys heading up the coast are probably heading for our lightly/undefended tundra cities.

Right now, Greece's best unit is a swordsman. I say we go on a pillaging campaign (especially around Pharalos which has one of their horses, their only silks, and their only source of iron...). If we are able to prevent them from building more swordsmen (and from getting knights (at present, they only have horsemen)), get Feudalism, and our iron hooked up, we could do a lot of damage to their infrastructure... BTW, it is probably a good idea to move the warrior in Alexandria to cover our worker (and pillage their source of iron...) before going on to the next turn.


JMB

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBEDSG4-150BC.zip

Originally posted by JMB

230 - I decide to protect our workers with warriors to hopefully discourage the Greeks... Realize that I forgot to try to buy Republic. An alliance versus the Indians is worth about 400 gp to China. Alliance versus the Indians, 277 gp, and 14 gpt to China for Monarchy. Monarchy, 3 gp, 5 gpt to Germany for the Republic. Monotheism and 3 gp from Russia for Monarchy and 8 gpt (I dropped our lux tax to by 10% to be able to make this deal...). I decide to revolt this turn (many of our cities would go into disorder this turn anyways...). Because we are broke, we will probably end up selling off something this turn... Fortunately, we didn't.


It once happened that I had to pay large amounts of gpt, revolted and while in anarchy, didn't have the money to pay. Thought I'll lose a building. I didn't but I lost my rep.

Originally posted by JMB


170 - I trade the Greeks 4 gpt for 62 gp. As expected, the Greeks declare war. We lose Pi-Rameness. The Chinese begin Sun Tzu's.



I guess you didn't lose yours though. I'm puzzled :confused: .
You can stay in anarchy, not pay your dues and not get a rep-hit?

PS Good luck with the war against the greeks.

(0) 150 BC: I kill the 2 warriors near Memphis and and archer near Heliopolis without loss and get an elite spear. No need they pillage our precious tiles.

Send a spear to greece silks.

Do some further troop shuffeling.

How have the 2 workers southeast of Asyut moved? According to the road status they must have either been already dead or moved there from our territory. The 2 spears will probably die in open terrain against 2 swords, one of them vet and an archer. Time for a desperate move. A vet warrior from Asyut looses against the reg sword, then one of the vet spears kills it. At least our workers have a chance now.

Why in hell are there 2 greek galleys on our western coast and our nearby galley hasn't attacked them? The odds are 50-50 we would have won, but they would have lost 3 troops in case we where successful.

Interturn: One of our spears died, but the archer didn't attacked, so workers are still ours. Chinese kill a indian galley on our northern coast.

The preturn took me more than one hour. I have to leave this evening for the weekend. So I might have to give back the turn I stole from Zed in the beginning due to time reasons unless you are willing to wait until monday. :)

Go get 'em Urugharakh! :hammer:

If we could somehow take the cities inside our territory, like Pharsalos and Ephesus, this could help out our situation quite a bit. I don't know if that's going to be possible or if simply defending is all that we can do... I am somewhat glad that I'm not playing these turns too. :) Don't be afraid to trigger our War Chariot golden age if needed; surviving an attack and expanding a bit would be a good of it. Best of luck, we might need it!

(post#1000 for me, btw) [party]

OK, I managed to finish my turn in time. We fight a very successful defending war with few losses and a couple of kills.

Concerning Sullas war charriot golden age: we need horses for this and have none. Concerning the assault on Alex cities: I leave that to Zed-F, T-hawk and maybe even you, Sulla.

(1) 130 BC: Thebes finished our first sword and will produce spears with 20 shields/turn from now on. Switched tiles between Thebes, Manphis and Byblos, so that the latter pulls 3 shields/turn instead of 1. Mephis away from archer, so it can finish a sword once our Iron is online next turn. Heliopolis finished Catherdal and will add a warrior to be upgraded to a sword next turn. Elephantine hires an entertainer, Alexandria switches scientist to clown and Giza hires scientist all to prevent revolt next turn. Fortunately this doesn't cost a shield in Giza. Otherwise I would have opted for raising luxes to 30% at the cost of 17 gpt.

(2) 110 BC: Iron connected. We upgrade 3 warriors to swords. Memphis and Heliopolis will both buid swords every 3 turns, while Thebes will add a spear per turn. Elephantine switched to cathedral ready next turn and will then add to our military. We need every sword and I decided the market has to wait.

Interturn: Spear at greece silks defends successful against a newly produced sword from Pharsalos.

(3) 90 BC: One of our new vet swords kills a sword on the gold hill beside Asyut and promotes to elite.

Interturn: 2 spears got killed in the assault on Asyut, but the city is still ours. Gandhi asked for peace. Unfortunately I had to decline because our MA with Mao. :( WE can expand our palace. [party]

(4) 70 BC: We kill a vet warrior and a vet sword. Switch Asyut from granary to wall, wich will be ready next turn.

Interturn: A vet sword pillaged a tile beside Asyut. Our spear at greek silks kill another sword.

(5) 50 BC: We kill a vet sword near Asyut, which is now save. We kill our first hoplite. Even the first sword was successful and has one hitpoint left. I can't allow a hoplite pillaging campain. Now the greek galleys are out of 3 turn range form Alexandria. So I move the defending spear onto greek iron for pillaging.

(6) 30 BC: We pillage Alex iron.

Interturn: Silk spear kills another attacking sword. London completes Sun Tzu. Alex starts Copernicus.

(7) 10 BC: We kill another 2 archers and a horse.

Interturn: Alex signed Liz to an MA against us.

(8) 10 AD: Alex wants 220 g for peace. We have only 2 horses left in our territory, both not dangerous at the moment and no war weariness. So I decline. With now 9 swords, 3 of them elite, and buildin one sword and one spear every turn we should think about some rewards our of this war. I would like to have Pharsarlus, Hereiklia, Ephesus and our Pi-Ramesses. Well, that is wishful thinking.

Interturn: Germany joined the war. I feared something like that, but an MA against Liz was too expensive last turn.

(9) 30 AD: We kill another 2 archers and a hoplite. Our territory is currently without foreign units.

Interturn: 2 archers kill one of our precious spears on a hill.

(10) 50 AD: Our swords kill another 2 archers and a horse. Peac with Alex drops to 200 g. War weariness hits. I raise luxes to 30% and hire a couple of specialists in our corrupt cities. We can afford feudalism, but not theology for a 2 to one trade with Joanie. So I don't do it.

We defended ourself successful during the last 10 turns. Our military changed from 11 warriors, 13 spears and a very dangerous position near Asyut in 150 BC before i took over:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_BC0150a.jpg

to 7 warriors, 17 spears, 11 swords and a secure position now.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_AD0050a.jpg

But we have lost Pi-Ramesses in the war and gained nothing so far. I want at least Pharsalos before we make peace. This would give us a silk monopol, horses one additional iron and denies iron to Alex. I would prefer taking Ephesus in addition, which would reduce cultural pressure on Asyut consideralbe. Hereiklia and Pi-Ramesses would be fine, but are no must have. If necessary we should switch to monarchy, wich is not too bad being religious. Eventually we should kick Alex from our continent, though thats not the question at the moment.

We currently face 2 phony wars with Liz and Otto. I doubt there will be any danger but you never know. At least our relation towards them are bad. We get back our gpt payments to Mao and Cathy in 6 turns and hopefully can do a 2 for 1 deal including feudalism and theology with Joanie. Lets hope we can get something out of a peace treaty with Gandhi then. Currently he has nothing to offer.

PS.: Please recheck happieness according war weariness. I'm not sure I did everything optimal in this department.


AD0050 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/DSG4_AD0050.zip)

Urug,

I didn't attack the Greek galley's because we weren't at war at that point. The turn that they attacked, I had the galley inside a city (the end of it's turn; for protection) and then I sent the galley after them...

About the workers. I had several more workers on that tile (they were clearing the jungle) and they had just finished clearing it the trun before. If I had moved them all (without roading the square first), I wouldn't have been able to get to the mountain (and they would have still been in danger from another couple swords, if I remember correctly). So I used 2 workers to complete the road that turn, got most of the workers out of there and then brought in reinforcements.

Nice job!

JMB

I agree with Urugharakh, we need to grab at least Pharsolus and hopefully Ephesus as well before signing peace with Alex. He's lost his iron supply so we can expect to see nothing worse than horses and archers, neither of which is dangerous at all in the stupid way that the AI uses them (and it's a damn good thing we pillaged it, otherwise we could be seeing knights! :eek: ) We are at war with England, Germany, and India but since they are all overseas (Germany can't even reach us at the moment) we have nothing to worry about. Monarchy if war weariness gets too high but hopefully we can maintain our Republic. A very, VERY nice job managing a crisis situation and turning it into one where we can potentially make gains against Greece. :goodjob: Good luck T-Hawk; it's going to be an interesting turn...

(Can't believe I forgot we lacked horses so no War Chariots, heh. Weediness on my part. :smoke: )

Zed's up now, not me, and I am not going to be back at my Civ 3 computer until Monday afternoon. So it might be awhile again..

We're in Republic, so absolutely we should trigger our golden age as soon as we get the opportunity. Looks like we'll have to take some horses by force of sword first, though...

Well, I wanted another RBE2-class game, and we just might have one on our hands :) Great recovery. Did Greece get their golden age? If so, we're going to have a FLOOD of units on our hands... If not, let's see if we can end the war before they do so, or (better yet) just after?

BTW, Sirian, if you're lurking, we've seen most of the map by now, so feel free to join in any commentary :)

Will get the game tomorrow most likely.

Didn't have time to take detailed notes, sorry. Our shield wall on the western border is holding up, and giving out far more punishment than it is taking :hammer: , which is a good thing since Alex sends another 2-3 swords every 2-3 turns or so. He used to be sending horses as well but I haven't seen any recently. About a third of our sword production has so far gone to replenishments on this front. In the early fighting we got a GL, Ramses, and I thought about using him to grab Sistine but unfortunately we didn't have the tech and couldn't get it, so he went to make a sword army.

The south is pretty quiet; Alex was bringing a couple archers every once in a while for a bit but that has slowed down somewhat. I managed to scrape a few swords together and take Ephasus with Ramses' help, so we can now build the Epic. I have not started it though, we need troops more. :)

Alex did land a couple individual troops in our north, which I killed, but we are SO WEAK up there... all our cities were on long builds so I didn't do anything about it for most of my turn, though we have 1 sword building up there now. On the plus side, now that Ephasus is ours I have amassed a fair-sized stack of swords to tackle Pharsalos. There are a couple irrigated tiles around I didn't think to pillage (sorry) so the city is still size 9. Alex has been sending swords out of there periodically but so far it hasn't been too much trouble. Once our army gets to Thebes and heals, we should be ready to go on the attack.

We have a couple spears near Thebes that need to go south to Heliopolis to reinforce the shield wall and protect the swords that hang out there. The swords near Thebes are heading to our rallying point south of Pharsalos.

In other news, Germany and England are willing to talk peace but want lots of cash for it. I'll let the next leader tackle that, and diplomacy in general, which I mostly ignored on my turn. We are also woefully behind on tech, as Sistine, Copernicus, and Bach's have already been built. Lux tax is up to 40% and our northern icy fishing villages had to starve to size 1 to keep happy since they are so corrupt they can't generate cash. Fortunately our FP should be online in a few turns to improve that situation. Still, we need to end this war soon, hopefully after we capture Pharsalos and maybe the fishing village next to it.

Save file:


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE-DSG4-250ad.zip


EDIT: I should mention that we're at peace with India. China betrayed us and made peace early, not that we care, since India's in no position to make war with anyone any more... :hammer:

I see it. Good progress overall, definitely. I can play Monday afternoon, I think.

Inherited turn:

Thebes can go into food shortage to crank swords at 30 shields/turn.

Interesting - Copernicus has been built, but we cannot trade resources with China. That means China doesn't have Astronomy. There's brokering opportunities up there on the tech tree, if we can get there...

War weariness is killing us, with luxuries at 40% now. Still, I don't expect this Greek war to last more than about five more turns (enough for our army to capture Pharsalos), so we'll stay in Republic.

Diplo check - nothing to do. Joanie somehow lacks Theology, although there's no way we can get it to broker.

Interturn, our wall kills about six Greek swords while losing one spear.

260 AD: The Forbidden Palace completes, boosting our take-home income from 14/turn to 34.

290 AD: We capture Pharsalos. That gives us HORSES! I order up a couple war chariots right away.

300 AD: A very eventful turn, that took me about an hour.

War weariness has jumped up to phase three.

But a war chariot triggers us our Golden Age!

England landed a couple units next to Pharsalos, and we get a Great Leader from picking them off!

I think it's better to make peace than to waste 50% of our Golden Age income on luxuries. Greece gives us Theology for our treasury, a 22gpt discount from what anyone else wanted for it. We sell Theology to India for all he can pay, which is 78 gold + 6/turn.

I also pay Greece Silks (he's our only potential customer) plus 44gpt to get Education, so we can see what lies beyond that.

Bingo - China has Banking, but lacks Astronomy, and France lacks both! I pay a hefty 95 gold per turn to Russia for Astronomy.

That means we can trade resources with China, although the other four civs will require Navigation. We trade Astronomy + Silks + 3/turn for Banking + Spices + Wines. Then Banking to France gets us Feudalism.

Astronomy to Germany gets us peace plus Engineering. I was hoping France would have Invention so we could trade them Astronomy for it, but they don't. I'll look for a buying opportunity on Invention or Economics to use our leader on one of the wonders. One-beaker research started on Printing Press as usual.

We can drop lux tax to 10%, and still have 65/turn income. Some banks are ordered up.

310 AD: England landed a couple more swords, which we kill, and they will pay 20 gold for peace. We do so, because we want to trade resources now that they have Navigation. Russia does, too.

Silks get us Ivory from Russia and Incense from England. Lux tax to 0%. I establish embassy with England: they've got Smith's due in 12, which is our time limit for buying Economics and rushing Smith's. (Canton may have it due even sooner.)

And nothing else interesting happened. Sulla, up to you as to whether to go for Leonardo's or Smith's or save the GL for something else (all the way to ToE?) Thebes is on the Heroic Epic to prebuild for Wall Street, which it'll be able to swap to just after Elephantine's bank finishes.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-350ad.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-350ad.zip

Magnificent! I am thoroughly impressed with the wartime turns put in by Urugharakh, Zed, and T-Hawk. :goodjob: Alex thought we were easy meat; instead we nailed two of his cities, triggered a golden age, and popped a great leader. That 300AD turn was one of the biggest single turnarounds I've ever seen in ANY game. Cheers to that! :beer: :hammer:

I say to use the leader for Smith's right away, hopefully killing the cascade as soon as Leo's gets built. With a proper prebuild, I don't see any real chance of losing TOE; no reason to hold on to Cheops for that long. I'm going to play this game sometime tomorrow, and I'll go with whatever the group consensus of those posting here is. Hopefully I'll be feeling better then as well; at the moment I barely have enough energy to get up out of bed. :(

Very nice! Since my last turn (*smile*), we are miles ahead... Great work! I wonder where you guys would be without me dragging you down... *smile*

I would also agree with going for Smith's right away.

JMB

I didn't jump on Smith's because the tech would cost us around 1400 gold total; having Smith's won't recoup that for 60-70ish turns, but it'll be a fine payoff later on. And do note that we're on pace to reach 1000 gold for full interest right around when Wall Street will complete; any gold paid out now may delay that.

Leo's isn't that great a prize, but at least it's on the main tech path. (Tis a pity the Sun Tzu/Sistine cascades went through to Bach's). And with Leo's, we get the option of building a zillion war chariots for Military Tradition upgrade to really teach Alex a lesson. I'm really on the fence, which is why I left it up to the group. :)

I was waiting for Joanie to get either Invention or Economics and pull a brokerage deal. She may yet do that, although I don't know how much longer we can wait before someone finishes one of the wonders. Another option is to buy Invention now, and look for a brokerage deal between Gunpowder and Economics.

If you want to buy a tech and rush a wonder now, you can do it in Memphis which has an empty box and won't lose any shields.

Hope ya feel better, too :)

We got 2 leaders out of that war, don't forget our army. :)

We would not be able to use Leos to build up and upgrade a war chariot army without first disconnecting our iron. We've already had our golden age so war chariots should be removed as a build option (if not now, then at the end of our golden age?) Are we planning to go to war again before Infantry? If not then Leo's is probably not very useful. By the time we get Infantry/Arty we should have factories and Hoover (assuming we do in fact get ToE) so we should be able to build outright any troops we need.

I'm guessing by the time we catch up on infrastructure again it will be close to the Industrial age anyway, so on that basis I'm guessing we don't want war again soon (besides which we need this weariness to wear off) so I'd vote against Leo's. We should either use him on Smith or save him for later. If we don't go to war again soon he will keep indefinately. Of course the latter is more dependent on when Alex will decide to attack us again...

Don't need to disconnect the iron - we haven't gotten Chivalry so we can still build the war chariots.

If I were soloing the game, I'd probably do Leo's and go for the war chariot upgrade swarm. That takes a lot of coordination, though, that we might not pull off perfectly in an SG. There's also the fact that there's no way we can get _ahead_ in tech - if we get cavalry, so will he. Smith's is the safe, reliable bet - but that price tag on the tech is still scaring me off...

We should discuss our game strategy before deciding on the correct wonder. I do like some more wars with the goal of killing Alex and I want these wars soon. I have several reasons for this:

1) I like some more wars after I played the more uneventful trading games RBE3 and Epic 17.

2) Pharsalos faces serious flip danger until we eliminate Alex from our continent.

3) Herakleia is a first ring city for our FP. Sparta and Mycenae are first ring cities for Thebes.

4) There will be (most likely) coal and rubber in the jungle. There is a good chance of having all necessary resources on our continent.

5) We will get a dyes monopol in addition to our silk monopol, which would open superb trade options.

6) We own 19 single swords and a sword army, which will become useless soon. We must use all our shields most effectively in this beyond deity szenario.

7) I think Alex will attack us again, maybe at some for us unfavorable time. For example while establishing factories and working on our rail network.

8) The game is (almost) won in case we own our continent.

9) Alex hasn't paid enough for his betrayal.

10) Our people in Pi-Ramesses must be saved.

11) We would control Sistine in Athens.

12) Heroic Epic will give us a solid shoot at another leader.


Hopefully everyone else agrees now, that we should eliminate Alex as soon as possible. :hammer:

We can build war chariots until we discover chivalry or military tradition, because they are cheaper than horsemen with the same stats. So a massive cav or a knight upgrade is a good possibility.

Getting knights at the appropriate time is easy even without spending precious resources unnecessary. We simply buy invention (or any other tech) and trade it to Otto or Joanie for chivalry.


Concerning our wonder:

The advantage of Smith is obvious: about 3 gold per turn and city for the remainder of the game. - I count market, bank and harbor for all cities. I don't count airports, wich approximately cancels the mistake for counting harbors in non coastal cities. After all I'm interested in an approximate value of the wonder. - This results to ~40 gpt with our current empire and adds to ~80 gpt once we eliminate Alex.

The advantage of Leo is more difficult to compute. We save ~1000 gold for economics (Mao sells for 35 gpt and 310 g), which we can pick up with some out of day techs from Otto or Joanie later.

We currently own 17 spears. Lets assume we upgrade 20 spears to infantry, which results in another 1400 gold.

We will need at least 40 war chariot -> knight upgrades for another 2000 gold.

All together we would save about 4500 gold with Leo, which results in Smith being more favourable money wise in case the game will run for another ~80-100 turns, which is most likely.

In short term analysis, we would save some of the cash for the spear-infantry upgrade. This will still need ~65 turns until Smith beats Leo cashwise.

The main question is of course, do we need the knight, resp. cav upgrade to crush Alex in time? I think we do.

Summary: assuming we want Alex head, and we want it soon, Leo is the better wonder.

My advice would be, wait three or four turns to evaluate trade possibilities. Then get invention and build Leo unless the trade options suggest otherwise. Our main cities should be ready for war chariot procuction in at most 4 turns. Lets build a couple of chariots, grade them up to knights and teach Alex a lesson in about 20 turns. This would at least give a very interesting game.

We shoudn't be afraid of war weariness. Being religious we could switch to monarchy without problems. The spoils of war as outlined above should be more than enough compensation for a couple of low income turns.

For a war strategy, we should be able of taking Hereiklia, Mycenae, Sparta and Thermopylae all in our second war turn using all our swords on Mycenae and 12-15 knights on each of the other cities.


Concerning Pharsalos: please train a couple of workers out of it once the market is finished. With 7 foreigners the flip chance it way too high.

This is becoming quite an interesting game to watch and read.

Urug, I think you're SPOT ON about needing to see Alex go, and sooner rather than later. Then again I think I was the earliest one around here advocating war with Alex :p

Besides, I tend to have Alex as super-researcher in my games, and it wouldn't surprise him to get Cavalry so much earlier than you that it would be very painful indeed.

On the wonder... tough call. If you HAVE the cash to spend on upgrading to knights, Leo is only a short-term saver, not an enabler - go for Smiths. If OTOH it enables you to make the big upgrade where spending cash on Economics and without Leo's you cannot, I would go for Leo.

In recent Deity games I've been fighting a lot more and a lot earlier, and their stigma of being all-powerful is quickly dissipating. Their tactical prowess in actually conducting war is just... a joy to watch. :lol:

Charis

Ok, well on the score of which wonder to build, if most people think we ought to be going to war then I agree Leo's is it. I would think we should get some banks and infrastructure in general going first, especially around our FP; hopefully 20 turns is long enough for that as well as to build up military. I didn't realize we didn't have chivalry though! :crazyeye: Silly me...

EDIT: Doh, wrong account. :) Zed-F speaking...

Originally posted by Zed-F
I would think we should get some banks and infrastructure in general going first, especially around our FP; hopefully 20 turns is long enough for that as well as to build up military.

20 turns is more than enough and we don't need our FP site producing military. Heliopolis, Memphis and Elephatine are ready for military procuction once they finished banks. (No harbors are needed at the moment.) They make a chariot every turn as long as we are in golden age. Add a few chariots from Thebes, once we finished wall street and heroic epic (maybe even before the latter) we should have enough chariots for the upgrade in 20 turns without a single unit from our FP area, which should indeed focus on infrastructure first. So it is the question of do we want a war in 20 turns, not the question of do we have the necessary military in 20 turns.

(0) 350AD I like Urugharakh's idea the best; build a bunch of War Chariots, get Leo's, upgrade them all to knights, and wipe Alex off of the map. For that reason, I'm going to try and find a brokering opportunity for Invention; if one doesn't exist by 400AD I'll just buy it from the Chinese. With that in mind, Memphis goes from an unnecessary harbor to War Chariot production (one every turn). A bunch of other cities will do the same once they finish their banks/marketplaces. Pharsolus is entirely too risky for a flip, even with all those units in there (perhaps especially because we have a big army there). I change it from market to worker, and set it to starvation diet. I want that city down to one Greek national.

(2) 370AD Heliopolis finishes its bank and goes onto War Chariot production. A brokering opportunity opened up this turn, as Germany picked up Invention but lacks any other techs we need. Since we want Navigation to be able to trade with Germany and France, I buy Navigation from China for 764g + 10gpt. We can now trade luxuries with Germany, which allows us to get Invention for Navigation + silks + 5gpt. Unfortunately, Joanie is broke and can't offer us anything for our silks, but we can Chivalry from her whenever we want. Not surprisingly, the civs ahead of us have Gunpowder; exactly what tech they are up to is impossible to tell though. They haven't reached Theory of Gravity yet, fortunately. Cheops rushes Leo's in Memphis. From this point on we need to build up gold for upgrades, so no more deals.

(3) 380AD We get Leo's as planned. Memphis back to Chariot production. Alexandria finishes bank and also switches over. Despite having Gunpowder, Alex does NOT have muskets in his cities (or at least not in Sparta). This is a great stroke of luck for us! As long as we attack before he enters the Industrial Age, Alex is toast.

(4) 390AD Bank finishes in Elephantine, switches over to Chariots. Thebes switches to Wall Street, due in 3 turns. Pharsolus also hit size 1 this turn, so it should be quite safe from flips with all those units in it.

(7) 420AD Now this is interesting. Between turns Gandhi shows up and "demands" iron. India has 4 cities and is so far behind in tech that they can't even reach us with units. I tell him to back off and he does. Wall Street finishes in Thebes on the same turn our income goes over 1000g (not too shabby, eh?) Thebes is set to build Heroic Epic, due in 6. But Thebes is getting 39 shields/turn, and the Epic costs 200 shields. I switch the tiles around and can get it in 5 turns without starving.

(9) 440AD The Russians build Magellan's and the cascade ends completely this turn. If we're lucky, we might be able to get all the wonders from this point on, especially if we can get Newton with a great leader.

(10) 450AD I end on an unremarkable turn.

Right now we have 33 War Chariots. At a cost of 50g per upgrade, that would run us 1650g. We currently have 1945g and are making +304gpt. We are producing 5 Chariots/turn, so we won't run out of money for upgrades. El-Amarna is getting 19 shields/turn; it will be able to produce a War Chariot each turn as well each turn once the worker in the city merges into it next turn. (Note to JMB: merge that worker into El-Amarna next turn!) I say the date to attack is 500AD; that's the turn that our golden age runs out, and at that point we won't be able to produce War Chariots every turn out of most cities. We should also have about 50 chariots by that point, and the best unit they should come up against is hoplites. When I think about all the damage that 50 knights can do... it's almost scary. I think Alex is going to be in for a rude awakening 5 turns from now! :lol: Good luck JMB - your next turn is going to be crucial.

RBE4 450AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBE4_450AD.zip)

Superb preparatory turn, Sulla.

To JMB: The second time you'll lead us to war, though it was not your intention last time. Be sure gathering ALL our swords to attack Mycenae on our second war turn. I suggest using 20 knights on Herakleia to secure the capture. Probably an overkill, but we must take it immediately even with possible bad RNG luck. 15 knights on each Thermopylae and Sparta shoud be fine, while the rest of our knights can pick up some longbows near Pi-Ramesses. Sparta must be razed due to its bad position with respect to Thebes and Elephantine. I suggest rebuilding it 2 tiles northeast. I'm not sure about razing the other southern greek cities though.

Good luck, be the RNG with you.

Urugharakh,

Sparta has Cop's Observatory... Does that change your opinion on what should be done with Sparta? (I am usually loath to raze GWs, but I agree, Sparta is in a terrible location for us...)

JMB

Originally posted by JMB
Sparta has Cop's Observatory... Does that change your opinion on what should be done with Sparta? (I am usually loath to raze GWs, but I agree, Sparta is in a terrible location for us...)
Hmm, good point, I completely missed that. Do we get enough out of Copernicus to let Sparta live? I doubt, but its not that obvious like it would have been without Copernicus. I personally would still raze Sparta to the ground, but treat it as you like. With Copernicus ours, I can live with the sight of this terrible city.

How is Sparta in a bad spot? Looking up at the above map from T-Hawk's turn, it seems to be 5 tiles away from Elephantine and 6 away from Thebes, for no overlap.

Zed,

You are right, it has no overlap but does waste several (potentially) good tiles right near our capital. Looking at things again, the waste doesn't seem all that bad... I'll start the war tonight, but wait to take Sparta until we get a few more votes as to whether to raze it or not (it will have a fair bit of overlap with Delphi though, but hopefully that city will be ours as well...)

JMB

Partial report...

450 - Notice that Pharalos doesn't have a barracks, switch from Marketplace and will rush in 3 turns or so (so that we can upgrade our WCs right before attacking Herakleia). Start breaking down our defensive wall to increase our defenses up North. Troop shuffling to get everyone into position... Hurry granary (120 gp) in Byblos and begin a settler to replace Sparta. Palace expansion.

460 - More troop buildup and troop shuffling. We complete the Heroic Epic.

470 - More troop buildup and troop shuffling.

480 - More troop buildup and troop shuffling. Purchase Chivalry from Joan for Silks, 215 gp, and our WM. Upgrade our 49 WCs for 2450 gp (dipping well into our capital...). Notice our first Musket out of Thermoplyae.

490 - Move our knights into position. 17 are on the iron mountain outside Asyut. 14 are on the wheat to the SW of Elephantine. 17 are on the mountain to the NE of Pharalos. France declares war on the Greeks! Yeah baby!

500 - We declare war on the Greeks. I establish an embassy with France for 83 gp, because I want to see what they would offer for an alliance versus the Greeks. She won't offer anything and expects us to pay her! We lose a knight to a sword on a mountain (we were attacking from a mountain as well). The second knight takes care of that swordsman. A knight takes out a longbowman on the hill north of Sparta. A regular knight takes out a longbowman in the jungle outside of Pi-Ramesses. We capture 2 slaves as we move our knights to the mountains north of Thermoplyae (it, like Sparta, is guarded by a musket). All is ready... We lost 3 knights to a counterattack. They also already have Cavalry... Renegotiate our trade deal with China. Silks and 10 gpt for Spices and Wines. Our golden age ends... Thebes riots (whoops!).

510 - Lux tax raised to 20% to prevent further rioting... A vet knight promotes to elite killing the knight on the iron mountain outside Asyut (their knight killed our spearman and freed our recently aquired slaves...). A regular knight takes out a horseman... The taking of Herakleia: 2 retreat, 4 die. We kill 2 hoplites and a cavalry. Begin starving city. The taking of Mycenea: Our army attacks Mycenea's musketman (only one hp lost). A vet sword then takes out the second regular musketman, only taking one point of damage. Mycenea is ours! (and it was on a hill too...) We start starving the city. The taking of Thermoplyae: First knight retreats, second one wins. Third retreats. The