ChrisShaffer
Board gamer
Yes, we need more cottages. Resist the urge to spread Hinduism unless there is an obvious immediate payout - a cultural victory is dependent on catching additional religions.
w.r.t a cultural victory. If we can secure borders (and the map seems to be set up for this). It becomes possible. A nice walled city on a hill with heavily promoted LBs can go a long way. Maybe all the way to Cuirs.
My two cents on the situation would be that this game will play in many ways like an Always War game. We will be endlessly forced to take peace (of course there is no peace in always war )with one Toku to run our army across our land to smack the other Toku who is now attacking with a stack AGAIN. We'll only be free of them when no Tokunut is attached to us by land. Get construction-build cats-whack the stink out of them
Yes, it likely will be pillaged, but in the meantime it might be useful to us and might delay/distract Hammy's units at a critical time. In any case, if you don't finish the road you'll lose a turn moving to the forest to finish the chop (assuming you'd be moving from a roadless tile into Vijay and then onto the forest) because of the funky crossing-a-river penalty we seem to have there, so you don't lose anything. [Edit: It's possible I'm only remembering this from the test game, which had a lot of WB monkeying--check things out with the GoTo button.]...except extending the wheat road ... heck, the wheat road itself would just get pillaged I think).
Maybe keep a little extra until we see how much the new cities are going to cost us. Think about the tradeoffs of libraries vs scientists. And if we're planning a library anywhere (Delhi?), hoard cash until it's finished.Do we have a lower limit on how much cash to keep in the bank? In always war games its critical not to go on strike.
kcd asked for help with PPP so here's my collation of what we've talked about:
Micro stuff:
- Drona's borders will pop in 10 turns--anything useful we can do with that?
- Cancel all worker actions when you open the save.
- While Bolly is finishing the settler it can work the corn instead of a mine for +1 commerce.
- Switch Vijay to walls for 1 turn.
- Give Vijay the deer when it gets to pop2. Don't go below pop2 in case we need to whip walls.
- Make sure the forest chop will go to Vijay's granary (not Bombay).
- Figure out how urgently we want to finish the Vijay granary chop. Use GoTo to see if finishing the wheat road is turn-neutral before going to the forest.
- Gift unneeded resources to Shaka and/or Hattie?
- Note what Japan was/is researching. Did he finish HBR?
- Build cottages! Right now! The tile SE of Delhi needs only 1 more turn. Workers near Bolly probably need to cancel whatever they're doing and build cottages.
- What's our GP plan? Settle a Scientist? Save a Prophet to bulb CS after CoL? Can we plan things so some cities specialize in one kind?
- By Vijay, I'd try to hold our side of the river and/or the forests rather than retreat into our defenseless city and let them pillage the wheat. But do what you think best.
- Pillage Japan this turn, moving Woody2 to peak at Kyoto, then take peace. Unless you're feeling lucky and want to keep going.
General plan:
- Research Construction.
- Build cottages.
- Revolt to OrgRel when appropriate--need a Hindu missionary to go to Drona.
- Workboat sees what's on the other side of the mountains.
- Settle deer/cow site. Try to connect it before settling.
- Build 2 settlers and 2 FWs. Improve city sites before settling (as possible).
- Start AP in Drona when appropriate. (WasteMinder says put the temple overflow toward a FW and then start AP when Drona has Hindu/OrgRel--fewer turns stagnating and more efficient use of hammers. Some people might disagree.)
A couple of thoughts and questions on the micro points:
* worker in queue in delhi is about to lose invested hammers, may want to switch back and do a 1 pop whip.
* how much will gifting resources get us? i know the basic of +1 diplo point after so many turns with a max of 2, but is there any chance it gets us out of worst enemy? if not, is there a point?
* on vijay hold other side of river, looks challenging with 3 tiles to cover. at least in the city we can get a wall and some fortify points. if we spread to cover three tiles we may be too thin to stop a stack.
* on the great prophet i prefer the shrine gpt+cult+ religion spread. on the sci agree with settling.
* agree on rest of points and kcd high-level plan.
Green from me.
On the question of getting an AI to vote for us. Is there any chance of getting an AI to switch to Hindu, by giving back a couple of cities taken in war after infecting, bribe to switch, and then using AP war on the heathen to get up he point of establishing a defensive pact, and trading tech, blah blah, blah, blah. Or are the hidden modifiers too much to overcome? Flipping Toku to the good side of the force could be very advantageous.
Green.
I don't think gifting to our neighbors is a good investment.
Gifting to a far away Toku that also has another religion (how would we know?) is ok.
I probably won't be able to play this month. Don't know about April yet. Didn't even finish the BOTM . How is it so many of us are so busry with RL right now? At least we increased team size and a few can still play.
I can't remember any occasion where I got Toku to good terms short of adopting his religion and favorite civic (Mercantilism), Maybe being at war against a common foe, but that doesn't do us much good in the current circumstances. I think AAA's observation about this playing like an Always War game may be right on the mark.
The plan gets Green from me.
Micro stuff:
- Drona's borders will pop in 10 turns--tactical advantage for later.
- Cancel all worker actions when you open the save.
- While Bolly is finishing the settler it can work the corn instead of a mine for +1 commerce.
- Switch Vijay to walls for 1 turn.
- Give Vijay the deer when it gets to pop2. Don't go below pop2 in case we need to whip walls.
- Make sure the forest chop will go to Vijay's granary (not Bombay).
- Figure out how urgently we want to finish the Vijay granary chop. Use GoTo to see if finishing the wheat road is turn-neutral before going to the forest.
- Gift unneeded resources to Shaka and/or Hattie?
- Note what Japan was/is researching. Did he finish HBR?
- Build cottages! Right now! The tile SE of Delhi needs only 1 more turn. Workers near Bolly probably need to cancel whatever they're doing and build cottages.
- GP plan (6t) Settle a Scientist. Use Prophet to build hindu shrine. Can we plan things so some cities specialize in one kind: Drona production, Bolly science, rest don't know.
- By Vijay, I'll fortify into our quickly wallable city and let them pillage the wheat.
- Pillage Japan this turn, moving Woody2 to peak at Kyoto, then take peace.
General plan:
- Research Construction.
- Build cottages.
- Revolt to OrgRel when appropriate--need a Hindu missionary to go to Drona.
- Workboat sees what's on the other side of the mountains.
- Settle deer/cow site. Try to connect it before settling.
- Build 2 settlers and 2 FWs. Improve city sites before settling (as possible).
- Start AP in Drona when appropriate. (WasteMinder says put the temple overflow toward a FW and then start AP when Drona has Hindu/OrgRel--fewer turns stagnating and more efficient use of hammers. Some people might disagree. Can't start AP until hindu is spread in Drona)
I wonder if neil has created some sort of weird water maze with all those mountains .
Unless the yellow/red status of Deckhand, HKJJ, Rusten, or Chris has changed, I do believe that AAA would be next up. This also fits in with his being the first to respond after I asked.Say... who's up now? It will be a turnset with lots of whipping/chopping I think.
When we get Construction, shall we go slow on research? We'd do CoL, I assume. Bolly's sci's could be changed to priests (to improve the odds of a Prophet to bulb CS after CoL, and also contribute a hammer and gold each), or they could be sent to the mines to build cats. If we pop another Scientist it will bulb Philosophy--do we want that? In any case, Bolly should keep growing so it can 2-whip a cat when it exceeds its happy cap.
It's good that Toku is researching Alpha, right? That way we can extort techs from him for peace.