SGOTM 21 - Xteam

[leif erikson]

Nice work Folket!

Looks like we want Civil Service for Oracle tech? Or Metal Casting for Forge plus Colossus.

Do we need some Workers? We seem to have a lot of Cottages to build?

Where can we find some happy pills?

 

[Folket]

Well, The big happy pill is monarchy. We should be able to trade CoL for it.

What we should ask ourselfs is if we want to wait three turn before the revolt so that we may adopt HR as well.

 

[Folket]

I wonder where Isabella is since she does not have open borders with Shaka. She can't on our continent else she would have met William and us. Is she on an island to the south?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Excellent work!

More Testing
Okay, we've about hit the end point of where our testing has taken us and so now we'll need to do another round of testing. I won't have time to fully update the test game for about a day, but we still have a T69 test saved game that will be somewhat representative of the real game, which is linked from the first page.

Or, perhaps Folket can make backup copies of his real-saved game autosaves (if manual saved games weren't taken on each turn) and then advance the T65 or T66 saved game to the current turn.


Bigger Picture
We know from BSPollux that this game will be a deep teching game. So, the team that gets to Oxford University the fastest is going to have a very strong advantage.

Oracling Civil Service puts us on the right path. Metal Casting can probably come in trade at some point (say, by Liberating 2 Cities to Elizabeth, who likes researching that tech) or could be self-teched if we want early Forges.

We definitely want an Academy with our Great Person #2. But, what's the fastest way to Education (and therefore Oxford)? Lightbulbing Education with 2 Great Scientists!

If we could launch a Golden Age, we could get triple GPP for a period of time, enough to get us 2 Great Scientists.

So, how do we get that Golden Age? Great Person #2 should not be used. That leaves us with continuing to handicap Gems City with hiring 2 Scientists in the long term or going for Music.

Music by way of Literature also unlocks our Heroic Epic and The Great Library... perhaps the Great Library could be Chopped somewhere (in Amsterdam would be ideal).

So, hopefully, we'll be able to concurrently use an army of Catapults (which means getting probably 2 Galleys up near Willem) plus Archers(?) to take Amsterdam concurrently with our teching goals.

I'm still not sure which will be the better approach (self-generating Great Person #3 vs teching Music), but one possible tech path is:

Currency (stop if Willem starts researching it after Monarchy) -> Construction (Catapults and Odeons) -> Aesthetics -> Literature -> Music -> Paper -> double-Lightbulb Edutation

Creative gives us cheap Libraries and Philosophical gives us cheap Universities, so we may not even need Forges before Libraries + Universities, although if we can use Organized Religion and have earned Metal Casting in trade, we might still whip some Forges.

We'll also need to balance whipping Settlers in the capital versus growing it... with a lot of Health Resources, we can very quickly grow the capital to a large City Size by spamming Warriors there (Monarchy is a guaranteed tech from Willem, as there's no Wonder attached to the tech to prevent him from trading it to us).

Matured Cottages + Oxford University + Bureaucracy = help us to meet any late-game teching needs very effectively.



Wonders
Do we need any more?

Oxford University is our next primary goal.

The Heroic Epic for sure.

The Great Library would be nice if we can find a City location with a lot of Forests, but isn't really a necessary Wonder.

The Hanging Gardens could be opportunistic if Amsterdam has built an Aqueduct and we manage to capture Amsterdam with the Aqueduct intact and in time to complete the Wonder, otherwise probably not.

We might even skip The National Epic unless we end up wanting later Golden Ages, since getting a Great Artist when you want a Great Scientist can hurt.


Short Term
Worker micro at Corn City... do we send 1 or 2 Workers to Chop into the Granary?

Do we then race to Farm the Corn or do we build a G Riv Road on the way there?

Do we then Farm a G Riv square to give the Corn +1 Food?

Gems City will probably steal the Gems Mine back.

Farms before Mines, especially with Monarchy for Hereditary Rule coming in... Granaries + whipping is just way too over-powered when Unhappines is not a concern.

Obviously, whip Worker 4 (if not already done so) out of City 3 for improving our Cow Pasture.

We'll need to decide on Worker 5 (very useful for getting Cottages up and running) vs a Spy out of our capital after whipping Settler 5 post-Bureaucracy.

With our recent war success, I'd probably suggest that we push out our winning Military units and forget about the Spy for now... they can be our sentry net instead of a Spy, to see when Shaka's units are on their way toward our Cultural Borders.

Note that Shaka won't declare war until he's going to enter our Cultural Borders, so units that are "in the field" won't be immediate targets while Shaka is still at Peace with us.


Medium Term
We'll need to balance whipping Settlers with whipping Catapults with whipping Forges in Cities with the Organized Religion bonus plus possibly with whipping the odd Missionary.

Any new City, where possible, should be settled where we can put 1 Chop into a Granary, or in the cash of Triple Fish Island, where we have a PH Mine pre-improved that we can work for 5 Hammers per turn for 5 turns until our Cultural Borders expand, then grow on a netted Fish to make the Granary a 1-pop-whippable item.

Our Worker actions should be heavily prioritized toward getting our Granaries as 1-pop-whippable actions at the ideal times, with other Worker tasks coming as secondary goals.

EDIT: We may also whip one or two Cities to the bone (City 4 is a good candidate) before gifting them to Willem and then declaring war on Willem, thereby resetting Whipping Unhappiness, so any infrastructure in addition to a Granary should be skipped in such a City. I'm probably thinking City 4 plus maybe another future City that we settle, say, one that shares the Corn and gets some G Farms built for it also being a potential second gift City, even if we capture it back immediately, to reset its Whipping Unhappiness.

We'll also have the option to use a Spy on Willem if he techs something juicy, or else just to use the capital-moving tactic to get all of the hints out of him.


Testing Needed
We should check to see if we can find a way to get an AI to show us their Gold supplies when going into Anarchy. We may get Willem to go into Bureaucracy at the time when we gift him Gold if doing so will allow him to give us back all of our Gold... or, the small amount of Gold earned back for only getting 6 hints might not be worth that trouble if he won't show us all of that Gold.


Civics

What we should ask ourselfs is if we want to wait three turn before the revolt so that we may adopt HR as well.

There's no point. We have 3 nice Civics, which will cost us a total of 2 turns (Bureaucracy, Organized Religion, and Hereditary Rule). Let's get ourselves into Bureaucracy ASAP so that we can get Settler 5 created and on the move. We won't need the extra Happiness in 3 turns' time and we probably won't need it for the roughly 6 turns' time that it would take to wait to revolt into it.

The bigger question is "Org Rel with Bureaucracy or wait for Org Rel with Monarchy?"


Isabella

I wonder where Isabella is since she does not have open borders with Shaka. She can't on our continent else she would have met William and us. Is she on an island to the south?

We didn't give Writing to Shaka, so only when Isabella received Writing from us could the two of them have randomly chosen to Open Borders with each other.

I'm putting my bet on Isabella being to the west of Shaka, much like she was to the east of us originally in our test game... such that she is blocked off via land, but managed to sail a Work Boat to the east past his Culture to meet us. That fact would explain why she hasn't met Willem, as her Work Boat could only travel south past Shaka's Culture.

There isn't much room to the south for an island to exist, until BSPollux placed Isabella against the south edge of the map, which would be a really weird thing to do.

EDIT: After having looked at the real game, there IS no land to the west of Shaka. And, his Culture goes to the south side of the landmass. What? I'm totally confused as to where Isabella came from. Maybe she started with a Work Boat that has a wrong mission type, which caused it to stay in place instead of exploring, and only when Shaka's capital's Cultural Borders expanded a second time, did they overlap the Work Boat's square, causing it to gain a new mission and start exploring?

 

[Folket]

There is nothing west of Shaka. We have explored there. Also she could not have moved past Ulundi. And it is unlikly she started with a wb on our continent since she would have found us sooner.

Isabella must be between us and Shaka. Or more likely, there is a path of coast to Isabella somewhere between us.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Test Game
It should be mostly accurate, at least enough for us to figure out the micro for the next little while.

It was hard to model what is happening in City 4, so I faked things a bit by using a build item that we're not likely to build (a City Wall) to give us almost the correct overflow Hammers (we'll be short by 1 Hammer).

I also gave us The Oracle, which will give us the same Culture and GPP in City 4.

However, you'll have to manually give ourselves Civil Service on T70.

Once we figure out what we're going to build in Cap in place of a Spy, which is very likely going to be a Work Boat (as we'll need several Work Boats very soon and Gems City really can't produce them quickly, while Surfin' Turf is far away from Triple Fish Island and City 4 can't produce Work Boats at all, so X-opolis really needs to help out with making Work Boats), it will probably make sense to play a 1-turn PPP just to make sure that we grab Civil Service properly and can then breathe a sigh of relief.


Build Queue Manipulation
We should be making use build-queue manipulation to preserve the Hammers invested in build items that won't get built for a while. Any time that a build item appears at the top of the build queue, Hammers in that build item won't decay. Turns of Anarchy are the perfect time to put a build item at the top of a build queue which we won't be finishing for a while.

Does everyone know how to do so?

Shift + click puts a build item at the bottom of a City's build queue

Ctrl + click puts a build item at the top of a City's build queue

Clicking on an item in a City's build queue removes it from the build queue


Religion
It seems that Elizabeth is Hindu. Sending her our Confucian Missionary via Galley would probably be a good way to use of our Confucian Missionary. The trouble is that it would take a long time to do so, as we need our Galley close to our capital for now.

It would be unfortunate to be running a different State Religion from Elizabeth for a significant amount of time.

That said, it could take a while before we'll get a Galley up to Elizabeth's area, and owning the Missionary for all of that time will cost us 1 Gold per turn. So, we could certainly consider the idea of spreading our Missionary domestically or spreading him in Willem's capital.

If we're going to spread him domestically, one option is to wait for another Religion to spread to one of our Cities and then spread Confucianism there. Another option is to spread Confucianism in City 4 if it hasn't spread by the time that we're finished our turn or turns of Anarchy with the plan to switch to Confucianism on T71, so that the overflow Hammers from The Oracle and Chopped Hammers going into the Granary will benefit from Organized Religion. But, that's only 1 Building, while we'll probably mostly just build Units in City 4 afterward, until we gift the City away to Willem.

So, we could pick Surfin' Turf and plan to build Lighthouse -> Library -> Barracks there.


Galleys
It would be nice to get a Galley up near Elizabeth to send her Confucianism. It would also be nice to have at least 1 Galley to later be able to shuttle units to Willem's capital, although bringing a 2nd Galley later would be ideal.

However, we have uses for Galleys nearby...
i. Settler 5 to Fur City
ii. Some Worker to Triple Fish Island
iii. Settler 6? to Triple Fish Island
iv. After Worker 1 finishes Camping the Deer, Roading the Deer, then Chopping/Cottaging the G square on Fur City Island, he'll need to be sent elsewhere
v. Sheep Settler (Settler 9?) saving a couple of turns walking

So, it would be nice to get another Galley at some point, in order to send one northward while the other stays at home to perform necessary duties.


Great People
Elizabeth got her Great Prophet in 1320 BC. But, it is 1240 BC now and we didn't gift Monotheism to her, so she didn't Lightbulb Theology, which would have unlocked The Apostolic Palace early on.

She has probably settled her Great Prophet, which means that capturing London becomes an even higher priority.

We should not gift her Monotheism now, as doing so would just encourage her to go after Monarchy, which we don't want her to do.

I'm not sure if we can still 100% target an AP Victory anymore, but so far we've managed to keep 4 Religions to players that we have met, so as long as that trend continues, we should hopefully still be able to get The Apostolic Palace built by an AI that we can meet pre-Optics.

We've also kept the Great Prophet Wonders to the locals (Elizabeth and us), but since it'll probably take her a while to generate Great Person #2, there will be time for another AI to sneak in a Great Prophet Wonder somewhere.

The worst thing that can happen is an AI building The Temple of Artemis or the Shwedagon Paya, Lightbulbing Theology, then building the Apostolic Palace on another continent, in which case we'll need to rethink our Victory Condition.


City Builds
Now is a crucial time where we're going to need to focus on REXing by building Settlers and Workers for a while.


Anarchy on T70 (and probably also T71 if we want to use Organized Religion + Confucianism)
While we're in Anarchy, we should put build items in our build queues that are not going to be completed for a while. That would mean a Barracks in Gems City, the Spy in X-opolis, and the Archer in Surfin' Turf, but just for when we're in Anarchy.


Science Rate
I believe that a 0% is wise for at least this turn, as we will have 0 fractional losses due to having 4 Scientist Specialists hired.

After that, we'll have to judge on a turn-by-turn basis, but with an Academy being 11 turns of Commerce-earning away (10 turns for the Great Scientist to be generated + 1 turn of movement), we'll need to make a call on:
i. Earlier Currency
VS
ii. Delaying Currency so that we can get the Academy's Flasks while reseraching Currency

We'll have roughly 150 / 650 Flasks researched in it if we stay at a 0% Science Rate. It would take us roughly 5 turns to research the rest of Currency. We wouldn't benefit from Currency's extra Trade Routes during Anarchy, although we could earn back Gold in lump sum sales of techs to AIs, assuming that we want to sell any techs at the time and that an AI actually has more than, say, 10 Gold to offer us at a time.

Let's say that an Academy would be worth an extra 16 Flasks per turn for 5 turns. That's 80 Flasks. We can probably earn about as much from Gold trades and extra Trade Routes, so I'd say that we'll end up teching Currency before getting our Great Scientist. EDIT: It may make sense just to horde Gold until our Academy gets built, especially if our plan will be to gift Gold to Willem after learning Currency.

*** EDIT: I forgot to account for the Bureaucracy bonus, so I edited the above estimate, so it might also make sense to wait until we get our Great Scientist before hitting 100% on Currency, especially if we can afford to delay the revolt into Hereditary Rule until the time when our Great Scientist is moving.


An option could be to switch to Bureaucracy + Caste System and then later to Hereditary Rule + Slavery, but I don't think that our Cities are really set up to take advantage of doing so... by the time that Gems City could grow to Size 5 and hire a 3rd Scientist Specialist, it would be T73 and we would have 112 / 200 GPP, meaning needing another 88 GPP. 88 / 12 = 7 turns, while 88 / 18 = 5 turns... a 2-turns savings is not worth it.

We need to focus on REX, so having the capital hire a bunch of Specialists in Caste System to get our 3rd Great Person sooner isn't the right play, either.

So, i. Earlier Currency it is, without switching into Caste System.

That said, after learning Currency, it makes sense to stay at a 0% Science Rate until we have our Academy built.

We should also stay at 0% or close to 0% until one turn after Willem has researched Monarchy and we see what he will be teching after that tech, and if it's not Currency, we can jump our Research rate up to 100% on Currency.


Monarchy

Well, The big happy pill is monarchy. We should be able to trade CoL for it.

Testing shows that this trade isn't possible. We'll need some Flasks invested in Monarchy.

Testing showed that we would need 29 Flasks invested in Monarchy to be able to trade Code of Laws for it.

An alternative option would be to gift Code of Laws to Willem on the turn before he learns Monarchy and sell him Civil Service for Monarchy, which would give him a chance to go into early Bureaucracy.


Trade Routes
It seems that we only have 3 Foreign Trade Routes with Shaka, so one of his 4 Cities must not yet be connected to the rest of his empire.

Then again, I saw weird stuff going on with Sury in the test game, where we only got Trade Routes with 2 of his Cities initially and then with a 3rd one when he founded his 5th City, even though the initial 4 Cities all have Roads connecting them.

So, there are some mysteries with how Trade Routes work.


Unit Movements
Willem's Cultural Borders have expanded, so once Warrior 2 heals (1 turn should be good enough to get him to 2 health or close to that, as you heal 0.3 while in your own Cultural Borders and we're at 1.7/2 Health--which, in BtS, I believe means somewhere in the range of 1.65 to 1.74) and moves westward, we'll be able to send Warrior 3 to guard Surfin' Turf. Warrior 3 will make his way through the Forests, to give us greater chances of Forest regrowth, but not until after Warrior 2 has healed for a turn and moved out.

So, something like:
T69, 1240 BC
Archer 1: Wake up and move 1W GH

T70, 1200 BC
Warrior 2: Wake up and, assuming that no Barbs are visible, move 1W GH Riv
Warrior 3: If Warrior 2 moved 1W, then move 1E G Riv For, then move SE from here on future turns... walking ON Forests preserves their chance of spreading. Walking on flatland adjacent to Forests (as we would do if we instead just headed straight SE) would be bad, as we'd prevent Forest growth wherever Warrior 3 was standing each turn
Archer 1: If Barbs are spotted, he can react accordingly, otherwise he could head 1SW G Riv (1E of the G Riv Horse), since we'd be able to see all of the surrounding squares having just been on the GH square

T71, 1160 BC
Warrior 2: With Willem's Cultural Borders there, dare to move 1NW GH For
Archer 1: Again, if no Barbs are spotted, we could move 1SW (Something) Riv For

T72, 1120 BC
Warrior 2: Move 1W GH For, which will be adjacent to Willem's Cultural Borders and which is a spot that will give us spawn-busting in the area from a pretty safe location and can give us advance notice of Shaka's units coming
Archer 1: Find a spot in the area that can give us good advance warning of Shaka's units coming, perhaps moving 1NW (to 1W of the G Riv Horse) which is another Forest square... we can figure out this detail after we've explored that area a bit more


When Building Workers and Settlers
Please remember that when building a Worker or a Settler, it is often preferable to work a Mine than a Farm, since all Food gets converted into Hammers.

This point applies even more strongly in a Bureaucratic capital, since our "actual" base Hammers get multiplied by Bureaucracy's bonus, but our "converted" base Food does not get multiplied by Bureaucracy's bonus.

Example:
After 3-pop-whipping a Settler, the game likes to leave a G Riv Farm assigned instead of a GH Riv Mine.

In our capital, that means:
G Riv Farm = 3 F -> 3 H, for a net 3 H + 1 C
GH Riv Mine = 1 F -> 1 H, 3 H * 1.5 = 4.5 H (say, floor to 4), for a net 1 + 4 = 5 H + 1 C

Just by paying attention, we make 2 (or possibly 3) extra Hammers for doing nothing other than being alert to the opportunity!


Things to figure out
Which Civics to run. Probably switch to Bureaucracy + Org Rel on T70, then Confucianism on T71, with us optionally Opening Borders with Isabella on T71 before switching to Confucianism, since a BtS AI won't cancel an Open Borders agreement and Isabella has one of the worst game-long hatreds toward heathens.

Or, we could just plan to stay in No State Religion for quite some time, only switching into Org Rel once we get Monarchy and then only so that we can build Missionaries without needing Monasteries.

What to do with Workers 2 and 3.

What to build in X-opolis... I'm thinking Work Boat for 1 turn, then complete Worker 5 after Settler 5, then finish off the Work Boat while growing.

What to build in Gems City. Probably Work Boat -> Work Boat.

What to build in Surfin' Turf. Probably not another Archer just yet. A Lighthouse would be good, especially if we go for Organized Religion and wait for Confucianism to auto-spread there for a turn, then spread it ourselves if it hasn't spread by the start of T72 (2 turns of Revolts... no point spreading before then because the Missionary won't cost us 1 Gold per Turn while in Anarchy).

What to build in City 4 after the Granary. Probably partial a partial Archer and a partial Spy, later whipping a Settler or a Worker after growing.

What we're going to do with Gems City after getting the Great Scientist... maybe fire the 2 Scientists, grow to Size 6, then 3-pop-whip another Settler? REXing will be good at this stage.

Worker 4 should be pretty easy... Pasture the G Cow, Road it, then Farm the G Riv that is 1NE of Surfin' Turf.

Do we want to spend 29 Flasks to get Monarchy or do we want to enable Willem with really early Civil Service's Bureaucracy Civic?

EDIT: I forgot to account for Bureaucracy's bonus on the Academy, so perhaps it makes sense to stay at a 0% Science Rate until the Academy gets built, especially if we can save 1 turn by switching to Hereditary Rule just after the Great Scientist appears and while it is moving to X-opolis.


EDIT: Also, we should figure out our Foreign Diplo policy. I'm tempted to say "If an AI Demands anything, give it to them except for Monarchy or Feudalism."

 

[Folket]

I think we should put our overflow flasks into monarchy so that we can trade for it. If we give William CS he might decide to go for Education since he has minor science flavour, if he does he will beeline Liberalism after that. Without CS I expect him to research currency, MC, CS or calendar.

I'm confused as to how trade routes work. I have tried in the test game I do not always get trade routes to all cities that are connected. I might have to read the code to see what decides.

It seems like my autosaves are gone. I'm sorry about that. As well for forgetting to keep track of the great Prophet. That was bad.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I think we should put our overflow flasks into monarchy so that we can trade for it. If we give William CS he might decide to go for Education since he has minor science flavour, if he does he will beeline Liberalism after that. Without CS I expect him to research currency, MC, CS or calendar.

So, do we WANT him to go for Paper for us? That would be great, right?

Or, let's say that he goes for Metal Casting but will take 30 turns to research it, but maybe 19 turns to research it if he is running Bureaucracy. That approach would also be better, right?

What I have heard but am not sure about is that an AI will trade you all of their Gold when in Anarchy... I'm not sure if we'd be able to make strategic use of that fact by gifting Civil Service at the right time, though, since there is a hard-coded limit of (20? 25?) turns between a non-Spiritual Civ's Civic switches, and I'm assuming that he'll switch Civics after learning Monarchy.

I'm more leery of giving Civil Service away to any other AI, but since Willem is small and close, it's certainly an option and we should probably decide pretty soon, so that we'll know whether to dump some Flasks into Monarchy or not.

Note that if he Demands Code of Laws, dumping Flasks into Monarchy would have been a waste, so it might be good to wait until he's about to learn Monarchy before we dump Flasks into that tech.

I'm confused as to how trade routes work. I have tried in the test game I do not always get trade routes to all cities that are connected. I might have to read the code to see what decides.

It's probably not too important, as it's not too hard for me to fake Trade Routes... I can just put a Dye Resource on a GH Mine that we're working for +1 Commerce in a given City, for example. The trick is just going to be keeping track of the Trade Routes in the real game so that I can know what needs to be done to update the test game.

It seems like my autosaves are gone. I'm sorry about that.

No worries. I don't really have the time to analyze every saved game, although it is nice to be able to have old saved games to reference if we need to figure out the exact date of something... manually-made ones where you pause the game first are better, though, as loading an autosaved game can cause BUFFY to trigger a "reloaded the game" event if an AI has asked you to make a decision at the start of your autosaved game.

EDIT: What IS important is that you confirm that your Civilization.ivi file for Beyond the Sword contains these lines:
MaxAutoSaves = 0
AutoSaveInterval = 1

As well for forgetting to keep track of the great Prophet. That was bad.

Don't worry. It would have been nice, but we'll find another way to manipulate the AIs to building The AP for us. At least Elizabeth should be making more Gold per Turn now which we might be able to get in trade for a Resource post-Currency.

 

[Folket]

My max saves is set to 10. Save Interval is set to 1. I can change that to max saves to 0.

I guess William will start to tech one tech before he gets CS from us.

At the moment I would not like to spend a turn to revolt to a religion. If we plan for a GA from music It hink we should wait for that. I guess we should try it out and see how fat we can get there.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

My max saves is set to 10. Save Interval is set to 1. I can change that to max saves to 0.

MaxAutoSaves = 0 means not to delete autosaved games, although they can be overwritten if you play the exact same turns. That way, if you play a different game during a different set of turns, saying, starting a new game from 4000 BC, you won't suddenly lose the autosaved games from a different time period in a different saved game.

That said, loading autosaved games is a bit risky business and it's still ideal to make manual saved games each turn, if you can remember.

I guess William will start to tech one tech before he gets CS from us.

It depends upon how we want to do things. If we want to give him the chance to tech Paper early, then steal said tech from him, we'd trade him Code of Laws when he's 1 turn away from learning Monarchy, then sell him Civil Service for Monarchy on the following turn.

At the moment I would not like to spend a turn to revolt to a religion.

It all depends upon what we plan to build and how we're going to handle the AIs.

Are we going to rush sending our Galley northward and send Settlers 6 and 7 to Elizabeth? If not, we won't be getting her to Friendly status anytime soon, so the negative Diplo won't hurt us.

Similarly, we won't be getting Willem to Friendly anytime soon, so again, the negative Diplo won't hurt us.

Shaka is already plotting a war and has no State Religion... it can't really get any worse.

Isabella won't be Friendly without Buddhism as our State Religion, which now may end up being the AP Religion (better than an unknown AI founding it, assuming that Isabella can be reached early on without funny tricks like a Work Boat being gifted to her at the start of the game), but it can always spread to us later while we REX. Isabella hardly trades at all, so upsetting her in a non-permanent way won't really hurt us technologically.

So, there's no real advantage to staying in No State Religion, unless we're going to handicap our REX by gifting Settlers early on, which probably isn't the right play, especially since Willem and Elizabeth have no techs to trade to us, and we can always steal techs from Willem after Monarchy.


Thus, it's a matter of gain vs cost. If we're going to be building more than a few Buildings... I'm pretty sure that most Cities will get Odeons, for example, then the early Hammers gained from Org Religion + a State Religion will more than make up for the 1 turn of Anarchy. The Civic cost is currently 1 Gold per Turn, which is also a worthwhile cost. We're already at the point where +1 Unit costs us +1 Gold per Turn, so I think that Buildings will get built. A Lighthouse and a Library are good build items for Surfin' Turf, since we have the Crab + Lake for the Lighthouse and the Gems Mine plus good base Commerce from Trade Routes for the Library.

If we keep building Missionaries for new Cities, they'll gain extra Hammers when whipping Granaries and Lighthouses themselves.


Isabella can even simply Demand a tech from us at some point and we'd be able to counter the unhappiness, even though she won't make for a good tech-trading partner anyway and likely won't have anything else to give us for a long time.

If we plan for a GA from music It hink we should wait for that. I guess we should try it out and see how fat we can get there.

Would we switch to Organized Religion without a State Religion to be able to build Missionaries, would we mess up an Education Lightbulb by teching Meditation for Monasteries, or would we simply not spread our State Religion at all?

If we steal a tech from Willem, which goes hand-in-hand with putting him in Bureaucracy soon, then being in Confucianism gets us a 40% discount on stealing the tech from a gifted City (gifting him a City is the safest way for our Spies and cheapest for the Distance cost of the Espionage Mission), which is also pretty huge.

Let's say that we could steal Currency, Construction, or Metal Casting. Well, we'd want to do so before getting to Music, so the sooner that we revolted, the more time we'd get to use our State Religion.


The more that you make me talk through the situation, the more attractive Confucianism as a State Religion becomes.


Research
We could also be building Research for the next little while, to help pump our way through to Currency, then we could build Wealth.

Or, instead of dumping Hammers into partial Archers, we could put Hammers into Missionaries.

Basically, until we get to Construction, we don't have great Units to spam, so Research or Missionaries might be better build items for a City such as City 4 after it 1-pop-whips its Granary.



EDIT: In terms of switching Religions, we might end up doing so during a Golden Age, say, if Hinduism or Buddhism has spread to us and we want to be in that Religion, but for the medium term, Confucianism will probably serve us best.



EDIT: Workers 2 and 3...
We could probably do something like:
Worker 2 moves 1W G Riv and Roads -> moves to the G Corn and Farms
Worker 3 moves NW + NE to the P Riv For where Fish City will go, then Chop -> move 1SW and partial Farm a G Riv square -> move 1S and Farm a G Riv Road

Doing so means 2 + 5 = 7 more turns until the Corn gets Farmed, but 1 to 3 of those turns are during Anarchy.


We could also send both Workers directly to the Corn... walking there is just as fast as Roading along the way when 2 Workers are involved, so we could go:
Both Workers: Move 1W and Road the G Riv -> Move to the G Corn and Farm

That would mean that the Corn would get Farmed after 1 + 3 turns = 4 more turns, which sounds better in terms of total Food earned, but would doing so delay our Forest Chop for too long?

If we're looking at 2 turns of Anarchy in the short term, then we might be okay, as we'd then do:
Both Workers Road the Corn -> 1 Worker can move 1 turn earlier and partially Farm the G Riv Road -> move to the P Riv For -> Chop it... for a total of 1 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 3 = 10 turns... way too long

Thus, a good compromise solution would probably be to have both Workers help with building a Road to get one Worker to Farm the Corn faster.

So:
T70
Worker 2 Move 1W G Riv (2E of the G Corn) and Road
Worker 3 Move 1W G Riv (2E of the G Corn) and Complete the Road

T71
Worker 2 Move N G Riv + NE P Riv For
Worker 3 Move to the G Corn and Farm for 5 turns

T72
Worker 2 Chops the P Riv For for 3 turns

Doing so gets us our Chop after 5 turns and our Farm after 6 turns, which seems to be a pretty good compromise.



EDIT: I'm still not totally sure what to do about Gems City after we get our Great Scientist #2 there... perhaps 2-pop-whipping Workers will be good, as the City can't grow very quickly if X-opolis is hogging the Wheat.

It does seem a bit weak for the City to be on a whipping cycle, though...
Let's say that we convert the G Riv Farm that is shared with the capital to a Cottage, and we work both Gems Mines there...
At Size 3, that's 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 - 6 = only 2-Food surplus, which is pretty terrible.
Toss in a G Riv Farm at Size 4 and that's still just a 3-Food surplus.

Of course, assuming that we want to hire 2 Scientists at Size 5, doing so leaves us needing to work 2 Farms and 1 Gems Mine just to stay stagnant.

But, ideally, we'd be working both Gems Mines there.

So, maybe we should just focus on growing Gems City but not whipping it.

For example, growing the City to Size 6 could have us being Food-neutral with 2 Farms, 2 Gems Mines, and 2 Scientists.

Or, if we pushed out the hiring of Scientists until later, we could just keep growing on Farms to be able to hire more Specialists in a Golden Age and afterward we could switch Specialists to Mines.

Thus, I'm thinking that we won't be whipping Gems City anymore, except in a case where our capital can give up its Wheat for an extended period of time, but I think that keeping the Wheat in the capital for quite some time is going to be a strong play, due to growing into Bureaucracy-enhanced Cottages and being able to regrow quickly from whipping.


Meanwhile, Surfin' Turf and City 4 can focus on working Food-based squares and whipping, since both Cities have sufficient Food surplus to be able to recover quickly from whipping.

 

[Folket]

Been playing around a little.

See this as a rough draft to have something to talk about.

Do we want any cottages around city 4? My guess is that we want to get a farm NE of the city first but I would enjoy one or two cottages on those river tiles.

I like the idea of a second galley.

I guess we want to grow our capital to size 8-10? Or do we want to whip settlers at a smaller size?

It seems like doing two turns of 0% and then four turns of 100% will get us currency. We are probably better loosing some fractions on the last turn to save us money for acadamy.

We shuld buy three hints from William as soon as possible to determine what our future strategi is going to be. If we can finish three quests soon we should rush for optics to enable a AP victory.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Been playing around a little.

Thanks! We need people to keep testing to keep the momentum of the game going.

Do we want any cottages around city 4? My guess is that we want to get a farm NE of the city first but I would enjoy one or two cottages on those river tiles.

A Farm NE of the City would be quite helpful.

Here's my vision for City 4: Granary -> grow -> whip Settler -> as soon as Construction is unlocked, build Cats and Scouts -> whip the City to death, literally, even whipping Warriors/Scouts as much as we can

Then, we perform a clever little trick that the AIs love to perform but many players on the CFC forums foolishly mock:

Spoiler :

So, Farms would be my preference, in order to grow the City quickly, build at least one Settler, then hopefully a Cat or two along with some Scouts/Warriors.

We will hopefully also have a City settled to the west to steal back the Corn (2W of the G Corn).

This approach is not without cost... there is an investment... but, there is also payback down the road.

Players mock the AI armies which consist solely of siege units that appear with regular consistency in BtS. Some people say that it's a bug in the AI programming, but I think that it is pure genius.


However, until we have unlocked Construction, building extra units (like Spies, Archers, etc) just means more units sitting around, eating up Gold per turn for no real good reason.


Cap really needs to work its 5-Food Crab constantly and Fur City shouldn't be stealing it. That means that we want a Work Boat for Fur City soon, but we also need a Worker to build Cottages for our capital.

I would actually be okay if we first grew on Farms, though... the "ideal conditions" for a Cottage-heavy City are to first grow on Farms until you are 1-City-Size away from your ideal target City Size and then massively convert all of your Farms to Cottages. We don't have enough Worker turns to hit this theoretical maximal optimization, but we could finish the G Riv Farm at 1NW of Cap first and then work on Cottages on other squares, eventually replacing the Farms with Cottages after we've grown a lot.


Think about it this way: Roughly every 15 Food earned in Cap is worth 30 * 1.5 = 45 Hammers. That's roughly a tripling of output.

Or, if we don't whip much and just grow, then the sooner that we grow, the sooner that we can work our maximum amount of squares in the capital.

I guess we want to grow our capital to size 8-10? Or do we want to whip settlers at a smaller size?

We definitely need to whip Settler 5 and probably Settler 6 from Cap, as our other Cities won't have grown enough and Gems City is probably not going to whip again, as the Wheat being used by a Bureaucratic capital is just so strong... we can allow Gems City to keep borrowing the Wheat long enough to grow to Size 5, but then Cap will probably keep the Wheat for a very long time.

Settler 5 at Size 6 since we need that Settler ASAP. Settler 6 whenever it makes sense, but no smaller than at Size 6, as we'll want to work our Deer, Crab, and Wheat non-stop in our capital (well, the Wheat can be worked as soon as Gems City has hit Size 5).

Again, when 3-pop-whipping, recall that Bureaucracy produces 45 Hammers per whipped population, so if a non-Building build item costs 90 or less Hammers, it will become a 2-pop-whipping action. That's why we earned only 8 Hammers in Settler 5 (100 - 8 = 92; 92 > 90; therefore, it's a 3-pop-whipping action, earning us 3 * 30 * 1.5 = 135 Hammers, much of which will overflow from the 100-Hammer Settler).

I like the idea of a second galley.

The trick is fitting in all of the Hammers from somewhere. The more up-front Work Boats, Settlers, and Workers that we can build, the more Hammers that we'll earn in the medium term.

With TGLH, Commerce won't be an issue and can actually grow rather than shrink when counting Commerce minus Maintenance, for settling the next few Cities.

So, the less Spies, Archers, Galleys, Missionaries, etc that we build in the short term until we get our REXing going, and the more Food-based squares that we can work, the better off we will be.

Monarchy for Hereditary Rule allows us to break the game's limitations on Slavery (Happiness) with a bit of a Gold per turn investment in Warriors, so some Warriors will be justified where needed.

But, we need enough Cities, with Granaries completed, which will keep growing and whipping to make proper use of our early Hereditary Rule advantage.

It seems like doing two turns of 0% and then four turns of 100% will get us currency. We are probably better loosing some fractions on the last turn to save us money for acadamy.

Great observation!

We shuld buy three hints from William as soon as possible to determine what our future strategi is going to be.

I don't think that anyone disagrees with you about wanting the hint soon.

If we can finish three quests soon we should rush for optics to enable a AP victory.

I have to assume that some of the quests can't be completed by the time of learning Optics and Theology, otherwise I will be very disappointed at BSPollux's REPEATED attempts to warn us that the game will be a long game.

I wouldn't be surprised to see late-game quests along the lines of:
i. Gift 10 Nukes to a lady and help her to eliminate her Worst Enemy
ii. Gift 10 Tanks to a lady
iii. Help Catherine to build 5 Research Institutes (she would need to tech Superconductors, although we could build Laboratories and gift them to her and then they would become Research Institutes)
iv. All sorts of other quests that require late-game techs


Ideally, we'll steal a couple of techs from Willem, whether we're at war with him or not. We may end up having 3 wars with him:
1. War #1 is to gift him both a City and Catapult fodder, which also helps him to build a Road network toward us, and also gives us a City from which to steal techs cheaply
2. We optionally recapture our City and at some point, then Cease Fire with him, in order to make better use of our City. War #2 (optional) would then have us gifting him another City shortly before declaring war on him but not recapturing that City and instead capturing all of his self-built Cities so that his capital gets relocated close to our core area
3. Cease Fire and gift him a stack of Workers, then declare war and use one Chariot (which can be built a long way off from now, so there's no rush to get a Horse Resource) to immediately recapture the Workers, optionally gifting him a different City slightly before the war if we want to keep him alive, otherwise we kill him off


The second war may be optional, depending upon how much advantage we feel him keeping one of our Cities for a while will be (if we can keep stealing techs from him, it can be worth it for him to keep said City for a while).


I really don't see the need for us to spam Cottages outside of the capital. We're not hurting for Commerce due to TGLH with Foreign Trade Routes (and later island-based domestic Trade Routes), several Gems Mines, and several Riverside squares.

What we really need is Granaries, Food, Food, Food, some Military Police Units, and more Food.


Food will give us more Settlers, Workers, and Work Boats. Food will give us Catapults. Food will give us Great Scientists for Lightbulbing. Food will give us infrastructure (i.e. Universities and Oxford).

That's one reason why a Lighthouse in City 3 will be good, as it means more Food (5F + 2C Crab, 3F + 2C Lake).

All of this green Riverside land (G Riv squares) screams Farms, Farms, and more Farms.


At some point, we stop whipping, grow some of our Cities, and launch a Golden Age, hiring several Specialists in several Cities, generate some Great Scientists, and Lightbulbing our way to Education and possibly Liberalism (temporarily avoid Machinery for Liberalism).


Our army of Catapults will grow over time, honing their skills in our backyard training grounds, then the veterans can be shipped off to Willem with some escorts.


Somewhere in there, we'll unlock our Heroic Epic and build it in City 3, then replace whipping with Mines in that City.


So, we should approach this turnset with the goals of:
- How do we maximize Food in our Cities?
- How do we get our Granaries built early and at good times?
- What units can we delay completing but leave in the build queues until later to complete, saving us Gold costs for now
- How do we get more priority REXing build items, such as Settlers, Workers, and Work Boats ASAP?


There's no doubt that +1 Happiness from Fur City beats building +1 Warrior in every City, and there's no doubt that Triple Fish City is going to be very strong once we get it settled and have built Work Boats, a Granary, and a Lighthouse for that City.

It's all about maximizing these benefits so that we can have several large-sized Cities hiring Specialists during a Golden Age, then whipping Universities and having the capital perform whipping overflow into Oxford.


Other teams will be doing similar things; we'll just aim to do things better than they will.


If we want a good City for stealing techs, gifting City 4 seems like a good choice.

If we just want to gift any old City to Willem, then gifting him Northern Fish City after building him a G Riv Cottage might be a good alternative option. He may or may not even make the time to build a Work Boat for us.

Note, though, that gifting him a City resets that City's Whipping Unhappiness, so we can optionally take advantage of that fact... or, we simply abuse Hereditary Rule by stocking a City with Warriors for a while until Unhappiness wears off.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, here's what we've got so far in terms of a tentative PPP. I've tried to document the reasoning behind decisions so that it's clear to follow why we're doing what we're doing.

One point that may not be clear is that if a Unit (such as a Spy or an Archer) has Hammers in it but is not at the top of the build queue at the start of a turn, it will start to lose its Hammers after 10 turns. The same happens for Buildings (such as a Barracks) after 60 turns.

With a little bit of effort, we can put build items at the top of the build queue during Anarchy to save a turn of Hammer decay.

Also, whenever a build item gets completed, it gets completed at the end of our turn. If there is a build item in the build queue after that build item, it then gets placed at the top of our build queue at the end of our turn.

The game only calculates Hammer decay at the BEGINNING of the NEXT TURN, so even though a build item wasn't at the top of a build queue at the end of our turn, if that build item was second in the build queue on the turn when we completed the first item in the build queue, then the second item in the build queue will not suffer from Hammer decay for +1 turn.

Doing so can earn us +1 Hammer or +1 Gold (from delaying when we'll complete a build item). We're not yet at the point of the game where we can throw away Hammers or Gold due to laziness.


This PPP is a work in progress... feel free to offer suggestions on how to improve things. I'll also have to edit in thoughts from the real game, such as when we might gift Code of Laws to Willem, dependent upon his research pace.


EDIT: We might also have to alter the tech rate slightly in there... instead of 2 turns of 0%, we might need 1 turn of 10% just to get Currency to be a 4-turn tech... but, it will almost become a 5-turn tech if we dump Flasks into Monarchy, so that fact is a point in favour of using Civil Service to get Monarchy from Willem. Actually, on second thought, we shouldn't need a turn of 10%... we should be pretty close with stealing the Gems Mine in Gems City on T75 (stealing it on T74 shorts City 4 by 1 Hammer and also gives us a greater fractional Flask loss)... and if we're short by a bit, a City or two could build Research for the last turn on Currency.


Suggested PPP
Suggested Diplo Policies
If an AI Demands/Requests a tech which is not Monarchy, give the AI that tech. If an AI Demands/Requests Monarchy, then tell that AI "no"

If an AI Demands a Resource or Gold, give the AI that Resource (a Resource can only be Demanded if we have an extra copy of one, so there's no fear about our only copy of a Resource going missing)

If an AI Demands/Requests Gold, let's say that if it is less than 100 Gold, give it to the AI, but if it is more than 100 Gold, do not give it to the AI (Gold can only be Demanded if we have 50 Gold or more in our coffers)

If a tech trade other than Monarchy comes available, stop play to discuss the opportunity.

Monitor the F4 GLANCE screen's Worst Enemy values. For example, Isabella hates Willem by -3 for being in a heathen religion, for a total of -2 Cautious, and thus Willem could become her Worst Enemy in the future.


T69, 1240 BC

Keep Research on Currency (even if we decide to trade for Monarchy using Code of Laws, putting roughly 50 Flasks, as per the test game, is too much when we only need to put in 29 Flasks into Monarchy, as per earlier testing)

C1: Switch to building a Work Boat

Scout: Wake him up and move 1N P (NW + N of the P Sheep). Doing so has the downside of reducing Forest growth chances to 0% on that square, but gives us spawn-busting of 4 more Barb-Galley-breeding squares, without reducing any squares that we are spawn-busting since our Culture is fog-busting the area to the south of the Scout. With all AIs (whom we have met) knowing Sailing, Barb Galleys are a reality wherever we leave a space for them to spawn.

Archer 1: Wake up and move 1W GH (SW + W of the G Cow)


T70, 1200 BC

Select Civil Service from The Oracle

Do not revolt Civics when asked to

Manually revolt into Bureaucracy + Organized Religion

If Willem is down to 1 turn away from learning Monarchy, gift him Code of Laws, then plan to buy Monarchy using Civil Service on the following turn

C1: Put Spy at the top of the build queue
C2: Put Barracks at the top of the build queue
C3: Leave Archer at the top of the build queue
C4: Leave Granary at the top of the build queue

Warrior 2: Wake and move 1W GH Riv (NW + W of G Cow; only move if no Barbs have been revealed by Archer 1)

Archer 1: If no Barbs have been spotted, move 1SW G Riv (1E of the G Riv Horse)

Warrior 3: Stay on the G Riv this turn

Confucian Missionary 1: Move to the GH Riv Gems Mine (NE + N of City 3) so that he can be used to spread to either City 3 or City 4, if one of those Cities gets Confucianism spreading to it automatically over the next couple of turns.

W1: Finish Camping the Fur
W2: Move 1W G Riv (1NE of City 4) and Road
W3: Move 1W G Riv (1NE of City 4) and Complete the Road
W4: Rename him as "Worker 4" (click on his name)
W4: Press Ctrl + 4 to number him
W4: Move 1W G Cow (1W of City 3) and Pasture


T71, 1160 BC

Do not switch to Confucianism yet, as we want to complete Settler 5 first

If Willem is down to 1 turn away from learning Monarchy, gift him Code of Laws, then plan to buy Monarchy using Civil Service on the following turn

C1: Switch to Settler
C1: 3-pop-whip the Settler
C1: G Riv Farm -> GH Riv Mine
C1: Put Settler -> Spy in the build queue
C2: Switch to Work Boat
C2: Put Work Boat -> Barracks in the build queue
C3: Switch to building Research (so that we can keep the overflow Hammers for a future Confucianism spread)
C4: Switch to building Research (so that we can keep the overflow Hammers for a hopeful Confucianism spread)

C1: Deer, Crab, GH Riv Mine


Archer 1: 1SW Something Riv For (1S of the G Riv Horse)

Warrior 2: 1NW GH For (2W of the Lake)

Warrior 3: Wake and move 1E G Riv For (SW + W + W of the G Corn)

W1: Road the Fur
W2: Move to P Riv For (NE + NE + N of City 4)
W3: Move to G Corn and start to Farm
W4: Pasture G Cow (1W of City 3)


T72, 1120 BC

Look at the F9 DEMOGRAPHICS screen's Exports - Imports values and write them down (or screenshot them).

Open Borders with Isabella

Look again at the F9 DEMOGRAPHICS screen's Exports - Imports values and write them down (or screenshot them).

If Willem is down to 1 turn away from learning Monarchy, gift him Code of Laws, then plan to buy Monarchy using Civil Service on the following turn

Switch Religion to Confucianism, but only after Opening Borders with Isabella

C1: Spy should be at the top of the build queue
C2: Put Barracks at the top of the build queue
C3: Put Archer at the top of the build queue
C4: Put Granary at the top of the build queue


Archer 1: Move 1NW Something For (1W of the G Riv Horse)... we are doing so to avoid leaving any spawn-busting gaps when Warrior 2 moves, and Warrior 2 is moving to avoid spawn-busting gaps when Warrior 3 moves, so if you would like to move somewhere else instead, please stop play first so that we can make sure that our units move as a team. This approach allows us to send Warrior 3 home, though, which saves us 1 Gold per Turn on Unit Supply, so we should have a pretty good reason for wanting to move our units in a different way.

Warrior 2: Move 1NW G For (NW + W + W of the Lake)

These positions should be good for Archer 1 and Warrior 2 to stay at for spawn-busting, fog-busting, and advance-warning of Shaka coming.

Exploring any further westward would be an unnecessary risk.

Warrior 3: Move 1NE G For (2W of G Corn, so that we can get within our Cultural Borders 1 turn sooner)

Settler 5 (called Settler 4 by the game): Move into Galley 1

Galley 1: After the Settler is on the Galley, move 1E + 1SE (1NE of the Fur; it won't matter that we just put 2 units outside of our Cultural Borders as there are no Unit Supply Costs during Anarchy)

W1: Complete the Road on the Fur
W2: Chop P Riv For (NE + NE + N of City 4)
W3: Farm G Corn (NW of City 4)
W4: Pasture G Cow (1W of City 3)


T73, 1080 BC

Science Rate 100%

C1: Put Worker -> Spy in the build queue
C2: Put Work Boat -> Barracks in the build queue
C3: Put Lighthouse -> Archer in the build queue
C4: Granary should be the build item


C1: Should still be working Deer, Crab, GH Riv Mine
C2: Should still be working Wheat, Gems, 2 Sci
C3: Should still be working Crab, Gems
C4: Should still be working Gems, Corn (Unfarmed)


Galley 1: Unload Settler 5 on the G that is 1E of the Fur, then re-enter our Cultural Borders (probably go 1NE of Cap unless you have a better idea)


W1: Move 1N G For (2E of Cap)
W2: Chop P Riv For (NE + NE + N of City 4)
W3: Farm G Corn (NW of City 4)
W4: Complete the Pasture on the G Cow (1W of City 3)

Confucian Missionary: Spread in City 3 unless Confucianism has already spread there, in which case spread in City 4

Warrior 2: Skip Turn on the GH For (NW + W + W of the Lake)

Archer 1: Skip Turn on the For (1W of the G Riv Horse)

Warrior 3: Move 1E GH (1W of the G Corn)


T74, 1040 BC

Science Rate still at 100%

C1: GH Riv Mine -> Wheat (growth in 1 turn)
C1: Put Work Boat -> Spy in the build queue
C2: Grassland -> southern G Riv Farm (not the 2nd Gems Mine yet, so that City 4 can get 30 / 60 Hammers going into its Granary this turn)
C3: Crab -> G Cow (to earn +1 Hammer per Turn via Organized Religion; we wouldn't have earned this extra Hammer last turn, even though the Cow got Pastured last turn; if we fall short on Flasks later, we can always consider a temporary Research build item in a couple of Cities on the last turn or two of researching Currency)

W1: Cottage the G For that is 2E of Cap (remember that the Chop will go into Fur City, so we might as well hope for Confucianism to spread before Chopping, so we can delay the Chop by Cottaging the square)
W2: Complete the Chop on the P Riv For (NE + NE + N of City 4)
W3: Farm G Corn (NW of City 4)
W4: Road the G Cow (1W of City 3)
W5: Rename him as "Worker 5"
W5: Press Ctrl + 5 to number him
W5: Move 1NW G Riv and Farm (1NW of Cap)

Settle City 5

C5: Work the Fur
C5: Build a Granary

Warrior 3: Move 1SE GH (1W of City)... I'm not sure where he will be headed, perhaps to City 3, City 4, or Cap

 

[leif erikson]

Been reading, trying to catch up. It is like taking a university course.

I'd like to go back to my favorite subject, the Horse tile. If Izzie is between us and Shaka, (she has 3 cities and Shaka 4) then that Horse tile is in imminent danger of being swallowed up by Izzie in her need to expand. I guess the Work Boat will soon tell us where she is, but thinking we should consider a plan change if we wish to claim those ponies.

Really kind of surprised that, in an Immortal game, no one has Iron Working by turn 70. Would really like to trade for it. Better keep a pretty good tech in reserve to claim it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It is like taking a university course.

Let's hope that you enjoyed your time (studying) in university!

I'd like to go back to my favorite subject, the Horse tile. If Izzie is between us and Shaka, (she has 3 cities and Shaka 4) then that Horse tile is in imminent danger of being swallowed up by Izzie in her need to expand.

That's a valid point. Settling Fur City is very strong, though, as it converts our Foreign Trade Routes into 3-Commerce Trade Routes and 1-Commerce Domestic Trade Routes in our other 4 Cities into 2-Commerce Trade Routes.

It makes me feel that we should keep Open Borders with Shaka, despite Elizabeth's hatred of him.

Once we declare war on Willem, Elizabeth won't be all that happy with us anyway, so we should probably plan to gift her a City and steal a tech if she ever researches a tech that will be tough to get in trade, such as Theology or Philosophy, since once the Religion is gone, many AIs avoid those techs for a while.

So, if we have to tell Elizabeth that we won't stop trading with her Worst Enemy, I think that we'll just have to accept the -1 Diplo Attitude from her. She's the natural next target after Willem, assuming that we can still complete her quest once she's down to a single City.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, I don't think that we can afford the Commerce hit from not settling Fur City as City 5, but City 6 could be Horse City.

In fact, it might be good for Isabella to build us such a City, so that we can capture it with Cats and Archers instead of having to build it ourselves.

That said, if Isabella is in the fog to the west, how is it that she has 2 Holy Cities and no Cultural Borders are visible when we zoom out, and no Religion has spread to Shaka?

Plus, how did Shaka and Isabella delay meeting each other until well into my turnset if they are immediate neighbours?

Actually, that fact pours water on my theory that Isabella started with a Work Boat near Shaka.

So, an island to the south seems to be the only theory that we've come up with that can possibly hold true, and if she's on an island, then we shouldn't really worry about her settling on the mainland before we have Settler 6.

Really kind of surprised that, in an Immortal game, no one has Iron Working by turn 70. Would really like to trade for it. Better keep a pretty good tech in reserve to claim it.

We'll still have Currency to trade should Willem tech it after Monarchy. We'll be a few techs up on Elizabeth. Shaka or Isabella won't trade it to us, due to their high iTechTradeKnownPercent values (50 and 60, respectively) but one of them learning it could help either Willem or Elizabeth to be more willing to part with Iron Working.


At some point, we might want to build a Fort on the square 2NE of City 4, to make a canal toward Willem and Elizabeth.

There's also the option of building a Fort by City 3 (NW + N of City 3) and one on the northern coast, but we'd have to settle a junky City in the area to make it happen.

Regardless, we're a ways off from either Fort approach being viable (since Forts must exist within our Cultural Borders for boats to be able to use them), but doing so would be a way to set up a Galley chain from our future Heroic Epic City, so settling a junky City (no Resources, but at least G Riv squares) to the north-west of City 3 later might be a way for us to "catch up" on warring by declaring war later than other teams do.


I'm still not 100% in support of Organized Religion and Confucianism (more like 98% in support of revolting), but since we won't be trying to get AIs up to Friendly status for a while, we can just plan to Open Borders with Isabella earlier than planned and reap the benefits when we build cheap Odeons.

City 3 will probably benefit the most, with an earlier Lighthouse giving us more Food.


EDIT: What would be really funny is if we could Settler-spam sufficiently while Shaka continued to stay away from Mysticism and Writing and then we Culture-flipped his core Cities. It might even be possible that Willem does that very thing.

Speaking of Willem's Cities, his second City had to have been founded on the G Riv For that is SE + SE + S of Amsterdam. As of T62, that square was Forested, but wasn't within Willem's Cultural Borders. As of T65, when he'd already founded City 2, that Forest had mysteriously disappeared. This claim is backed up by the location of Willem's Cultural Boders on T69.

What's terrible is that he settled one square away from having the Gems square within that City's big fat cross! What a dope!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I just went to look for clarification on the rules and it looks like there is an opportunity there, depending upon how random number generation plays out in the game.

Rules Clarification Requested (with strategic implications, so I'm posting in our thread instead of in the Maintenance Thread)

Purchasing Information
Willem will only sell information if his opinion of you is +1 or better.
Information is purchased with a cash gift via diplomacy screen, or by moving workers into his capital and gifting them by the interface button.

From that wording, if Willem Demands/Requests Gold from us, it will count as "a cash gift via diplomacy screen." (The saved game prior to the exchange can be our autosave.)

So, the questions then become:
1. If Willem asks for a lump sum of Gold (say, 61 Gold) and we give it to him, can the excess Gold that isn't enough to purchase the next hint act as a credit?

Example:
We learn Currency on T77 and save up, say, 65 Gold by T78. At the start of T78, Willem comes Demanding 61 Gold.

The next hint will cost us 50 Gold, so we'll earn that hint. Can we keep the 61 - 50 = 11 Gold as a future credit toward the purchase of Willem's next hint?


2. Similarly, can we voluntarily set up such a situation? For example, can we gift Willem 50 Gold per turn over the course of several turns, then earn the next hint when our total lump sum Gold gifted to him reaches the next hint's threshold? As long as we avoid other trades with him on the same turn, I don't see anything in the rules which explicitly states that this approach is not valid.

Doing so could be useful to avoid Shaka Demanding a large sum of Gold from us.

 

[BSPollux]

Sorry, but no.

You have to initiate the trade yourself. And you may not include any other trade with it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Sorry, but no.

You have to initiate the trade yourself. And you may not include any other trade with it.

Fair enough.

What about question 2?

 

[Folket]

I'm assuming that we have to pay William with a lump sum. But can we pay for more then one hint in the same turn? Do we do as one transaction or several?

 

[BSPollux]

Sorry didn't see the second question.

No, the rules state you have to pay in "a trade" not in "trades". So you have to pay in one go (you may not even split it within the same turn, like paying 66, doing something and paying 100 later for 166). This is to avoid abuse.

You may buy several clues in one trade (like 166+200=366 gold in one go) or you may pay for each in a separate payment within the same turn. Provide before and after pics for each transaction. If you have payed for several clues you may ask them all at once, or after each other if you prefer that, no matter how you payed.