SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

It appears that there is some danger of Kashi converting either Tokugawa or Hammarugawa to Hinduism accidentally since the spread rate is influenced by distance. Neither have spread Buddism beyond their capital and we don't have buddist missionaries to assist them.

If Hammarugawa gets a random spread to Dur-Kurigalzu or Tokugawa gets a random spread to either Tokyo or Osaka, then they will have roughly equal numbers of Hindu and Buddist populations.

Worryingly, they are both friendly with each other at +10 and +9 relations respectively. If either converts to Hindu, we have no way to flip them back, and we can forget about Hammarugawa voting for us to win the game I think.



About the only thing I can think of is a 5 turn jump into Theocracy and bribing them into Theocracy to keep the Kashi from spreading any more Hindu into their civs.

Also, if we plan on Hamma voting for us at the end, he needs to have some Hindu population to boost us from under 75% to over 75%. One vote won't do it haha.
It's like playing chicken with a truck. He needs some Hindu population but not too much.
Maybe we should plan for the worst and figure out a way to win if we have a Gawa competitor in the AP election.

bcool said:

We can not get OB with Shaka on T116 unless
1) Cyrusgawa is not a Hindu member (nor will he become one randomly in the next 7-8 turns)
2) We have to meet Cyrusgawa
3) We have to make peace with Shaka
4) We have to gift him a city with Hinduism in it
5) We have to prevent the city with Hinduism from falling into Hammuragawa's hands
6) We have to DoW cyrus and call a holy war against him.

I think that is the only way that we will get OB with Shaka by T116.

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Why not
1a) Found city N of Nippur T108, see that Shaka would take it, spread Hindu, gift it to Shaka around T114 , or
1b) Found city N of Nippur T108, see that Shaka would not take it, gift it to Hammu, retaining the missionary, and hope to settle NE of Babylon, spread Hindu and gift to Shaka by around T114, and then
2) T116 AP-OB
This way we don't have to care about Cyrus yet. We'll have OB with Shaka and the option to send another missionary to him if/when he loses the gift city.

Or do wars between AP members prevent the OB resolution among the remainder?

bcool said:

Alternatively we can maintain the war with Shaka relatively easily and punch a hole through his lands with most of the other AIs help (or eliminate him entirely).


Re: relations with Hammuragawa

I believe we must get Hammuragawa to +10 visible relations in order for him to vote for us in the diplo win

So +3 liberation
+4 trade
+2 resources
+1 peace
+2 shared war
-2 heathen religion
+10 visible

-2 inherent negative modifier (hidden)
+8 reality

+8 is ordinarily required for diplo voting. Is it different for the AP vote?

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I never have any idea - it seems to change with every post I look at.

Kaitzilla said:

It appears that there is some danger of Kashi converting either Tokugawa or Hammarugawa to Hinduism accidentally since the spread rate is influenced by distance. Neither have spread Buddism beyond their capital and we don't have buddist missionaries to assist them.

If Hammarugawa gets a random spread to Dur-Kurigalzu or Tokugawa gets a random spread to either Tokyo or Osaka, then they will have roughly equal numbers of Hindu and Buddist populations.

Worryingly, they are both friendly with each other at +10 and +9 relations respectively. If either converts to Hindu, we have no way to flip them back, and we can forget about Hammarugawa voting for us to win the game I think.



About the only thing I can think of is a 5 turn jump into Theocracy and bribing them into Theocracy to keep the Kashi from spreading any more Hindu into their civs.

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We'd have to gift them up to Theology and we have no real surety on them staying in Theocracy, either.

It does seem a bit weird that we've seen two Kashi spreads in the last 8 turns, and none in the previous 35, and none from the holy city for 50 turns before that.

State religion flips via espionage back to Buddhism will be an option, I believe. We can only flip them into civics that we are using, but state religion is different. Or flip via tech trades with our hoped-for espionage-generated tech advantage.

mabraham said:

We'd have to gift them up to Theology and we have no real surety on them staying in Theocracy, either.

It does seem a bit weird that we've seen two Kashi spreads in the last 8 turns, and none in the previous 35, and none from the holy city for 50 turns before that.

State religion flips via espionage back to Buddhism will be an option, I believe. We can only flip them into civics that we are using, but state religion is different. Or flip via tech trades with our hoped-for espionage-generated tech advantage.

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Oh cool, that is a big relief

No Theocracy then.

mabraham said:

Or do wars between AP members prevent the OB resolution among the remainder?

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I wish I knew. According to the AP guide we need to have closed borders with a full member before it will come up. Someone mentioned that we can waive that requirement in our game due to the AI_Team bug. Did WastinTime encounter the OB resolution back on T105?

mabraham said:

Or do wars between AP members prevent the OB resolution among the remainder?

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I reported my test results post 1929

OB option will not come up.

@Kaitzilla, yes the OB did come up t105 because Shaka is not a voting member.

mabraham said:

State religion flips via espionage back to Buddhism will be an option, I believe. We can only flip them into civics that we are using, but state religion is different. Or flip via tech trades with our hoped-for espionage-generated tech advantage.

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Unfortunately not true, religion flips work exactly the same as civic switches -- unless we are using the civic/religion ourselves, there is no way to get an AI into that civic/religion by trade or espionage. The options won't appear in the diplo trade screen or the 'Choose Espionage Mission' pop-up.

If a neighbor does convert to Hindu, we might hope for a resolution that he defies (such as assign city), so he gets demoted to voting member status, I think then he is not an eligible candidate anymore.

Edit: The Theocracy idea is quite neat, as long as the neighbors are involved in wars, they will like Theocracy very much.

you can Alt+F1 - liberate cities during an ongoing war ... to an opponent who still refuses to talk, that's interesting!! And you still get the permanent +1.5 for city liberation ... nothing prevents you from conquering the city again immediately for the next liberation ......

AP confusion and clarifications.

The OB resolution will not come up if there is a ongoing war between members, so on T116 the resolution will not come up if Hammu and Toku or we are at war with Shaka (and we have spread Hinduism to Shaka) (doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon)

We can have 99% of the vote and still win diplomatically as long as 1 other AI votes for us. So we do NOT have to play chicken with the number of Hindu votes Hammu has. (I'm 99% sure of this... not tested in the game yet)

I like the theocracy plan.

I think in addition we should go to war with Shaka and capture a Buddhist city (then use that to spread Buddhism to Hammu and Toku to avoid disaster later.
This works well with a switch to Theocracy. We need some catapults and we need an army moving asap.

DanF5771 said:

you can Alt+F1 - liberate cities during an ongoing war ... to an opponent who still refuses to talk, that's interesting!! And you still get the permanent +1.5 for city liberation ... nothing prevents you from conquering the city again immediately for the next liberation ......

View attachment 318820

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That's crazy! So we could rack up quite the bonus with Shaka and get him to vote for us by liberating and capturing, liberating and capturing?
Backup plan #2 if Hammy or Toku flip to Hinduism

DanF5771 said:

you can Alt+F1 - liberate cities during an ongoing war ... to an opponent who still refuses to talk, that's interesting!! And you still get the permanent +1.5 for city liberation ... nothing prevents you from conquering the city again immediately for the next liberation ......

View attachment 318820

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The hell...exploit?

I think other teams will laugh at us for such abuse...but goddamn what the designers were thinking of?

DanF5771 said:

hooray for more bugs

Shaka brought in Cyrusgawa as a war ally against Toku. (mouse over Toku-Shaka in F4-Glance)

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I guess you are referring to the worst enemy bug...

Backup plan #3 if Hammu and/or Toku become Hindu. Declare war and take their Hindu cities back into the fold.

edit: whoot! whoot! Tachy sighting!

bcool said:

We can have 99% of the vote and still win diplomatically as long as 1 other AI votes for us. So we do NOT have to play chicken with the number of Hindu votes Hammu has. (I'm 99% sure of this... not tested in the game yet)

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Unfortunately, we do have to play chicken. BTS used to allow this way back, but since patched to prevent self-voting....If we are over 75% on our own, then the option to win will not come up (unless there is another bug).

DanF5771 said:

you can Alt+F1 - liberate cities during an ongoing war ... to an opponent who still refuses to talk, that's interesting!! And you still get the permanent +1.5 for city liberation ... nothing prevents you from conquering the city again immediately for the next liberation ......

View attachment 318820

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Another amazing find DanF. We'll keep that in our bag of tricks.

WastinTime said:

Unfortunately, we do have to play chicken. BTS used to allow this way back, but since patched to prevent self-voting....If we are over 75% on our own, then the option to win will not come up (unless there is another bug).

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I barely remember where I read this, but I think it is coming from r_rolo1 talking a certain still alive bug or in a certain extent exploit in the one the most recent patched BTS game where self-voting still happens (UN though, don't know if it transfers to AP diplo) on condition someone has lower than max pop the ending turn and during IBT, you break the limit.
Quite unfortunately, I can't be clearer as at that time, I never investigated this stuff. Perhaps, Dan has something to say about it.

If already mentioned, sorry, I just plunged myself back to CIV action...

In regards to infinite city liberation bug (DanF you may be the first ever discovering on the forum...), I bet at 80 % this will be prohibited next SGOTM's as being extremely exploitative. Some people already dislike city liberations (not me of course), but this flies by the same caste of "To Go" or FCM exploits, but here it can easily be observed in the world events.
Some people criticized us for using TAP abusing (really, seriously! ) in the last SGOTM, but now it looks blatantly an exploit.

EDIT: By the look of your chariot positioning, I guess the liberation only happens when enemy units (a.k.a. us) are outside the BFC. 2 tiles diagonal are excluded (good job designers again)...which means...in a single turn...you can liberate n+1 times the city where n is the number of chariots. The hell...
I have a good name for it: No city razing exploit. lol

Nice to see you resurrected, Tachy.

Did you know capturing cities gives war success of 10?
Also this Alt+F1 way of city liberation makes establishing the threat advantage for peace negotiations ‚kind of easy’ -> peace deal bargains …

needs to be fixed.

DanF5771 said:

you can Alt+F1 - liberate cities during an ongoing war ... to an opponent who still refuses to talk, that's interesting!! And you still get the permanent +1.5 for city liberation ... nothing prevents you from conquering the city again immediately for the next liberation ......

View attachment 318820

Click to expand...

That is brilliant.



However, I'm 99% sure that is an exploit.

Tachy is right. If we win that way the ridicule will be endless

I'd like some more input before constructing the PPP as we still have a LOT of ways we could go about this. Screenshots of empire are here.

In regards to Shaka, we can still have the open borders resolution on the table if we make peace before T115 and bribe both Toku and Hamma into peace also. They are open to the possibility if you look at the screenshots from post 1938.

This would work well if Shaka was willing to take the city 3N1E of Nippur, or a city we settle northeast of Hammarugawa's capital T113 or T114. We would not use the missionary until we were sure he would take it. Then we would bribe Toku and Hammu into peace, gift the city to shaka for peace afterwards hoping for no "trading with worst enemy" hits from Toku/Shaka, and vote for open borders T115.

This has the advantage of getting us to the far side of Shaka much quicker than a prolonged war. We could spread Hindu to one of his core cities to lock him in and go to war with him again for another holy war before T125 or T135. (Might get some "Declared war on our friend" diplo hits)

The disadvantages are that once again we will be under threat from Tokugawa.



**Edit** Does open borders resolution not come up if we infect Shaka with hindu and Cyrusgawa is one half of the unmet AI team who also got infected with Hindu? That would be hilarious if we met him on T115 and he prevented us from getting Open Borders Resolution T116 because he is at war with Shakagawa. We aren't even supposed to know he exists yet. Nevermind, Cyrus is at war with Toku it seems.





If we instead widen the war against Shakagawa with more holy war T115 (pretty sure we can vote for it again, we need to test this to ensure open borders with Hatty+Elizabeth+mystery civ_team) we are safe from Toku, we gain shared war bonus with Hamma, and we can bribe them both into Theocracy after gifting them Polytheism+Monotheism+Theology+some gold afterwards if they won't switch to it automatically for the war. I agree that they will stay in Theocracy for the duration of the war as it is very strong war civic. Theocracy should keep Kashi from converting them to Hindu. They are close to us and are in the most danger of having it occur to them.

I'm not sure how high the Gawas go on shared war bonus, but we could get a few of them voting for our victory if the war lasts the rest of the game.

We could snipe a Shaka city from another AI's failed attack, whip out a buddist missionary to send home, and then spread Hindu to it and gift it back for peace as Bcool mentioned. It might be useful to play one turn to know if crossbows will be available soon if we go for extending the war.

The disadvantages to this are having to militarily escort settlers and missionaries through Shaka's territory one square at a time to reach the far side the hard way.





I'm thinking send Spy_1 and Scout_1 to scout north of Hamma's lands. Send Garret to LibTown to steal Code of Laws from from Hammarugawa. With open borders and no city garrison, should be safe enough. Once he suceeds, he heads 3 north form Dehli to steal from Lizzy's gifted city.

I think 3N of Setsuma looks like a good place to quickly gift a Hindu city to Hatsegawa and get another hindu missionary building back in our empire.

I want to send Scout_2 Northeast through Hatsegawa's lands until it hits ocean, then Northwest. I want to send Spy_2 straight north through Hatsegawa's lands hugging the mountains close to Lizzy while looking for an opening.

I'm not sure where a golden age will fit into this as there are some tiny doubts that Lizzy the tech champion might not take our city 3N of Dehli, but it will affect build orders some.

Let's develop a 1 turn PPP and try to leave our options open.

If we do get the great engineer and machinery or have a golden age up our sleeves that will change our plans.

I think I favor the continued war plan either way however.

I think there is a reasonable chance we could get a bit lucky and end this game in 30 turns. If that is the case I would rather have as many shared war diplo bonuses that we can get.

We need probably need +2 shared war with Hammuragawa and that means to be safe we should get to +3 (so that when peace breaks out we will still have +2 for a while).

To get to +3 we need 24-25 turns of shared war right? I think we should keep the war going.

We can either punch through Shaka, eliminate him entirely, or slow walk settlers through his land. Or We might get lucky and get some more random distance Hinduism spreads and never have to make it through his lands. Plus an extended war with Shaka opens up the possibility of us owning a buddhism city.

The extended war with Shaka doesn't have to slow us down that much and could prove critical for a very early win.
The peace with Shaka plan is far from a sure thing, and might deny us an easy way to rack up diplo bonuses that could prove useful very soon.

Kaitzilla said:

**Edit** Does open borders resolution not come up if we infect Shaka with hindu and Cyrusgawa is one half of the unmet AI team who also got infected with Hindu? That would be hilarious if we met him on T105 and he prevented us from getting Open Borders Resolution T106 because he is at war with Shakagawa. We aren't even supposed to know he exists yet.

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@Kaitzilla, a couple of your turn #'s (like 104, 106 need to be changed to 114, 116)

RE: meeting the mystery AI that has hindu. We will be given contact with them t115 (whether we want to or not) because the vote triggers the contact.
I don't think we will want to broker peace with everyone (expensive).
btw, Cyrusgawa is at war with Toku (not Shaka).

RE: Hats settle site. I prefer 5N1W instead of the site 3N you proposed because if Hats is bribed into war with Toku (reasonably likely) the city get captured to easily. (and then there's the proximity to Hats argument that was already put forward.)