SGOTM 18 - Kakumeika

I'm also against wasting money on Construction when we can have Muskets and even have a chance to maybe draft them in the future. A draft-Musket is 1 pop and needs no or only little Siege, so it's cheap and strong and it has no counter-units. I'm still of the opinion that we don't have to push into this war and disregard everything that could delay it by lets say 10-15 turns. Our cities have Libraries + Universities and they have awesome riverside grassland, simply spam Cottages and let them grow so we can draft them down once we get our hands on Nationalism. Mansa will research something useful after having Divine Right, and it'll either be Construction in 2T or he'll make the wiser choice and Lib Nationalism for us. We have to be prepared for that time because we want to have techs which we can trade to him for it to minimize the time in which he could have the most stupid idea to take his shot at the Taj Mahal. We'll take Joaos cities as soon as possible, but we have to keep the big picture and that means that we also want them as easy as possible and with as little effort as possible, because the last will greatly contribute to our BPT / EPT / GPT or whatever. Let's simply keep the hands still, take the 2 remaining cities from Genghis once he whips that Settler and build the Courthouses which are necessary for the Foridden Palace slowly and grow and develop the empire so that we have a high-tech-rate which we can sustain until the end of the game and then wage a very fast (hopefully draft-) war against pathetic Joao.

Good thing of this also is that we maybe can save the -2 with Gandhi because Joao might either DoW us or Mansa again.

WastinTime said:

My first thought was MoM is not that critical, but it probably will shave many turns off this game if we can sustain an eternal GAge until the end of the game. I think we need to lock this wonder in and not worry about fail gold. I'd be happy to generate fail gold after MoM in Washington, but I suppose we're all done with our wonders by then. What would be the next fail gold opportunity?

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Right, time to dust off passive espionage techniques

From Tachywaxon's Bucket List thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12874828&postcount=224
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12874829&postcount=225

SabotageProduction*((EspionageByAIOntoYou+100)/(3*InvestigateCity)

The easier formula is (Sabotage Production / Influence Civics) * 100
if Influence Civics is an option.

Joao's Oporto (western ivory city) might be building something with 1254 to sabotage production.
Influencing his civics cost 738 so the city has:
(1254/738)*100 = 170 into something with a 4 pop whip possible.

Dr. Evil might be building something in Swinger's Pad with 1267 to sabotage production.
Influencing his civics cost 1074 so the city has:
(1267/1074)*100 = 118 into something with a 4 pop whip possible.

Here are the techs they know:



The 5 wonders that can still be built are:
400 Apostolic Palace no resource bonus, needs Theology
550 University of Sankore double production with Stone, needs Paper
300 Statue of Zeus double production with Ivory, needs Aesthetics
450 Mausoleum of Maussollos double production with Marble, needs Calendar
450 Shwedagon Paya double production with Gold, needs Aesthetics

Joao has only Calendar, so if he is building a wonder in Oporto (170), it is Mausoleum of Maussollos
Joao wants our Marble so he doesn't have it.

Dr. Evil has Aesthetics, so if he is building a wonder in Swinger's Pad (118), it is Statue of Zeus or Schwedagon Paya.
Dr. Evil doesn't want our Gold, so he has Gold. He says nothing about Ivory so he doesn't have it.

Can't see Dr. Evil's capital or Goldmember's cities with passive espionage. Who can say what they are building?

WastinTime said:

Mansa is in war prep. That's new, right? probably good news.

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You're right.

Mansa is Friendly with both Gandhi and us, so we can't be the targets.

It is Dr. Evil, or Joao, or Genghis.

Probably not Dr. Evil. His power rating is like 50% or 60% higher than Mansa.

Mansa has open borders with Joao again.


I predict he will either DOW Joao or Genghis.
If it is Joao, it will be soon. They border each other on a chokepoint.

Maybe send us a Buddhist missionary to Clams too before war breaks out again


Maybe we should send over 1 chariot to monitor the situation?

I thought we had at least one chariot mapping Joao and the Ivory and Swinger's Pad situation. Couldn't hurt to find Joao's other cities too.

It's an odd game where Gandhi and Mansa are stuck at 3 cities. They have great land around them. I wonder what caused this strange behavior? It's actually a really good thing because our plan is to gift cities to Dr. Evil to make him our opponent, so we have to make him larger than both of those two. We don't want Mansa to take a lot of Joao's cities, so we're fortunate that didn't happen last war. I wouldn't think Mansa would attack Joao. Just a few turns ago, he said he had 'nothing to gain.' So he should be thinking about GK. Joao seems like a more logical target tho.

Had a look at the savegame. I totally didn't notice that Mansa built the Parthenon

Read the post of Kaitzilla about the wonders. Not really sure, but that western ivory city from Joao has almost no hammer output. At first I thought, "let's gift Joao Marble so he can finish the MoM just before we invade that city and take away his Ivory" , but now I'm not sure if it wouldn't be a lot better to fast-chop it in Turfan, that city has 7 Forrests still.

on the Universities. Now we only need some cottages .

Liked that we have enough money to research Gunpowder fully once Oxford is there or will manage to research it with 100% via which way however. I think we should beg some Gold from Mansa again now though, because chances are good that his budget will fill up again from his reserves when we get Gunpowder and Gunpowder vs Philosphy is almost a 1:1 trade.

All cities looked good for me besides that they're small due to our heavy building, Pigs wasn't perfect though or I again missed something, why did we build a non-riverside mine and why are we building an Axe?

I'm still voting for that we move the war against Joao until later. This has to do nothing with turtling like WastinTime assumed, it's just really that we have basically no army and our cities have awesome land, superb multipliers, should grow and that war with drafting is not only cheaper but also easier.

I hope that we are building the NE in Washington for Failgold. That city has only got 1 source of wet Corn .

If Mansa btw. doesn't want to settle his land, we could found a city on the Iron near the Moutains. Would have a river so nice commerce, would start on a 2 tile and we could steal Mansa's Pigs from behind the mountain. We could also sneak in a nice city on that ueber spot swede built for him, would maybe be nice for espionage purposes or simply because it's an amazing spot.

Hth.

I've checked with the test game. Even if a 3rd AI gets Construction, Joao still won't trade it



We could get it from Mansa or Gandhi if they tech it, but right now we have nothing to trade for Construction until Gandhi gets Theology or Civil Service first.


Long story short is, I don't see us getting Construction any time soon unless we tech it ourselves.


Assume we do tech Gunpowder. What do we tech next?
We can't tech Printing Press because we don't have Machinery.
We can't tech Chemistry because we don't have Engineering, nor Engineering without Construction.
We can tech Drama, Music, Divine Right, Philosophy, Compass, Fuedalism, Liberalism(bleh), Construction, or Machinery.

If instead, we tech Construction(568) and then Machinery(1137), we could trade those and a bit of gold for Philosophy(1300) from Mansa.
After that, we could crush Joao with Mace/Catapult and be able to tech Gunpowder or Engineering or Printing Press.

WastinTime said:

- Happy to see GK's worker is not chopping (he's mining), and the city is back to size 4 which could mean a 2 pop settler whip. Go GK!

Capitalist.
From PPP:
"t102 wheat, gold, marble, pmine, FP"

I'm 99% sure this won't work, but I don't know why I'm worried. I'm sure you'll fix it when T102 arrives. You've got everything set up well, Universities coming in, overflow maxed. But I suspect you will need to run my original plan:
"t102 wheat, gold, marble, pmine, engineer"

Maybe your spreadsheet doesn't handle the overflow properly? (max 100 raw hammers on University)

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Thinking further, you are probably right that I will need this fallback. My spreadsheet does not implement the overflow cap. I didn't think to check whether it did because we did this strategy for an Oxford in Orleans a few SGOTMs ago, but maybe that was hand-optimized by Kaitzilla, not me.

Kaitzilla said:

Right, time to dust off passive espionage techniques

From Tachywaxon's Bucket List thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12874828&postcount=224
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12874829&postcount=225

SabotageProduction*((EspionageByAIOntoYou+100)/(3*InvestigateCity)

The easier formula is (Sabotage Production / Influence Civics) * 100
if Influence Civics is an option.

Joao's Oporto (western ivory city) might be building something with 1254 to sabotage production.
Influencing his civics cost 738 so the city has:
(1254/738)*100 = 170 into something with a 4 pop whip possible.

Dr. Evil might be building something in Swinger's Pad with 1267 to sabotage production.
Influencing his civics cost 1074 so the city has:
(1267/1074)*100 = 118 into something with a 4 pop whip possible.

Here are the techs they know:



The 5 wonders that can still be built are:
400 Apostolic Palace no resource bonus, needs Theology
550 University of Sankore double production with Stone, needs Paper
300 Statue of Zeus double production with Ivory, needs Aesthetics
450 Mausoleum of Maussollos double production with Marble, needs Calendar
450 Shwedagon Paya double production with Gold, needs Aesthetics

Joao has only Calendar, so if he is building a wonder in Oporto (170), it is Mausoleum of Maussollos
Joao wants our Marble so he doesn't have it.

Dr. Evil has Aesthetics, so if he is building a wonder in Swinger's Pad (118), it is Statue of Zeus or Schwedagon Paya.
Dr. Evil doesn't want our Gold, so he has Gold. He says nothing about Ivory so he doesn't have it.

Can't see Dr. Evil's capital or Goldmember's cities with passive espionage. Who can say what they are building?

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I can probably infer a hammer rate from Joao over the last few turns. He has to put 280 more base hammers onto a hypothetical MoM in the ~11 turns before we'd beat him to it even without the fail gold I propose to bank. Lacking marble, even with AI hammer buffs, I don't see him putting out more than 20 base hammers/turn. So we may as well have the fail gold, assuming the hammer rate I can observe is suitable.

Kaitzilla said:

You're right.

Mansa is Friendly with both Gandhi and us, so we can't be the targets.

It is Dr. Evil, or Joao, or Genghis.

Probably not Dr. Evil. His power rating is like 50% or 60% higher than Mansa.

Mansa has open borders with Joao again.


I predict he will either DOW Joao or Genghis.
If it is Joao, it will be soon. They border each other on a chokepoint.

Maybe send us a Buddhist missionary to Clams too before war breaks out again


Maybe we should send over 1 chariot to monitor the situation?

Click to expand...

OK, crappy chariot to go scout for Mansa's stack.

Seraiel said:

Had a look at the savegame. I totally didn't notice that Mansa built the Parthenon

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Yup, I noted it in the play-by-play log.

Read the post of Kaitzilla about the wonders. Not really sure, but that western ivory city from Joao has almost no hammer output. At first I thought, "let's gift Joao Marble so he can finish the MoM just before we invade that city and take away his Ivory" , but now I'm not sure if it wouldn't be a lot better to fast-chop it in Turfan, that city has 7 Forrests still.

Click to expand...

Could do, but the current plan has it chopped out of Washington in ~5 turns. The question at hand is whether we can afford to risk waiting to finish MoM around ~t111 - seems likely. Even if Joao sneaks it, we can capture it without it being a huge setback (and we'd have even more fail gold to offset that).

on the Universities. Now we only need some cottages .

Liked that we have enough money to research Gunpowder fully once Oxford is there or will manage to research it with 100% via which way however. I think we should beg some Gold from Mansa again now though, because chances are good that his budget will fill up again from his reserves when we get Gunpowder and Gunpowder vs Philosphy is almost a 1:1 trade.

Click to expand...

I think the hope there is that we can get more with a distant beg than we could get in a beg now, possibly some cash with Philo, and then maybe a beg later after the cooldown.

All cities looked good for me besides that they're small due to our heavy building, Pigs wasn't perfect though or I again missed something, why did we build a non-riverside mine and why are we building an Axe?

Click to expand...

Not having construction sucks for movement on this map. I estimated that we'd find enough use for that Gmine in addition to the riverside ones that it was worth never having to come back to this tile (perhaps until railroad), compared with the alternative plans of moving to do work elsewhere. It's actually being worked some turn around now, when if I'd moved elsewhere there'd be no improved tile to work.

I'd love to build something more useful than an axe, but I think we have our quota of horse archers and spears, WastinTime didn't like building archers to send north to relieve spears, nobody has made an actual suggestion of units we can build that they want (apart from the scheduled sentry chariot for the GoldMember mission). If we have no axes, how were we going to deal with stray spears? Our muskets will likely be taking on fortified archers and elephants... I'll build a horse archer next, but really my heart is building some archers to send north!

We should probably set up a whip cascade to sync with Gunpowder so we can get our first few muskets out ASAP.

I'm still voting for that we move the war against Joao until later. This has to do nothing with turtling like WastinTime assumed, it's just really that we have basically no army and our cities have awesome land, superb multipliers, should grow and that war with drafting is not only cheaper but also easier.

I hope that we are building the NE in Washington for Failgold. That city has only got 1 source of wet Corn .

Click to expand...

Yes, per my question when I paused the turn set! Do we want to collect that fail gold and accept the risk on MoM? So far, information suggests it's probably safe enough to collect the fail gold.

If Mansa btw. doesn't want to settle his land, we could found a city on the Iron near the Moutains. Would have a river so nice commerce, would start on a 2 tile and we could steal Mansa's Pigs from behind the mountain. We could also sneak in a nice city on that ueber spot swede built for him, would maybe be nice for espionage purposes or simply because it's an amazing spot.

Hth.

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Thanks!

Kaitzilla said:

I've checked with the test game. Even if a 3rd AI gets Construction, Joao still won't trade it



We could get it from Mansa or Gandhi if they tech it, but right now we have nothing to trade for Construction until Gandhi gets Theology or Civil Service first.


Long story short is, I don't see us getting Construction any time soon unless we tech it ourselves.

Click to expand...

Hmm. IMO the major application of cats is bombing city defenses, but Joao's phants don't receive them and our muskets will ignore them. Maybe we'll want the cats for the final siege on his capital, but we can probably open proceedings without them? Thus, tech gunpowder and re-assess at the time. (WastinTime and Seraiel seem to be of this mind; bcool wants Construction.)

Kaitzilla said:

Long story short is, I don't see us getting Construction any time soon unless we tech it ourselves.

Click to expand...

You just won't give up on Construction will ya?

Joao will trade us Construction if you gift him a tech or two to get him to Cautious.

Plan is to plan in ~4 hours, using same PPP except as modified by my post immediately above.

I like how you've examined the Joao/MoM situation and I accept your plan to go ahead with fail gold, T111 MoM. Especially since the backup plan is a free MoM from Joao. (assuming we're confident no one else will get MoM first.)

Free MoM might even be a better plan A, but that would take a lot of careful planning/timing.

At least two team members mentioned Joao's phants. We are not going to let him get phants.

I'm not sure why Joao would have any spears either. Mansa didn't have horses.

Next player! Let's get a goal PPP out this morning (please)

WastinTime said:

You just won't give up on Construction will ya?

Joao will trade us Construction if you gift him a tech or two to get him to Cautious.

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I did. That's the message test Joao gives when he is Pleased.

Try it with world builder yourself. Construction is one of those rare techs where 4 AI have to have it before Joao will trade it because it unlocks so many buildings and units.

I agree with WastinTime and Seraiel.

We should continue researching Gunpowder, grow our population, build cottages, trade for Construction and Philosophy, and hopefully trade for/steal Nationalism to run Nationhood for both drafting Musketmen (later Riflemen via more trades possibly) and +25% espionage in all cities.

We will probably need Hereditary Rule for happiness in preparation for drafting for at least some cities, so we need a tactic for building cheap MP units - our cheapest MP unit is now Archer (25H until Feudalism) then Chariot (30H until Guilds), Axemen (35H until Machinery) and finally Longbowmen (until Rifling?).

Sun Tzu Wu.

Mansa really screwed us with that DivRight pick. I'm working on a new research plan that might include getting Construction first (motivated by Kaitzilla's test). I tested Construction trade too, but maybe I didn't realize that a 4th AI got it so I thought Joao would trade and now I'm not sure.

My new plan might require us to start teching before Oxford, so please hold up on playing until you hear back from me. I should have something ready long before you intend to play in 4 hours anyway.

WastinTime said:

Mansa really screwed us with that DivRight pick. I'm working on a new research plan that might include getting Construction first (motivated by Kaitzilla's test). I tested Construction trade too, but maybe I didn't realize that a 4th AI got it so I thought Joao would trade and now I'm not sure.

My new plan might require us to start teching before Oxford, so please hold up on playing until you hear back from me. I should have something ready long before you intend to play in 4 hours anyway.

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Noted

The most interesting/fun thing about our research this game is how need to cooperate with Mansa. At any time, he could screw us (again) by researching something we already have or are working on. Mansa was 90+% likely to get us Machinery+Construction by T108, but instead he chose DivRight Here's how we might take advantage of this turn of events.

We now have a window to research Machinery+Construction that we didn't have before. However, we MUST get them before Mansa starts on them.
As long as we get something in return for our reserach we should be doing fine.

So,

T100-101 0% Construction
T102 100% Construction (before oxford)
T103 construction
T104-107 Machinery
(Trade for Philo+cash)

See what Mansa picks.
T108: We have lots of options now. Nationalism, PPress, gunP, Eng

Mansa likes Eng. PPress we probably want to bulb, so that means probably GunP (if Mansa doesn't pick GP) or Nationalism (if Mansa doesn't pick Liberalism or Nationalsim) next.

I'm not sure how much cash we'll need to make a Construction+Machinery+gold trade for Philo since Construction isn't a monopoly tech.

Hopefully not much.

We should probably do that Mansa beg for gold if we adopt this plan.
We won't be getting all his gold like if we trade Gunpowder for Philo.

Maybe start research even 1 turn earlier? If Mansa gets done with Divine Right in 7 turns instead of 8 because his cottages grow, we could fall into a 1 turn too slow trap if he picks Construction or Machinery next.

Kaitzilla said:

I'm not sure how much cash we'll need to make a Construction+Machinery+gold trade for Philo since Construction isn't a monopoly tech.

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I think you have it backwards. We will get a small amt of cash along with Philo.

RE: starting construction 1 turn sooner. You'd have to test that to make sure that it even matters. We still might not get Machinery any earlier. I figured that in the case of DivRight (7) instead of 8, we would just have to give a little cash (instead of get).