zyxy01: Russian Polar Expedition

Pre-turn
activate settler, move to south
change York to lib, to claim the other spices.
change Hastings to lib
change London and Odessa to cats
70AD
Moscow cat->cat
York lib->cat
Canterbury, Minsk galley->galley
Start moving units SE, to strike persians
90AD
ST Peter galley->galley
Kiev FP->cat
110AD
Nottingham galley->cat
Smolensk galley->cat
Found Sevastopol->cat
130AD-210AD
nothing, just building units
IBT
renew deal with china
230AD
get embasies with zulu and persia, to see what we are facing.


250AD
York lib->cat

Fleet just needs couple of turns to complete, then land near Gordium to claim diamonds. Also send small stack to the iron near Tarsus to pillage.



View attachment 109954

I'm back. And welcome, tupaclives!

I haven't had time to look at the save, but we seem to be doing very well! I'm obviously playing with a strong team here .

England is down, and most of the other civs have bad terrain. That's nice, they won't run away from us so fast. I'm only wondering what's up north... With standard size, we should have 7 opponents, and we can already see 5?? From here, we should probably go military expansion and pointy stick, but keep the strongest civs we can see intact to help with potential runaways on the northern hemisphere. And it won't hurt to get libs and markets to pay for all those troops.

Too bad about our rep, let's blame the war academy for this. I think I've seen various "truths" posted about reputation in the war academy, and the one that seems correct to me is what nero said (but I never seriously tested this). You start the game with a clean rep, but you break it when you break a deal that involves a per turn payment on the human side and an upfront payment on the AI side. It may also involve other items, that doesn't matter. Per turn payments are: diplomatic treaties (peace, MA, etc - they probably count as per turn payment for both treaty partners), gpt, resources. Upfront payments are: tech, gold, cities, workers, maps. With a broken rep you cannot buy on credit, except in peace (re-)negotiations and when allied against the "betrayed" civ, as mentioned before.

I'm not sure what happens when you break a deal involving only per turn payments on both sides. Your rep is not broken, but maybe you have to pay higher prices afterwards, I don't know.

Oh yeah:
Smart - up
tupaclives - on deck

Welcome back zyxy.

I was looking at the minimap and thinking about how I've been on maps like this where I was fortunate enough to start in the other half, in good terrain, and chomped at the bit when I found how bad the terrain was for the rest of the civs. They all were weaklings. I'd be surprised if the land up top isn't a lot better than what we're stuck in & the 2 civs up there will be powerhouses. Hopefully we're close enough to one of them to be able to offer something and make them our "friend" and help while we take out the other. There's still a lot to do down where we are though, and the production benefits the AI has at this level will even things out for their bad terrain. We've already seen this from England's quick culture production in tundra.

Nice going, team!

Am I being over confident if I ask what our preferred victory condition is?

We are going for conquest or domination, because with bad rep we cant self-research to the modern era for UN or SS win on deity...

And, got it.

A bad rep doesn't stop you trading-it only limits the opportunities. Maybe I've played too much C3C where the AI ends up in the Facism/Communism quagmire and their research comes to a grinding halt but going for fast research on Diety with a bad rep is still possible. You are just careful about what you research so as to get valuable monopoly techs and try to build up a large treasury to help with trades.

I'm happy with conquest/domination though if that everyone's preferred option.

Welcome back you all. Glad we didn't disapoint you. I prefer dom/conq as well as the other's tend to get very boring near the end.

I had some time to look at the save now.

• Just in case you didn't notice, there is a red border just above China.
• We can buy republic from Japan in exchange for 2 luxes, iron, peace and 7 gpt. Might be good, let's get out of despotism.
• China is a good early target, they have a lux, an iron source and should be weak. The main cities are on flat land.
• Japan would be a good target after China, they also have a lux. Zulu are severely weakened and make a good target later on - Zimbabwe has an insane number of rather useless wonders btw. Persia is a good trade and research partner for now.
• We're at the front of the tech race, that's great. I am not very happy with the min run on feudalism, it has no trade value. With engineering or theology we would have had a shot.

AI usually don't research techs from Monotheism to Democracy, so we could get monopoly on them, and trade to all civs. Feudalism and Enginering are useless for trading.

Pre-turn
Change production in a few towns from horses to swords, in eastern coastal towns to galleys.
Load swordsmans near Warwick to galleys. China is the best choise for our first attack, because of many mountains to landing.

IT


Turn 1
Moving units and galleys...

Turn 2


IT


Turn 3
Build aqueducts in size 6 towns.
Build harbors in frozen coastal towns.

Turn 4
Finnally ready for a war. Move galleys with cats and swords to Chinese borders, near Nanking.
Oh, we are trading luxes to China. And... Our rep isn't bad!!! Don't know why, but we can make gpt deals!
So I decide to do one trick: demand from Mao something, until he will be Furious, and then steal technology "Immediatly". I need some more money for espionage operation, and I traded 4 gpt to china for 61 gold.

Turn 5
Steal technology, and....



Turn 6
Our SoD is in the place



IT
Japan demands Dyes, I give.

Turn 7
Capture Nanking, got two slaves. [5-0]

Turn 8
Use roads to move troops to Canton, and then abandon Nanking.
New SoD is ready in Smolensk, and loaded into galleys.
Build an embassy in Kyoto.
Who had said that AI never build army using a leader? Here you can see the Heroic Epic



Sign with Japan MA vs China for Spices and 5 gpt. Also got a Japanese world map in this deal.

IT
Palace expansion!

Turn 9
Moving SoD to Canton

IT

Persia demands 21 gold, I give

Turn 10
The lux deal with Japan was ended at the turn 9, and I forgot about it... Six cities are rioting, I'm sorry...
Buy Ivory from Japan for 9 gpt, and up lux slider to 10%.
Capture Canton with 3 slaves [8-0]




Notes for the next player:

• Move slaves from 3SW hill from canton to 2 galleys, and bring them to our mainland.
• Build a few settlers to fill the Chinese land.
• If we are going for Domination, and don't need rep anymore, we can could attack Japan next
• Capture Tsingtao and Beijing ASAP, then sign peace for all techs and gold, and leave them with OCC. If we want to save our rep, destroy China, and prepare to attack the Persia.

Save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/zyxy01_SM_360 AD.SAV

In another thread tupaclives posted that he'll be away until jan 18. So unless I hear from him before tomorrow morning, I'll play. Roster:

tupaclives - up
zyxy - also up
Tone - on deck

lurker's comment: Japan had/has an army? ,wonder what it is, better find out, no?

smart said:

Who had said that AI never build army using a leader? Here you can see the Heroic Epic

Click to expand...

lurker's comment: That's the first time I've seen a sign of an AI army. Thanks for posting that, Smart!!!

Maybe in vanilla AI is more clever, and don't always use leaders to rush something unusefull, like colleseums
Btw, Tupaclives last activity in CFC was six days before. Zyxy, you can play turnset now

Yes, the AI uses armies in Vanilla, but not in C3C. quite the opposite of "intelligent".

On the Chinese war: Shanghai has Silks, so unless there's a Silks source hidden under Tsingtao or Beijing, I would rather bypass Tsingtao and take Shanghai. Or perhaps raze and replace, we'll see. It seems we need to fight for 15 turns to preserve our rep, as Japan paid upfront for the alliance (WM).

Got it. Btw, the link to the save is not quite right, here is the correct link.

Turn 0, 360AD: riots all over the place . Zulu has Feudalism, England has Republic, but we cannot swing a 2fer atm.

IT: Japanese shuffle a lot of troops around - some go forward, some go back - weird. China send a settler pair our way . Order is restored in the empire.

Turn 1, 370AD: whack the settler pair. Thank you, Mao! Our glorious armies move to Beijing. Take Tsingtao at ridiculous losses, 5 resisters.

IT: Zulu start ST in Zimbabwe, wonder capital of the world.

Turn 2, 380AD: Chinese keep resisting, our culture is quite a bit lower than theirs.

Now, what's this?


Aha!


He knows Egypt, has Feudalism and Republic, but not Monotheism. Our knowledge of Monotheism buys Feudalism, contact with Egypt, World Map, 30 gold and 7 gpt from Rome, everything he has except for Republic. I then renegotiate peace with England: we grant 20 turns of peace to Lizzy and teach her Feudalism in exchange for her knowledge of the Republic, her 2 gold pieces and her WM. I finally contact Egypt, but she has no new techs to offer and doesn't have enough to pay for Monotheism. Rome and Egypt have the best land, and both are pretty big:


Set research to Theology at min. I could buy Engineering if I sell our contacts, but there doesn't seem to be a safe crossing so it's better to keep the contacts until astronomy I think. The Zulu could cross using the GLighthouse, but sofar they haven't for some reason - too busy building wonders, no doubt.

We cannot conquer the world with swords now that pikes are around, so we'll need a better government. According to CivAssist Republic is not a good idea just yet, we need a few markets first. Monarchy is even worse. lux to 20%.

IT: Japanese kill a Beijing spear for us, and an archer from Beijing kills himself against a Japanese horse.

Turn 3, 390AD: Persia now has Chivalry, Persia and Japan have Engineering. Eight catapults knock 2 hp off a spear in Beijing and reveal that he is the only defender! An elite sword dispatches him and we raze Beijing, gaining 2 slaves. We march on Shanghai and form a block to keep the Japanese at bay.

IT: Egypt starts ST in Thebes.

Turn 4, 400AD: I'll hold the attack on China's last town because our rep is apparently still intact.

IT: Japanese are turning back. Another Chinese settler pair appears.

Turn 5, 410AD: With the Chinese settler pair around I can safely take Shanghai. Seven cats hit twice and destroy a harbor, 2 spears are killed at the loss of one sword, and Shanghai is ours. No resisters.

IT: Japan kills the Chinese settler and thus destroys the Chinese, as planned. They should get the rep hit for this. Resistance ends.

Turn 6, 420AD: Tblisi founded. lux can go back to 10%. I think we can move against Japan next. We have a deal for 14 turns, but Japan is at "remove of declare", so I'll just try to trap some troops...

Turn 7, 430AD: Sverdlovsk settled. Theology is known to Japan and Persia.

IT: Zulu restart ST, same place.

Turn 8, 440AD: zzz

Turn 9, 450AD: Rome now has Engineering. I'll stop here to get back to nice turn numbers.

notes:

• Fortified units and units that can move have full movement.
• We should switch to republic soon. We have 3 luxes (+ 1 import), and several markets finish in about 3-5 turns.
• Our World map is valuable: Rome/Egypt and Japan/England/Persia/Zulu don't know the map of the other group. We also still have the contact monopoly. There's possibly a 2fer available for Engineering.
• Japan is the next target I think, although we're probably flying in the face of their GA and UU. We have active deals, but there are a few Japanese troops and workers in our Chinese province, and they are at "remove or declare". We have two galleys with troops nearly in position at the Japanese iron source at Nara. They do have some pikes, and most of their army should still be up north near our border. I have not seen any samurai or muskets yet, it's mostly archers and horses (Japanese did not hook up iron until 10-20 turns ago). Our troops are fortified near Canton. There is a fleet north of China to assist with troop movement on the Japanese east coast. Our fleet west of China can possibly protect our eastern seaboard from ugly Japanese invaders. Of course you can always decide to attack someone else instead.
• We have a boat with 2 settlers near Hastings, and an exploring boat in Roman waters.
• Feel free to switch production to more useful stuff. I generally build settlers whenever I don't know anything better. I focussed on building markets and settlers, so we are a bit short on troops. We have plenty slave workers though.

Our glorious empire:


The save

Roster:
Tone - Up!
McLMan - On deck!
nerovats
Smart
Beorn-eL-Feared
tupaclives - away until Jan 18 (?)
zyxy - just played

I've just taken a quick peek at the save and it looks good.

I think that we need to take advantage of the lack of contacts for Rome/Egypt whilst we can. The Zulu have the GLHouse, which might end up in Persian hands soon, and there is a safe path up north for the civ that holds this wonder.

I agree with Japan as our next target. They have just one source of iron which is highly vunerable to pillaging. You even left me a couple of swords in the galley there. How thoughtful!



We can get Chivalry from the Japanese for 2 luxes and 33gpt. We should then be able to get Engineering from the Romans and some gold as they will be buying a monopoly tech for one that we have several contacts with. We could then wind up the Japanese with so tribute demands and then issue a 'leave or declare' so that they hopefully declare on us and we end up getting Chiv and Engineering for free and we don't get a rep hit. We then land on their iron and pillage it before (m)any Samurai get out.

We might also consider instigating a war in the North to slow their progress. An alliance could be part of a tech deal with Rome perhaps?

Any views?

I'll hold the attack on China's last town because our rep is apparently still intact.

Click to expand...

Japan kills the Chinese settler and thus destroys the Chinese, as planned. They should get the rep hit for this.

Click to expand...

You don't get a rep hit, when you destroy civ in alliance

Tone,

Sounds like a good plan. Good luck!

I don't understand the rep issue, but apparently our rep is not broken: we can buy chivalry for gpt, and the price seems not outrageous. Japan is not at war with England I believe. So perhaps it is allowed to break peace deals? If so, then this is a bug IMO.

EDIT: now I understand what you mean, because of Smart's reply. I've always been under the impression that you get a rep hit if you break an alliance by destroying the target civ. If not, then I could have taken out China a turn sooner, and I could have whacked another settler .

Why two civilizations could sign an alliance against other?.. Sure, to destroy it
You will get a rep hit only if you make peace with target civ during the MA.