ALC Game #22 Take 2: Arabs/Saladin

I would definitely leave the north to Washington, except for the jumbos to the NW. The farther you are away from Sury right now, the better. Hopefully, Sury and Washington will go to war fairly soon, Sury seems to like early war and Washington doesn't which should slow both of them down. In my experience, Sury is not reluctant to DoW you even if he has to go through 3 other civs lands to get to you, make sure your power rating is higher than Washingtons.

If you keep aggressively expanding or war with Zaro, your economy is going to hurt even more. I think at this point, you should only grab new cities that can pay for themselves.

You have kind of an odd mix of civs on your continent. I wouldn't be surprised at all if no one on your continent founds any religions. Sury without religion seems pretty tame? Washington and Zaro are ok tech traders but not the best.

Zaro's UU doesn't inspire much fear either, promoted longbows ignore first strikes if Zaro lasts that long.

So, basically, I am in the power through peaceful careful expansion camp.

I know it didn't work out in Take 1, but its a shame Sal didn't grab an early religion this time round.

Never mind, as for now I vote REX & Mids, 6-8 prime cities in our corner of the continent, then grab cats and take out Zara.

Validator said:

Chariots don't get any defensive bonuses, so they wouldn't benefit from the forested hills. And FYI the AI will attack "choking" chariots with archers (until they get a couple of promotions at least). Axes do a much better job of choking and Medina's copper should be hooked up shortly.

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Heck, I've pinned the AI with a woodsman1 warrior for a long time before he tried attacking it (I couldn't get the little sucker to woody2 for the life of me). I am aware that chariots get no defensive bonuses, but I'd be very surprised if Zara would attack 2 of them anytime soon. They were, in any case, just meant as placeholders until axemen can arrive (when's that ever gonna happen? Archers might work just fine with the right promotions). The idea is not to actually fight a war, just keep Zara weak and bottled up until you're ready to deal with him on your terms.

The whip overflow trick was described in an article by Vale here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272

The important part is:

But How Does This Relate to the Protective Trait?

What a great question. Lets redo the above math, but this time we will be using walls with a protective leader and access to stone.

True Cost = 150
Production Multiplier = 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
Base Cost = 150/3 = 50
Excess Hammers = [90 (forest chop) + 90 (forest chop) + 90 (whip hammers)]*3(production multiplier) + 150 (cost of walls being covered by "real" production of city) - 150 (True Cost of the walls) = 810
Base Hammers = 810/3 = 270
Hammers per turn is unknown but certainly less than 50
Modified Hammers per turn unknown but not relevant because of the above
Overflow Hammers = 50 since 270 > 50
Overflow Gold = 810 - 150 = 660

So, for the cost of chopping two forests and whipping one population we have created an overflow of 50 and 660.

Admittedly, you did just build a walls and everyone gets to make fun of you for that.


Vale's numbers are for marathon. Basically, for epic it comes out to half (330 gold or so). It does work. The mechanics are very simple: build walls to within 1 turn of completion, then take them out of the queue. Chop 2 forsts simultaneously. On the turn the chop finishes, insert the walls at the top of the queue and whip for 1 pop. Cha-ching!

huerfanista said:

The mechanics are very simple: build walls to within 1 turn of completion, then take them out of the queue. Chop 2 forsts simultaneously. On the turn the chop finishes, insert the walls at the top of the queue and whip for 1 pop. Cha-ching!

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Okay, that makes it sound simple enough, I'll give it a shot at some point, possibly in the next round.

huerfanista said:

There's no "might" about it. If you look at the map, it's the only place Roosevelt can expand. It's also the juiciest area (jumbos, gold, flood plains) easily available to Saladin, with big strategic implications (locking up the south, flood plains for 2 GP farms with gold to finance them, and JUMBOS!). 2 settlers to lock up the jumbos and gold floodplains would put Sal in great shape, and keep Roosevelt in check in a big way. Let's hope that stealing that worker will slow his starting rex enough so that you can grab that land. (hint: ASAP).


Of course, it may not be possible to peacefully block both Zara and Roosevelt at the same time. If you let him, Zara will definitely try to steal some of that gold city SE by putting it in a culture vise (I bet he will settle 2E of the southernmost gold for max pressure - talk about crappy city placement!). OTOH, Zara can easily be pinned right now with just a couple of chariots. That little peninsula connecting to his capital looks like it has some forested hills. Park a couple of chariots there and he's screwed big time. Park a couple more outside his second city so he can't hook up the copper and food, and he's going nowhere. Take him out whenever you want - jumbos and cats v. archers is just sick. I'd chop out 2 chariots immediately and pin his capital right now. Chop/whip a settler and grab the jumbos. Then 2 more chariots to put the vise on Zara's 2nd city, another settler for the gold floodplains, and finally one more to hook up the rice copper south (a fine production city for the war with Zara). When the money starts to run out, just do the chop-whip-protective-stone-walls trick and you've got 300+ gold to finance all this early expansion.

Yes, it's a very aggressive early move that, if successful, will get you a dominant position on this continent. I don't know if it can be done, TBH. If you let Zara off the hook, the land SE is no great loss when he grabs it (he will) compared to the W-SW. If you can block Roosevelt and reap these riches for Sal, Roosevelt will have to expand to his W (your NW), which will strain his relations with Surya (a big plus for you).

edit: And drop the mid's. You won't need them, and if you're lucky one of your future victims will build them for you. If you're dying to build something with that stone, go for the HG later.

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That's a nice idea, however that sort of war have to be either profitable, or at least effortless. So no running outside our borders, and definitely not camping for 80 turns on enemy territory - that'll hit our economy so hard that for the first time in ALC we would be having worker unions in 1750 BC - everyone would be on STRIKE!
I'd agree however with conquering/razing city that controls the chokepoint that leads to the core of Ethiopia and then park some Protective Archers/Longbows on a forested and neutral hill, further thoughts below

Leverage Walls, and most of all, GREAT Wall. Let them come, few axes/spears fortified here and there (to make a camp in which wounded units that just killed some attackers will be sheltered by an unit with +25% fortify bonus) should protect Your lands. Quite soon thanks to GW You'll earn Your GG, then tech Mathematics and lo and behold, for the first time in ALC We. Would. Leverage. A. Fort. Improvement.
Extra +25% to defense and acts as a city for combat purposes, so City Garrison, Longbows bonuses and city healing rules will apply. And we'll be still doing something for the first time in ALC

Polobo said:

With Pyramids we can run artists under caste system (or head for drama and get theaters setup) and still get the 3 beakers from Representation. No worse off than running a scientist HR (a little better since the artist gives you beaker as well) and you get mucho culture to keep your borders firm while you settle the south. Incite them to declare war on you while you garrison your walled/castled archer/longbow defended border cities running heavy farms and representation powered specialists and put some cottage cities in the interior for transitioning later (in addition to the capital).

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That's pretty much exactly how I'd like to see that, except that to me Madrassas will suffice, perhaps with some religion buildings later on. Scientists, after Angkor Wat Priests from Madrassas and Temples.
Don't forget about Great Wall bonus to GG points. Also, perhaps Great Spy that would pop up some time in the future will ensure enough EP to drop defenses in enemy cities bordering ours just in time for Sis to go from defense to attack, then garrison units in freshly conquered assets and wait for them to come. On top of that, attackers won't be pillaging a lot of land then, because it'll be still their land
Hmmm... Castles boost espionage? Yes please.

huerfanista said:

The whip overflow trick was described in an article by Vale here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272

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Just to be clear ... when you say 'take the unit out of the queue,' I assume you mean something like this:

1. Build Wall to one turn of completion.
2. Click on Wall in city screen, deleting it from the queue.
3. Insert new production item.
4. chop two forests simulatenously.
5. on turn that chop finishes, reinsert Wall at top of queue.
6. Get lots of gold.

I want to clarify that, because there are a lot of folks (me included, btw) who thought that clicking on an item in the queue simply DELETED it, and that hammers spent on the item were gone (I had thought that the only way to save the hammers on a project was to keep it in the queue; i.e., just push it down the line). What you are saying is that the previous hammers remain on that project, even if you take it entirely out of the queue.

IIRC, stored hammers don't degrade for at least for 10 turns or so, though I'm not sure if that's on Normal speed.

Do I have this straight?

slobberinbear said:

Do I have this straight?

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Yep. And building hammers decay far slower than unit hammers. It only takes a couple of turns to chop a forest (even with a single worker). Deleting an item from the queue doesn't lose the hammers. You will lose them if you don't reinsert it for 50 turns. A common trick for getting gold is to build a wonder you don't want (the UN, for example) until a few turns from completion, then deleting it from the queue. When it gets built somewhere else, cha-ching!

Guardian_PL said:

That's a nice idea, however that sort of war have to be either profitable, or at least effortless. So no running outside our borders, and definitely not camping for 80 turns on enemy territory - that'll hit our economy so hard that for the first time in ALC we would be having worker unions in 1750 BC - everyone would be on STRIKE!
[

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I'm a firm believer that if you don't have to lower your slider to 10% while rexing, you're not rexing hard enough. IIRC, Sis tanked the economy pretty hard during the early part of the Shaka game, and we know how that turned out. Seriously, we're looking at a lot of great land here. It shouldn't be very hard to get the economy humming, ASSUMING all the good land doesn't get taken by the AIs (Roosevelt in particular). Even if you do grab those jumbos first, Roosie will settle 3 tiles away to grab at least some of them. He'll also try to grab the gold floodplains west of the jumbos to try to box you in, unless you get there first. I expect a serious culture war with him over those gems in Medina, and I bet he'll make it tough for Sis to keep them.

huerfanista said:

I expect a serious culture war with him over those gems in Medina, and I bet he'll make it tough for Sis to keep them.

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Roosevelt won't be able to touch anything within Sisiutil's BFC as long as the cards are played right. The UB will produce 8 culture per turn once it's been up for 1000 years; just whip it out in the near future and problem solved. There is no way Roosevelt can keep up with that UB in a non-wonder city. Zara on the other hand is a problem with Stele and creative.

I find the extra culture on the madrassa a far better bonus than the ability to assign priests.

I agree; Roosevelt may create a super-culture wonder-city, but his cultural production per city is nothing exciting. Zara's the only frightening one culturally.

I've played as Zara several times and also been in games against him. One thing worth noting about Zara, when I've played against him, is that he tends to pursue Code of Laws early, meaning he's likely to found a religion from that.

Obviously, in Sisiutil's situation, going for Monontheism to found a religion (whcih I take it hasn't happened yet since Sis said nothing about another religion being founded, but then again, I don't have Bhuric's patch and can't see the saved game) isn't an option, but CoL is a viable option after Writing and IW are on line.

And yes, I know this goes against grabbing Archery (which Sis hasn't dont yet) as I've advocated, but given how close Zara is and that Zara likes to pursue CoL, Sis may want to do that if he wants to found a religion... and if he opts not to, just keep in mind Zara will pursue it and then you'll have a holy city to join up with Zara's Steles from Stonehenge plus Creative trait causing cultural border fights, and possibly losing more than just that Copper, depending on where Zara founds his cities and where the holy city emerges, should Zara get to CoL first.

Just something to keep in mind.

EDIT: And just tossing something else out: If an SE is what Sis sticks with, I'd be advocating moving the capital. Mecca is in a perfect position to run several specialists if those riverside tiles are farmed. You can still cottage up that second city, for examples, with its Pigs and Gems, and the Copper at some point during the game providing a few hammers.

Jet said:

Question, Sisiutil - did you finish the GW before getting peace with Roosevelt? I'm curious whether the power boost affected his willingness to sign in this case.

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Sorry, I forgot to reply to this sooner: No, I finished the GW after making peace.

Validator said:

I think you mean the purple city. They cyan city to the N of Mecca also would claim a source of copper. Of course it will struggle before IW is available, but it does serve the purpose of denying that copper to Rosy.

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Granted, but I think it will be a moot point. Roosevelt has been claiming territory to the north and is likely to have iron up there. No, I'll either leave that site to Roosevelt or if he leaves it, I'll wait until the SE is up and running and I can afford it.

Rusten said:

Roosevelt won't be able to touch anything within Sisiutil's BFC as long as the cards are played right. The UB will produce 8 culture per turn once it's been up for 1000 years; just whip it out in the near future and problem solved. There is no way Roosevelt can keep up with that UB in a non-wonder city. Zara on the other hand is a problem with Stele and creative.

I find the extra culture on the madrassa a far better bonus than the ability to assign priests.

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Really? If Roosevelt settles a city with those gems in his first ring (3 tiles from Medina's core) he won't be able to grab them? The AI does this to me in every border city in every game I play. If madrassas can overcome this, I will be mightily impressed (and another bit of knowledge will be added to the hopper, thanks to this thread). I await with bated breath.

War would be premature imo.

This is an excellent start (resource heaven) and you've set yourself up very nicely to take full advantage of it. The blocking cities to the east should restrict Zara's usual REX very effectively. And with a Great Spy most likely on the way thanks to the GW, the medium-term tech outlook is good (I recant on my previous suggestion to settle it - infiltration is the way to go).

What's needed now is a steady focus on carrying out the Pyramids/landgrab plan.

Blocking to the west is the obvious next move, but it's a tricky choice of where to settle. Validator's light yellow city is definitely too far away, but the orange and cyan cities would catch all the available resources. Nevertheless, I'd let Roosy settle the jungle area. Letting the AI chop jungles for you is much like letting them build wonders for you - they invest, you profit.

Personally, I'd settle 1W of Validator's purple city (the corn will make this a much stronger city), then take his blue floodplains one, and, costs permitting, the yellow coastal one. That'd bring you up to six very nice cities, with room for a few weaker ones later on.

In terms of research, after Writing (and probably Archery) I'd at least consider Alphabet->Currency. Assuming the GSpy shows up as expected, you can at least expect to get IW with a five-finger discount. Maths ought to fall into Saladin's pocket before long as well. If you pop a different GP, either Maths->Currency or Meditation->Priesthood->CoL would be better choices (I lean towards the latter, although you may well miss out on the religion).

Since you'll have to make the decision before the GP arrives, Alphabet would be a bit of a gamble, but I'd say the potential gains outweigh the risks.

By the way, if you should happen to pop a GE, rushing the Parthenon in one of your border cities could be a nice option.

Round 4: 1750 BC to 775 BC (39 turns)

I started the round by making a few of your suggested adjustments. First of all, I took advantage of Spiritual to change civics and avoid a slave revolt in the capital:



I also changed Mecca's build from the Pyramids to a Granary to help support the anticipated whipping I'd be doing there. I kept researching Writing.

A few turns later, I was back in Slavery to whip the granary to completion and put the overflow towards the Pyramids:



Slobberinbear's concerns about that eastern copper tile were correct:



Can I just say I hate being next door to a Creative civ? I don't care if Zara is the nicest guy on the block, he dies for this.

Some good news: my Warrior survived an encounter in the jungle with a barb Archer (thanks to Woodsman II and the fact that the clueless barb attacked from across a river) and earned Woodsman III. So now I can build the Heroic Epic whenever I'm ready.




The Heroic Epic is going to be needed, given the current state of the power chart:



That is worrisome, and it's something I'll have to address--but probably not until the next round.

As you may have noticed, my economy gradually recovered from the expansion I did at the end of the previous round, so Writing came along sooner than it looked at that point:



Which meant it was time to expand again:



I'll have to farm every tile I can in order to make that city viable since it has no food source. I guess I should have moved it 1W to get the corn, but I was following Validator's dotmap and trusting his wisdom. Fortunately there's a lot of river tiles and I'm planning on running a SE, so farms aren't a problem.

Meanwhile I decided to try out that walls-chop-whip-to-gold trick. I built Walls in Mecca to within one turn of completion. Then I got two forest tiles to chop on the same turn...



...and I then whipped the walls to completion.



This resulted in a ridiculous amount of overflow, something like 270 some-odd hammers in total.

And on the next turn, holy crud, it worked! 264 gold!



I immediately pushed the science slider up to 100%, using the gold to accelerate research. I was going after Iron Working as recommended, as you can see. This gold allowed me to finish IW and two more techs before the end of the round. Astonishing. However, it feels kind of exploity, so I don't know if I'll use it again. It was fun to try it this once, though.

Some good news on the diplomatic front, in my opinion: Suryavarman declared war on Roosevelt!



Since Sury is the furthest civ from me and doesn't share any borders with me--unlike the other two jokers--I'm going to try to keep him as happy with me as possible. Maybe he can keep Roosevelt preoccupied while I take on Zara. Of course, when it's down to just the Khmer and myself, all bets are off.

I finished IW; I'll show you where the iron is on the map at the end of this update.



As I said, I wanted to keep Sury happy, so that meant turning down FDR when he came by with a request:



That dropped him to Annoyed, so as I said before, I'm going to have to beef up my military in the next round. Granted Sury is keeping him busy for now, but if peace breaks out, Roosevelt may come my way.

I researched through Hunting so I'd be able to get the Elephants happening, and then finished my next Protective-leveraging tech at the end of the round:



Besides taking advantage of Protective, I felt the need to beef up my military. And what with losing Medina's copper, and Baghdad's is going to take a while, Archers were attractive... especially since my only source of iron is far, far away:



You can see that there are two other sources to the NW and SE, but both have been snagged by my neighbours. So I'll have to get a Settler down to the south coast ASAP.

The Pyramids are nearly complete--11 turns away! I'm having a Worker perform one more chop, then I'll let them finish on their own. After that, I think the next round will have to focus on Settlers, Workers, and military units. Madrassas are available, but I think they'll have to wait.

(By the way, notice that black corn tile at the far SE corner? That's right, a barb city is helping me block Zara!)

As for research, I was thinking of Alphabet next; my Great Spy is less than 20 turns away from appearing in Mecca (assuming the GE points from the Pyramids don't change that), and so I'll need Spies to take full advantage of his appearance. Regardless, it's high time for Alphabet anyway.

But as always, I'm open to suggestion and persuasion. Bribes too, now that I mention it. I'm not proud.

Sorry I was right about Medina's copper. But Medina is now locked in mortal cultural combat with Zara's new city to the east and his capital. So I think after the granary is done in Medina, you should consider whipping a Madrassa out for defensive purposes, so you don't lose the gems too. Medina is ripe for a good whipping anyway. Unfortunately, Damascus is going to lose its eastern floodplain tile to Zara's other city if you don't get a Madrassa in there as well.

It also appears that Zara is expanding to his northwest ... he has a city to FDR's east. I guess that Barb city to your SE did help block him a bit, but watch out, or he'll beat you to your southern coast. The man is a settling fool, I'm telling you. Too bad the barb city isn't in the best spot, or you could just capture it.

Great to hear that FDR is already serving his purpose as a Khmer-buffer.

Baghdad looks like a great production site but food will be tricky. You may even want to farm one of the elephants there just to get some growth.

As far as the wall whipping overflow ... you essentially traded one citizen, hammers and production time building the Wall, 10 turns of worker time, two forests, and one unhappy face for some hammers towards the Pyramids and a pile of gold. Had you just chopped the trees for the Pyramids (with the stone bonus), you'd have received what, 120 hammers?

To me, it's only an exploit if that overflow trick gained you the gold AND Mecca got the same or more hammers than it would have by simply chopping the hammers for the Pyramid. If the net hammers to the Pyramid were less by using the 'exploit,' then it was simply a trade-off, delaying the Pyramids and gaining one unhappy face for cash ...

slobberinbear said:

To me, it's only an exploit if that overflow trick gained you the gold AND Mecca got the same or more hammers than it would have by simply chopping the hammers for the Pyramid. If the net hammers to the Pyramid were less by using the 'exploit,' then it was simply a trade-off, delaying the Pyramids and gaining one unhappy face for cash ...

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I guess relative to simply chopping the pyramid, there is some net gain of hammers/coin because the chopped & whipped overflow hammers all get the protective-trait walls construction multiplier. So... there aren't extra net hammers to the pyramid, but he did get a very good rate on 'building wealth' for that turn

Just a random comment, in a recent game I had a very similar relationship to Zara as you have here (boxed him in with only 3 cities while I had overexpanded to ~8.) Some point in the middle ages during a mutual war, he volunteered to be a vassal, despite him being quite a bit ahead in tech. Being able to direct & trade for his research ended up almost doubling my research rate for a while!

how come there is a barbarian city on one of the pictures which subsequently disappeared?

It's an "exploit" because it's a way to build gold pre-currency. And because the multipliers give you so much.

Teching iron bad. If you want iron working, tech alphabet and trade for monarchy, mathematics, and iron working. On emperor, you will fall behind in tech if you don't tech smartly.

Trading 105 base hammers (on epic) for 264 gold is imo not a trick but a blatant exploit.