SGOTM 07 - Smurkz

Some questions:

- if we cancel OB with Lizzy now, but reopen later, do we regain the goodwill of the first OB period? Or does the counter start anew?
- if we become Confusionist, will the jewish civs (or at least the one holding the shrine) still send jewish missionaries our way? Is the rate at which they send them affected? What is the effect on the success rate?
- if Lizzy demands we become Confusionist and we comply, we will get positive "shared religion" points and "compliance with a demand" points with her and negative "heathen" points with the others. If we later switch to another religion or to no religion, what happens to these points?
- if we deny such a request, will she repeat it? I think "yes", and in that case it doesn't matter that it is only -1, because it will keep adding.

It looks to me that Lizzy is isolating herself from the rest. Evereyone on the continent is jewish, and the only civ that could possibly be converted to confucianism is us.
I would prefer to stay friends with everyone, which as far as I can see is only possible if we don't receive long term negatives from temporarily becoming confucianized, and there is a good chance that we will still get the jewish faith, and we don't get a lot of demands to switch religions (perhaps if we get free religion?). In that case, we could

• let the missionary in;
• give in to Lizzy's demand for a religion switch, only to switch back at a convenient moment, probably quickly after getting the jewish faith or the "free religion" tech;
• cancel all trades with Lizzy as soon as she becomes worst enemy for someone;

If this is not an option, then we have to choose. In that case, I would choose against her, close borders now and stop supplying her with resources now.

And then there is a weird idea: if we get both judaism and confucianism in Beijing, we can expect demands from both blocks to switch religions. If we comply each time, do we keep racking up compliance points?

Very good questions, and I need to look them up. I can answer one of them right away though - Lizzy will only contact us about switching religions at most once per 50 turns. And she is one of those who are least likely to ever contact us about it. But I'll be back with more exact answers in a while.

I just wanted to point out that we really don't want to switch religions too often anyway -- too much anarchy.

Right you are of course, we preferably don't want to switch more than once for the entire game.

I haven't had time to check up things tonight, I'll do it tomorrow after work. The rest of you should of course feel free to dig through the source

I'd rather upset one Lizzy then upset everyone else on our landmass. I'm for closing borders and waiting (hoping) for Judaism. I also wonder if the % chance is higher the more cities/civs surrounding us that also have the religion. 1.1% just seems low to me.

It seems low to me too, but I'm pretty sure I have the understanding correct. If it's too low, it's because I made an error in the computation, not because of not understanding the mechanics. And by those mechanics, only holy cities can spread religion, all other cities are of no consequence. I'll give you a more detailed rundown of the calculation later, but right now I have work to do.

I am opposed to anything that involves switching to Confucianism and then later switching to Judaism. I'm reasonably sure that if we have a state religion, other religions' missionaries will have a lower chance of success - reducing further our chances of becoming Jewish.

I vote for canceling open borders with Elizabeth, then reopening borders after 10 turns. By that time, her missionary should have diverted to another target.

That 1.1% chance is per-turn, right? So over the course of 50 turns, there's slightly better than 50% odds that we'll become Jewish? There's no way to improve those odds, but having our only city Confucian would lower them...

Ok, I still haven't had time to look at the source, I could do that now. But I think that regardless of what I find, it won't really address all the issues that have been brought up against letting Lizzy in. And the bottom line fact remains, it certainly won't help us become Judaist, even if it in the best case wouldn't do any harm either. Since I'm the only proponent for letting her in, and I don't feel very strongly about it, I'm fine with going the other way. So with that I think we have a consensus for cancelling OB now.

And I will play, then.

We got the GL *and* Judaism!

Details:

70 (1200 BC): Ok, first things first, OB cancelled with Elizabeth. Check everything's still as I left it, minus one pesky missionary, and hit enter.

IBT -- We lose the cows tile. Furs and silver are still holding at 52% and 65%, respectively. New York's culture has expanded, though I'm not positive it happened this turn; might've been a turn or two ago. It's hard to see up there under the ice. A Jewish missionary enters our territory! Jeez, dude, you couldn't have shown up a couple of turns earlier? I mean, really.

71 (1160 BC): Elizabeth now has monarchy, and everyone has Calendar.

IBT: We have Judaism. Needless to say, I don't revolt. HC goes to OR.

72 (1120 BC): Asoka has currency. I am so not used to this deity tech pace business. Worker goes to chop the hill west of Beijing. Furs/silver 51%, 66%. Cutting the second hill leaves us one short on the health meter. (We can cut one more forest without losing any more health, as we have nine forest tiles remaining.) A quick check at the spreadsheet reveals that we need that lost food in order to grow to size 9 on schedule. I *really* don't want to stop playing again, so I make the executive decision to cancel our deer trade with Elizabeth. This will leave us with no current deals with her and thus safe from the wrath of HC should he go to annoyed with her when his wrong-religion dislike increases in a couple of turns. (He's at least cautious with everyone else, so she probably would be his worst enemy if he goes to annoyed -- unless he knows other civs.) On the diplo screen, Elizabeth confirms that her worst enemy is currently Tokugawa -- not a surprise.

IBT -- The moment you've all been waiting for .... Great Library! Congratulations, everybody, that was a really good plan that worked out well. Oh, and Aristotle is born somewhere in a distant land.

73 (1080 BC): Silver mine finished. Furs/silver still 51/66. We're now set for happy at size nine (two turns from now), but we are short health and will have to cancel another resource deal if we don't want to lose food. Beijing reconfigured as per spreadsheet, and lighthouse is cued up ahead of the barracks. We're making 78 beakers per turn.

I think I'm going to stop here. It's only five turns, but it's been spread over several days, and someone else should get their chance. I would not be able to play any more until tomorrow, anyway. Plus, we need to discuss trades and religion -- wait for someone to ask us nicely on the latter?

--Save--

Great job Renata! Sucks the Jewish missionary couldn't have come sooner. If we are asked to switch religions, do we still suffer anarchy?

Excellent playing Renata - good call on cancelling that Deer trade. And excellent planning and execution everyone!

And that Jewish missionary -

Lots to think about now, a good place to stop. Thanks again Renata, I feel so much better now.

EDIT: Methos, yes we suffer Anarchy anyway.

Some quick unstructured comments:

We seem to have gotten the culture doubling of the Pyramids one turn earlier than I predicted. I guess that's an artifact of the game thinking we built them on turn 46, but the spreadsheet says 47 (since that's when we can start counting on its effects). Not enough to speed up our next border expansion, but it's something.

We also seem to have gotten the GPP for the GLib and the two extra scientists on the turn it was built, i.e. we're at 50 now instead of the predicted 42. Again not enough to speed us up to the next GP, but still nice.

Looking at the graphs, we're on par with XTeam in score in the top (though Murky Waters are the real leaders a bit behind us). What's really interesting to note though is that our culture graph is going to spike, compared to the teams that have played before us (admittedly only two, but XTeam is one of them). As a comparison, we'll break 500 on turn 78 and 600 on turn 81 (assuming no revolution, if we do revolt to Judaism then it'll be one more turn).

Murky Waters' culture graph is lowest of all - did they skip the Pyramids??

MW and RB's culture graphs are so anomalous that I'm wondering if they're trying for a military victory. They'll deserve kudos if they figure out a way to do it.

More unstructured thoughts:

On the trade front, we can't really do much (and don't want to either). It's a pity Drama is not available yet, but hopefully it will be before too long. By the latest spreadsheet we would want it by turn 83 to start the theatre, that's 10 turns away. Though that's hardly crucial, we could build WBs instead (and perhaps should, see below).

Asoka is sure researching fast - and it's really nice to see that he went for Currency and not CoL, that means if he gets Drama we might trade him CoL for it. We won't be able to trade for Currency for CoL though, at least not with him, Currency is more expensive. But if it spreads to some others somehow, we might be able to make a trade with CoL+Lit, with HC or Washington perhaps?

The health situation is starting to become troublesome. We should get that +1 resource trade bonus with Washington next turn if my calculations are right, and definitely within 2-3 if they aren't. So we could cancel the Crabs gift when we're ready to grow to size 9. It's also a quick job to road the Sheep, though it will be one turn too late for size 9, will help us to size 10 though. And in 5 turns our borders expand to cover the seafood out west, that's a potential of +2 health, and we should have plenty of time to build at least one WB before growing to size 11. So while the health situation isn't perfect, it seems perfectly managable to me.

Who was kind enough to send us a missionary? Just curious.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to wait with switching to Judaism for too long. We're still only Cautious with Washington, and Asoka's cap is high, we get +1 per 10 turns, and we want him to friendly as soon as possible. We could gamble on a +1 from someone asking, but that would decay with 1/100 chance so we can't count on it for the long run anyway. And if it's Toku that asks, it's rather irrelevant. I'll have a look tomorrow to see what the odds are of someone coming to ask us.

When either we or Delhi goes to size 10, we should see +3 income from the trade route. I believe it should be the same with Cuzco as well, and same thing with London if we re-sign that OB. Though perhaps we want to wait to five turns after HC became a Jew, so we know if he becomes Annoyed or not. But getting higher-worth trade routes is very nice, every extra commerce counts. And if we can trade for Currency, that's another trade route - very very valuable. (On a side note, we can also use this reasoning to know that neither Asoka nor HC have a pop-10 town yet, since we would then have +3 from our trade route with them).

Asoka sent the missionary.

I'm in favor of switching to Judaism right away, myself, but just wanted to throw that idea out there. And as far as any further deals with Elizabeth, I think we should definitely wait (2 turns?) to see what happens to HC's attitude before doing anything.

I'd rather switch as early as possible too, to build up our bonuses. Haven't looked at the save yet, so nothing further to add.

If we revolt before or at the growth to size 9, i.e. within the next 2 turns, we don't need to cancel the Crabs gift to Washington since the Sheep road will complete in time. We can take home the Crabs when we grow to size 10 instead. Another "good thing" about the revolt is that it synchronizes the completion of the cottage and the growth to size 10. So revolting before size 10 is probably obvious.

Downside is that we lose a turn to CoL, which may mean a less beneficial trade situation - but that doesn't seem likely at this point, we might have to wait a while for Drama to appear. Another downside is that we risk losing the Furs for a turn or two when we revolt. But I doubt that too, at 29 cpt it seems we will be able to match whatever NY outputs +20.

Actually, New York "should" be putting +40 into that tile every turn right now, with us only at +20 until we expand again. Works out the same as what you said, though. The actual percentage is holding roughly steady. We lost one percentage point after the NY expansion, but nothing since we got the extra Pyramids culture. I guess we lose the furs if the actual difference between our culture and America's on the tile is less than about 50, and I don't think there's any way to determine that. If we do lose the tile, we should get it back very quickly after our next expansion.

Renata (and sorry for the confusion previously...)

I am catching up slowly, but it seems everything went great . Converting jewish right now (or almost) is probably the best thing we can do.

Need to load up the save tonight while catching up (again... ) on the post lists.

What's the current roster ? GNE are you back online with us ?