SGOTM 09 - Fifth Element

Mesix said:

I definately think that founding Sushi is the best use of the Great Merchant from Economics. We could settle him in the Wall Street city if our expansion has crippled our research. THe only down side to Sushi is that we really need to take out Atlantis if we plan to have many seafood resources.

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You're growing old
You discovered the "double Lighthouse" thing. Atlantis has no seafood.
Portugal has Hammu has. We have, and can have more after frigates.

Back to my TS.
I'd like to play tomorrow morning. I'll be busy in the afternoon/night.
I think the only important thing yet to decide is:
1) Found ASAP the Rockies city
2) or wait next TS?
3) or half-way, build the settler after the market in LP? to found the city next TS?

OK, how about this. Build the settler after the market, send him down there with a defender, but don't settle him until we are ready. Ham can't screw up the positioning, but we still settle it when we want. I don't recall if the site is inside our influence, but keep him inside our borders to save - of course you know this.

Sushi could be good, but I haven't counted resources or anything. A 3rd GA might be huge, tho. <--what a fence sitter! And just to keep it up, I'm not sure about astro/bio either. I'd prefer bio so we can get onto the NP... hopefully we can trade for eng, I doubt chem will be available. The upside is that it should be easier to trade for compass/optics.

BLubmuz said:

You're growing old
You discovered the "double Lighthouse" thing. Atlantis has no seafood.
Portugal has Hammu has. We have, and can have more after frigates.

Back to my TS.
I'd like to play tomorrow morning. I'll be busy in the afternoon/night.
I think the only important thing yet to decide is:
1) Found ASAP the Rockies city
2) or wait next TS?
3) or half-way, build the settler after the market in LP? to found the city next TS?

Click to expand...

Atlantis has no seafood, but it spawns barbarian ships that raze our seafood resources. The Great Wall doesn't stop their ships from razing our fishing nets.

Goin' to play now.
The settler will found his city ASA he can. But he will arrive after the market, to balance the maintenance.
I talk about Sushi to give a complete spectrum, but i'm not much in favor of it: it's expensive and we need production, not population.

Mesix, it's what i said: we'll build our nets in the Atlantic ocean after frigates.
For the Pacific, i think barbs are not a problem.

TS played, the save

The best plans of men and mice...
Well i decided to go for settler first in LP. Managed to beat Hammu for 1 turn, but settled where planned, a nice city, IMO.

Then i wish introduce you to mr. Henry Bessemer. His friends call him mr. Mining Inc, dunno why

Switched to Poly as planned, traded MC to Hammu for Mono, his WM + 50 gold.
Completed MoM.
The Furry City (Kassite) is defended by 3LB. 2 Paras will be enough, maces can have some trouble.

I suppose you'll find this interesting. Is possible that Joao's hands are full due to barbs.
Those galleys continue to unload tons of bad guys.
Gunpowder is in, Lib is due in 4.
More will follow later today.

Wow! Look at the experience points on those Barbs. I'm becoming even more thankful for the GW. I'll open the save next to see what's going on.

Are we going to prioritize our tech path to get Mining Inc., or let Mr. Bessemer hang out for awhile? Mining Inc. is obviously useful for SS components in the end game, but may benefit is sooner is the form of Paratroopers.

Mesix said:

Are we going to prioritize our tech path to get Mining Inc., or let Mr. Bessemer hang out for awhile? Mining Inc. is obviously useful for SS components in the end game, but may benefit is sooner is the form of Paratroopers.

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Yes and no.
We need Nationalism to open constitution/corporations.
And all the path to Economics, of course.
Then all the path to railroad.

If your question is: do we'll research railroads before AL, the answer is yes.
I think Mining inc will only help the SS, not the Paras. By then we'll have all the continent. Too far away to be of help for Paras.

BTW we have to decide for the diversion before next TS.
1) Theo > DR > Nationalism
2) the path to Bio
3) the path to Astro
4) Nationalism straight to start the Taj in a half-undeveloped city which never produce a GPerson
I'm i favor of the first, hoping to trade for a decent number of the techs in the various paths.

Techs usually possible to trade, with some patience:
Compass, Optics, Engineering, Chemistry, Feud, Guilds, Banking.
If we'll see guilds as researched we must keep an eye on Edu: until not researched being first on Econ is not in danger. But if the AI will pop a GS it can be. We must pay the due attention.

This is the tech path i use in my tests.
Needless to say, not always you can trade for certain techs: they can be not researched yet or simply not on the table.

Theo > DR > Nationalism
somewhere before i complete Nationalism, Feud arrives on the table, sometimes compass too.
Optics is not so easy, but if we research constitution it can arrive.
Once we got optics, Astro: it opens the trades with the other continent, and there will be good opportunities to trade badly needed luxuries. Also the income from the trade routes will improve, and we must remember we'll have no trading partners in our continent. Sooner than you think.
Sometime i managed to trade for Printing Press.
Always with an eye to the Economics race, i go for Democracy. If i must self research banking, corporations first, to gain the +1 Trade Route in every city.
But usually it's not a problem build the SoL a little late, if we want prioritize Bio.
But if we not prioritize it, we can probably (not easy) trade for chem.

We can also skip DR, build the FPalace in Sparta and see what happens. Maybe this can be a good choice.
But i want Theo for the HS in LP. Another GE can save a lot of turns on the SoL, and you know how important it is.

As you see, a lot of if. We must forget the usual paths, hope in some luck and be generous. I usually trade Gunpowder with the other continent if i can have a good tech.
Shaka and Stalin are out of this, we must watch Wang and HC. Joao can have something, even Hammu. But we must be very careful with them.

Just looking at the save, and is a forge really the best build in Corinth ?

I'd have thought at least one workboat, or if we think barbs will be a serious threat there, then a lighthouse first. A forge just seems wrong, so I'm interested in the thinking if it's right.


We've got 4 more turns before rifling, so where are we going to build paras, and do we get a barracks in there now ? LP can pop one in after finishing the market.

What's the plan to get the economy out of the mire ? We're loosing 9 per turn at 30% with sod all army. How are we going to pay for the paras ? Or will war bounty do that ? Neither Hammy or Joao have built a shrine, so there's not even any income from there.

I'm not convinced by getting Divine Right, but maybe the Hagia Sophia is worth it however Doesn't Steam Power speed up workers anoter 50%, and there's not *that* long between getting the HS and steam power (although I take what you said about maintenance)

Falling asleep now. Maybe more comment tomorrow, maybe not.

I'm going to float some ideas:

Trades
Mono to HC for 190G
Poly to Stalin for 40G
Poly to Joao for 30G

This gives us money to keep our tech rate a little higher. Hopefully someone will offer us Engineering during the next TS as it is opens up a lot of the research path

Relations
Shaka and Stalin are +7 and HC is +5 and +4 respectively.
Wang Kon is the worst enemy of Shaka and Stalin and only a +2 with HC. My guess is WK is about to get eaten alive. I'm not sure if there is any way to exploit this.

Civics
I may have missed this, but why haven't we switched to Pacifism or even OR? If necessary, converting to Judaism gives us 1 happy in each of our three biggest cities, I'm not afraid of the "wrong religion" modifier. The best time to do this would be as soon as we have Paras in case Joao takes offense.
In my opinion Free Religion isn't worth it until we get a lot more cities. The one happy for each religion will only benefit LP right now. The 10% science will only benefit LP.
When we take Hammi out, we will have the holy city and can build the ToS for the gold bonus. Pacifism tremendously speeds up our GPeople, alternatively OR cuts 25% off the time needed to construct buildings.

Builds
LP - Barracks 1T (Paras soon), Temple x2 2T each (more happy faces, allowing us to grow bigger) we could do just one Temple for now. The happy faces depends on if we go FR, as LP would get 3 more from religions.
OR
Barracks 1T, Worker 1T, Worker 1T, Worker 1T, Paras

Athens - Barracks 3T, Odeon 2T (are happy cap needs to go up. This isn't going to be necessary unless we get it to grow faster and soon!) If growth isn't going up any time soon, I propose Barracks then Paras until we start Notre Dame if we go for Eng.

Blubzville - Odeon 2T, Baracks 2T, Temple 3T ( depends on growth) perhaps Paras until it's time to build Versailles

Pindus - Granary 6T, Forge 12T. These could be reversed.

NY - Forge 16T

Sparta - Forge 20T

Panama City - Forge 40T or Workers

Corinth - WB x2. There isn't enough coastline on the west side of our continent in the fog to have to worry about Barb galleys.

Research

Lib 4T, Rifling (Free)

Engineering ? Only to build Notre Dame for the 2 happy faces per city. Then Chemistry followed by Bio.

Divine Right ? For Versailles. Eases the need for Courthouses right now. Then Theo ( we may be able to get this in trade. (Do we want to build the AP? We certainly don't want to be on the wrong end of some of the resolutions.) Perhaps Theo then DR.

Nationalism? To build the Taj Mahal for a Golden Age.
followed by Constitution, Democracy

We could revolt to Organized Religion without adopting a religion. Then we would be able to build missionaries to spread religions to all of our cities. This would make Free Religion worthwhile once we get there.

hm... as usual Sweeta is busy in the weekend. Another delay, i'm worried by our pace.

Some good points in GB's post, some ... less.
I think you overstimate a Shrine in this particular game. Also the benefits from OR or pacifism are minimal, compared to the worst relations due to "haten religion", not to mention the turns of anarchy. If you're thinking to use the GAge for this, you can be half right. We can build one missionary/turn in most cities. But then we need to move him to the target city and often he fails to spread. You must add that we are allowed to a max of 3 missionaries for each religion, operative or in queue. It takes forever. I've tried it, i know well. Even with airports in almost any city is a long thing.

Yes, maybe the forge is not the best first building. Maybe we can switch to something different, a Lighthouse or a courthouse.

In my tests often Hammu built the AP. So in the first GAge i revolt to the AP religion and in the same turn to FR. Just to have the benefits from the temples with the AP owned.
Again, in my tests sometime Hammu or Joao built their shrine. Not a great income, anyway. It only helps the choice for the Wall Street city (where Mining inc will be founded).
In my tests i built temples only very late, and only the ones of the AP religion. No worries for the happy cap once we'll have Astro and can trade for luxuries.
Odeons are huge for happiness. I also always built Broadway and R'n'R.

I propose on half-way path after Lib/Rifl: Theo, then Nationalism, then the path to Astro.
This way we'll have good chances to trade for engineering.

I have posted my proposed build queue for LP in #3.

I'm not convinced it's worth diverting resources needed to get the shrine income up to a good level. If when we take the holy cities, the shrines are there, then maybe it's worth switching to OrgRel in a Golden age to pump out some more missionaries, but I don't think it's worth taking up a religion at least until we've cleared the continent. Even then, it may not be worth risking pissing of the AI and having to watch out for overseas invasion etc.

Temples could be useful for happy though. And hammers if the AP is built anywhere.

BLubmuz said:

hm... as usual Sweeta is busy in the weekend. Another delay, i'm worried by our pace.

Some good points in GB's post, some ... less.
I think you overstimate a Shrine in this particular game. Also the benefits from OR or pacifism are minimal, compared to the worst relations due to "haten religion", not to mention the turns of anarchy. If you're thinking to use the GAge for this, you can be half right. We can build one missionary/turn in most cities. But then we need to move him to the target city and often he fails to spread. You must add that we are allowed to a max of 3 missionaries for each religion, operative or in queue. It takes forever. I've tried it, i know well. Even with airports in almost any city is a long thing.

Yes, maybe the forge is not the best first building. Maybe we can switch to something different, a Lighthouse or a courthouse.

In my tests often Hammu built the AP. So in the first GAge i revolt to the AP religion and in the same turn to FR. Just to have the benefits from the temples with the AP owned.
Again, in my tests sometime Hammu or Joao built their shrine. Not a great income, anyway. It only helps the choice for the Wall Street city (where Mining inc will be founded).
In my tests i built temples only very late, and only the ones of the AP religion. No worries for the happy cap once we'll have Astro and can trade for luxuries.
Odeons are huge for happiness. I also always built Broadway and R'n'R.

I propose on half-way path after Lib/Rifl: Theo, then Nationalism, then the path to Astro.
This way we'll have good chances to trade for engineering.

I have posted my proposed build queue for LP in #3.

Click to expand...

That makes no sense at all. You don't need to adopt the AP religion to get the benefits. Once you switch to FR, you lose any benefit from the religion that you adopted. You get the from AP buildings whether you are the AP religion ar not. The only benefit to adopting the the AP religion is becoming the leader of the AP voting.

I think OR is a good civic to run (with no state religion chosen) so that we can spread religions to all of our cities. You don't need to have a state religion to get the missionary building benefit from OR civic.

I have to agree with Mesix on both notes. The hammer bonuses come with the AP religious buildings no matter what or if you have a religion. The bonuses from the UoS and Spiral Minaret require you to have a religion. Converting to FR, removes the state religion moving religion to No State Religion. Also, using the OR civic allows you to build missionaries for any religion that is present in the city. The 25% increase for building in the cities is lost if you have no state religion or if the state religion is not present in that city.

I agree that we should not adopt a religion but considering the extra happiness we get from FR for each extra religion in each city, we might want to test and see if it is worth it to crank out a few missionaries.

Get back to work, slacker!

OK, I'm here and have got it. In the future, if the turn comes up on a friday, and I haven't said I'm good to play, you should probably swap me with the next player, and I'll slot in early in the week instead. Having a look now.

WTF?? I am getting a "locked assets to protect.." or whatever it is. You know the one. I haven't changed anything recently, but last time I tried to load BtS, I had a crash to desktop, so perhaps some kind of corruption?? I have the assets checker, but don't really know what I'm doing with it, so if anyone has experience with it, perhaps you could help me.

In any case, better put me on skip until I get it sorted or reinstall