SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

Great Library

Can we use the whip-into-axeman trick you talked about to build it in The Farm?
As a bonus we get our soon-to-be-needed-against-Zara?

Or we can build my favorite wonder - Parthenon (AND NOT THE LAME S-P)

  • We dont need to research literture.
  • The bonus is in all cities, so we can build in Delhi and ge the bonus in the farm and the secondary farm (if we will have one).

OK, you said that overall this doesn't give you more GP only getting them earlier. BUT in our game this is exactly what matters. We need to give-up 4 GP. Getting those 4 GP earlier may well mean finishing earlier.

ok ok... I know what you are going to say that the bottleneck isn't going to be those 4 GP, but rather getting the Diplo win. BUT do you know that for sure? Have you ever played a game where you didn't use all your GP for something?
 
BTW, the great library (and parthenon) are x2 with marble, so it is cheaper than 525.
National Epic is x2 and it gets us 100% and not 50%, so it is more useful in the farm (but not the secondary farm) then parthenon, BUT we will have to build it in the farm

Building the great library not in farm is really a waste. We lose 24 GPP per turn (assuming we have NE and we ran pacifism). Isn't that more then the mare 12 beakers/turn we will get for it? Early in the game a GPP is clearly worth more than a beaker, but that changes as the GP cost raises (aka a GPP gives a smaller % of a GPP) but the benefit of a GPP caps (it will give you a fixed amounts of beakers for a tech). Do we ever get to the point a GPP = beaker and beyond ? Probably yes. But I don't think we reach the 2 GPP = beaker ratio.
 
I would assume we're either skipping Literature (or at least trading for it later) because we don't strictly need it, or we're going to make the detour to get it mostly for the National Epic.

I think building the Library in the gpp farm city makes the most sense. The Parthenon on the other hand should be built elsewhere

Comparing the Library to the Parthenon, the Library gets us:
12beakers, 32gpp (under pacifism, 24gpp otherwise) per turn. Just to get that many gpp from the Parthenon, we would need to run about 20 specialists (where three wonders is worth 2 specialists in terms of gpp). So the library is certainly a higher priority (and cheaper as well).

I don't think the Parthenon is worthwhile. We're making something of a beeline to Scientific Method, which will obsolete it. Although the same could be said of TGLib
 
Wonders
The Apostolic Palace
Spoiler :
Whoops, it looks like I forgot about the Apostolic Palace. Maybe we can't build a Worker and some Work Boats in Bedrock next.

Do we have anywhere else that could build the Apostolic Palace? Not REALLY, except maybe Wheaties.

Actually, with Wheaties having the Cow, 1 Hammer from the Wheat, 2 Plains Hills squares, and enough Food to support all of those Hammers, that's 3 + 1 + 4 + 4 +1 (for the City Centre) = 13 Hammers per turn once we've grown a bit.

It really would be nice to be able to build at least 1 Work Boat and maybe even a Galley somewhere and Bedrock seems to be the most appropriate place to do so. It could be argued that instead of a Galley, we could whip a Galley elsewhere, but Bedrock still not a really going to be a high Hammer location until it grows several population points, so building the Apostolic Palace there might not get it for us in time.

So, maybe let's plan to assign Wheaties as the spot to build The Apostolic Palace. I still think that it will be worthwhile to squeeze in a Worker before the Granary and Apostolic Palace, since we aren't very likely to see much competition on Theology for a while, but that point is debateable.



The Shwegadon Paya
Spoiler :
If we don't build the Shwegadon Paya, then an alternative is to attack the AI that builds it.

Perhaps we just need to find an AI who has a Favourite Religion of either Organized Religion or Theocracy and hope that they build it?

Gifting Aesthetics might be one way to give said AI a head-start, but then we might lose out on our head-start on The Great Library and/or The Parthenon.

Failing the above, I think that we can assign Wheaties to build the Apostolic Palace and then Bedrock can take on the Shwegadon Paya once it's done making 1 to 2 Work Boats.



The Great Library and The Parthenon
Spoiler :
Okay, let's do a fair comparison of these Wonders vs running Specialists.

We will equally get the Philosophical bonus for Wonders and Specialists, so let's take it out of the equation for now. The same applies for the Pacifism bonus, so let's also ignore it for now.

The Great Library provides:
2 GPP from the Wonder itself
2 * 3 = 6 GPP from the 2 Specialists
So, if we ran 3 Specialists in the Great Person Farm, we'd get about the same number of Great People Points.

However, it will take far more than 3 population points to whip The Great Library.

The Parthenon provides:
2 GPP in the City that it is built (since they are Great Artist points, I am going to say that we will build it somewhere other than Delhi and somewhere other than the Great Person Farm).
It also provides a bonus of 50% to all Cities.

Well, let's be honest with ourselves. In a normal game, your Great Person Farm will make it so that almost all Great People are born there once you run the full number of Specialists, due to running both Specialists and having the National Epic bonus.

However, in our game, since we are Philosophical, the ratio of the National Epic is a little bit offset, such that Delhi will still produce a few more Great People (say, at least 2, and likely more if we manage to build The Hanging Gardens and possibly other Wonders there, before game end). So, unlike a regular game, where The Parthenon's bonus is only practically going to apply to our Great Person Farm, it will also apply to Delhi.


In order to calculate The Parthenon's contribution, we DO need to take into account the Philosophical bonus and the National Epic bonus. But, let's say that we aren't running Pacifism that much.

Let's also say that we are running 6 Specialists in the Great Person Farm, which we can do at Size 9 with a Lighthouse and 2 Work Boats having improved the 2 Fish. We will still be growing the City with 2 surplus Food in such a case.

So that gives us:
6 * 3 = 18 base GPP
18 * 1.0 = 18 bonus GPP from being Philosophical
18 * 1.0 = 18 bonus GPP from the National Epic
So, with 6 Specialists, we are making 18 + 18 + 18 = 54 GPP per turn

The Parthenon would add:
18 * 0.5 = 9 bonus GPP from The Parthenon

Or, put another way:
Without The Parthenon, 1 Specialist nets us 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 GPP

So, The Parthenon counts as 1 extra Specialist in the Great Person Farm.

If, however, we have BOTH The Great Library in the Great Person Farm and The Parthenon somewhere else, then The Parthenon would add an additional:
8 GPP (for the Great Library) * 0.5 (The Parthenon's bonus) = 4 GPP


In summary:
The Great Library in the GPF = 2 and 6/9ths extra Specialists in the GFP
The Parthenon built elsewhere = 1 extra Specialist in the GFP
The Great Library in the GPF plus The Parthenon built elsewhere = 1 and 4/9ths extra Specialists from just The Parthenon in the GFP


Now, there is a great cost in building The Great Library. 525 / 2.25 (Marble + Organized Religion) = 234 base Hammers.

At most, you'll get 44 Hammers from a whip overflow operation, more likely 40 Hammers on average if you really try to get said Hammers. That equates 5.32 whips. With us also whipping Work Boats, possibly the Granary and a Lighthouse, this City is going to suffer from major unhappiness and low population, meaning that it won't be able to run a lot of Specialists for quite some time.


I don't have the numbers worked out for converting the cost of building The Great Library into population points, as well as the time that it takes to grow the population points, but with so few base Hammers in the Great Person Farm, we're probably better off skipping The Great Library and just focusing on getting the National Epic and then growing the City ASAP in order to hire Specialists.

We'll eventually be able to run 8 Specialists if we do so, but we'll probably be too small and unhappy to run more than 5 to 6 Specialists if we also get The Great Library. The end result is that we'll get about the same number of Great People points in the best case, but due to all of the turns spent growing and whipping The Great Library, we probably won't gain more GPP than the ones we lose in the opportunity cost of not running Specialists for a longer time period.


I'm not saying don't build The Great Library. However, unless you can provide math that shows it will pay for itself, I'm going to suggest that we put it in Delhi, where we will still get some Great People coming out, anyway, and where the opportunity cost of obtaining the necessary Hammers is much lower.
 
To address a few points that have been brought up:

Workers: Yes, we need them. We've done quite well so far and we've been very efficient with 4 workers and 5 cities. But, we are very soon going to have 4 more cities and a lot more techs requiring worker actions around our existing cities (AH, Hunting, Iron Working, etc.). Plus, we have some chopping to do around Delhi if we want to win the Hanging Gardens race. Building 2 more workers in Wheaties and Bedrock will help, but I bet we could easily use an additional 1 or 2. Let’s start with these two and see how far they get us.

The AI prioritizes Currency (at least in Vanilla). On Emperor, I would expect them to get it soon. The issue is that we only know 1 other civilization. If we don’t meet anyone else soon, we may have to self-research Currency, as the extra trade route per city will help us greatly with all of our new cities.

We should also think about getting Education soon so that we can chop/whip universities and Oxford in our capital. Although, we currently only have 2 cities with libraries, so Oxford is likely a LONG way off.

I think if we have to build the AP, Wheaties is better than our original plan of Bedrock.

I don’t think we want to build too many wonders in Delhi after the Hanging Gardens. We’re going to have to get a bit lucky to get a Great Engineer as it is. Adding all of the GPP from the Great Library would be suicide, me thinks.

Regarding tech trading with Zara, does it make sense to hold off trading for one turn after learning Alphabet so that we can self-research Fishing (should take 1 turn if we have the gold to run at 100%) and get the more expensive sailing in our first trade?
 
Gonna run through the PPP one more time in the test game and then play my TS. I'll check back in about 30 minutes to see if there are any last minute posts.
 
Okay so test went fine. Gonna play my TS now. Will post update in about 45 minutes or so unless there is a problem.
 
Session Log
Spoiler :
Here is your Session Turn Log from 675 BC to 365 BC:

Turn 133, 675 BC: Gandhi adopts Representation!
Turn 133, 675 BC: Gandhi adopts Caste System!

Turn 135, 625 BC: Merit Ptah (Great Scientist) has been born in a far away land!

Turn 136, 600 BC: The borders of Wheaties have expanded!
Turn 136, 600 BC: Christianity has spread in Wheaties.

Turn 138, 550 BC: Saladin adopts Organized Religion!
Turn 138, 550 BC: Shankara (Great Prophet) has been born in Aksum (Zara Yaqob)!

Turn 139, 525 BC: Gandhi adopts Slavery!

Turn 141, 485 BC: Zara Yaqob adopts Organized Religion!

Turn 142, 470 BC: You have trained a Settler in Silverado. Work has now begun on a Courthouse.

Turn 143, 455 BC: Mohammed Shah (Great Prophet) has been born in Delhi (Gandhi)!

Turn 144, 440 BC: You have discovered Civil Service!
Turn 144, 440 BC: Gandhi adopts Bureaucracy!
Turn 144, 440 BC: Gandhi adopts Caste System!

Turn 145, 425 BC: Grt Person Farm has been founded.
Turn 145, 425 BC: The Temple of Artemis has been built in a far away land!

Turn 148, 380 BC: The borders of Grt Person Farm are about to expand.
Turn 148, 380 BC: Clearing a Forest has created 29 ? for Grt Person Farm.
Turn 148, 380 BC: Riverdale will grow to size 3 on the next turn.
Turn 148, 380 BC: The borders of Grt Person Farm have expanded!

Turn 149, 365 BC: Riverdale has grown to size 3.


Autolog
Spoiler :
Logging by BUFFY 3.19.003 (BtS 3.19)
------------------------------------------------
Turn 133/750 (675 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:01:44]
Bedrock begins: Settler (25 turns)
Wheaties begins: Settler (30 turns)
0% Research: 11 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 20 per turn, 22 in the bank

After End Turn:
Delhi grows to size 7

Other Player Actions:
Civics Change: Gandhi(India) from 'Despotism' to 'Representation'
Civics Change: Gandhi(India) from 'Slavery' to 'Caste System'

Turn 134/750 (650 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:02:50]
0% Research: 11 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 23 per turn, 42 in the bank

Turn 135/750 (625 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:03:48]
0% Research: 11 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 24 per turn, 65 in the bank

After End Turn:

Other Player Actions:
Player contact made: Saladin of Arabia

Turn 136/750 (600 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:04:50]
0% Research: 11 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 25 per turn, 89 in the bank

After End Turn:
Whip anger has decreased in Delhi
Whip anger has decreased in Riverdale
Riverdale grows to size 3
Wheaties's borders expand
Christianity has spread: Wheaties

Turn 137/750 (575 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:08:11]
A Cottage was built near Delhi
0% Research: 13 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 28 per turn, 114 in the bank

After End Turn:
Delhi grows to size 8

Turn 138/750 (550 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:09:01]
0% Research: 13 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 29 per turn, 142 in the bank

After End Turn:
A Hamlet was built near Bedrock

Other Player Actions:
Civics Change: Saladin(Arabia) from 'Paganism' to 'Organized Religion'

Turn 139/750 (525 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:10:34]
100% Research: 63 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -21 per turn, 171 in the bank

After End Turn:

Other Player Actions:
Civics Change: Gandhi(India) from 'Caste System' to 'Slavery'

Turn 140/750 (500 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:12:01]
A Farm was built near Wheaties
100% Research: 63 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -21 per turn, 150 in the bank

Turn 141/750 (485 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:13:13]
80% Research: 52 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
20% Gold: -11 per turn, 129 in the bank

After End Turn:
Delhi grows to size 9
Delhi finishes: Confucian Missionary

Other Player Actions:
Civics Change: Zara Yaqob(Ethiopia) from 'Paganism' to 'Organized Religion'

Turn 142/750 (470 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:16:12]
Delhi begins: Settler (10 turns)
0% Research: 7 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 31 per turn, 118 in the bank

After End Turn:
Silverado finishes: Settler

Turn 143/750 (455 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:18:15]
Silverado begins: Granary (23 turns)
Silverado begins: Granary (23 turns)
Research begun: Alphabet (10 Turns)
100% Research: 64 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -22 per turn, 149 in the bank

After End Turn:
Mohammed Shah (Great Prophet) born in Delhi
Riverdale grows to size 4

Other Player Actions:
Attitude Change: Saladin (Arabia) towards Zara Yaqob (Ethiopia), from 'Cautious' to 'Annoyed'

Turn 144/750 (440 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:20:40]
Tech acquired (trade, lightbulb, hut, espionage): Civil Service
100% Research: 92 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -25 per turn, 127 in the bank

After End Turn:
The whip was applied in Riverdale
Riverdale finishes: Library

Other Player Actions:
Attitude Change: Saladin (Arabia) towards Zara Yaqob (Ethiopia), from 'Annoyed' to 'Cautious'
Civics Change: Gandhi(India) from 'Barbarism' to 'Bureaucracy'
Civics Change: Gandhi(India) from 'Slavery' to 'Caste System'

Turn 145/750 (425 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:24:17]
Riverdale begins: Confucian Monastery (90 turns)
Bombay founded
Grt Person Farm begins: Granary (90 turns)
100% Research: 99 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -31 per turn, 102 in the bank

After End Turn:

Other Player Actions:
Attitude Change: Saladin (Arabia) towards Zara Yaqob (Ethiopia), from 'Cautious' to 'Annoyed'

Turn 146/750 (410 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:26:31]
100% Research: 99 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -31 per turn, 71 in the bank

Turn 147/750 (395 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:27:33]
A Farm was built near Wheaties
100% Research: 99 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -31 per turn, 40 in the bank

After End Turn:
A Hamlet was built near Bedrock

Turn 148/750 (380 BC) [19-Jun-2010 00:27:57]
0% Research: 41 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
100% Gold: 24 per turn, 9 in the bank

After End Turn:
Riverdale grows to size 3
Grt Person Farm's borders expand


The TS went pretty much as expected.

Here are the differences:

T136
Met Saladin thanks to a WB next to the warrior W of Bedrock. He will not give OB and we are his worst enemy.
Christianity spread to Wheaties (after end of turn)
T139
Great Prophet born to Zara
T140
Zara sending prophet to Lalibela
T148
Worker 1 finished the chop on T148 instead of 149 as in the PPP. Blindly following the directions from T145 (Chop no stopping), I completed the chop into the granary in GPFarm. As soon as I clicked, I remembered that on the next turn I was supposed to not finish the chop but it was too late then. Guess that is one less decision we have to make moving forward.:)

Other than those events, everything was exactly like the PPP.

The save is submitted. Sorry but as usual none of my screenshots were saved correctly so you'll have to open the save to see any differences.

BLubmuz, you're up I believe!
 
Great job, unclethrill. :goodjob:

I was nervous about getting a GPro since I got a Great Engineer during my testing.

Regarding forest chops, do you have the Buffy option selected for workers to automatically stop when only 1 turn is left? I don't like to rely in it, but it has saved my bacon more than once and seems to work 100% reliably.
 
I opened the save and noticed a few things:

1. Zara does not know Sal yet.

2. Buddhism has spread to 31% of the world (compare that to Confucianism (4%), Hinduism (4%), and Christianity (0%)). Our plan is working to unite the world under the Buddhist flag. Now we just have to figure out how to get it to spread to us!!

3. We got the +2 trade route in Silverado with Gondor, just like we had in the test game. I assume it happend quite early on in the turnset.

I'll work on the test save tonight. Thanks for the notes and the logs. I should be able re-create it without too many problems, although it won't be Sal we'll be meeting. I'll make it the Buddhist founder (like Sal is in the real game) to try to approximate the hate Sal has for us.
 
unclethrill said:
BLubmuz, you're up I believe!
Click to expand...
Good job, UT!

CS not "oracled" is a good thing.

So Sal is the buddhist founder and he's our neighbour?

Let's just plan a war before he gets to Camel archers.

Tomorrow i'll look at the save and post a PPP.
I will also update page 1, it's awhile i don't.
 
Nice work, UT! :goodjob:

Other Turnset Comments
Spoiler :
unclethrill said:
T148
Worker 1 finished the chop on T148 instead of 149 as in the PPP. Blindly following the directions from T145 (Chop no stopping)
Click to expand...
If that's the biggest difference from the PPP, don't even sweat it. The fact that we were able to get 20 bonus Hammers at all is already a sufficient reward.

Yes, I set up a "trap" by saying "Chop no stopping," but it was said in the context of doing all of the other Chop/Stop actions, to avoid confusion. It is a BUFFY setting that stops our Workers from completing Forest chopping. Check out BLubz' messages on the first page of our thread to check to see if you have any other settings that don't match what he suggested.


Christianity has spread: Wheaties
Click to expand...
Excellent! Now we can buid the Apostolic Palace and switch to a different Religion. We still may want to choose a different Relgion, such as Hinduism or Judaism, to try and build the AP in a Religion that hasn't spread to an AI, but doing so would require a successful Missionary mission to Wheaties. At least this way, we have SOME religion other than Confucianism there.

Actually, I don't see Confucianism being spread in Wheaties in either log. Did you attempt to spread Confucianism and it failed or did the log just not pick up on the fact that it spread to Wheaties?


Turn 148, 380 BC: Clearing a Forest has created 29 ? for Grt Person Farm.
Click to expand...
Hmm, that's weird. I could have sworn it was 20 Hammers. Maybe a different Forest got chopped? Maybe my memory is failing me?
 
TEST SAVED GAME
Mitchum sent me a Private Message and asked me to update the Test Game. Please find the updated test saved game file attached. Kindly let me know if you have any trouble in accessing the file.


*** BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN OPENING THE REAL SAVED GAME ***
Spoiler :
We have two units with movement points remaining that need to be moved before ending the turn, but their turns have been skipped, so you'll have to wake those units before ending the turn. Thus, if anyone wants to open the real saved game, do so VERY CAREFULLY as one accidental Enter keypress can advance the turn and lose us our unit actions.

The test saved game represents the real game pretty accurately, so you should be able to open the test saved game and get an accurate enough picture of the real game without needing to open the real game (unless you are BLubz and are about to play the real game). Cool? :cool:



Initial Actions for the next Turnset
Spoiler :
We did not have a line in the PPP to wake up a unit on T149 (the current turn), since our Worker was going to have its movement point remaining. For whatever reason, Worker 1 has simply skipped his turn (equivalent to pressing the Spacebar) without performing an action this turn.

However, since Worker 1 is NOT active, you can easily accidentally advance the game by pressing Enter.

So, PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL when opening the real saved game, as an Enter keypress can advance the turn, and we don't want to do so.


Before we advance the turn, we'll want to spread Confucianism in Wheaties, as the Confucian Missionary seems to have already ended his turn this turn and he has surely sat in the City long enough to achieve his maximum possible success rate for being spread.


We'll also want to move Worker 1.

Now, since:
1. By the time that we could possibly get the Pig improved, we will probably be ready to whip a Work Boat and then work the Fish instead
2. We will soon settle the Crab City
3. We did not yet chop the Forest where the Crab City is going to be settled

Our PPP should start off with:
T149
Wake and Move Worker 1 1W GFor (W + W of the GPig and N + N of the Fish) and Chop/Stop
Wake the Confucian Missionary in Wheaties and attempt to spread Confucianism there

T150
Researched Alphabet -> Currency (that's my suggestion, anyway, as it will be a while before Bedrock will be free to build an Aesthetics-based Wonder)
CHANGE SCIENCE RATE: Research 0%
Move Worker 1 1W GFor (W + W + W of the GPig and SE + E of the Crab) and Chop




For now, I have simulated the real game's situation by manually skipping the turns of both the Confucian Missionary and Worker 1, so it is equally easy to accidentally advance the turn by pressing the Enter key in the test game, just like in the real game.
 
The First Page of our Thread
Spoiler :
BLubmuz said:
I will also update page 1, it's awhile i don't.
Click to expand...
Other than the roster, I don't think that it really matters. We seem to be working fine with our partial-Instant-Messaging approach. Most messages a few pages prior to the latest page don't get read anymore, let alone the first page.

If we were reading the first page, we'd be in deep trouble by now, based on what it says:
BLubmuz said:
Research
pottery ?

Builds
?

Units
Keep the scouting warriors alive
Click to expand...

I especially love all of the question marks. :crazyeye: :D

Seriously, though, it's not really worth trying to keep the first page updated, other than for things like the current roster and links to the PPPs (so that you don't have to sort through the thread later just to find them).
 
Dhoomstriker said:
TEST SAVED GAME
Mitchum sent me a Private Message and asked me to update the Test Game. Please find the updated test saved game file attached. Kindly let me know if you have any trouble in accessing the file.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Dhoomstriker. I wasn't sure if I was going to have time to get this done tonight and I didn't want to slow progress down on the game.

BTW, I just read that Saladin's favorite civic is Theocracy, just like Zara. I wonder if the game designers were nice to us and put in leaders who all have a favorite religious civic that is not Free Religion... Will these leaders stay in their favorite civic even if its not smart to do so (i.e. a human player would not be running said civic)?
 
An AI's Favourite Civic and Religion
Spoiler :
BTW, I just read that Saladin's favorite civic is Theocracy, just like Zara... Will these leaders stay in their favorite civic even if its not smart to do so (i.e. a human player would not be running said civic)?
Click to expand...
Once an AI gets into their Favourite Civic, getting them to switch out of it is often nearly impossible. Some AIs tend not to take their Favourite Civic as seriously (Churchill, with Nationhood as his Favourite Civic, doesn't seem to prioritise switching into it, for example).

However, good luck getting Saladin or Zara out of Theocracy. The "plus" side about Theocracy is that it is a self-fulfilling Civic. An AI that likes Theocracy is only really likely to switch out of Theocracy in favour of Free Religion, and will probably only consider doing so if they have a different Religion in nearly every City (other AIs will switch to Free Religion more readily if they have, say, 3 Religions). Since Theocracy prevents most ways of spreading non-State-Religions, this Civic tends to cause an AI to be relatively one-Religion-centric, which then encourages them to stay in Theocracy, which then keeps other religions from spreading, which encourages them to stay in Theocracy...

You get the picture.


The "negative" side about Theocracy is if an AI adopts it before we have spread the religion that we want them to run to them. We seem to have lucked out that Saladin already has the religion that we want to spread around, so we don't have to worry about this case.

Zara is so securely Confucian that I really believe he'll end up being our Diplo Opponent and won't be worth the effort to try to convert him to Buddhism.

So, in either case, we're lucky here. Odds are that there aren't any more Theocracy-loving Civs, but we can hope that there are some that love Organized Religion, which would also make it safe for them to build the Shwegadon Paya on our behalf.


As long as we keep our borders closed with non-Buddhists (we'll need them Open with Zara for now, for his Trade Routes and good relations for trading), we should be able to avoid quickly spreading most of the non-Buddhist religions. Once we have Buddhism and a couple of Buddhist Missionaries prepared, then we can slowly Open Borders with other AIs 1-by-1, spreading Buddhism immediately after Opening Borders, to try and beat the "natural spread" of our domestic religions.
 
FYI, I updated the test saved game (it is now TEST 4 instead of TEST 3) and reuploaded it to the same message above.

The previous version had Zara partially researching Alphabet on the turn that we learned the tech, which could mess up our ability to trade with him properly. In the real game, he's going to still be researching Monarchy.

So, I went back several turns and got him to switch to Monarchy. The number of turns invested in Monarchy is not quite the same as in the real game, but this way, Zara won't "pull a fast one" on us.
 
Mitchum said:
Great job, unclethrill. :goodjob:

I was nervous about getting a GPro since I got a Great Engineer during my testing.

Regarding forest chops, do you have the Buffy option selected for workers to automatically stop when only 1 turn is left? I don't like to rely in it, but it has saved my bacon more than once and seems to work 100% reliably.
Click to expand...

I do have that setting on and actually made the selection for him to finish the chop on that turn which is what really made me mad at myself.

I will go through and doublecheck my settings since I had to reinstall my OS last week.
 
I just noticed that Sal has 56 espionage points against us. We met him 14 turns ago. 56 14 = 4. Sal is assigning 100% of his espionage points against us. At first, I thought this meant that Sal was isolated until he met us, but that's not possible since Buddhism has spread to 31% of the world. It must be because we're his worst enemy and there is a Buddhist love fest going on. :goodjob:

I am trying to figure out which techs Zara likely has. Specifically, does he have Writing or Math yet. He didnt' learn them during my turnset because I noted which techs he learned (Iron Working - T129 and Masonry - T134). I also noted what he was researching at the end of each turnset, T73 – BW, T90 – Meditation, T105 – unknown as he must have just learned something, T120 – IW, T149 – Monarchy.

So, if Zara learned Writing or Math, it would have been during either Dhoomstriker's turnset (T90 to T105) or unclethrill's (T134 to T149). Did either of you keep track of what Zara was researching during your turnsets?

Regarding the next turnset, I'd like to propose that BLubmuz play two, one-turn turnsets before finishing out the rest of his 13 turns. During the first one, he will perform his first tech trade, learning either Animal Husbandry or Iron Working (plus Fishing) by trading Alphabet. During his second one, he will likely learn the other one by trading Math. Knowing where the Iron and Horses are could change our settling location and/or our worker actions.

If we could agree on these two mini turnsets quickly, we could find out this information and better plan out the rest of the turns.

Before playing a single turn, we have to agree whether or not to give in to Zara's request if he asks for a tech. I say don't give it to him unless he asks for Writing... We should also decide which techs we don't want to trade to Zara, like techs on the Liberalism = Free Religion path.

By the way, Zara's WFYABTA (We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced) limit is 10 techs (same with Saladin) * 140% (40% boost on Emperor) = 14 tech. After having traded for 14 techs, it will be harder to get any techs from him (until his memory decays). Maybe we can keep track of the techs we've traded while knowing each civ in one of the first few posts.

I doubt we'll ever hit the limit of 14 techs since we're not teching all the way to a Space victory, but you never know.
 
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