ALC Game #9: Incas/Huayna Capac

carl corey said:

Yeap, even if they "see" her on the map you're trading, until they actually make contact by caravels she's still "hidden".

Click to expand...

Speaking of caravels, it wouldn't cause any harm to gift a caravel to hatty and have her discover the other continent. That could be a way to have her discover the others so you can get Cyrus and Frederick into the war with her. Edit: Of course that could potentially backfire if she hits it off with them immediately.

When I didn't want to actually fight in a war, I've gifted a unit here or there to help out the Civ I actually wanted to win (or at least stay alive).

In some ways Hatty is an irrelevance. You've currently got about 38% of land; Egypt might bring this up to 50%, probably less, so for domination you're committed to a serious intercontinental war.
Hatty is only currently in contact with Nap but that could change at any time. Nap remains slightly ahead on pop but that may not last. Best chance for a quick victory is diplomatic; at the moment Hatty is friendly to you and annoyed with Nap. So head towards UN and get it over with, or face a long and tedious war (or wars) or a slightly longer but less tedious space race.

I think that using the aggresive trait kind of dictates knocking of Hatty, doesn't it?

Seriously, though, the point isn't to finish fastest, it's to best use the leader. Since we couldn't use the Quecha, at least use Agressive so we can use Financial on Hatty's squares. And it's not as if leaving her alone is going to help any victory, especially with her lack of contact.

And long and tedious? Getting Alex mainly invovled sitting and smashing his stacks -> mopup

I don't get it. Why does being Aggressive mean you have to kill everyone within reach? I don't see why not killing Hatty is not making the best use of HC. Although I think that's probably a good idea for the long run, I think it's completely fallacious reasoning when you use the Aggressive trait to justify a war you may not need to fight. And this had been done quite few times here.

I agree Aggressive lends itself well to warmaking (duh), especially in the early game. However, this game has seen its share of good warmaking so that trait has been utilized. I think whether Hatty goes down next or not has nothing to do with the trait. It's a question of whether Sisiutil is better off getting and optimizing those cities or letting Hatty keep them and focusing on his own growth. If he is aiming purely for a diplomatic victory, conquering Hatty is unnecessary and might even be a distraction. If he wants to keep space race and domination as options, however, grabbing her cities is probably the better choice.

Round 10: to 1836 AD
Part I: Razing Egypt

Two things: first, I like to keep my options open, and second, war is fun. (It's hell in real life, of course, but on a computer, it's better than a barrel of monkeys.)

I loaded the game and before I made a move to start the next round I made a whole bunch of changes. First off, I moved my ships and troops into position to pounce on Hatty. I then deleted a bunch of old, obsolete units in my core cities to reduce expenses. I wouldn't be needing them for Hereditary Rule's happiness bonus, what with Alex gone, and I was about to change civics anyway. I started building several Settlers so I could get my new cities in place ASAP. I also adjusted my trades, especially with Frederick, trying my best to give him the least advantageous resources to keep him from growing his cities:



Sidebar: in this and the previous ALC, I think the part of my game that I've fine-tuned the most is resource trading. I'm still figuring it out, but just the idea of renegotiating the price of one resource rather than trading a bunch of them was a huge step for me. Now I'm tweaking my trading strategy even further.

I've reasoned that the best resources to offer the AI are livestock--deer, sheep, cow, pigs. Why? As I mentioned before, a city's health cap is almost always higher than its happiness cap; in addition, the "booster building" for livestock, the supermarket (which makes them +2 health rather than just +1) comes very late. After livestock is seafood. Only coastal cities with harbours get a double boost from them, and we all know the AI is shy of the water--by exactly 1 tile, most of the time. After that, it's a toss-up between grains and some of the calendar resources. So if you compare this screenshot to the last one from the previous round, you'll see that I substituted clams for spices in a roundabout way.

I also cancelled my Open Borders with Hatshepsut. This bounced a couple of her Longbowmen into open ground where they'd be ripe for the picking.

I then took a risk and waited a turn before declaring war on Egypt. I wanted to get my troops into position, after all. Fortunately, no one had "discovered" Egypt during the interval:



Poor Hatty. After dying at my hands in so many games, you'd think she'd learn to keep her distance from me, but noooooo... she's the girl next door that I inevitably treat shabbily. Sorry, babe.



With war declared, I decided that a change of civics was in order.



With the mass of experienced troops I now had, and Hatty's technological backwardness, the conflict was not going to last nearly as long as the one with Alexander, so I would not be needing Hereditary Rule nor Nationhood. I chose Representation for the research boost, especially since I was still running Mercantilism (only Cyrus was running Free Market at this point). In addition, as aelf recommended, running Cyrus' favourite civic would give me a diplomatic boost with him. I also selected Free Speech so that the borders of my new and conquered cities would pop faster.

First things first: I got rid of that annoying little city Hatty placed in my back yard outside of Athens:



I had a Settler in Athens ready to go on the designated tile, but lo and behold, the other Civs showed up with Galleons carrying Settlers--Cyrus, Frederick, and even poor ol' Lonesome George were sniffing around. If I wanted to get my new cities in place, I had to move fast, and I had to cut off the AI. More on this shortly.

I took a chance by going into anarchy; I was after the free Great Scientist that comes from Physics, and you might recall that Freddy also had that tech's direct prerequisite, Scientific Method. But I remembered that the AI usually makes Physics a low priority, so I accepted the risk. Turns out I was right:



You see that? Frederick went and researched Steam Power rather than Physics, which probably meant I was in the clear. I had, in fact, generated a Great Scientist in Machu Picchu just before I changed civics, and now I knew what to do with him. Instead of burning him towards Physics, I settled him:



Meanwhile, I kept razing those poorly-placed Egyptian cities:



Just to the south is a mini-stack consisting of a Grenadier, Musketman, Settler, and Hindu Missionary. I founded my new city while the ruins of Pi-Ramesses were still smouldering:



But I had to rush more Settlers into position, as the AI was, as I mentioned before, lurking about, looking for good terrain:



I can understand that Washington has no room on his continent to expand. However, I see very few human players pulling this puzzling tactic the AI loves: loading up a Galleon with a Settler and Longbow as soon as you have Astronomy and sailing around, looking for a new world to claim--or, more likely--a tiny, cold, ill-fed corner of that new world. And the maintenance costs? Yikes.

Regardless, I had my territory and resources staked out and didn't want to give them up to anyone:



And I wasn't going to let Hatty get in my way!



I mean, really. Founding a city on top of a food resource? Come on. It was just begging to be razed.

Ah, yes, and I was the first to discover Physics and won the grand prize. I settled that Great Scientist in Machu Picchu as well. I could have burned him for Biology, but he only would have shaved off a couple of turns. Meanwhile, the AI had a few techs on me, so I went shopping to see what I could get:



This worked out well, I thought. I had gone to Cyrus previously for Rifling, but he wanted some combination of Liberalism and either Democracy or Chemistry in exchange. Hardly and even trade. Steel was a little more even, especially since it was a 1-for-1 trade.

I also went to see Frederick:



I double-checked to make sure that Physics is not a pre-requisite for Biology. No sense making it any easier for him to catch up to Napoleon.

Steam Power revealed coal, of course, and guess where it showed up: right next to Athens, my soon-to-be Ironworks city! Ya gotta love that.



To be continued...

Round 10: to 1836 AD
Part II: Raising Inca

More new cities!





And here I was complaining about my economy not being up to snuff. DUH. Don't worry, though, I'll eventually make up for it. What was a pleasant surprise was that at least I'd built my economy well enough so I never had to go below 50% research to break even--at least not for long.

With the poorly-placed cities razed, I zeroed in on the three north-eastern cities that I wanted to keep, starting with the Egyptian capital:



So let's see what I got for my trouble:



Not bad--a granary, aqueduct, forge, and an Academy. Too bad Alex and Hatty didn't manage to build any wonders (well, aside from the Buddhist shrine in Athens). Oh well. Thebes has decent food, with the corn and deer, but is lacking on the production side. I'll have to mine the uranium and the hill to the north.

And I finally founded the last of my new cities--ironically, this is the one I had intended to found first!



And just in the nick of time, too--yes, there's an American Settler on that tile with the Longbow! George put his city, Seattle, 1 NW of the deer instead--a poor location, as it misses out on the oil to the north, but George probably doesn't have Scientific Method yet and can't see it. Pig Iron's cultural pressure stole the deer back from him a few turns later, so Seattle will probably flip if I push things. Frankly, I'm glad it was George and not either of the two Creative leaders who put a city there; it makes my life a little easier.

And I then discovered what I'm sure will be a very important tech for this game:



Right away, I saw benefits. Look at what Biology allowed me to do in Ironville South:



Yeah, I know--if I'd founded the city 1 tile east, I would have had the gold and the coal. But then the city's food situation would have been even worse than it already is.

Golden Horse, which is building the Statue of Liberty, also benefitted tremendously from Biology, enabling it to work several heavy-production tiles and grow its population while working on that wonder.

And history repeated itself. Just as Alex died a cold, lonely death at my hands in the desolate northern wastes, so, too, did Hatshepsut succumb to a similar fate.



I kept it. It has two fish tiles and copper for production--a decent fishing village, albeit chilly as all get-out.

As sad as I was to see Hatty go, the AI leader I kind of feel sorry for in this game is Washington. That bully Napoleon picked on him and left him with only two cities, and now he's languishing in last place. If he didn't share a religion (and a defensive pact) with Cyrus, he'd be toast. He's obviously been begging techs from his Persian buddy--I mean how else did he get Astronomy? The poor slob.

I think he sensed how I was feeling.



I gave it to him. It's an old tech by now and I want to do what I can towards a possible diplomatic victory, right?

Towards the end of the round, I got a very pleasant surprise. Tiwanaku finally produced the Great Person it's been building all game. The odds preferred a merchant, followed by either a scientist or a prophet, and in 4th place, an engineer. Any of them would have been beneficial. I would have settled the GM or GP in Cuzco; the GS would have been settled in Machu Picchu. Well, I got the Great Engineer!



I am indeed thinking of using him to rush the Statue of Liberty, which I would have to do on this very turn (the SoL needs about 750 hammers, and he'll give me 720). Should I use him for something else? He'll shave 1, maybe 2 turns off of Assembly Line--meh. I could settle him in Athens. OR maybe I should save him for the UN? I pretty much have a lock on the SoL at this point, after all--it's 13 turns away from completion and no one else has Democracy yet. I await your advice, as does Benny.

That's it for the round. In the next post--the state of the world in 1836 AD.

To be continued...

Nice set of turns again. Impressive indeed. Another civ destroyed and the land completely taken over and with nice cities also. I say burn the GE on the Statue. You have roughly 25-30 cities. That means 25-30 specialists which will produce normally something like 75-90 beakers per turn with representation (not counting multipliers) for 12 turns (which you will shave of building SoL with the GE). So you will get at least 900-1080 beakers before multipliers and great scientists not counted. What does an engineer bring for research?

I do think that the last steps would be beelining for mass media and getting the UN and end the game in a diplomatic style.

Yeah you should save it for the UN, at least if you want to finish before I did

SoL is nice, but do you NEED it for the win. Even if you are losing the techrace, who cares? As long as you reach mass media and this will be fairly soon.

If you are going the dilpo way, I can't see the benefit of razing Egyptian city's when you need to rebuild population. Although the city sites are suboptimal or sometimes ridiculous, it still can be common sense to hold on to them. You need population to win, not the best economical city's (anymore). It's all about focus. Just like the suggestion of refarming matured cottages. It seems horrible, but only the win counts.

Anyway, I guess since you don;t want to decide for a victory yet, it seems more logical you don't take into account the 'extreme' measures to pursue solely a diplo vic.

Don't get me wrong, in many ways you play much more efficient then me, because I am way too lazy and tend to make stupid mistakes when I notice I am winning the game. But the focus on strategy or path to take is the most important fact to learn and how you move on in difficulty. So just trying to show the path

The State of the World in 1836 AD

First off, let's look at the maps. Here's my original, southern continent:



Yes, Cajun is indeed sitting right on top of Uranium. The inhabitants of that city all glow in the dark--it's kind of cool. Overall, I think we made pretty good use of this continent--I mean, look at all that desert! And yet it's supporting 12 cities!

And here's my new, northern continent:



A matching set! 17 cities on this one (18 if you count Seattle), most of them brand new. No wonder my research is at 50% and losing money! Oh well, a few more banks, a few more cottages, and Wall Street is almost done in Cuzco. We'll be fine. Besides, with all those cities contributing research, the modern techs are getting researched in less than 10 turns, usually 5-8.

The non-Incan continent:



The trade table:



And here is how things stand tech-wise--first, with Frederick:



I'm researching Railroad because I can't see myself trading any of those techs to Freddy. I want to switch to Emancipation soon to grow my new cottages faster (and to penalize the AIs, of course, and force them to research a tech I already have). I'm about to start on the Kremlin. And now way do I want to give Biology to anyone--well, ironically, except Napoleon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll try to bully it from me.

Tech standings vis-a-vis Cyrus:



And versus Napoleon:



Would you believe that Napoleon still doesn't have Astronomy? I think he's doing it to spite me. No, really. I've been producing Frigates to ward him off, and I think he's decided to just stay at home and not let me have my fun sinking his ships.

And here's how I stand with everybody, focusing on Cyrus:



Running Representation obviously shifted him from Pleased to Friendly. It makes switching to Universal Suffrage problematic, however. I have a +9 with George and a +11 with Frederick, with no negatives. Nappy is a -8.

As for everyone else, well, obviously George and Cyrus are cuddly. Cyrus is pleased with Freddy, George cautious. And everybody dislikes Bonaparte, surprise surprise (Freddy = cautious, Cyrus = annoyed, George = Furious).

Based on the victory conditions screen, Napoleon is still #2 in population:



So once again, if the UN vote was held right now, I'd most likely win. However, Freddy or Cyrus could get Biology very soon indeed, and that would complicate matters. I could probably win against either of them, but it might be trickier.

Here's the power chart:



I am rather disinclined towards a domination win now. If I had gotten started on it earlier, fine, but taking out any of the top three powers will be a long, hard slog--and remember that both Frederick and Cyrus are creative, with Napoleon's cities in between them, making winning precious tiles all that much harder. No, I think it's either diplomatic or, failing that, space race.

Once West Point is complete, Ironville South will start pumping out defensive units for all my coastal cities, while they produce the occassional ship and the inland cities a few siege weapons--all to ward off any thoughts of invasion by anyone. If Nappy gets Galleons and launches them, my distant-early-warning Caravels will spot them. I'll have spies soon to enhance my intelligence even further.

Now, it's time for the usual debate!

• Civics: I think a change--possibly the last one of the game--is in order. State Property, obviously; I'll soon have the Statue of Liberty and I would benefit from the trade routes that are starting to open up. Emancipation also makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty much done whipping, and I need the boost to cottage growth. Plus the happiness penalty will slow down the AIs and force them to research Democracy, though I may have to cough it up if any of my friends come and ask for it. But what about Universal Suffrage? I'm going to build the Kremlin--or should I bother? If I switch to US, I risk losing Cyrus' votes, whereas I don't need to do anything to keep Freddy's.
• The Great Engineer: The more I think about it, the less I want to use Benjamin Franklin on the Statue of Liberty. One big problem with the SoL in this game is that its effects are continental, not civ-wide. Bummer. So I think I should save him for another wonder, and the obvious one is the UN. Speaking of which...
• Research: I could switch right now and take the overflow with me. Should I just bee-line to the UN, via Electricity -> Radio -> Mass Media? Or should I balance my research a little? Railroad would help with production (including building the UN itself), as well as defense (think mobility), and Combustion for Destroyers would be good for fending off trouble as well. Should I swallow my pride and trade Communism and Democracy to Freddy for Railroad?
• Economy: I've been changing a few farms to cottages in Egypt and Greece, but based on the posts that went up while I was playing the round, I'm thinking I should stop. I need to grow my population as much as possible, don't I? The slider's at 50%, but hey, I have 29 cities all producing research--nearly 900 beakers per turn at last count. Wall Steet's almost done, and I can mass-produce missionaries to help with the bottom line, right?

The saved game file is below. This one is almost in the bag, kids--we just have to decide how to proceed, and what contingency plans we may require.

I'm new, but have really enjoyed following this thread.

It looks like to me that Cyrus already has Biology. It doesn't show up as a tradeable tech in the Foreign Advisor screenshot above when clicked on Cyrus.

My idea is beeline to massmedia.
Seeing how fast you research, it should take less than 20 turns.
When you have finished the statue of liberty, it will make it even faster.
That gives you all the time you need to move you GE to your IW city.
UN should be build in 4/5 turns max.
Victory in 30/35 turns, sounds good no?

+ going fast reduces the risk of nappy losing 2nd place

Can you bribe GW into (another) war with Nappy? If I look at the picture Nappy needs biology fast! He is losing on Cyrus and Freddy. Cyrus has the better land and prob will grow faster, not Freddy! Yes you could prob win even if there is a other runnerup, but it will be guaranteed if Nappy is the runner up. If GW declares on Nappy, Nappy will kill him netting 2 nice city's, which will be enough to maintain the pop. race. Would still consider gifting Nappy biology...

If Cyrus becomes 2nd in pop, switch to US and try to get Washington to switch to Free Religion. If Freddy becomes 2nd instead, you can also switch to US to get Washington's vote, but try to score more points with Cyrus (Defensive Pact is a good one, but you should sign it with Washington too).

I think diplomatic victory is not a problem now. You should definitely beeline to Mass Media and save the GE for the UN.

Something what pops in my mind... Why not declare (phony) war on Nappy (nobody cares) try to get GW into the war, and after some time sue for peace in return for biology and maybe some other techs too Nappy. In other words, losing a phony war, while strenghten Nappy to beat him in the UN. This way you won't get the 'you traded with our worst enemy' penalty.

I don't think GW would be brave enough to declare war on Nappy. He wouldn't want to lose his Defensive Pact with Cyrus anyway. I think only Freddy would agree to that, but if he wins (which he might, since he is more advanced) that could put him in 2nd place.

Well the main point is getting around the negative trade/gift modifier, by giving it as war tribute. I wouldn't ask Freddy to join in the war, no. But you think Nappy would lose the war from Freddy? Check the powergraph.. I don't think a few techs ahead will overcome this difference in power.

voek said:

But you think Nappy would lose the war from Freddy? Check the powergraph.. I don't think a few techs ahead will overcome this difference in power.

Click to expand...

Well, if Nappy sends off a third of his forces to land on the Inca continents, yes. Freddy could shift into war mode and start building up units. Grenadiers vs. macemen is no contest when their numbers are almost equal.

If you want Nap to have biology to stay in second place you could always just give it to him.
Civics wise might you be better with emancipation rather than slavery; also Cyrus and Fred are both running free market so that may be worth considering.

Arf, forgot that SoL is bound to the land so it will only support 12 cities. Bummer. Save it for the UN then I would say. SoL is in the bag anyway since nobody has democracy yet.

I don't think you have to worry too much about defense. You are propably number 1 in soldier strength. Getting railroad, electricity, radio and mass media is a good tech path. Rifles, grenadiers and canons are enough to ward of anybody right now. Switching to emancipation and gifting democracy to Nappy would also help him since the others get the -2 unhappy so Nappy can grow harder.

A few thoughts:

Firstly, nice acquisition of Egypt - poor Hatty never stood a chance.

Secondly, as others have said, a diplomacy win seems to be in the bag so save theh GE for rushing the UN.

Thirdly, if you're really concerned about Nappy being overtaken in population due to lacking biology, why not declare a phony war on him yourself, then gift it to him as part of a peace deal when he's willing to talk to you again. It's a bit gamey, but would get the job done without upsetting any of your friends. You'd just have to be prepared to bribe Freddy/Cyrus out of war if they take it upon themselves to dogpile him on your behalf.