RR6 - I am Legend

I'm glad half way Boudica started talking in english after her earlier fit in german!

Got it, hope to play Wednesday evening or Thursday, otherwise can't get to it till Monday.

So where are we going with this? I got the feeling we kind of lack a master plan... Just turtle away until we can massively start spying? I guess we should actively pursue democracy and communism so just for that we may want to research along the typical edu/lib line. Machinery though for some beefed up defense is fine, although it would invalidate a possible lib bulb, if we ever get a GS, that is.

Priest can be settled or used for a GA. Dunno what's best.

Well, my personal idea was to trail to liberalism, democracy and communism, and then starting pouring espionage on ramesses for our variant.... the rest are minor details

Seriously, We will have some issues in getting liberalism freebie in this game IMHO. Both Sury and Biz are teching strongly, boudi is a loose cannon and we still have to see against who Charlie is gunning out.... so we might have serious issues in teching fast enough for getting liberalism in front of the AI ( even counting with some GS that the RNG decides to give us ... i don't expect we get enough GS in due time to make a lib bulb viable anyway ), but liberalism in itself would probably be helpful.

About the prophet... well, dunno either This is probably not the best time for a GA and settling now seems so... little ...

Anyway, nocho is up. I'll pick it next.

As Sury is Charlys worst enemy I think we should be save as long as we'll stay ree of any religion..

Techwise we need to consider wether we want to grap some land from charly.. In case we want we need maschinery first.. And as I won't believe we'll be first to lib I'd rate getting some more land bit higher..

And still I think settling the GP would be the best desision.

Mmm, I'm very sorry but I'll need a skip. Couldn't make it tonight and from tomorrow until Sunday I'll be away from my civ comp (though will surely be online ), the soonest I could get to it is on Monday evening. So it's over to rolo, who will show us a fine display of The Roloist Approach.

Ok, I will pick it ....

Any comments before that ?

Long term I'm wondering which will be our 3 obectives as cities where we want to reach legendary. Memphis looks good, but then? Prague maybe, but the third one? Pi-Ram seems unreachable by our culture and we can't place a city closer by. Then we have the horrible Ulm and that Khmer city. If those are not the objectives maybe we should conquer something somewhere.

Still I think we should go the edu route rather quickly. Don't think either we have a great chance for lib, but imo we should get demo and communism as soon as reasonably possible, which at least means getting universities and Oxford out the sooner, the better.

I already said what where the ones to get IMHO: Pi-Ramesses ( it is easily reachable from Memphis ), the Egyptian capital ( ditto ) and obviously Memphis.

Agreed on trailing via liberalism.... like I said before, we will need it for communism anyway

r_rolo1 said:

I already said what where the ones to get IMHO: Pi-Ramesses ( it is easily reachable from Memphis ), the Egyptian capital ( ditto ) and obviously Memphis.

Click to expand...

Missed that. Or forgot.

Okay, indeed from Memphis the other Egyptian cities can be reached. Keep forgetting that when spreading culture in a city that city will act as an epicenter from where culture is spread around in the typical fat cross way. At least I suppose it works like that. It's so counterintuitive not to own such a city!

So with Thebes 4 tiles away from Memphis, I suppose we need to spread 500 culture to reach it, while Pi being 5 tiles away needs 5000 of our culture in Memphis?

nocho said:

Okay, indeed from Memphis the other Egyptian cities can be reached. Keep forgetting that when spreading culture in a city that city will act as an epicenter from where culture is spread around in the typical fat cross way. At least I suppose it works like that. It's so counterintuitive not to own such a city!

Click to expand...

It works like that. it is counterintuitive. That is why we are making this SG, btw: using couterintuitive mechanics to get a counterintuitive result

nocho said:

So with Thebes 4 tiles away from Memphis, I suppose we need to spread 500 culture to reach it, while Pi being 5 tiles away needs 5000 of our culture in Memphis?

Click to expand...

IIRC yes IMHO it looks far better than playing with the crappy khmer city or planning a culture win on a city we may want to capture ( and raze ) far before the end game

Well, before I start the report, I just want to give a reminder: we should not put spies on Egypt for now We are close of being Rammy worst enemy , and given his stack of units he has unspent from the Boudi war, it would not be surprising that a caught spy would push us to annoyed terrain, "hands full" and war in 4-5 turns, even before we could even notice. When we start pounding espionage missions on rammy we should make sure that we can face a DOW of his part ( spies giving trouble are a pretty sure way of making the relation go red ) and we aren't at this moment ( well, better said, we weren't, but that is going too far ahead of the report ). Because of that I called all the spies to inside our borders in the first turn of our set. I would like that everyone refrained of having spies in Egypt for a while, please....

That said, my set opened with the AP:

I said no and it didn't passed anyway. At the moment, with Charlie being handful and no certains about us being the target or not, the last thing we wanted was to risk a two front war.

A bit of good luck

Bah

Well, tech wise I decided to trail for Lib and back fill with tech trading. Teching Paper and a turn of research on machinery allowed this:

Then I started teching philo, in the hope of grabbing it by trade with Charlie vs paper and lit. But that was not bound to happen:

Thank to the heavens all those units that were gathering near the southern border disapeard to never been seen again, probably eaten by the Khmer UU ( charlie had a boatload of chariots... should had been a feast for Sury ). Meanwhile someone decided to play spy on us:

Nothing serious ...

The war of Charlie vs Sury didn't lasted long, though:

As you can expect, the AI voted for peace. Well, better this way: no one had time to ask us to join the war

I ended the set with the end of Philo teching ( charlie kept his hand tight on it until the end. Normal, being a monopoly tech ). Sury also got it this IBT ( self teched, because I'm not seeing a AI trading a monopoly tech with their worst enemy during a war with them ). The tech trade screen is like this:

If sury started teching Edu, we are clearly in a tight race for liberalism. But we have a good chance of winning it given our GS in 3 turns ( sury got his last GP in the turn before charlie dowed him, as you can see in the screenie I posted showing Charlie DOW ), that obviously should be used for bulbing the rest of Education.

The Glance screen:
Charlie hates Sury, Sury hates Charlie, Boudi hates Rammy, Rammy hates Boudi and everyone loves Biz We are not particularly loved or hated, except by Rammy ... we should take care of not pissing him too much until the time we need it.

Talking of Rammy, Boudi is gearing to war from close the beginning the set. With rammy being her worst enemy, it is clear as water that we will see sooner or later a stack of celtic units marching east through our lands. We should decide if we let her do that or not... again not sure if we gain more letting her make some damage or not to Rammy....

Anyway, nocho is up, Ad Hoc on deck

Nice going! Hope to play monday evening. Can't look at it before that though. Well, tech path is clear at least, for the rest it will be mainly about acting mister nice with everybody, I suppose.

Yup, tech to Lib, play nice with everyone as long as it is reasonable, try to get drama for cheap, get natio from Lib if you get that far in the set, and if possible buy something on the south side of the tech tree with the lib prereqs ( obviously after having a good grip on Lib )

Take a look at the empire and everything looks impeccable. I see our Great Prophet still meditating about his destiny. I don't give him advice, so he's still meditating at the end of the set.

Only adjustment I do is hiring temporarily 2 scientists in Eridu which brings our GS in 2 turns instead of 4.

T180 Wild haired Albert E. is born in Eridu and he bulbs a large part of Education. Turn research up to 100% and with some fiddling (building research in some places), Edu is due in 2.

T182 Education is in. Set 5 of our 7 cities to universities, slide research down to 0 for a while.

T183 The water in Eridu is poisoned. The Celts rejoice (Boudi starts a GA). The remaining 2 cities are also set to universities. I know we don't need 7 universities for Oxford, but I like the sight of our empire trying to become as learned as possible. Besides, all cities but Eridu seem to be mainly commerce places, while Eridu boasts the great library.

T185 Decide to whip the university in Uruk for 1 pop and crank up the slider to 100%.

T186 The Apostolic Palace wants to put out an edict that forbids trade with Ramesses. We say no.
Spot this trade with Wang which I take. Compass is not that useful here, but it will make another trade possible next turn.


T187 The AP resolution against Ram fails. Make this trade with Boobs.


T188 Suryavarman the Second, fearless leader of the Khmer, declares on Carlo Magno, leader of the Holy Roman Empire, which according to my sources was netiher Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

T189 Somebody feels like spending his EPs on us, as now our capital's water supply is poisoned.

Liberalism is due in 1, so I hand it off here. Nobody is close to it yet, as everyone still lacks education, so we might want to get something else than nationalism from lib. Not least because note that Charley somehow got his hands on nationalism. Biz has gunpowder.
We do still get marble from Ram, so if we want to go for the Taj we should take nationalism anyhow from lib as maybe with marble we can still beat Charley to it (he's also at war). Not sure what's the wisest thing here, although probably I'd just try to get something else from lib.


Some universities are coming online soon by ordinary building procedures, so we may want to whip some more so we can start on Oxford, presumably in the capital.

Our workers are getting out of work, that is, the BFCs of our cities are about done improving. Therefore I sent some up north to get the spare furs online, we may want to sell some to the highest bidders.


I also noticed we can still build the National Epic.

Lurkerage:

I'd aim for either Constitution or (if very lucky) Democracy with Lib. Getting EP buildings up ASAP feels like a priority in the variant and the SoL would sure help a lot as well. I'd almost never advice taking Nat if someone already has it - though I forget what difficulty level the game is -> how viable trying for a non-monopoly wonder is.

Got it, Constitution for lib sounds a good idea.

Yup, as long as you pull the safety valve if someone gets philo and Edu democracy is too far away ... we would still need natio, constitution and PP Natio is 10 turns on break even point ( 60% ), so even teching natio can be somewhat risky ...

It passed my mind helping Sury vs Charlie but our army is far from being ready to war It would be good if we could grab Prague and Nuremberg... charlie has a small supply of friendsi n this world , so no one would be pissed.

BTW we should work a little more in boosting our AP religion spread, even if only becuase of the hammers.... a boudi missionary is crossing our lands, probably to spread the faith to Ramesses, the last non-member....

P.S *scratch head* boudi backed out from "hands full" ? That is a first one for a AGG leader in my experience

@R_rolo - roster please. I think I may be up, but not sure.

You are not up, LK. Ad Hoc is up and got it some posts ago ( nocho asked for a swap with me and that might be the cause of your confusion ). So:

Roster:

r_rolo1
Ad Hoc -UP and GOT IT
LKendter - on deck
GreyFox - MIA
Thy_Spellcraft
nocho - just played

I too would vote for researching natio on our own (maybe Charly will trade after some turns..) and take const from lib. To make this bit sver we'd fire a GA with the prophet.. This also would cut the anarchy for changing civics to nationhood..

I'd also try for manually researching nationalism, if we're half way researching it and somebody gets close to lib we can still take printing press from lib. At least it's also on the way to demo (and communism farther away).

Nationhood is an interesting civic, but I think not until we got some major spy infrastructure in place. The +25% spy points with only ziggurats doesn't outweigh our bureau capital yet, methinks.