SGOTM 11 - Plastic Ducks

Played and save uploaded.

Very very lengthy log, which is over 30K char, can't post.

This is a fruitful set, almost everything went very well, except that HM failed to spread in Hyde. Hence I delayed the Moai until I could send another HM there so that the overflow from forge whip can get the OR bonus. Also I let Cal built Moai for cash and whip a HM in the end, can pump another HM immediately next turn.

T191


T193


T194


T195


T197


T199


T203


T205

Well done!

I'll try to look at the save (which should take about an hour...). The fur is behind as I expected... We probably need to plant a city on that island to get trade routes going to all our cities as I said earlier.

Good job!

Good to see three strategic plans on progress/ accomplished:

1) Generate a GE;
2) War plan against Zara+Izzy;
3) Consecutive 3-4 GA. (However the first GA seems a bit premature since the pop was low because of a big scale of whipping; in this condition I think the second one triggered by Taj can be delayed a bit.)

I'd think the game is over except for one thing: having enough vote for Diplo victory. Here is the actual pop situation I estimate:



Diplo victory needs 60% vote and we have now 48% for sure (Us+Zara+Izzy+Bar+Saladin). As pop grows, we can reach easily 52%-53% (if others' pop don't grow, we can: +20 pop => 51%, +40 pop => 53%; the reality will be more difficult as others' pop grow at the same time, and Toku+Meh+Justine have much more growth potential than Zara+Izzy+Bar). But 60% seems to be out of the limit of time (100t) and tech (without Bio).

In the actual situation, another Dow seems worthy to ensure enough vote.

I leave you the chart to play with

Wow, thanks DingDing ! Your spoiler looks most useful.

Very good set, Duckweed, well done.

I take it you triggered the GA with the artist from Music and that we got a scientist on T191 ?
It's not all that important, but in retrospect, we should have discussed this, earlier : Maybe triggering with the scientist would have been better, since it will be difficult to have an other artist for the next GAs (whereas scientists won't lack).
Part of the difficulty of triggering GAs is to have GPs of a different kind.

OTOH... The scientist would be useful to snipe Scientific Method.

--> As usual, my random thought



@DingDing :
So... to keep it simple, we need another vote than that of Saladdin and our vassals.

There's probably an other landmass so we can get some more pop... But it looks irrelevant compared to the diplo. Except if there are like 20 smallish islands...

If we choose to go for a 2nd war, then :
- either we go at war NOW! and then we slow our tech rate (and thus need to reconsider the building of infra in our cities). Need to choose between Justin, Toku and Meh... (Justin or Meh being the most sensible, I guess. Higher pops) ;
- either we wait to see how things develop... and we will probably need additional military techs. We could go at war with Maces vs Maces, but Guilds isn't far away for the AIs and then it would be manageable but more bloody (and requiring more hammers). The good point is that we can keep military tech parity with trading alone.

--> In any case, a 2nd war would slow us down. So maybe we can/should afford more infra than what Duckweed planned ?

Physics is just around the corner and Airships will give us an edge on any future war.

We just have to decide between Roku, Meh or Justinian as a target.

We can possibly get Toku's vote if we join his war...

While Mehmed is the easiest target I think.

Anyway, I'd like for a 1 turn set just to know what we'll be facing from barbs.

Another option is to get Mehmed's vote but it would require to spread Hindu quite a bit, rather than rely on a spy revolt to be safe.

Note: Justinian is #1 at power and Toku is #2.

The ways to get enough vote.
1. War with either Jus/Toku/Meh, this war should be launched near the end of the game so that it won't slow down our research to Mass Media. The benefit is that we can get 1 more GG and safer.
2. Spread Hindu to 7 cities of Meh and convert him. Or Spread Hindu to 1 city of Meh and 5 spies to switch him to Hindu 1 turn before UN vote. The benefit is that we can keep faster research.

By any way, we need quite a lot HMs.

Anyway, Let's capture the barbarian city 1st.

About GA, I think it's a little bit slow to launch at T199 since I estimated that we can researched Mass Media in 800ish AD and we need <15 turns to build UN without GE <5 turns with GE. GA later than that is a waste. Don't delay Tai so that we can have continuous GA, we should be able to produce at least a GM/GE from Pat before the end of 2nd GA.

Who's next?

I think Bugg should be next.
He'll be back tomorrow and that's when I'll be off (not sure, yet, I'll leave either sunday or monday, and will be back on wednesday/thursday)


Pfff... I just looked at the save and... that game is disgusting.
We've got about EVERY wonder (except for SH and the Great Wall) and this GA thing... The commerce we're pulling is incredible. Taking Aksum was a REALLY good move, Duckweed.


- We can still settle 1-2 cities on our mainland. Should we think about a few settlers ?
- Also, that's it, we can build a few warriors for garrison. It's a waste in Vijay, obviously (the stables are for elephants ?) but maybe Bombay could produce some, or a cottage city... Lahore could build its own, I guess (11 turns, set on Wealth at the moment).
I guess it's not a hurry, though.
- I didn't check : Does the bonus from the Heroic Epic applies to missionaries ? Or is it just for military units ? If yes...

@Duckweed
The cost of spreading Hindu to 7 cities is pretty similar to that of 1+5 spies, but then it guarantees no spy caught penalty. With spread failures the cost of making missionaries will be higher and we'll need monasteries or Organized Religion at the expense of GPP. I'm really torn on this issue and will keep thinking while I look for a computer!

Does Zara have a religion in a city? We should spread it if not.

kossin said:

@Duckweed
The cost of spreading Hindu to 7 cities is pretty similar to that of 1+5 spies, but then it guarantees no spy caught penalty. With spread failures the cost of making missionaries will be higher and we'll need monasteries or Organized Religion at the expense of GPP. I'm really torn on this issue and will keep thinking while I look for a computer!

Does Zara have a religion in a city? We should spread it if not.

Click to expand...

There's some difference. The most annoy thing is that we can only produce/have 3 HMs at a time and the distance to travel is long. After we switch to pacifism and researched SM, only Delhi can produce HM. We need 20~25 HMs for ourselves and Meh's cities if we want to spread 7 Meh's cities considering the failed spreading. Another small reason is that we already have 3 spies in hand.

We'd better to produce as many as HMs before the completion of Taj as we are going to switch to Pacifism afterward.

My opinion is that if we can get another GG from the last hit at Izzy, let's go peaceful route, otherwise go war route to vassal Meh. Let's play a short set to capture dye city and vassal Izzy 1st.

There's some chance Zara's city will get a random religion spread, I would not worry about it before the end.

Duckweed said:

There's some difference. The most annoy thing is that we can only produce/have 3 HMs at a time and the distance to travel is long. After we switch to pacifism and researched SM, only Delhi can produce HM. We need 20~25 HMs for ourselves and Meh's cities if we want to spread 7 Meh's cities considering the failed spreading. Another small reason is that we already have 3 spies in hand.

We'd better to produce as many as HMs before the completion of Taj as we are going to switch to Pacifism afterward.

Click to expand...

Food for thought :
It's been a while since Saladdin had Theology and he's been at peace since then.
If we assumed that he will complete the Apostolic Palace in the near future, then it would make sense to build additionnal Hindu Monasteries...

Duckweed said:

After we switch to pacifism and researched SM, only Delhi can produce HM.

Click to expand...

May be nice to prioticize a HM and a monastery in Madrid to help spread the religion in that landmass.

Back!

Good job duckweed! Will look more at save later.

From report, I aggree we want a short set to finish off dye-city, and reveal barb-island completely. Will make planning easier from there.

Sounds good Bugg.

I have to look at the game again but I think revolting Mehmed to Hindu with spies is too risky or plainly not sufficient. Seeing as at +4 he dropped to Cautious, that means he's actually at +2 so we need to get +10 in order to have him vote for us.

Gifting cities, same religion and Vassalage should do the trick though.

I will make a longer post in a few hours after carefully analyzing our diplo situation.

It seems clear from dinding's estimations that Justinian will be our UN opponent. That's fine as he's not very well liked anyway. This is of course unless we decide to war him and reduce his pop.. Unlikely indeed.

Peacefully:
We have little chance of getting Toku to +8 unless he starts forgetting the demands we refused. If he should however then sharing a war for some turns/sharing Mercantilism will earn us his vote.

Saladin should vote for us easily, we'll get another 3 from religion, 1 from Theo and can get 2 from fair trade. Despite -1 for vassaling Izzy we'll have over 8 easily.

Mehmed is the Wildcard here. As per my previous post, my understanding is that we have only +2 with him in reality which will likely drop to +1 after vassaling Izzy. Converting him to Hindu with spies gets us from -3 to +1 (+4) and brings us to +5, 3 short. Sharing Feudalism will earn us a few + as well (maybe at the cost of Bureaucracy?). Sharing a war is difficult so remains agreeing to demands and liberating cities.
Someone will need to WB test the # of cities with Hindu required for him to convert and also how much + we can get via liberating cities.(1,2,3?)
In my estimation, converting Mehmed with spies will not be enough to get +8 so if liberating cities and spreading Hindu is too complicated, we will be forced to use war for another vassal.

Lastly, we have to be careful of Mehmed being Saladin's worst enemy. It will be easier on us if he were to convert to Hindu and the demands would stop then.

If not, then war with Maces, Elephants, Airships and I assume Trebuchets will be needed.(unless we need bigger guns fir the fur). If we were to make a war along the east coast up to his capital we should get enough for UN.

I think peaceful will be easier and faster... We just need to get cranking out HMs and spread to his cities in priority.

Looking over the save a bit, a few thoughts:

We really need to know the Barb defences to know what to do. So a small 2-turn turnset is in order to finish spain and scout barb-island. No need to delay this. Are you ready for your turnset kossin? If not I wouldn't mind duckweed completing 2 more turns as he's the most familiar with the current situation.

We should start by spreading Hindu to Cordoba and Madrid to get started on HMs there, maybe?

I pretty much aggree with what kossin said about Toku-trouble, so that leaves us with securing Saladin+Meh votes. Sal should be ok. Meh I aggree we need to test (haven't had the time yet, maybe tomorrow as I'm off for the afternoon) how to get him on our side peacefully.

@ kossin:

The spy is able to convert him even he&#8217;s got only 1 hindu city. So theoretically we can count much more than +1 from sharing the same religion if we convert him early. I&#8217;d say +2-3 at least.

My suggestion is that the actual HM we have shouldn&#8217;t spread religion to Zara&#8217;s ex horse city, but to Madrid immediately. And Madrid whip straight away a monastery and start spamming HM. Upgrade 2 Galley to Galleons to accelerate the transport of HM..

On the other hand, there is a lot of room to the north of Meh where you can easily found 2-3 border cities to gift. That&#8217;s +2-3 for sure.

Lastly you can count +2 from sharing the favourite civic (5-6 turns before Mass Media, convert to Vassalage. So will have 10 turns of sharing civic, +2 relation)

Ideally, to sum up, it can reach +10-+12 if the measures above work. But problem comes from the variation of pop from the cities we gift to Meh, so need to well locate the cities on the worst sites to avoid of Meh being our UN opponent. The success depends on calculation, operation and luck.

BTW, about Saladin, is there a possibility to build another city on the continent and gift it to him? I remember there is room for another city.

I have high preference for another war. We have 15+ elite macemans, all we need are a few WEs, cats, and airships. This force is enough to crash an immortal AI easily. I believe we can let Meh bend in no more than 10 turns. Moreover, Izzy will also help to distract some of Meh's forces. Just make it simple.

Duckweed said:

I have high preference for another war. We have 15+ elite macemans, all we need are a few WEs, cats, and airships. This force is enough to crash an immortal AI easily. I believe we can let Meh bend in no more than 10 turns. Moreover, Izzy will also help to distract some of Meh's forces. Just make it simple.

Click to expand...

That's my initial idea. It's just like the army is just beside and you only have to DoW and vassalize him. Thus the problem can be solved once and for all.

The main condition of vassalizing the AI is the power of the Master (vassals' power don't count). Now our power: Meh's power = 1:1. That's not that enough to vassalize him quickly, especially considering his power will have an increase upon Guide.

A quick way to increase power is a big scale of drafting. With drafting, it's possible to increase the power by 30% within 5 turns. The vassaling will be much easier, even the massmen don't have to land on the landmass.

Of course, the difficulty of vassaling Meh can be verified by WB, if anyone has the time.

Edit: Other constraints of vassalizing:
1) Our War success must be at least 40 points higher than that of enemy. Kill 1 unit in attack = 4 point, kill 1 unit in defense = 3 points, capture 1 city = 10 point. (So I estimate you will have to at least capture 2 Meh's cities.)
2) Avoid being Meh's worst enemy during the war, which will increase the boundary of accepting being a vassal by 33%. (So if it's the case, convert to NSR or Buddhism once War success is enough)

@Bugg
No unfortunately I don't have a laptop yet, I had no time for shopping. I might get around to it tomorrow though but you never know.

A 1-turn set is enough to capitulate Izzy and see what lurks over on the fur island(by 1 turn I mean finish this one and a few moves in the next turn, basically 2 turns )

@dingding
Spy converting Meh risks getting demerit for caught spy. Also he could revolt out of Hindu at a very bad moment (the turn ofthe UN vote) which would screw us over and add another 6 turns for victory. The safest peaceful approach is HM spreading no doubt about it.

Now with war on the horizon again perhaps, then we want Forbidden Palace in Madrid as well I would think(correct me if I'm wrong but I remember not being able to liberate cities to vassals).
Or we can create a vassal on that island by liberating cities. This serves a few purposes: we get free garrisons, an extra vassal voting for us, no need to spread Hindu to all those cities(lots of hammers saved!!!) and no maintenance worries.

Regarding capitulation numbers, I don't remember how we're doing on land but I would assume the only problem will be meeting the power requirement. We will easily get enough war success with help from Airships (Mehmed should have a SoD however small it might be) and as we capture cities his power will drop fast. Depending on our need fir bigger guns to tackle barb island, we might have a very easy time capitulating him.

Anyway I agree with your posts, testing should give us a good idea of how it will go.

@Duckweed
This is Emperor difficulty so it should be even easier

@all
Do you accept a 2 turns pre-set to see what is on fur island and to capitulate Izzy?
There aren't that many things to do, basically decide if we want the dye city and maybe some micro. I can't do it right now but I think I should be civ-able during the next week.

Also if someone wants to update the test game it could be nice. Hammers and food don't have to be exact, there's not much point anymore really with ~50 turns left.