SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

cas · Jul 21, 2010

beestar said:
Had a quick look at the save, some preliminary thoughts:

Tech trading

Everyone else is a techno peasant, and I would start trading away some techs to pick up gold, maps, and diplo points. Code of Laws is a good choice; the AI tends to prioritize it so it will be teched anyway, and it's not a big threat to us (Other options to trade away are worse: Metal Casting, Paper, Currency, Philo. We should try to keep the AI away from Liberalism and Free Religion).

Zara is risky to trade with because he's Toku's worst enemy, and Toku is a PAIN to get happy with. But Zara is a tech leader with Machinery and Construction. Getting Zara into Hinduism is important so he can be our rich, tech-advanced buddy (and an unthreatening neighbour!)

Q. what are we bulbing for Liberalism?

MC would not be a terrible thing to trade to the Hindu bloc. I believe both Toku and Zara already have machinery...

The goal is Radio with Liberalism, but we are going to be very tight on scientists at this rate to bulb the pre-reqs (SciMeth, Physics, Elec).

cas

beestar · Jul 21, 2010

I entered all the AI diplo characteristics into the Google Docs under a new sheet. From this we can figure out how to get to +8 Friendly to vote in the UN (including all hidden modifiers). There's some useful stuff to know:

Theocracy is most AIs' favourite civic, and it is worth +4 for Zara and Justinian, +3 for Isabella, but only +1 for Saladin. Toku is for Mercantilism (+3), Mehmed for Vassalage (+4).

Shared religion will earn lots of points: +7 for Zara, +6 for Justinian and Isabella, +5 for Saladin. Toku is only +3 and Mehmed is +4.

Different religion pretty much earns -2 across the board - Isabella doesn't hate other religions as much as her reputation might suggest.

Shared war earns a max of +2 (Zara) to a max +4 (Tokugawa, Mehmed, Saladin).

We have some notable warmonger neighbours: Zara and Toku and Saladin have a unitprob of 'often', Justinian is 'very often', and Mehmed is 'extreme'. Also, a few of our friends will WHEOOHRN at pleased: Zara, Isabella, Tokugawa. Mehmed, Saladin, and Justinian will not.

Psychological profiles of our dear neighbours

Zara's a massive trader and will trade techs even at Furious (though not monopoly techs). He will trade happiness bonuses at Furious, and maps and OB at Annoyed. He can be bribed into converting religion even if he is annoyed with you. Zara is an unreliable friend, as he can be bribed into declaring on someone he is Pleased with!

Isabella will trade techs and open borders at Annoyed, but has to be Pleased to trade maps. She too can be bribed into declaring on those she is Pleased with.

Tokugawa will never trade maps unless he is Friendly. He needs to be cautious before trading most things. He can be bribed into war with those he is Pleased with. Our Japanese friend needs to be Pleased with you before he will consider stop-trading requests, civic adoptions, or religion conversions.

Saladin will trade at cautious or annoyed, though he will trade happiness resources at Furious. He won't be bribed into declaring on an AI he is Pleased with.

Mehmed II will trade health bonuses down to Furious, and will perform most other trades even at Annoyed. He won't be bribed into declaring on an AI he is Pleased with.

Justinian is a surprisingly friendly zealot, being willing to trade resources and technology at Furious (though not strategic resources). He will even open borders at Furious and swap maps at Annoyed. He won't declare on someone he is Pleased with. However, he won't change religions unless he is Friendly with you.

beestar · Jul 21, 2010

Great People Party.

Hi guys, I updated the stickies and had a look through the turnlogs. I believe we've generated 4 GPs so far: GS for Academy, GS to bulb Philo, GS to part-bulb Education, and GE for UN. We need to at least generate 4 more to greet Eldine, and they can be any kind.

If we want to bulb our way toward Radio, we will bulb SciMeth and Physics (no problem, very high priority), Astro (no problem), and Electricity (need to be a little careful)

- We need to avoid Chemistry as that puts Biology over Electricity.

- If we tech Engineering AND Gunpowder, this will put Chemistry above Electricity and Astronomy. Should be easy to avoid, unless we are warring a lot more than planned.

But how many Great People do you guys think we can generate? We've got 4 so far. Fluro's option in the spreadsheet has us getting 10 more GPs (6 for bulbing, 4 for Eldine). We pick up a GG from warring and the GS from Physics, so that's 8 more GPs to spawn. We need at least 9,000 more GPP to generate these GPs. Since we are running Theocracy instead of Pacifism, this will take about 150 turns.

I wonder if it's worth going for the Economics GM and the Music GA. This would help our economy and give us something to safely trade away to the AI to boost our own research. GSes could be used for bulbing toward Radio, rather than saved for Eldine. It would delay our teching in the short term.

FYI GS bulb priority list attached

Spoiler :

Fluroscent · Jul 21, 2010

Cheers beestar, nice to get the numbers at hand.

So, with hindu and theo, Justin will be friendly in no time. We can then trade for aesth. And lit if he has it.
If music is still available, we can take a shot at it. Our 100% :science:

rate is going to dwarf the AI's rate at this point with Oxford.

I like beating up Izzy. Likely to the point she vassalizes to Mehmed. If Mehmed can be made the opponent, getting the votes from the hindus will be easy. Only real issue is whether mercantilism is needed for Toku (maybe we can get some shared war bonus instead).

Fluroscent · Jul 21, 2010

Another issue, we need to consider going down the optics path to locate the remaining resources. I'd not be suprised if the hindu mainland holds the silk, which may not yet be hooked up. But we need to know what we are facing concerning the barbarian controlled fur.

There may also be small islands with the other resources.

About tech (again). Putting beakers into liberalism at 0% for now, while waiting for either Aesthetics/Literature or Machinery in trade seems best for now. I suggested gunpowder, but it and chemistry is of course not needed (at least not until we need grenadiers or something for war purposes)

About great people. Scimeth is of course worth delaying until all prereqs are cleared. I imagine we will clear the prereqs, slowresearch it, and when it is the right time we fire up the slider, finish scimeth, bulb physics and as much of electricity as possible, and then finish liberalism->radio, and hopefully have enough gold to finish MM at 100%.

About military buildup. We may as well leverage theocracy by spreading hinduism to the designated cities. 5XP maces/cats are quite powerful at this stage.

beestar,

beestar · Jul 22, 2010

Yes, Optics and Caravels would be a good idea. We can trade and pick up some maps to scope out the continents, but the furs are at sea. Knowing resource locations will affect out war / diplo plans and we should find that out quickly.

Military I'm not so sure about. Isabella's weak but I notice that Mehmed has Feudalism, and longbows are going to be tough to crack without Trebs. I'd prefer to bribe someone into attacking Isabella later on, then dogpile on.

By the way, great job cas on converting Zara. He's got 5 Hindu cities now, should join the gang soon. We will have to give up a fairly good tech to get him to convert to Hinduism - probably CS.

Since time is short I'll play a short set tonight - 5-10 turns, do some trades and pick up some maps. We should have an interesting look at the strategic situation by then.

beestar · Jul 22, 2010

Proposed diplo plan. Goals are to get the right people friendly, get Isabella/Mehmed to pleased so we can pick up a map from them, trade for Aesthetics and Machinery/Compass, and extract maximum trade value from our old techs.

1. Tech at 0% in the short term to prepare for a push to Music.

2. Mathematics to Mehmed for gold and +1 diplo. Fish to Mehmed for gpt, to get resource happiness.

3. Shop Calendar to Isabella for gold, and +4 diplo, and to remove Worst Enemy status.

4. Convert to Hinduism.

5. Trade CS to Zara in exchange for conversion to Hinduism and Machinery (or failing that, Construction).

6. Compass from Saladin for MC/COL/whatever.

7. Once we're Hindu buddies, get Toku to Pleased and acquire Machinery / Compass in exchange for whatever it takes. He's backward and we can trade him COL/Currency/Theology.

8. If Mehmed's friendly enough, pick up Aesthetics from him for COL. If not, consider getting it from Justinian.

9. Get to Friendly with Justinian and acquire Divine Right (for MC and COL, or CS and COL). Shop around Divine Right as no one else has it, it doesn't hurt us, and it has high trade value. This will be the next round of trading after we finish extracting value from COL / CS.

-----

builds.

Machinery and CS are starting to get around, so Crossbowmen and Macemen and Longbowmen are making their appearance. I'm not sure we really want to sink the hammers into fighting a real land war with anyone.

Will review more cas' detailed suggestions.

techs

We need Optics, Printing Press, Astro, SciMeth, Physics, Electricity, Radio, Mass Media. Bulbing all those techs would require 12 GSs which is way more than we can generate in time. Instead, we're going to have to half-bulb, half-research those.

I would save up for a run at Music; self-tech Optics (trading for the prereqs); complete most of Liberalism; and get Printing Press ASAP by self-teching or bulbing to accelerate our economy. Meainwhile we can save up GSes for post Sci Meth bulbing as discussed.

cas · Jul 22, 2010

beestar said:
By the way, great job cas on converting Zara. He's got 5 Hindu cities now, should join the gang soon. We will have to give up a fairly good tech to get him to convert to Hinduism - probably CS.

Our city Patal is really paying the price for that (severe whipping). But it was worth it since we definitely need Zara with the Hindu block. Only one missionary failed. So 6 built / 5 successful. One is in a galley headed to Zara's 6th city. I would build a library in Patal (maybe chop the forest) and it should be able to run 2 clam + 2 sci specs if we get a couple more happiness resources.

Also consider whipping a Tao missionary in Agra before switching out of slavery...and spread Tao to Dehli. Then see my earlier post about possibly using whip overflow from the Tao temple/monastery for Oxford.

cas

Fluroscent · Jul 22, 2010

and spread Tao to Dehli.

I believe Delhi already has Taoism, and both religious buildings.

Mostly agree with the plan.

3. Shop Calendar to Isabella for gold, and +4 diplo, and to remove Worst Enemy status.

This might be counterproductive, as she will certainly assign a new worst enemy, and begin making demands.
It's not like we are going to aim for her votes or something, even if we don't war.
And Mehmed probably has the same map as she does anyway.

Machinery and CS are starting to get around, so Crossbowmen and Macemen and Longbowmen are making their appearance. I'm not sure we really want to sink the hammers into fighting a real land war with anyone.

Isabella will not have Xbows/Maces anytime soon. Only the hindus are advanced. They are not likely to trade with Isabella (or rather, she is unlikely to trade with them). Remember that every GG we spawn is de-facto worth a GS bulb.
And we need the dye anyway. I don't think we can rely on trading for it.
We have several cities that only have marginal builds available anyway.

And we are going to be running theocracy.

9. Get to Friendly with Justinian and acquire Divine Right (for MC and COL, or CS and COL). Shop around Divine Right as no one else has it, it doesn't hurt us, and it has high trade value. This will be the next round of trading after we finish extracting value from COL / CS.

Not sure about this. We may also get literature from him, and then we are beginning to sell him too advanced techs. Still need to keep them at a reasonable pace so we can get radio from liberalism.

cas · Jul 22, 2010

Fluroscent said:
I believe Delhi already has Taoism, and both religious buildings.

Oh, duh.

It does. Didn't see the little Tao symbol when I looked originally.

Nevermind. The only overflow would have to come from missionaries or something...not sure that is worth it.

cas

beestar · Jul 22, 2010

Lots of progress, no big problems. Played a bit longer as things were going straightforward, we're running out of game days, and a few extra turns would give us a lot of information.

1. Completed Oxford. As of T209 (535AD) we are generating approximately 300 bpt breakeven (depending on how many cities build Wealth).

2. Zara was Pleased but had redlined conversion to Hinduism redlined in the trade screen (not sure why :confused:

). Fortunately, he converted to Hinduism all by himself - maybe because one of the other Hindus bribed him into it.

3. I think I've found Fur Island just off the west coast of Byzantium, but we can't see the inland areas until we sent a Caravel/Spy over.

4. Teched Machinery, Optics, Literature. Traded for Construction, Aesthetics, Compass. AIs were very hesitant to trade Aesthetics, which was annoying. In the end the AIs who had the desirable techs were too advanced and asking too high a price, so I didn't give up much. No one has Philo or Paper and let's keep it that way as long as possible.

5. After becoming Hindu I begged from all our newfound friends, including a map from Justinian worth 80 gpt. This gave us circumnavigation :lol:

6. Economics is too far off the path and Justinian got Music already.

7. We are now in Theo and Caste. We need to dip into Slavery as a lot of our cities have no production capability, and I would like to whip Caravels, National Epic, and some Hindu Temples for the AP +2 :hammers:

.

8. Did not declare any wars, but started building catapults from Bombay. We are Mehmed's worst enemy despite agreeing to a demand for our map. Toku is worst enemy of Isabella.

9. Got the map of the mainland. Ivory is well distributed among our friends (Ethiopia 2, Byzantium 3, Japan 3). Silk still hasn't been found and I suggest holding off on war until we find it. It's either in Ottomanland way up north, or in a yet-undiscovered island.

10. We have tons of resources and enough happiness for size 20 cities. I am even giving away our both of our incense resources, and both of our sugars, for diplo points.

Turn Log:

Spoiler :

Screenies:

Tech situation and end of turnset. Still haven't teched Hunting

Spoiler :

Japan and Arabia

Spoiler :

Byzantium

Spoiler :

Fur Island?

Spoiler :

beestar · Jul 22, 2010

Since we're running low on time I'd like to continue for another 10 turns. The immediate future is finding the Furs and Silk, with next tech being Printing Press and Astro while accumulating GSes. Specific actions are to build a few caravels, send some units to Fur Island, maybe build up some military, and whip some infrastructure (National Epic!).

One question - do we want to war? I could be convinced to attack by the GG argument. Fighting a defensive war will rack up some GG points even if we don't capture the cities. Also, sucking the AI into conflict slows down their teching, and gains us mutual military struggle diplo points.

On the other hand, we are successfully trading Dye from Isabella right now, and unit builds take away from Wealth builds, and directly slow down our teching. Remember we can only DOW on two civs before Eldine shows up.

Our potential targets:

Isabella still lacks MC, CS, and Machinery, and Feudalism. So she has no maces, xbows, or longbows. Isabella has no wonders.

Mehmed lacks MC and CS, but has Feudalism, so he can field longbows. We are meant to cower before his Horse Archers. Mehmed has Parthenon somewhere :drool:

I suspect he has Silk in his territory - we haven't mapped Isabella's territory but it's not very large and I can't see any Silk there yet.

We could probably do well against both of them. Zara can be bribed into dogpiling onto Isabella but it would probably cost us Optics at least. Toku can be bribed into dogpiling anyone, and we might be able to get away with only giving away CS and Aesthetics. (Note that I said dogpiling - for initiating war, they are both asking for 4 high-level techs).

I always bring too few units - how many units would you want before we wage war? We would need at least a bunch of galleys, catapults and maces, and maybe a few spearmen and a trireme for protection. If we could trade cheaply for Engineering, trebs would make it a very easy war.

cas · Jul 22, 2010

good progress. I'm ok with you playing more turns.

Out of curiousity, what is the 'enemy' spotted near Bombay ? I assume a barb galley that we need to destroy before it reaches some fishing grounds near Patal ?

If we go after Isa, how likely is it that she will drag Mehmed along ? I agree we need to generate some GG for the great people requirement.

I wonder if we should look at the cities that have generated some GSci points and see if we can calculate popping Great People (prefer scientists) from them using caste...BEFORE we get NE online and Varanasi floods with GPP.

cas

Fluroscent · Jul 23, 2010

I am concerned that a demand from Izzy (stop trading with Toku for instance) will put an end to our dye trade at some point. Is her different religion negatives maxed out?
In my experience, having both peaceful relations and different religions with someone like that is a very unstable situation.

We could of course war at a later stage, but that would require an additional tech path. I would feel comfortable invading with 8 maces, 2 phants(trading for them), 6 cats. That would do nicely to capture 2-3 cities (assuming she gets longbows but not Xbows/maces, and our units all have 5XP). We could use just four galleys(and a caravel) if we park half the army on Zaras little island.

If we could get engineering, trebs would make it easy. But we probably cannot get it without giving up philo/paper.

Four goals could be achieved.
1. Get our own dye source
2. Get more vote% by population
3. Get a city that can be gifted back to Izzy (or Mehmed) with UN.
4. Get GG's for Eldine

Other than that, getting shared war bonus with Toku will probably be useful.

Questions:
-How do we stand in population? Are we close to being #1? We need to be comfortably #1 to be able to gift the UN.
-How does Mehmed fare in that department? If he is big enough, we don't need to gift the UN.
-Has the espionage screen been looked over? We might want to focus on Izzy+Mehmed to defend against sabotage if we start a war.

Go ahead and play some more turns. We have to move forward.

beestar · Jul 23, 2010

(to answer questions, yes that was a barbarian galley which our galley later defeated; and Toku is the biggest civ with 6.2 million citizens to our 5.4 million. Mehmed has 11 cities so I think he should be close. I've reallocated espionage between Isabella and Mehmed)

Slavery and a Surprise.

All right, played 10 turns to 715AD.

Toku went WHEOOHRN and two turns later declared war ... on Justinian. That crazy Japanese warlord cannot be trusted. He took a Byzantine city but Justinian has a Maceman tech advantage. Zara dogpiled on Toku on the same turn - our Hindu bloc is not very friendly!

We could bribe Toku into stopping the war, but I'm not sure if we need to actually do anything - this is slowing down research pace nicely among our tech rivals. Ultimately we want to either (1) be the most populous civ, and gift UN City to Mehmed or Isabella; or (2) have the most populous be Mehmed, and keep UN in our own city. Right now Toku is #1 and hopefully he won't grow by conquest.

In other news, the anti-infidel strike force is being whipped into shape. We have 4 maces, 3 war elephants, 5 cats, and 3 galleys. Not all of them are 5XP as I generated a few extra units out of cities that don't yet have barracks/Hinduism.

We are still in Slavery because I think we should whip a few more units before switching back to Caste and Pacifism(?).

Techs: sold Aesthetics for Toku for 230 gold and Hunting at last. Teched Printing Press. Zara now has Philo but I don't think we should fire-sale sell Philo yet.

Also, we have located Fur Island. The fur city is guarded by the ominously-named city of DevilsGate. I think we want Galleons to deliver our Anti-Infidel Army to Fur Island.

Spoiler :

There's a Caravel sailing north to explore and to drop a spy in Mehmed's territory. Mehmed's got 3 Silk somewhere, so that's all of our resources located. (Do we want to attack Mehmed instead of Isabella? He's a long way away by Galley, with Isabella inconveniently in between. Or we could attack both of them ... )

So, who's next?

Turn log.

Spoiler :

Fluroscent · Jul 23, 2010

Suprised at that move by Toku :rolleyes:

. I guess there is always a risk when he is less than friendly. Hope Justin takes back the city and makes peace.

But #1 priority seems to be locating the silk. Did we actually see the furs? It is not on the SS.

We don't seem to need galleons to reach that island. Perhaps we should just send our current forces to take the 2? barb cities on that island? Justinian may get around to capturing them eventually since he put a city there. That would really put us in a bad spot. Unlikely to happen any time soon though.

Side effect would probably be putting us at #1 pop (Devilsgate is food rich, the other city has at least wheat). Downside is the large distance maintenance, and a delay in invading Spain. But we could of course whip courthouses there, and build up some more forces without over-whipping instead. We can consider upgrading the galleys sent once the barbs have been dealt with, that way there is only a short path to Spain to possibly join with the new forces from the mainland.

We probably have to suffer some "you refused to help us during war-time" penalties. But we should be on the good side of the votes, so we can probably afford it. May have to get into mercantilism with Toku though.
Also a risk that there will be some hindu worst enemies demanding trade embargos and so forth. That may be a good reason to bribe them to peace before the negatives start to pile up.

cas · Jul 23, 2010

I would consider bribing Toku/Justin to peace soon, but not right away. Slow their tech pace a bit, but avoid most of the -diplo penalties.

I can see valid points on both sides...attack Isa first or attack the barb-fur island first. I'm leaning toward Isa first. I think it boils down to how fast you think Justin (or someone else) will take the barb cities on that island.

I wonder how many GG we can generate by parking a stack with one medic, 5-6 cats, and a couple maces/phants outside a Isa city...then constantly use the cats to cut them down to 25% health every turn without killing them. Should be able to generate 3-4 catapult battle points every turn. If the defenders get too great in number, kill off a couple with maces and let the cats heal. Of course, Mehmed will probably join the battle after a while.

cas

beestar · Jul 23, 2010

Furs are not yet actually visible, but I'm confident they're on that island. Yes, it can be reached by galleys, but it's a loooong way there because we have to go west across Hindu Continent. That's why I recommend galley war now, Galleon mission to Fur Island later.

We don't need to be #1 in pop now, just when the UN gets built, so I'm not worry about grabbing DevilsGate too quickly. Totally agree that we need to make sure Justinian doesn't get there though - as I recall there's only one fur resource.

Getting the Silk is probably our biggest headache, as we are Mehmed's worst enemy. If we need to take Silk by force, now is our best time to attack Mehmed. It would be great if we could get away with just a limited war to grab a foothold and claim Dye and Silk. Best if we could grab Parthenon while we're at it

I like cas' withdraw-catapult idea, especially if our army isn't big enough to conquer our victim completely. If all we care about is GG points, it could rack them up quickly.

Who's next?

pnp_dredd · Jul 24, 2010

It's orb's set, then I'm up next.

Sent orb a heads up message.

beestar · Jul 24, 2010

As an insurance policy, we could send over a small fleet the long slow way to DevilsGate. Devilsgate is defended only by an axe and 2 archers right now, and we might be able to take it easily. Or at least be able to snatch it away from Justininan if he starts to attack it. 3 macemen and a catapult might be enough if the barbs don't upgrade to longbowmen.

We could take DevilsGate at the same time we are prosecuting the longer, slower war with the infidel. Might be a good idea, especially if we bog down against Isabella/Mehmed.

Depends on how soon Astronomy arrives and how long it takes to sail the long way.

SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

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