ALC Game 28: Ethiopia/Zara

Alright, I'll check that espionage screen when I start the next round. Currently, neither of us has any espionage accumulated towards the other, I assume because we just met this turn.

I am going to heed your advice and settle on Pacal's island as soon as I can unless somebody gives me a few compelling reasons not to.

I'm no expert on the culture victory, but I've won a few games culturally so I'll give my thoughts on how we'd win a cultural game with this map and this leader. The path I think we ought pursue goes something like this. We'll build the wonders unlocked by Aesthetics, Literature, and Music. After that our goals are going to be Drama and Philosophy. Hopefully we can get a few religions and build temples and cathedrals in our three cities which I think are going to be: our current capital, the flood plains city, and the national epic city up north that claims the three seafood tiles and a bunch of grassland. Hopefully our other neighbors are nice and we don't have to worry about war declerations. As I see it, the pros and cons of pursuing a cultural victory with our leader and his traits are as follows:

Pros

1. This is an ALC, and pursuing a cultural victory would let us use our UB to great effect. Cathedrals give +50% and they are incredibly expensive, so the +25% given by the UB can't be underrated.

2. We can use our creative trait to let us build cheap theatres and libraries which give some culture.

3. We have access to marble which will let us continue to build as many wonders as we can. The access to marble and copper will also give us half off of of the cathedrals for four of the six cathedrals, can't remember which atm.

4. We're on our own island. This doesn't really make the VC that much easier, but I don't really like naval warfare and this way I don't have to deal with it in this ALC.

Cons

1. We're not philosophical or spiritual. These are my two favorite traits when pursuing a cultural victory since they allow us to pop Great Artists and build a ton of cheap temples, but I think we can deal, especially since we should be able to get the Parthenon for +50% Great Person rate.

2. We don't have any religions yet. Hopefully we would have had a few by this time, letting us get a head start on our temples in six cities, but again I think we'll get Hinduism pretty quickly as we have open borders, trade routes, and no religion currently. There's definitely the potential to get theocracy or divine right if we want to.

What are your comments?

I'm currently playing a game as Zara on Fractal, but am much further along the timeline. It turned out that the world was a chain of large islands, each with one civ on it (except the biggest which I am on and had four of the nine civs). So, definitely build that city on Pacal's island, send out a scout from there, and keep exploring with the boat. There may be useful surprises yet to find.

Now you're not isolated and don't have to concentrate on the bottom of the tree, and are going culture, philosophy before music might make sense, for a religion. Depends how you feel the rest of the world is teching and which order would be best to win both races ideally, but at least not lose both. What's the GPP situation? Bulbing philosophy is usually strong but I guess you'll be getting merchants for a while now.

Benginal said:

2. We don't have any religions yet. Hopefully we would have had a few by this time, letting us get a head start on our temples in six cities, but again I think we'll get Hinduism pretty quickly as we have open borders, trade routes, and no religion currently. There's definitely the potential to get theocracy or divine right if we want to.

What are your comments?

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For a Cultural Game, I like to play it one of two ways:
1. Found a lot of Religions
2. Found no Religions except for maybe something really late, like Islam from Divine Right

Option 2 works better than founding 1 or 2 Religions yourself, since you want as many Religions to "naturally spread" to you as possible, assuming that you aren't founding a lot of Religions.

When you found a Religion, you'll have the Holy City as one of your Cities. Cities which are in close proximity to a Holy City will have a much higher chance of getting that Religion natually spreading to them, which is what you do not want, since you will already have access to that Religion--you would rather that other Religions spread to you naturally.

If most Holy Cities are farther away from your Cities, then your Cities will all have low chances of those Religions spreading to them, which in effect works out to you having a higher chance of getting multiple Religions appearing within your borders.

As for my comment about founding Islam--well, it could be that you only get 2 or 3 Religions spreading to you naturally before all of your Cities "fill up" with at least 1 Religion in them, meaning that they'll only be eligible to get a new Religion if a Missionary spreads it to them. So, at that point, you might as well try and found a Religion of your own, but "that point" in the game is probably late enough in the game that only Islam will be unfounded.


Of course, another option is to found a couple of Religions yourself and "forcibly" gain other Religions--capture a City on anther continent, fortify it heavily, wait for it to come out of revolt, then (while running Organized Religion) whip 3 Missionaries from that City and send them into your waiting Galleys or Caravels (Caravels can only carry one Missionary each).

z0wb13 said:

i think you would do well to settle on pacal's island.

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Of course, that's another great way of picking up a Religion... settle a City on a neighbour's continent and let them build you a Missionary (eventually) from the Religion that they founded.

It's all very well waiting for loads of religions to come on a pangaea, but in a situation like this Pacal's hinduism might be all there is. I say take control of our own destiny - get one self-founded, and some temples and cathedrals up ASAP. I've had too many promising CV setups ruined by sitting and waiting too long and no religion arriving. Put a city near Mutal and Pacal will missionary it regardless of if we have a holy city on our island.

Saving a great merchant for sushi might not be a bad idea. If you're not comfortable enough with the global political situation to turn off your research slider at liberalism and free speech sids is a tremendous culture boost and obviously the food is nice as well. I don't have a ton of experience with corporation based late game culture, nor do I have access to the sevopedia, but I'm sure someone can clarify: does sids compete with civilized jewlery?

I would say no to pursuing a cultural victory for several reasons.

I think at this stage it's unlikely you'll found many religions, especially at Emperor level, and it's dicey to rely on them spreading to you given how tricky trade routes might be for some time on this map. If you found even one religion it's likely to spread to every city on your continent, shutting out the automatic spread of foreign religions to you, and given your isolation it's probably going to be a long time before anyone bothers to send any missionaries your way.

Also, the best way to a cultural win is by running artist specialists out your yin-yang thanks to Caste System, and you don't really have many strong GP sites. The hybrid sites to your north lack a source of fresh water to become full-blown GP farms. Even after Caste System you can't irrigate the north without building a farm on the NW cow tile which is a bit of a waste.

You have a good-sized mini-empire of 10-11 decent cities mapped out and that's a good basis for achieving any of the other victory conditions. I vote for REXing right now (abandoning your current wonder-chasing--well, except maybe for the GL since you have marble). Follow this with a bee-line to Gunpowder for the UU, then produce Galleys (and/or Galleons) filled with Oromo Warriors for world conquest. But then, I'm a war-monger at heart.

i want to be the first to back sisiutil up;p

correct me if i'm wrong, but the most religions you can hope to achieve is 3: hindu (spread), tao (bulb philo., maybe), islam (slow research). even then, it's not a lot. it would be enough if the game goes until 2010, but it won't be a particularly early finish.

you mentioned earlier that you wanted to showcase zara's traits (CRE, ORG). the counterintuitive aspect of the creative trait is that it really is more helpful for grabbing early territory than anything else, and secondarily, cheap libraries which can lead to more, faster great scientists. the point is, +2 per city is a drop in the ocean of you need to win a cultural victory. spiritual is probably the best trait for CV, as others have mentioned.

i think you've had a great opening, although you might be getting a little wonder crazed. i say this having fallen prey to that myself. be very careful, and don't stop REXing until your entire island is established. but your first priority should be to get a foothold on pacal's island, 1 NW of the wheat looks promising. it might be too late, but if you miss it, don't stop REXing. as soon as pacal runs out of space, he will start sending galleys over to your island.

next priority is the national epic city. i'm thinking the southerly one might be better, because the northerly one doesn't seem to have that much production. but, a lot will depend on civics changes. i would stay in slavery for a bit, at least long enough to use food to build granaries, lighthouses, courthouses, and libraries (notice the discounts!) in these cities: national epic, national epic+park, trade routes city. after you get your GP farm up and running, you can switch to caste system.

settling that tiny island to the north is probably a net gain for your economy, due to IC+GLH, but it obviously has crud tiles to work, so it might not be priority 2.

i'm not sure about the colossus. i forget how close you are to finishing metal casting. it makes sense to try to put it in the capital; great merchants i find to be the most versatile type of GP. but, unless you are close to finishing the parthenon, drop it. the great library is probably okay, but it's a lot of hammers, so make sure you put it in a city with good production.

once you are done with REX, shift the focus from CRE to ORG. just turtle, research, let those cheap ORG factories build you into space, or amass a gigantic war machine first.

random thought: move hybrid 8 NW, off the hill for more production. it's going to suck anyway;p good luck!

@Benginal: FWIW, I thought it might be worthwhile taking a look at Dhoomstriker’s save in the latest IC (if you haven’t already). The reason I mention it is that I think the save makes a very strong point that is directly relevant here: that the combination of TGLH and organized (-50% upkeep costs) is a very powerful incentive to REx, assuming you’re going to settle coastal cities and be able to grab some coastal trade routes. Having now met Pacal and seen the layout of your island, you know this is possible, so I’d be setting two priorities here:

(i) Settle that land ASAP - and let coastal trade routes and your leader's organized trait pay for the expansion. Personally, I’d settle your own island because of the logistical effort reinforcing a city next to Pacal might need (since he can DoW at pleased). However, if the site you can settle is that good (which is difficult to tell), I can see why many are suggesting to settle his island. If the objective is to secure coastal trade routes, you could also look at settling that small island off to your north at some point.

(ii) It’s difficult to tell this without the save, but with marble available, I’d have been making The Parthenon and GL a priority here. After all, you don’t need to invest the hammers in military units for a rush at this point, so investing hammers in wonders (for which you have the requisite resources) seems a very productive use of them IMHO. FWIW, I’d have been very tempted (again without seeing a save) to build The Colossus in Gondar – because you’ll likely want to run an engineer specialist in that city anyway to get some semblance of production there before you can build The Moai Statues in the city. Indeed, if you whip a granary and then a forge in that city, you might still have time to get the Colossus built there – assuming you get the copper connected. Perhaps you could then get the capital to build The Parthenon and Gondar to build the GL?

Good luck!

Round 5: 525 BC to 450 AD (39 Turns)

I thought about what you all said and decided that, despite the novelty of pursuing a cultural victory, this wasn't really the time or place to do it. It was going to be an uphill battle the whole way since I would be challenged to pop enough Great Artists to win in a timely manner. I was worried that I'd be so far behind and not close enough to winning come later in the game that I'd be too easy a war target and completely helpless should I be declared on. Therefore, I decided to use the advice many of you recommended -- use my Great Lighthouse and my organized trait to rapidly expand along the coast. My tech path would be one that would hopefully allow us to get a few wonders while also stabilizing our economy such that an ALC-worthy Oromo attack would be possible.

I began the round by making some early civic changes. Monarchy would allow us to grow our cities, and while I planned to be whipping heavily it didn't cost any extra anarchy to switch into it. Slavery was my main reason for the anarchy since my cities were at that point where whipping was going to be quite useful. I'm sure I over-whipped as at the end of the round my cities are almost all smaller than I wish they were, but I'll get it right eventually.



Just a few turns into the round, we met our next neighbor -- the Virgin Queen.



My experiences of Elizabeth have been mostly positive. She will declare at pleased, but I find that she rarely does. If you guys have any diplo advice to offer either about Elizabeth, or the next leader I'd love to hear it.

As expected, I popped a Great Merchant in the capital. I'm a fan of these guys, but wasn't sure what was best with him in this case. He would have bulbed Metal Casting, which I was very nearly finished (it was my first tech of this round). And I wasn't sure I wanted to settle him. I decided in the end to use him as a completely overqualified scout and have him explore Pacal's continent. He eventually conducted a trade mission in London earning us 1100 gold. This allowed us to run the slider at 100% the entire round.

After finishing Metal Casting I started a forge in the capital, where I was planning to build the Colossus. The tech trade screen at this time showed that nobody could trade except Elizabeth who wanted Metal Casting, and would trade Alphabet, Iron Working, and some lesser techs. I wanted both of these techs, but wanted the Colossus more, so I decided to do no tech trading. I decided that I would self-research Aesthetics.



Not only do we get to here Sid Meier speak, but we can also start building quite a few wonders. The builder in me was pleased and off I went.

In the meantime, I sent my settler over to Pacal and Elizabeth's continent. The land wasn't great, but I wanted a foothold on the continent, since I like having a city on a continent on which I plan to wage war, . It was a close call, but I was able to settle this city just in time.



After Aesthetics came in, I decided to go all in and research Literature. The Great Library is such a super awesome wonder, I love to get it. And with marble, I'd feel like a knuckle-head not going for it. After Aesthetics though, I wasn't quite sure what to research, my choices were. Meditation, Monotheism, Code of Laws, Drama, Feudalism, Mathematics, Alphabet, Archery, Horseback Riding, Iron Working, and Machinery. I decided on ... Machinery. Alright, I'll explain myself. I wanted Code of Laws, Mathematics, Alphabet, Archery, and Iron Working and I knew I could trade for all of those with Aesthetics in a few turns and Metal Casting now. Meditation, Monotheism, Drama, and Horseback Riding I was just ignoring for the time being. They weren't super important at the time. So it came down to Feudalism and Machinery. I'm gunning for gun powder (pun intended, ). I never tech Feudalism so I guess I just followed that pattern. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to do here, but am very interested to hear what you would have done.

I met my next neighbor.



Yay, our first leader who is safe once we get him to pleased. For some reason, I'm more worried about him than the others, but again, I'm no expert on diplomacy and would love to hear your thoughts.

And now for one of my favorite wonder video soundtracks. Duuuuh duuuh duh duuuuh ... you know what I mean.



I probably could have tech traded earlier, but 1) better safe than sorry and 2) I forgot.







Here's a little micro-managing. I wasn't sure if this was best, or if it would have been better to whip something cheap in front and let the overflow go into the library. But I did it this way and then whipped the Great Library in later. Notice the two citizens.







While this Great Library was being constructed I continued to run the slider at 100% and research in quick succession Mathematics, Currency and Civil Service. I ended the round here and am eagerly awaiting your thoughts on what I should research next.

And to finish the write-up on a super exciting note. Check out the trade routes city. Notice that there are three units on the tile. They are, my settler, Pacal's settler, and Pacal's chariot. Luckily there's not a "you keep settling all my city sites when I'm one damned turn from settling them myself" negative diplo modifier.



Other notable events of the round were that I missed the Parthenon but got a nice 200 gold for it. I also have a Great Merchant that I just popped, again in my capital. I'm not sure what to do with him, so let me know what you think.

Alright. That's the end of the round. I'd love to hear your thoughts on my tech path, my decisions, etc etc. You don't have very much to go on at the moment, so I'll post a State of the World shortly.

The State of the World, 450 AD

Our Cities













The Countries







Info Screens



















Points of Discussion

1. What should we do about espionage? If we plan to wage an Oromo war, the enemy will very likely have Longbows. This would make spy revolts very useful. We also get cheap courthouses, so I like the idea of building a bunch of cheap courthouses very soon and then putting all our espionage towards a leader. Which leads to another question:
2. Who should we declare war on? Elizabeth is the odd duck, but she also is the strongest neighbor. I'm hesitant to take on the Hindu block, what do you think?
3. Those of you who said a Culture Victory would be a bad choice are incredibly clever, as we still have no religions, .
4. What should we do with the Great Merchant? I like the idea of another trade route, maybe to Hammurabi. This was we can scout with him a little bit and get some gold at the end that will let us power through to gunpowder and maybe leave us some gold left over to keep us solvent while we do battle.
5. Civics? I'm switching the capital to the flood plain city which I plan to grow next round. It should be way bigger already, I'm sorry. I got all confused and whipped when I shouldn't have and generally really messed up that city.

I look forward to everything you have to say!

neat, but put up some maps! i liked your use of the great merchant. and you really lucked out grabbing those city sites.

the reason i lobbied for the overseas city to be NW of the wheat is because it would have afforded you control of the coastal tiles between the two islands. it looks like mayapan could grab some of the sea tiles. not a big deal, and you get better tiles where it is.

nice writeup

edit: oops, you put up maps;p

edit: switch to bureaucracy, immediately. every time that i wait, thinking i'll somehow save a turn of anarchy later, i always regret it.

the obvious tech path here is: paper>education>gunpowder. divert espionage to pacal, and plan to attack him because:1. london is on a hill, mutal is not. 2. mutal has 3 corns in it!!!?!?! and silver and horses. 3. you already have a sizable amount of EP built up against him. 4. pacal seems the most backward, although this could be because he is working slowly on feudalism. if this is the case, victoria might make a better target.

you might be able to bulb paper with the great merchant, although i'm not sure if it would be worth it. you probably come out ahead by running a trade mission (meaning more total ), then slow researching. i'm not sure what kind of rubric you want to use. but if you can guarantee a great scientist next to help research education, you might be able to slow research gunpowder before you run out of money, and before all the ai have longbows. it's a toss up for me, someone else probably knows better, like whether i'm forgetting a tech;p

anyway, if that works out, i'd go engineering>chem>trade_philo>liberalism>take_steel>conquer known world with cannons and oromos (and galleys;p). that's best case scenario of course, you have to thread the needle; but never underestimate a gigantic stack of cannons and oromos.

oh yeah, the best kind of drafting is also a bonus when playing as zara. so there's another option: researching nationhood and drafting a billion drill 2 units, then upgrading them later. not that upgrading is really cost effective, especially as zara gets cheap factories and such; building new modern units is cheaper in the long run.

anyway, grand strategy: this is essentially a water map. while i do think it would be prudent to strike soon, IF you can get oromos out relatively fast, and continue to war if you can nab cannons early, your best bet is still to turtle, wait for aircraft carriers, and then crush the ai with your superior human brain. the ai can't respond to combined amphibious assaults, i think because the range of naval ships is so large that they can't anticipate your target... i'm blathering.

to reiterate: late game domination, or possibly spaceship victory.

z0wb13 said:

the reason i lobbied for the overseas city to be NW of the wheat is because it would have afforded you control of the coastal tiles between the two islands. it looks like mayapan could grab some of the sea tiles. not a big deal, and you get better tiles where it is.

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You're definitely right about the site. I was planning on settling the site NW of the wheat as you'd suggested because we'd also gain two riverside grassland tiles. But by the time I got the settler over there, which I think I did pretty soon, Mayapan was already settled so I took pretty much the only spot I could. With all the grassland in the city and our Colussus-powered coastal tiles the city should be alright.

Wow, that's a lot of poor tile use decisions as well as some builds... food man... food.

kossin said:

Wow, that's a lot of poor tile use decisions as well as some builds... food man... food.

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I'm more than open to the criticism. Is it the improvements that are the problem or just that the tiles my citizens are currently working aren't optimal? You don't have to list every problem, as I'm sure you don't have the time, , but if you could point out some of the most egregious errors I'd really appreciate it.

I would say no to pursuing a cultural victory for several reasons.

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I did a speed-run just now. Could have gone for culture but still obtained conquest vic in 1400s, which makes the former somewhat time-consuming, if not boring.

Benginal said:

I'm more than open to the criticism. Is it the improvements that are the problem or just that the tiles my citizens are currently working aren't optimal? You don't have to list every problem, as I'm sure you don't have the time, , but if you could point out some of the most egregious errors I'd really appreciate it.

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Since you don't have the save up I'll just go by the pictures quickly from t133.

Note: I can't see which cities were whipped as you don't have BUG.

Aksum really needs at least 2 grass farms, +4 growth is just meh!

Similarily, Lalibela could really use a farm to get a head start on growth. It has several good tiles that will eat at your food surplus... you don't want it stuck at size 4 for 10 turns?

Gondar: well, that picture is just a crime. 1 food is much much superior to 1 commerce. 2 food and 2 commerce is also much superior to 1 hammer. You'd have built TGL more easily if you grew and whipped workers. Same for NE.... plus, you'd have more workers.
(btw that t122 screenshot where you work a citizen instead of the 4F1H wheat )

1F>1H>1C
Exceptions are when H/C shave off a turn from a tech/build.

Addis Ababa: capital, seriously? It's too weak in F/H/C to be worth spending 200H there.
Nevermind that it has 9 desert tiles. Working a desert hill? Borrow the grass mine from Aksum and have Aksum work another tile (fur, coast, whatever).

Yeha: still not impoved that seafood... just for comparison's sake, LH is 30H (Org) giving you 2F right now... wb is 30H and would give you 2F as well.

The priorities in a city: (culture if necessary to work food)>improve food that you will work shortly>granary>(LH if necessary)

Debre Berham: ugh... a PH over a GH.

You are Organized. You have 0 Courthouses! Org is the best excuse in the world to put down the CH fast!
I'm not sure why you're building a bunch of Archers instead, you don't have any city that will need one for at least 10 turns. Debre Berham is about to get whipped.

***
Sorry I don't want to sound like I'm ranting but you need to think a little bit further before making decisions
This is the ALC after all !

kossin said:

Aksum really needs at least 2 grass farms, +4 growth is just meh!

Similarily, Lalibela could really use a farm to get a head start on growth. It has several good tiles that will eat at your food surplus... you don't want it stuck at size 4 for 10 turns?

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Alright, this makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking of using my irrigation abilities to farm the two grasslands in Aksum and the grassland in Lalibela.

kossin said:

Gondar: well, that picture is just a crime. 1 food is much much superior to 1 commerce. 2 food and 2 commerce is also much superior to 1 hammer. You'd have built TGL more easily if you grew and whipped workers. Same for NE.... plus, you'd have more workers.

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I don't understand this. Do I put a worker at the top of the queue, and then whip it right when it's about to be completed with the overflow going into TGL (or whip it for 2-pop and 31 H or something?) It's not too late to use this tactic for the National Epic and I'd like to know how to do it.

kossin said:

Addis Ababa: capital, seriously? It's too weak in F/H/C to be worth spending 200H there.

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My thinking for this comes from my dependence on a bureaucracy powered commerce capital. I take it in this case my dependence is a bad thing, . Would you suggest leaving the capital where it is? Given that I've already started, is there anyway to get failure gold for the palace in Addis Adaba? Should I just finish it?

kossin said:

Yeha: still not impoved that seafood... just for comparison's sake, LH is 30H (Org) giving you 2F right now... wb is 30H and would give you 2F as well.

Debre Berham: ugh... a PH over a GH.

You are Organized. You have 0 Courthouses! Org is the best excuse in the world to put down the CH fast!

Click to expand...

I'm on it.

kossin said:

I'm not sure why you're building a bunch of Archers instead, you don't have any city that will need one for at least 10 turns. Debre Berham is about to get whipped.

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I'm building the archers because I want to take advantage of being in Monarchy and grow by cities, that and my power is terrible and archers are cheap. I was going to send both of these archers to Gondar allowing it to run a bunch of scientists. Does this make sense? How should I accomplish what I want to in this respect, if archers aren't the way to do it?

kossin said:

Sorry I don't want to sound like I'm ranting but you need to think a little bit further before making decisions
This is the ALC after all !

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You don't sound like you're ranting, just correcting, . Thanks again!