SGOTM 03 - Geezers

Look on the bright side: If - as seems to be suggested by your figures, we are stuck with Monty at no. 2 in population, at least that means we can take out Toku, as well as the civs that Monty is pleased with

(I'm not btw suggesting we do that until we're sure)

Sam_Yeager said:

Weren't we thinking of gifting Hittite to Toku? Or are we just building it up a bit before we gift it?

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I assumed we were going to gift it, that's why I built a Theatre and pastured the pigs and began building farms in the grasslands. I was planning on building a granary there once the harbor finished. The more food sources there are, the more it would grow Toku's population.

Also, if we want Toku as our opponent, should we consider gifting him the techs required to give him Biology as well? Or should we just hope for Toku to stay ahead of Monty and Hatty and plan to take down Monty's friends?

DynamicSpirit said:

btw I'm now utterly confused about who's turnset it is Mark's?

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Yep, I got it. I will have a look at it tonight.

Thrallia said:

I assumed we were going to gift it, that's why I built a Theatre and pastured the pigs and began building farms in the grasslands. I was planning on building a granary there once the harbor finished. The more food sources there are, the more it would grow Toku's population.

Also, if we want Toku as our opponent, should we consider gifting him the techs required to give him Biology as well? Or should we just hope for Toku to stay ahead of Monty and Hatty and plan to take down Monty's friends?

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Don't agree. I don't think that you can over come Monti/Hattie without 7-10 city change. i.e. You are not going to get Toku as #2. whether you pasture pigs or teach Hittite to fly and gifting it prematurely will only mean another city to take in the long run. Just my 2 cents

Thrallia said:

I assumed we were going to gift it, that's why I built a Theatre and pastured the pigs and began building farms in the grasslands. I was planning on building a granary there once the harbor finished. The more food sources there are, the more it would grow Toku's population.

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Well doing all that is pretty sensible whether we gift it or not - either way, the advantage of Hittite to us increases with its population

Dagnabit said:

Don't agree. I don't think that you can over come Monti/Hattie without 7-10 city change. i.e. You are not going to get Toku as #2. whether you pasture pigs or teach Hittite to fly and gifting it prematurely will only mean another city to take in the long run. Just my 2 cents

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If you look at the crop yield graph over the last 50 years you'll see Hatty,Toku and Monty battling it out for 2nd spot behind us. Monty's currently 2nd with Toku quite close behind him. I think there is quite a close correlation between crop yield and pop.

That being the case I don't think the gap is quite as wide as you think so I think the idea of gifting Hittite to him is still a good strategy.

Thrallia said:

There's some troops in a galleon near Louis XIV. The only friend we have that would mind us declaring war on him is Monty.

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I'm not quite sure where the idea of attacking Louis came from. I would far rather see Frederick and Mao out of the way before we start considering attacking any other civs. In addition as I posted in reply to Dagnabit I think there's still a good chance that we can get Toku as our opponent. If that's achievable then the last thing we want to do is upset Monty.

The problem is that Frederick and Mao by themselves won't give us anything like the population we need to win, even if all the AI's on >= +8 diplo with us vote for us (+8 is a number that seems to be bandied around a bit in the forums as the approx. point where an AI becomes willing to vote for you). We will need to take out someone else too. Of all our friends, Monty is the one who seems to be simultaneously most friendly with our enemy civs, so there is a fair chance that we will have little choice but to upset him, although I agree if we can keep Toku as the opponent and Monty on our side that will be good (if he is still on +12 with us, and +8 is the correct figure, then we do have some leeway in terms of declaring war on his friends, but that's just speculation).

Personally I'd rather see what the votes actually in a diplo vote before deciding on gifting Hittite to Toku, as there is a distinct possibility that gifting it to him won't make a difference. Very hard to tell until we've seen the figures.

One request btw to whomever's turnset it is when the first vote comes up? Can you (a) record all the votes, and (b) make sure you upload a save on that turn. It could be quite useful to have the save so we can do some population-adding and check for sure whether the number of votes actually is exactly the total pops of all each civ's cities.

Sam_Yeager said:

If you look at the crop yield graph over the last 50 years you'll see Hatty,Toku and Monty battling it out for 2nd spot behind us. Monty's currently 2nd with Toku quite close behind him. I think there is quite a close correlation between crop yield and pop.

That being the case I don't think the gap is quite as wide as you think so I think the idea of gifting Hittite to him is still a good strategy.

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Crop yield graphs? Strike another blow for knowledge I can't remember if I've ever looked at those grafts. I suppose in a few years I will have looked at most of the game. I will have to take a look when I can look at the save a little later

It's too bad we can't gift Hittite, look at the result and take it back if it doesn't help

Dagnabit said:

It's too bad we can't gift Hittite, look at the result and take it back if it doesn't help

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Isn't that what cavalry are for?

The reason I looked at Louis XIV as the 2nd or 3rd person for us to attack, is that he has only 3 cities, but 2 of them are over 10 pop...by himself he'd give us around 28 pop points in an attack just barely larger than what we need for Frederick. Additionally, he's Toku's strongest supporter, and the founder of Confuscianism, the shrine of which would be very nice to have, since it is the state religion of 3 or 4 civs

Looked at it and it looks quite good.

We would need 11.616 gold or 51 pop to rush the UN at this stage. Have to see next turn how the gold is reduced to see how long we have to wait until we can cashrush it. Hopefully we get some gold from conquering some cities.

What I am not sure about is what the three lonely maces are doing at Hamburg. They cannot accomplish anything there, but would be useful on the attack on Berlin. Do I miss something ?

I had planned on attacking both Hamburg and Berlin at the same time, and found out too late that we had very low odds at Hamburg. Berlin we can likely take within 2 turns since all but one Longbow in Berlin is dead now, so I figured the Maces would stay at Hamburg and take advantage of the frigates and the cat that we won't need at Berlin next turn.

The cash required for the UN has been falling ~450 gold each turn. By my estimates, that means we are gaining ~1050 gold per turn toward rushing it. So, I would think that we could rush it within your turnset.

I know Simon mentioned putting it off and rushing troops, but I see no reason to put off the UN, since there's absolutely no way to win without it, and there is a slight chance we could win almost immediately with it.

I am not liking the weak position we have gotten into in Germany. I am not convinced we can take both cities without reinforcements. At best we need to heal a couple turns ( which works to our disadvantage). We need cossacks and Cats. We most certainly can't take Louis without them. Frigates can deflate citys but shear number of defenders begs collateral damage. Until we have sufficient force for Louis, I would immediately send troops watching him to assist in downfall of Germany. Where are the Galleons when you need them? (broken record,:grin

There are two longbows, 2 horse archers and a catapult in Berlin
I ship the 3 maces over

IBT : well, now we know who Vicky was going for, she declares war on Louis

1) 1643AD : unload the maces at Berlin, next turn it should be ours

IBT : nothing

2) 1646AD :

The battle of Berlin

CR3 Mace kills longbow (84%)
CR3 sword kills longbow without taking a scratch (96%)
CR2 mace kills horse archer (96%)
CR2 mace kills horse archer (98%)
CR1 mace kills catapult (96%) and Berlin falls

Now that Berlin is ours I upgrade the two knights to cossacks there.

3) 1649AD : units healing in Berlin

IBT : Toku declares war on us !

4) 1652AD : not much

IBT : a single Japanese war elephant approaches Hittite

5) 1655AD : pike loses to the war elephant (79%)
a knight kills that elephant (99%)

IBT : nothing

6) 1658AD : now it gets interesting :

Huayna declares on Hatty
Washington declares on Huayna

Gandhi is also moving troops by sea

Battle of Hamburg :

a catapult suicides on the defenses
cossack kills a longbow (86%)
CR3 grenadier kills a longbow (93%)
knight kills a horse archer and Frederick is out of the game

Huayna used the time and built a city SW of Berlin on the oil, cheeky bastard !

IBT : Hatty demands we stop trading with Monty, but we can't
Vicky asks us to join in her war against Louis as it doesn't look good for her, I agree

one of Tokus' caravels sinks one of ours

we discover another uranium source at Moscow

7) 1661AD : galleon sinks one of Tokus' caravels in exchange

IBT : nothing

8) 1664AD : Berlin comes out of resistance

IBT : nothing

9) 1667AD : not much to do

IBT : nothing

10) 1670AD : Hamburg comes out of resistance

CASHRUSH THE UN in Moscow

On to Simon. Bring it home, mate !

Nice set of turns Markh What is the next plan of action? I quess the Hittite discussion is on the sideline for awhile Who is #2 now?

Toku has not shown any actions after sending his elephant. Stupid AI. I have transferred a few cossacks to our homeland as this will be the most important. There must come something from Toku.

Now that the Un is built next turn I would gift/trade techs to our friends. Currently we have Gandhi and Mansa being friendly to us and as we joined Vicky we have better relations with her, too.

If we want to go for Louis we can upgrade our city raider maces to grenadiers. They will take cities together with cossacks. Louis has nothing to counter that.

I have not checked who is number two at the moment, but I guess it is Monty.

We are now into a part of CIV I have very little experience. Someone said +8 gets us votes. If we are going to bribe AIs can we do things like cancel a commodity trade and gift the commodity? Will that get us a +1? Also how much $ do we have to gift to get a +1? I was hoping a win by diplo would have more options for manipulating the AI. From what I am learning we still need to Bash most of the CIVs to get a Diplo vote

And another one bites the dust. Nicely done mark.

I see both Ghandhi & Mansa are friendly with us as well. Ghandhi is willing to trade Communism which enables PAs. IIRC to get a PA you have to have had a DP with a civ for several turns (50 turns rings a bell). Mansa is willing to trade nice things like Steel. Both of them would probably accept Biology in exchange as a tech as well.

I think it might be worth making those trades.

Julius's power rating seems to have increased quite a lot recently. Perhaps tossing him the bone of biology might be a good idea. Just to remind him which side his bread's buttered on.

Monty seems to have put on a spurt recently on the crop yield front to be second currently although Toku also seems to be increasing again. Although we can't talk to Toku at present I wonder if it's worth evacuating our troops in Hittite and letting him 'capture' Hittite?

If we make the trades I suggested above then there may well be a case to delay the UN for a turn or so to let us arrange a DP with either Ghandhi or Mansa and let Toku take over Hittite as suggested above.

I think both Berlin & Hamburg should be building theatres rather courthouses. To begin with it's quicker and also it's more likely that we can flip Huayna's blasted city. Equally I think we should run the culture slider at 20% or so to remove the unhappiness in our cities. On the subject of happiness I feel that taking out Mao would be better than getting involved with Louis at present. We've got the 'mutual struggle' bonus from Vicki already. If need be we can convert from the token war to taking it seriously at a later date.