SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

@ Dhoom

If you go to the F8 Members tab and click on Diplomatic Victory, you'll see that according to the Bug poll, Shaka is still ~200 votes short. As ZPV said, Liz (170 votes) + OSS (55 votes) is more than 25% of total votes. Unless we accidentall vote for Shaka or unless every AI votes for Shaka and grows a bunch of pops, we're fine eliminating Hammy. BTW, we'll also be stealing Hammy's 14 votes away from Shaka if we take his last city.

What is the current plan related to Optics, caravels, spys, circumnavigating and exploring Bulgar Bay/Lake/Canal?

Here's what I see from the Members' screen:
Mansa + Huayna have 105 votes while the leader (Shaka) has 124 votes.

If Mansa were to switch to a Civic that isn't Free Religion... which would probably happen as soon as he went to war... which he is currently planning... then Mansa + Huayna would have 128 votes and would be Elizabeth's opponent.

Shaka can't win because Elizabeth holds many of the votes.

Now, Elizabeth can't easily win because people don't like her very much. But, let's say that she gets bribed into war and starts sharing a Mutual War with some of the AIs (you know, say, against us).

The other AIs don't like the Mansa + Huayna team, so all that is required is for enough of them to reach the minimum Attitude required to vote for Elizabeth and then Elizabeth can instantly win the game.


Is all of that so far-fetched? Not really.

Let's say that Mansa + Huayna declare war on us, then bribe Elizabeth into war with us (it's feasible). All of a sudden, the AIs that we are at war with at the time (Genghis and Shaka/Cyrus) will start to like Elizabeth, and like her enough to vote for her... for example, Shaka's votes would no longer be on the "opposite side" of the vote. We might not lose on the first vote but we could certainly lose on the next vote, and there's a tiny chance that we could lose on the next vote if the AIs play their cards right.


So, I don't see us as being 100% safe from a Religious Loss.

We're safe in the vote in six turns, which is what your gifting a city to Hammy is trying to prevent, right? We'll have to look at it again in ten turns to see if we have to do something then. But for now, let's put Hammy in his grave.

What stops Mansa + Huayna from starting a war during the intervening timeframe between now and the next vote and thereby becoming Elizabeth's opponent? They're already planning a war.

Perhaps you figure that we are safe because they probably need Astronomy first before they will actually declare war? I've seen Cathy do that before... 100+ turns of wanting to declare war on me and finally doing it once she had a Galleon full of units to throw at me.


If we make sufficient inroads against Shaka, he could stop being Elizabeth's opponent, but I'm assuming that this situation won't occur until after the next vote, although it's theoretically possible if Hammy's last City's Culture gap allows us to sneak up one one of Shaka's bigger-sized Buddhist Cities.

Is there any chance that we can get some War Elephants in the east?

A Crossbowman = a Pikeman = a War Elephant in terms of Hammer cost, but a War Elephant is far more versatile out of any of them and is probably the best out of those units for assaulting Elizabeth's Cities.

Pikes are fine on defence but crumble on the attack when there is even 1 Maceman or 1 Crossbowman defender.

Crossbowmen are okay against Macemen but don't have great base hitpoints, so they don't do very well against Longbowmen or War Elephants.

War Elephants can get in trouble by Pikes but after some collateral damage can take on pretty much any other unit with high odds of success.


The eastern front has the best chance of going after Elizabeth, yet it doesn't seem like it is properly equipped to handle Macemen, Longbowmen, Crossbowmen, Pikes, etc... once our couple of Crossbowmen get picked off, we're asking for it, and on the offence, we're sorely weak.

Let me know when it's my turnset. I don't have time to read the dissertations on this thread anymore. I've said everything I have to say. Meanwhile, my vote for any vote is abstain, with the exception of voting to play asap, in which case my vote is for asap.

I'll check in once or twice a day to see if it's my turnset.

There is a lot of back and forth going on and we don't seem to be getting too far on the Slavery vs. Caste System debate or the wipe out Hammy vs. gift him a city debate.

@ZPV Can you put together a PPP that states what you plan to do with repect to the items that have been brought up in the thread, big or small, even if we've agreed on them. Those that we have agreement on can be put behind us (i.e. promote the xbow, build east and west canals ASAP, etc.) and no longer need to be mentioned. That way, we can focus on any areas of disagreement (i.e. gift Hammy a city, Slavery, etc.).

Then, each person with a burning desire to fight for a particular course of action should be allowed to post one final argument for their point. The argument should be clear, concise and short if possible. Then, any open items should go to a vote so that we can move one. I agree with LC that we're getting bogged down and talking in circles at the moment with both sides feeling that they are not heard or understood.

My plans:
1) Stay in Caste. The slavery option just doesn't work right now.
2) Workers near the fronts drop mostly everything to chop caravels and build forts.
3) Kill Hammy off, albeit being a little careful due to Zulu culture. We are in no danger whatsoever of an AP loss.
4) The Harrapan caravel has a very easy time circumnavigating, so it will do that before exploring Mongolia.
5) Yes, I'll promote that crossbow near New Sarai.
6) Given #1, I can't make any useful progress on a Buddhist Monastery. Sorry.

How about this option regarding the war with Hammy and the upcoming AP vote:

1. March on his capital.
2. Bombard to zero.
3. Leave one red-lined unit.
4. When the vote comes up, if it's to end the war with Hammy, we kill him IBT and the vote is wasted.

This won't slow down our wars with Shaka/Cyrus because we don't really want to attack them right away due to fear of having the war stopped by the next AP vote, right? So it gives us time to collect our stack, heal it, and prepare to march on the AI after Hammy. It may also prevent us having to give a city back to Genghis.

Mitchum said:

How about this option regarding the war with Hammy and the upcoming AP vote:

1. March on his capital.
2. Bombard to zero.
3. Leave one red-lined unit.
4. When the vote comes up, if it's to end the war with Hammy, we kill him IBT and the vote is wasted.

This won't slow down our wars with Shaka/Cyrus because we don't really want to attack them right away due to fear of having the war stopped by the next AP vote, right? So it gives us time to collect our stack, heal it, and prepare to march on the AI after Hammy. It may also prevent us having to give a city back to Genghis.

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Thanks for the warning.
I'm sure this is the correct line of action.

One last note on the upcoming wars in the east, which was brought up by Dhoom. Our stack will get decimated by enemy macemen, right? We do need several war elephants and another cross bow or two just to keep from losing all of our siege and city attackers.

Genghis and Liz have Civil Service and access to macemen and we've got 1 xbow in our eastern SOD and 2 more on the way; zero WEs. We've seen one mace in Genghis' furthest city. We can expect to see more once we start marching on his core cities. What if we find a quick route to Liz? Are we prepared with the right counter units to face her?

So, how do we plan to quickly beef up our eastern stack with WEs and xbows? Or are we planning to just push forward and hope that several maces don't attack our SOD?

Mitchum said:

So, how do we plan to quickly beef up our eastern stack with WEs and xbows? Or are we planning to just push forward and hope that several maces don't attack our SOD?

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Push forward and be careful.
I've been wary of building WEs for the east because Liz has pikes, but I can work one or two into the next round of units.

ZPV said:

1) Stay in Caste. The slavery option just doesn't work right now.

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This may be the only point of contention...

ZPV said:

2) Workers near the fronts drop mostly everything to chop caravels and build forts.

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I think we're all in agreement on this one.

ZPV said:

3) Kill Hammy off, albeit being a little careful due to Zulu culture. We are in no danger whatsoever of an AP loss.

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I hope we can agree on this one. A lot of random things would have to line up against us perfectly to make this an issue. I agree that we're 100% safe related to an AP loss.

ZPV said:

4) The Harrapan caravel has a very easy time circumnavigating, so it will do that before exploring Mongolia.

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Is it possible for a western city to build a caravel for this purpose? If not, what constitues an easy time and how many turns would the caravel need to spend going out and then getting back to the Bulgar Canal? About how many turns until the canal is done? Will you be building a spy or three?

ZPV said:

5) Yes, I'll promote that crossbow near New Sarai.

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Another item we agree on!

ZPV said:

6) Given #1, I can't make any useful progress on a Buddhist Monastery. Sorry.

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I'm fine with this too. Based on the current numbers, I think we'll have time to shore up our Buddhist votes in 10ish turns. I'd much rather spend hammers on WEs right now.

ZPV said:

Push forward and be careful.
I've been wary of building WEs for the east because Liz has pikes, but I can work one or two into the next round of units.

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As long as we don't leave any WEs out to dry, they should be fine since our axes will easily handle any pikes that attack our SOD. Plus, WEs should have no problem killing off red-lined (or even 50% health) pike city defenders.

Realistically, how many WEs could we have in our SoD without Slavery? I'd say none in the next 10 turns... and maybe one or two in 15 turns. This is the only reason why I think Slavery is at least worth considering.

Regarding Astro, are you so concerned about it because:

1. We'll need it for Liz and the AP
2. We'll need it for galleons to speed up troop movement
3. We'll need it to take out HC and/or Mansa
4. Running Slavery means that we won't be able to run scientists in Thebes and thus have higher odds of getting a GPro

Personally, I don't think we'll need it to get to Liz and capture the AP. We can already see that we can drop off a stack in her territory via Bulgar Lake.

Galleons are nice to speed things up but this alone isn't overly convincing.

I think our best course of action is to leave HC/Mansa alone such that HC will be our opponent for the AP victory. Even if it turns out that conquest/domi are fastest, we won't have an army to load on galleons any time soon so a 5-turn delay on Astro wouldn't kill us here.

Getting a GPro would definitely delay Astro. As it stands, we only have ~80% GS there. Stopping scientists for 5 turns may make that ~75%. Neither of those numbers make me feel really comfortable, to be honest.

I'm not leaning heavily one way or the other. I'm asking these questions because I fully understand Dhoom's position on Slavery because he's laid out his reasons. I don't feel that I fully understand all of the reasons for Caste System.

Regarding Liz, I just thought of something. She started with 1 city and 1 settler. What if Neil put her capital in the center of the donut and her settler on the donut. That could make capturing the AP very difficult. It doesn't mean Astro will be required, but it would complicate things.

I forgot, did we agree what to do with the Great General?

Mitchum said:

Realistically, how many WEs could we have in our SoD without Slavery? I'd say none in the next 10 turns... and maybe one or two in 15 turns. This is the only reason why I think Slavery is at least worth considering.

Regarding Astro, are you so concerned about it because:

1. We'll need it for Liz and the AP
2. We'll need it for galleons to speed up troop movement
3. We'll need it to take out HC and/or Mansa
4. Running Slavery means that we won't be able to run scientists in Thebes and thus have higher odds of getting a GPro

Personally, I don't think we'll need it to get to Liz and capture the AP. We can already see that we can drop off a stack in her territory via Bulgar Lake.

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My reasons:
1. We *might* need it to get to London in a useful time. I'm not prepared to bet against this.
2. This will be useful, and make tactical landings an actual possibility - when the AIs have triremes and caravels, it's very unlikely to be possible to do galley landings.
3. Meh.
4. Running Slavery to churn out enough units to be worth delaying 1-2 will kill our economy.

I hear you about WEs, but frankly we can live without them. It's slow going, but we have no choice there, WEs or no WEs.

ZPV said:

My reasons:
1. We *might* need it to get to London in a useful time. I'm not prepared to bet against this.
2. This will be useful, and make tactical landings an actual possibility - when the AIs have triremes and caravels, it's very unlikely to be possible to do galley landings.
3. Meh.
4. Running Slavery to churn out enough units to be worth delaying 1-2 will kill our economy.

I hear you about WEs, but frankly we can live without them. It's slow going, but we have no choice there, WEs or no WEs.

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We should be through Genghis and most of Cyrus and/or Shaka before we actually know Astro and can get Galleons on the scene. So I'm not sure that #2 is a big enough advantage on its own. Dhoom has already shown how we can use galleys to land next to Genghis' cow city, so we can still accomplish this to some degree without Astro. Plus, we haven't seen any enemy boats on Bulgar Lake or The Canal so I'm not overly worried about losing galleys to enemy triremes or caravels.

I have to admit that I'm not 100% clear on the exact relationship with pops, city maintenance, troop costs, etc. As long as we continue to work all 2C tiles or greater, it seems that whipping away miners and wouldn't crash our economy. It is clear that the more units we produce (during Slavery or by hand), the higher our troop costs will be, so I get that whipping a bunch of units will hurt in the short term. However, troops now leads to sooner city capture which leads to faster wars and more city capture gold.

So for me it boils down to these three concerns:

1. We "might" need Astro to capture the AP in a timely manner.
2. Slavery would allow us to get WEs and other units on the scene faster which will help our war efforts.
3. We need to be careful about crashing our economy, no matter what we do. We need to keep expenses low and get city caputure gold as efficiently as possible to stay afloat.

Did I miss anything?

Regarding Slavery, would we even revolt to Slavery after several more turns of CS and an Astro bulb? Would any units whipped 15 turns from now even be useful?

My biggest concerns at this point are having enough units (and the right units) on the front to keep our war efforts moving forward efficiently and keeping our economy afloat. If we can do this without Slavery, then I'm fine with it. The fact that we "might" need Astro to capture the AP efficiently isn't as big a concern to me.

Mitchum said:

We should be through Genghis and most of Cyrus and/or Shaka before we actually know Astro and can get Galleons on the scene. So I'm not sure that #2 is a big enough advantage on its own. Dhoom has already shown how we can use galleys to land next to Genghis' cow city, so we can still accomplish this to some degree without Astro. Plus, we haven't seen any enemy boats on Bulgar Lake or The Canal so I'm not overly worried about losing galleys to enemy triremes or caravels.

I have to admit that I'm not 100% clear on the exact relationship with pops, city maintenance, troop costs, etc. As long as we continue to work all 2C tiles or greater, it seems that whipping away miners and wouldn't crash our economy. It is clear that the more units we produce (during Slavery or by hand), the higher our troop costs will be, so I get that whipping a bunch of units will hurt in the short term. However, troops now leads to sooner city capture which leads to faster wars and more city capture gold.

So for me it boils down to these three concerns:

1. We "might" need Astro to capture the AP in a timely manner.
2. Slavery would allow us to get WEs and other units on the scene faster which will help our war efforts.
3. We need to be careful about crashing our economy, no matter what we do. We need to keep expenses low and get city caputure gold as efficiently as possible to stay afloat.

Did I miss anything?

Regarding Slavery, would we even revolt to Slavery after several more turns of CS and an Astro bulb? Would any units whipped 15 turns from now even be useful?

My biggest concerns at this point are having enough units (and the right units) on the front to keep our war efforts moving forward efficiently and keeping our economy afloat. If we can do this without Slavery, then I'm fine with it. The fact that we "might" need Astro to capture the AP efficiently isn't as big a concern to me.

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A galley landing at Karakorum isn't going to happen. It'll be chock-full of units, and we need to have our entire stack, to be able to withstand a counter-attack.
Would we revolt to slavery after astro? Yes. We are not even close to being within 20 turns of victory. There will be plenty of time for units built in 15 turns to be useful.

Only whipping away unhappy citizens and useless tiles gives us very very few units where we need them. Look at the game. We have loads of tiles we need to work if we're going to afford 40-50 cities. We just can't get much from whipping right now.
I'll knock Pi-Ramesses up to 17hpt, and churn out at least one WE.

We have more units than it looks like in the NE, but it'll take some work to get them all in the right place.

The only other concern I have is the priorty between circumnavigating and exploring Bulger Lake and getting spies in Liz' territory. To me, the latter is more important than that former. If going for cicumnavigation delays exploring Liz by more than 1 turn, I'd say that we try to circumnavigate by either building a caravel somewhere else too or waiting until we've delivered a spy or two to Liz.

The reason exploration is so important to me is that the sooner we understand Liz' lands and where the AP is, the better prepared we can be to capture it. Circumnavigation is a bonus, not a requirement.

Mitchum said:

The only other concern I have is the priorty between circumnavigating and exploring Bulger Lake and getting spies in Liz' territory. To me, the latter is more important than that former. If going for cicumnavigation delays exploring Liz by more than 1 turn, I'd say that we try to circumnavigate by either building a caravel somewhere else too or waiting until we've delivered a spy or two to Liz.

The reason exploration is so important to me is that the sooner we understand Liz' lands and where the AP is, the better prepared we can be to capture it. Circumnavigation is a bonus, not a requirement.

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It won't delay it, since the ship will be back in time for the forts to be built.