ALC Game 18 Pre-Game Thread: Playing as Isabella

Just a couple of things I'll add, and I'll admit I skimmed many posts as I'm doing this at work (shhh... don't tell anyone!) and need to head out soon for an appointment.

1. If you are intent on grabbing one of the earliest techs for religion, take Polytheism. That will at least get you on track to Monotheism if somebody gets to Poly before you do.

2. I agree with the strategy of taking Theology from Oracle. Oracle should be a priority wonder for its Great Prophets.

3. When you do spread your religions, be careful about doing it to a civ that doesn't have a religion yet. Ideally, you will want to spread it first to a civ that didn't found a religion, but already has one in its borders. It may not be entirely possible to do that, but if you can strategize how you spread religion to your opponents, you can leverage your position with the AP. Certainly, having somebody be your friend because of shared religion is a good thing, but if this friend of yours is chummy with people who don't like you (and the way the AI works, it's more frequent for AI civs to like each other than for AI civs to like you personally), that friend of yours could end up preventing you from taking victory via the AP.

If you use the AP for a diplomatic victory, espionage and spies may be as important as other factors. You may need to change the civics of the other civs (especially if someone changes to theocracy.)

madscientist said:

Well, that brings up some earlier post, does this ALC want the cheap AP victory, or a more legitimate one (getting a fair vote, as a UN diplo victory). I don't know, shoving one city with religion per AI doessn't do these style of games justice.

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Some people claim the AP victory isn't all that easy after all ... this ALC could serve as a good well documented example of how to do it (spies forcing civ changes on theocracies, etc), and how easy and therefore cheap it can be.

If we knew for sure the AP is going to be changed in a patch I'd be against going this route, but since we don't ...

Well, and Sis could always say "The option to vote myself winner is there now and we know from previous AP votes that I would indeed win, but let's ignore that and just go conquering with highly promoted trebs and cannons"

Probably more important is the question of keeping cultural as an option or not, regarding the early techs.

I think it would be educational and appropriate for Izzy to pursue a religious victory with the AP. It fits her character and is a change from the other victory conditions in past ALC's. If for some reason you can't get a religious victory, what about pursuing a cultural victory. When did you last do that in an ALC?
Izzy is a promising candidate for a culture strategy because she can help you get multiple religions, multiple religion buildings, and religious wonders which segue nicely into a culture victory.

I think a beeline for Theology represents Isabella's character. The starting location and neighbours will drive what other techs are researched around the six (Theology and its lineage). Mining and BW are useful techs in their own right, but here it's taken with trading in mind, for the early techs not researched.[Mining is not a prequisite for Masony]

Next comes the path to engineering . It makes sense for all of Isabella's cities to have walls and citadels.

Then caravels for taking the missionaries around the world.

For those civs that don't recognize Christianity, the Spanish inquisition (we have ways of making to change your civics) and the really tough nuts will need to have visits from the Conquistadors.

Izzy always starts with neighbours and at least one of those is a fellow mysticism civ - Arabain, Aztec, Byzantine, Celtic, HRE, Incan, Indian, Korean and Mayan. An early axe rush is a preferred solution, though Protective makes that more difficult. The Incan is industrious so you'll lose the wonder building race for stonehenge or you'll win it and be on the receiving end of a quecha rush. The Byzantines and HRE will mirror your tech paths. They will also try to found Christiainity.

I am guessing you are going to have those three civs nearby and Gandhi's sure to be around.

Isabella seems like a good candidate for a specialist economy to me: Expansive gives you extra health to help cities that are running big populations for specialists, and Spiritual allows you to switch between Slavery and Caste System.

It sounds even better if you're going for a AP diplomatic win, because if all goes to plan you won't make it to the latter eras when a SE loses its power.

Baldas said:

The problem with the path to Theology is that you need worker techs early and you only start with fishing. If you go for Polytheism first then it's that much longer before you have something for your worker to do. The options would therefore be to not build a worker first (okay if you have a seafood resource) or don't go for Polytheism first. I think it's okay to let other civs get the first two religions because you'll be first to Monotheism and Theology (won't you?) and how many religions do you need for an AP victory? Just one. Make sure you are first to Theology and the others don't matter as much.

So it's map dependant. If you start with a seafood resource then you could build a workboat first and go for Polytheism, or you could let the AI get the first two religions and go for worker techs. If you don't start with a seafood resource then go for worker techs first. You'll want mining and bronze working early anyway.

If you want Isabella to be Christian then you don't have to enable the "choose religions" option because you'll be trying to be first to Theology anyway for the AP. And if you miss out on the first two religions then enabling "choose religions" would make it less likely that you'll get Christianity because the AIs have their own favourites and there are quite a few who prefer Christianity. I quite like the "choose religions" option in the games I play, but I probably wouldn't use it for this game.

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i think i'm leaning towards "if there's seafood, build workboats and research poly, let the AI get to the other religious tech first, except theology."

if you use "choose your religion" and somebody reaches med before you reach poly, and they pick christianity, then naturally you lose out on that flavor.

but without choose religions i see some impact too. if you get to poly first and found buddhism, you'll have the shrine in your capital and chances are it will be spread in your empire before you research theology and can convert to christianity for flavor. but the AP will always be locked into whatever state religion the builder was following when it was built. if the first religion you founded was christianity, and it's well spread throughout your empire, you're golden. but if you founded buddhism early, when you change SR your old cities won't benefit from religious civics until you get christianity to them. so if you do get to pick christianity on turn 14 or so, life is better with "choose religions" if you have a lot of old cities with your first religion in them. depends how many cities you have by Theology i guess. if all you need is a couple missionaries who cares, first one is free anyway.

oh actually ... if you want to be rich, and if you want to go the "AP religion in as few AI cities as possible" route, you might want a non-christian shrine in your capital? or at least a good city with nice terrain, not some "oh i just founded this suck city for X resource and oops it got picked as holy" one. to encourage spread of the heathen faith, as non-isabella as that seems *giggle*. so you'd want to found a religion other than christianity early, so a good city ends up the holy city. more effective wall street if you're not at 0% science, and the ability to build hammer-intensive wall street in the first place. even moreso if you might dedicate effort/missionaries to spreading that non-AP religion to some AI cities to prevent natural spread of the AP religion and hog votes for yourself .

wow ain't i greedy and cheap?

eh, then again if you go the "spread non-christian faith" route then actual commerce at the holy city wouldn't matter. and that part is figuring the game lasts until corporation, which it might not.

wow ain't i indecisive? -2 learn to just hit the back button and not post at all, rather than typing more words when you change your mind midstream, chatty permanoob

edit: OMG potentially on-topic helpful info! (credit to cabert)

Tyrant Roger said:

If for some reason you can't get a religious victory, what about pursuing a cultural victory. When did you last do that in an ALC? Izzy is a promising candidate for a culture strategy ...

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for the reasons that you mentioned and also because she's expansive. health tends to be a much more limiting factor for cultural wins than happiness is, +2 would be a godsend!

women are like that...



on topic, ap victories are not that hard to get if you do it right, you just starve the world of your religion by running theocracy. i'd suggest an oracle slingshot to theocracy or something, build a lot of cities and grow to the highest population you can, then just spread your religion to one small city of each civ and you'll get the diplo victory option and since they only have one city in your religion you will just control the entire vote..

it's cheap..

SickCycle said:

women are like that...



on topic, ap victories are not that hard to get if you do it right, you just starve the world of your religion by running theocracy.

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*giggle* if you assume all women are like me you're gonna get into trouble! i'm an oddball. but yeah quite a few of us can be that way .

my understanding of theocracy is just that it prevents natural spread of any religion other than my state religion to my own cities. it can still spread to foreign cities. also, i can still spread other religions to my own cities myself if i want to use missionaries. so, if you want to give a civ running theocracy your religion, you can gift them a missionary and if they're in the mood, they can use it on one of their cities even while they're in theocracy. requires OB of course, but i heard a rumor about gifting a caravel with a missionary in it? thought that was in this thread but i didn't see it on a re-read. haven't tried that one myself.

thanks i thought it kept your religion from spreading but i think that is just because we were talking about it in a apostle palace thread..

i'm obviously confused and still relatively new lol but the idea is still sound hehe because it only counts the cities with that religion if you just keep a massive population and try and starve them of whatever religion the apostle palace is in you basically control the entire vote..

my keyboard is broke so forgive my grammar,spelling not all my keys work

glad you weren't offended, it was just a joke. it was towards the chatty and indecisive and not the cheap part btw lol i love when women buy me stuff..

This how I See it, If Sisiutil wins a Religious Victory before he's able to use his UU & UB, he'll load the last save before he won/choose that victory option. Because the ALCs were also meant to show off how to properly use the UU and UB.

If such a thing occurs where you win a Religious Victory, before or during your implementation of your UU & UB I Think you should go back to your last previous save game (in auto-save) and this time go for a domination Victory, not only to show off your UU & UB but to also show off the NEW Modern Age Units and NEW Air Combat for BTS. I Know you want to show off those Paratroopers... LOL.

BUT if you win the Religious Victory by the Res Age and you've used your UU and UB to the full extent and their obsoleting then I think you should carry on to the next leader.

SickCycle said:

glad you weren't offended, it was just a joke. it was towards the chatty and indecisive and not the cheap part btw lol i love when women buy me stuff..

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oh i tend to be giggling when i type in the ALC threads, and i pretty much assume other folks are too when they're typing stuff to me. or whatever the guy equivalent of giggling is. but i still ain't gonna buy you stuff! even tho i meant "cheap" as in, hogging the votes so that i don't have to butter up to the AI, rather than a UN "spend effort getting folks to like you" type victory".

kniteowl said:

If such a thing occurs where you win a Religious Victory, before or during your implementation of your UU & UB I Think you should go back to your last previous save game (in auto-save) and this time go for a domination Victory, not only to show off your UU & UB but to also show off the NEW Modern Age Units and NEW Air Combat for BTS.

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well, or we could just load the save ourselves and mess around with it. but yeah i suppose a lot would rather see it here than live at home, particularly since BtS is so new. i kinda want that, but i want to see the other leaders too. obviously i haven't gotten over that indecisive thing yet.

kniteowl said:

I Know you want to show off those Paratroopers... LOL.

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my poor paratroopers are never going to get the 25% fortification bonus. during peacetime, i make them jump every turn just to watch since it's soooooo cute! i can tell they think it's fun, like how shaka's impis love to be out there in the field since they dance around. hubby does not have a feel for such things, and actually said to me that they might need a rest now and then and maybe they consider it "cruel oppression"!!! so now i have them jump into the globe theatre every once in a while *giggle*.

Just thought I'd try out a game so I played with the same settings. I won't go into too much detail but there were a couple other zealots out there (who must have had better commerce tiles than me) because I got beat to both poly and monotheism by 2 turns. I thought the game was starting nicely since I had 3 seafood and marble in my capital's big fat cross but I have run into some snags - well one major snag really - lack of bronze or horses and by the time I discovered this it was getting late (as I had researched the prereqs for theology) so I need to research hunting and archery to fend off the barbarian hordes. Hopefully I'll get there in time.

The good news was I was easily able to build the oracle (marble and lots of forests) and found Christianity (so you may not want to have custom religions on).

My first two BTS games were won with AP diplomacy victories. They weren't anything I planned, I didn't make the AP in either one, but things just fell into place.

So to go for an AP diplomacy win I would shoot for Hinduism, so there is the Judaism backup. If I got Hinduism I would let it spread naturally and also do some missionary spam. Try to get Hinduism in every city that doesn't have a religion. Cities that already have a religion I wouldn't worry about. Then use either the Oracle or a prophet to found theocracy. Try to get it into a city with some production, if not use the missionary in a city with some production. Build the AP in that city, switching to Christianity before it finishes. Pick one city in each known civ, preferably a small one without much growth potential, not near my borders, and convert those to Christianity. Then beeline to Optics, load a caravel for each unknown civ with a spy and missionary and send them out. Change to no religion before contact. If you can get open borders with the new civs, and they are not running theocracy, pick the smallest city you can find to convert. If they are running theocracy but you can get open borders, put the missionary in the smallest city and gift it to them. If open borders isn't possible, give them the caravel with the missionary. Once everyone has the religion, change to christianity and wait.

I think if want to use that strategy in a game, you had better do it before the next patch. Hopefully this will get fixed, I think that it is quite lame. I would be embarrassed to play the fiery, pouty, Isabella like that.

How I think you should really play:

Found Hinduism or Judaism. One religion is enough. Pick an enemy, preferably someone next to you who has their own religion. Spread your religion to everyone else. If there is anything you can do to prevent your religion from spreading to the enemy, do that, definitely no open borders. Got a city ready to build the AP. Go ahead and found Christianity if you have to, but not a big deal if you get beat as long as you are close enough to build the AP. Once you have that declare war on the infidels and try to get a vote for everyone to join in. Votes might also show up to stop trade to the enemy civ, do that if possible. Try to get capture some good land, but don't worry if it takes a while since you will be racking up those shared conflict points. Once the enemy is wiped try to have a happy, one religion, tech trading continent. Then when you meet the others, unless you are way behind in tech, treat them like heathens from the start and invade with all of your buddies the moment you have astronomy. After you grab some cities then spin off a colony, making sure that they have the right religion. Keep going until you have a true religious victory in that every city has the one true religion.

Welnic's second strategy sounds like fun.

Won't be as fast as the first but would highlight more aspects of BtS and Isabella. Might also allow for her UB and UU to be used.

Kietharr said:

only the castle trade routes are obsolete at economics, the rest of the castle functions until rifling.

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Actually, the +25% is lost at Economics too.

Bh

You should definately make sure that the religion you spread to opponents early, and your AP religion is not the same one. If you found Hinduism first, and half the world converts to hinduism, you want to make sure that the AP use a different religion, christianity is a good bet, so that you'll be able to spread it at your leisure, and get the votes you need, from your monster-sized cities.

Why do you need those upgraded trebs anyway?
You aren't going to capture alot of enemy city's. I wouldn't give priority to engenering. Although on the other hand... In the line of the other ALC games you should exploit unique buildings.

Once a city has a religion, it takes a missionary to add others (unless the city is chosen as the holy city site of another religion).

Scarredroman said:

Once a city has a religion, it takes a missionary to add others (unless the city is chosen as the holy city site of another religion).

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Unless you get on of the religion-spreading random events. I think the best of those is for spread to 4 of your cities and 4 rival cities, but I'm not sure what the criteria are to trigger it.