RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

Wow, that was an absolutely amazing turnset! And so well illustrated with pictures too. Now we're in really good shape moving forward. Here are my initial thoughts looking at the save.

- We definitely want to wipe out that little Roman city that they just founded (Neapolis) before it has time to start growing. Our two horses shouldn't have too much trouble doing that right away.

- I think that we want to take Monaco (and release it for super-ally status) as soon as it's feasible to do so. Just having line-of-sight in that area would be very helpful, leaving aside the free culture. Naturally, we don't want to get sucked too far forward and lose our horses either... I'm sure uberfish can use his best judgment and see what the Romans do.

- Hopefully the Greeks won't send too much our way. I'd save that gold in our bank in case we have to rush an emergency unit. Also remember that we have horses on rest in both Kyoto and Osaka, since the game won't cycle through to these units unless you wake them manually, and the little icon is extremely easy to miss.

- I don't think we want to do any more conquering at the moment, since Greece and Rome would only extend our lines further out. I agree with alpaca that we should start expanding instead, using that +9 happiness we have. Istanbul and My Little Pony are probably going onto colosseums next, since we'll be out of horse supply and our military looks OK right now. We'll also have Meritocracy in about 3 more turns, which will give us +5 more happiness. (Trade routes are already giving us 20 gpt, nearly enough to pay all our expenses. Income already +34 gpt? Oh yes, that snowball is starting to roll down the hill! ) I like these spots best:



This is a useful strategic spot, three tiles away from Kyoto/Osaka, needing only a single road connection to our current road net, on a river with silver and lots of hills, defended from attack to the south by those mountains. I like it the best of the spots near us. However, there are Greek borders poking out from beneath the clouds over there to the east by the cows, and it could be a little bit dangerous. Up to you guys if you think we should go for Red now or wait until it's safer.



The other city spots I like are in our sheltered northern hinterland, which we probably want to start filling up ASAP. Osaka messes up our dotmap a little bit, but we can plan around it. Pink has two resources + hills, so I would prioritize that spot first. Yellow is weaker, but of course still worth founding, and it would get us another gold for sale purposes. Then further to the northwest:



Basically we just continue the three-tile grid further. Green is pretty decent, Blue is a weak city, although it has hills and that + maritime food = good stuff. We should probably try to found all of these cities within the next 20-25 turns.

- Do we want to try getting an AI ally against one of these opponents? Siam will declare war on Greece for a paltry 122 gold, which would give us a bit of breathing room and let us concentrate on Rome. I would probably do it, since 122g is nothing, and AI vs AI wars are definitely a good thing for us right now.

- More theoretical question here: when do we want to de-puppet our Japanese cities? When we do, should we raze the non-capital ones or keep them? I don't usually puppet cities much in my games (detest that particular game mechanic), so I'm really open to whatever everyone else wants to do. Let's try to figure out what our plan is going to be moving forward.

- I think it's pretty clear that Writing should be the next tech after Construction for libraries. After that... Iron Working, maybe? Would be nice to see the iron sources. Upgrading a couple of warriors into swords would also be helpful. Of course, then our puppets will start turning into idiots (durr, let's build barracks and armories in cities that can't train units ), but we'll probably want to either raze or depuppet them around then anyway.

uberfish, why don't you play 16 turns to get us on a more even number, and then we'll go from there.

EDIT: If the images in this post don't show up, try refreshing your browser. That seems to correct the issue for me.

Nice turns and very nice report!

Only one possible criticism which is that I think My Little Pony was one turn from growth the whole time it was building a settler. But in any case we're looking pretty good here.

One possible longer-term plan is bulbing up the bottom of the tech tree for our UU lancers and muskets, which I understand are fairly good.

I would settle green, blue and pink all one tile further west. I agree about getting Siam into a war, to be honest I forgot to check because I asked them about Japan earlier and they refused and Ram didn't seem to like me very much after taking out Oda. By any measure, this would be 122 gold well spent (just 4 turns or so)

The red spot would be strategically useful so I agree with settling that first. This is likely to tick off Siam a bit so make sure you get him into the war before settling. In a similar fashion, that strategically placed city between Istanbul and Tokyo is available now because we're at war with Augustus.

As for the puppets, we should in my opinion leave them alone until we have settled the available space. They don't cost a lot of happiness if we trade-post them and I found they often do what I'd do, except for some barracks weirdness but that's not too bad. When our happiness starts going into the red (there's no reason not to go down to -5 or so) they will start building colosseums, too.

We should try to see if we can get another Maritime ally. It should be possible to steal the one from Siam by throwing money at them (stupid deity AI doesn't spend anything on it).

Agree about writing. After that, I'm pretty open-minded. I tend to go into the Chivalry direction to keep my mounted forces up-to-date and swinging against the AI. This also allows to pick up Currency and Civil Service, which are both useful. When we get currency, My Little Pony should build Macchu Picchu.

Edit: The Janissaries are pretty awesome indeed. So maybe we should try that instead of Chivalry? The thing why I don't particularly like Musketmen-type units is that there's nothing that upgrades to them which means you have to buy a few. You're probably right about MLP being close to growing those six turns or so, as I wrote, expect a few minor screw-ups from me

Looks great, i hope the AIs won't be able to stockpile you too much.
I suggest liberating monaco. First, its mucho influence, second it is a barrier between augustus and you, providing control area and a place to heal/upgrade. and cotton, i think?

as a tip, you might consider switching on the resources in the general screens. imo it makes "reading" the screenshots much easier.

keep up the good work!

Oh, I also want to point out that getting a medieval tech will increase allied city-state culture per turn from 8 to 12.

Got it, nice fighting action guys. I'll try and consolidate our position.

How about periodic screenshots of the economic overview, so we can see pop and builds in the cities (I assume infininte small city sprawl is the plan)?

dV

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I think liberating Monaco would be good play with reducing the warriors

Heh I didnt saw the screens at first, after it I would strongly agree with the dotmap ;-)

the war was very instructive thanks alpaca

Wow nice! only 69 turns in and we're in second place in land! Just a hair behind the first place civ, too. I think the "runaway civ" in this game might be us.

I have a thought about settling and expansion. We're at 295/500 happiness right now, and getting +9/turn. What about slowing down our expansion a little bit, until we get into a golden age? We could save up a few settlers for that, then settle them instantly once the golden age starts, and also rze the japanese cities at that point.

I have to admit that this is usually the part where I'm confused about what to research next. Writing is nice, sure, but after that we've already got everything we need! what about going for iron working and mathematics, and making a couple catapults? Then we can head towards banking for the forbidden palace.

How is it possible for us to be at 0% literacy? I thought that was basically a measure of how many techs you've researched.

As a side note, playing this way makes me feel like the borg. Diplomacy is useless, and instead we just expand forever, replacing whatever cities the other civs make with our own perfectly identical cities, placed in a rigid crystal lattice.

pi-r8 said:

Wow nice! only 69 turns in and we're in second place in land! Just a hair behind the first place civ, too. I think the "runaway civ" in this game might be us.

I have a thought about settling and expansion. We're at 295/500 happiness right now, and getting +9/turn. What about slowing down our expansion a little bit, until we get into a golden age? We could save up a few settlers for that, then settle them instantly once the golden age starts, and also rze the japanese cities at that point.

I have to admit that this is usually the part where I'm confused about what to research next. Writing is nice, sure, but after that we've already got everything we need! what about going for iron working and mathematics, and making a couple catapults? Then we can head towards banking for the forbidden palace.

How is it possible for us to be at 0% literacy? I thought that was basically a measure of how many techs you've researched.

As a side note, playing this way makes me feel like the borg. Diplomacy is useless, and instead we just expand forever, replacing whatever cities the other civs make with our own perfectly identical cities, placed in a rigid crystal lattice.

Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww

No idea about Literacy, it could be a comparison to other civs?

pi-r8 said:

How is it possible for us to be at 0% literacy? I thought that was basically a measure of how many techs you've researched.

Click to expand...

Haven't played the current version but in earlier ones (IE CivIII) it was the amount of libraries/universities/research labs you have built, not how many techs you've researched.

pi-r8 said:

I have a thought about settling and expansion. We're at 295/500 happiness right now, and getting +9/turn. What about slowing down our expansion a little bit, until we get into a golden age? We could save up a few settlers for that, then settle them instantly once the golden age starts, and also rze the japanese cities at that point.

Click to expand...

What? Stop expanding? Don't throw down settlers on every inch of available ground? I'm disappointed in you, luddite. Seriously though, we'll get a Golden Age when we get one. No reason to stop the city spamming snowball. Most of our Golden Ages will likely come from using up excess Great Generals when we no longer need them.

Played out the two front war last night, will report tonight, I can confirm that we are at least not dead.

Sullla said:

What? Stop expanding? Don't throw down settlers on every inch of available ground? I'm disappointed in you, luddite. Seriously though, we'll get a Golden Age when we get one. No reason to stop the city spamming snowball. Most of our Golden Ages will likely come from using up excess Great Generals when we no longer need them.

Click to expand...

Sorry, sorry. I guess that's heresy. But seriously though, I have a feeling we'll be mostly in negative happiness for a long time from here on out, so this might be our only chance to get a happiness golden age. It seems like a waste to throw away 300 stored happiness. great general golden ages are good too, but the more the merrier.

pi-r8 said:

As a side note, playing this way makes me feel like the borg. Diplomacy is useless, and instead we just expand forever, replacing whatever cities the other civs make with our own perfectly identical cities, placed in a rigid crystal lattice.

Click to expand...

So Civilization 5 = Borgification I? The game comes down to the contest between the AI attempt to zerg you, vs. your attempt to Borg them?

That is the point of this game, isn't it? That an ISCS (infinite small city sprawl) strategy + constant war of expansion - any diplo, +/- any city state relations = easy Diety win? Which if true, would be the ultimate confirmation that Civ V is less challenging than Civ IV (at least for military victory).

pi-r8 said:

Sorry, sorry. I guess that's heresy. But seriously though, I have a feeling we'll be mostly in negative happiness for a long time from here on out, so this might be our only chance to get a happiness golden age. It seems like a waste to throw away 300 stored happiness. great general golden ages are good too, but the more the merrier.

Click to expand...

The other potential benefit of an expansion moratorium might be a quick policy to go with a happiness GAge?

Actually, you only need to pause settling expansion, to get GA and policy, right? You could still capture and puppet (and later raze and resettle) while waiting for happy GA and/or policy, right?

dV

Subscribing

pi-r8 said:

How is it possible for us to be at 0% literacy? I thought that was basically a measure of how many techs you've researched.

Click to expand...

I have not noticed any % in literacy until after writing is established in my games so far. Which, kinda makes sense. How can you have a literate Civilization who can't write?

uberfish said:

Played out the two front war last night, will report tonight, I can confirm that we are at least not dead.

Click to expand...

That's... reassuring, I guess.

subscribed. I'll be watching this with interest...

t69 - Pay Siam 112 gold to declare on Greece. Their borders touch, so hopefully this will be an effective distraction. I decide not to settle the red dot for now, it's too close to the Greek/Siamese border and a bit of an overstretch currently. Our horse at Osaka takes a peek at Greek forces, not much seems to be coming so move the other horses down to Tokyo. Siam wants a research agreement, which I turn down because we need 1000 gold to bribe Genoa. We still don't know enough about the layout of the land so I'm going to send our scout southwest to get an idea of where the other AIs and city states are.

t70 - A Roman invasion force pushes up from Monaco. I decide to let them advance for one more turn and let the city take fire. Horse in Istanbul is done, on to settler



t71 - Meritocracy finishes. Our silver at Tokyo gets pillaged by a chariot as Roman forces advance. Our 2 horses coming from Istanbul and Osaka are now ready to join the fight, for a 4 horses on site, leaving one patrolling the Greek front. Our counterattack kills 4 units. This earns us our first great general: Lord Nelson.

We get our rental horses back from Monty, but he has no cash now. We need some gold to buy off Genoa. I shop around for resource sales but the best I can find is silk to Napoleon for 206 + 3gpt; annoyingly this is just short of the 1000 for the efficient city-state bribe.

t72 - General arrives at Tokyo, which means it's a good time to follow up the previous turn's attack by liberating Monaco. 2 horses cycle through the open field northeast of the city to attack and our warrior finishes the job. We get a bit of gold from this, which completes the 1000 gold for Genoa. This is a good deal as they have quite a few troops to distract Rome. Amusingly, I also manage to pick off an unescorted Roman settler in the southwest with our scout.

Alex is moving on Osaka with a couple of hoplites, the next horse from MLP is headed that way. MLP also on a settler for now, I figure I can get away with this so long as we aren't losing troops against Rome.



t73 - Caesar retreats all his troops south of the river at Monaco, in the meantime Alex's hoplites show up at Osaka, so I am forced to make a decision on how to split our army. I transferred 1 horse from the northern front to the southern front earlier, so I will send him back now along with our general. This will give us a total of 3 horses on each front.

t74 - In an unexpected show of competence Caesar's archers are now bombarding Monaco from the far side of the river where our horses can't get at them. I guess I will just have to let our forces rest and heal up, allow Caesar to recapture Monaco and liberate it again next turn. Caesar has a lot of troops, no point getting overaggressive here and losing units. I made contact with France, to the southwest.



Construction is in -> Writing next

t75 - Alex's 2 hoplites attack at Osaka. Horses clean them up. Rather upsettingly, a full health horse with flanking bonus + great general against a half health hoplite on flat ground still takes 4 damage killing the hoplite... ouch. Istanbul finished its settler, start an archer, we need it. In the meantime the proposed red dot site east of Kyoto has been already claimed by Siam.

Caesar retakes Monaco; I re-liberate Monaco. Because the horse pops out at a vulnerable location after retaking the city I decide to blow a heal promotion at 50%

t76 - Our horse that just liberated Monaco blew the heal promotion becomes target practice for by 4 or 5 Roman archers, surviving with 1 hp! He runs away. Amusingly, he gets enough XP from surviving the attacks to get another promotion. Oh, I promoted one of our fresh level 1 horses that hadn't been spending promotions on healing to shock I while there's a lull in the action on the southern front. Time to start building a veteran unit core.

Writing is in, on to bronze working. Our puppets are building city walls anyway, apparently having decided to do so back when we got declared on; understandable I suppose.

Also, we have a new city with obligatory silly name. I decided to found this one to solidify the southern front.



t77 - Caesar gives up on Monaco and decides to advance on Tokyo again. We lose our warrior defending in the forest SE of the city - I should probably have chopped this down but didn't want to waste the chop on a puppet build. Anyway I retaliate by killing some chariots/archers. Oh, Monty is no longer upset with us, and wants open borders now. I turned this down as I don't want him settling in our backyard.

t78 - research agreement request from Egypt; hold off on it for now, I might need the money to buy an archer. Notice that Monaco isn't actually shooting at Roman troops any more, upon closer investigation they're actually at peace with Rome after the second liberation. I seem to get this bug quite often in single player. This is actually good for us in this case, as it means Roman forces don't have that river defence line anymore.

t79 - found Byzantium to shore up the north, putting us into -4 happiness. I decided to stick with the "matrix" city plan since by following it we will be able to raze Osaka later and replace it with 3 cities, and it manages to avoid all the mountains. We should follow up by settling 3NW of Osaka once that area is secure. Currently there is a standoff while Alex brings in more units via sea transport, fortunately the units that are trying to outflank our line are just warriors. Also one of his phalanx is sitting in one of the 1 tile lakes, and getting badly shot up by city fire from Osaka.



t80 - Alex moves forward aggressively enough that I feel obliged to rush buy an archer in Byzantium (can't do it in Osaka because it's a puppet). The Siamese spears that have joined the fight are at least weakening some of the hoplites, so we got our 122 gold's worth from the war dec.

t81, 82 - Beat back the 2 warrior/3 hoplite assault at Osaka and kill off a large group of archer/chariot/spears on the Roman front near Tokyo. The AI may be pretty dumb, but these turns certainly aren't easy to play as I have to try to avoid attacks that will get a unit seriously damaged or leave it in a bad position. I now have an archer on each front, and it's making a big difference dealing with the annoying spears. I'm also killing an archer or chariot every turn at Constantinople as Caesar keeps moving 1 unit there to try and harrass workers.

Genoa wants us to find Egypt. Our scout is looking...

t83 - Gold sale to Napoleon expires. Resell it to Monty for 224 + 2gpt. Lots of the AI cash seems to be going into research agreements and I can't get too much for resource sales right now, so I sign a research pact with Siam to try and help improve their bad attitude.

Iron working brings good news: 6 iron at Ayshe's vineyard available now, another deposit near Byzantium we could access with a border expansion if we wanted. Who is Ayshe anyway? On to mathematics for catapults, which should shut down the infantry attacks.

t84, 85 - Unit healing and cleanup of stray Roman units around Tokyo. I agreed to mutual open borders with Napoleon to help with the scouting (he's far enough away that he won't settle behind us). Oh when I talked to Siam they claimed that our army was a laughing stock (demographics show it's middle of the road) He's not listed as hostile on the diplomacy screen, but always finds some nonsensical excuse to dislike us and won't give good trade deals. Oh he's also the AI tech/production leader, we will probably have to take him down a peg or two at some point.



Our aggressors aren't doing too well on the demographics. Right now we're probably in a position to counterattack Rome and force concessions for peace once their declaration timer runs out. In my opinion we do not want to kill Caesar, best to leave him as a buffer against Siamese expansion. I didn't move everything, so Sulla can reposition our troops and promote units as he sees fit. I started another settler in MLP, feel free to change that as we're happiness capped while the first wave of colosseums go up. Maybe we should build barracks, actually. Here's what our situation looks like.



Oh, yeah, you guys thought +34gpt at the end of Alpaca's set was good? We're now over double that (!) despite the fact that our large army costs us 25 maintenance. Most of this comes from trading post spam since our cities don't need to work farms thanks to maritime food. And ICS hasn't even kicked in yet, the close city spacing just saves us a few gold on roads but we would get the same economic result with fast expansion at any city spacing. If you wanted evidence that maritime per-city bonus is broken look no further.


Future plans?

I think this is a good point in time to start keeping 1 of each luxury resource for happiness and begin research pacting, now that we have plenty of income and 4 solid city-state allies. We're going to unlock more 10+ turn techs shortly, and it will help build good relations with Aztec/Egypt/France. Siam worries me in the medium term with their unfriendly diplomatic attitude and powerful elephants, so let's try and keep the others happy. I didn't get a good opportunity to pick off Neapolis, Sulla will just have to do it himself I'm afraid. We could probably kill Rome off if we wanted to, but I'd rather leave them alive as a buffer against Siamese expansion for now, it will take a while to settle our back yard.