Immortal slavers!

Ok. Got it but it loks like we need some discussion before playing. I'm not sure we have the troops to take out a city on a hill defended by axes. We'll want catapults minimum, especially since Pericles will have culture defense by then. I'm thinking some settling to plug in holes (and make sure Pericles doesn't settle more junk cities) before warring.

Sure, settle the iron if you can get it, and northwest of our capital.

I support cat war as the working plan for after COL. For now, settlers, buildings, exploration.

We still haven't made any OB or resource deals. We can't get that resource trade with Hammurabi any more.

All good points Jet... I would prefer attacking Hammurabi though as his land is better (gold , floodplains area)... but yeah for now, COL, settlers, workers, and specialists .

Ok, played a short set through CoL + AH (Madrid has horses!).

Turn 75 - I change research to AH in anticipation of Madrid popping borders for that mysterious pasture

Turn 79 - AH is in. We get horses!

Turn 83 - I found Teotihuacan for the iron + another gold.

Turn 86 - CoL is in and we found Confucianism in Teotihuacan. I stop here with research tentatively set for math.

Willy is the only one with alpha. He'll trade it for the following:



And our budding empire:



We now have access to caste, which we should probably adopt for merchants after we finish whipping. Math opens up currency and construction (with masonry). Currency will help our economy a bit until the altars are in place, or we can go right for construction. Honestly I'd prefer to settle a few more cities and build up a little more infra before going to war again. And don't ask why I built another worker in Madrid instead of a settler. I was worried about city costs when I chose the build and didn't realize how many workers we have running around.

shyuhe said:

We now have access to caste, which we should probably adopt for merchants after we finish whipping.

Click to expand...

stop whipping? Perhaps in the next game PLus I would think we want to use scientists unless we want to bulb the guild line?

shyuhe said:

Math opens up currency and construction (with masonry).

Click to expand...

I too think this should be our next research for the points you mentionned.

Currency will help our economy a bit until the altars are in place, or we can go right for construction.

Click to expand...

I would go with the later... LBs will coom soon enough... and altars are to be asap.

No love for killing Hammurabi instead of Pericles (letting him take the jungle down)?

Thoughts?

Roster duty:

Mysty -> fly! blush: sorry)
Raskolnikov ->wanna enslave...

Cheers

mystyfly said:

Curious to hear Rustens reason why aest is bad...

Click to expand...

Aesthetics would give us nothing. We don't have marble for the wonders. It's much better to either get alphabet earlier and have the option to produce science or aiming at CoL which has a great number of uses. Using aesthetics to obtain alphabet would just be a waste of ~100 beakers and unnecessary WFYABTA.

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Didn't look at the save yet, but:

Agree with Ras; scientists are better than merchants.
Early currency isn't as good on Pangea as it is on other maps.
We should've settled west of our capital by now. That spot won't give much maintenance and has an abundance of food. I would settle for the NW fish as well (can use caste to pop borders quickly).

About religions: I guess we don't want one right now so the new holy city can pop borders but after this? None of the AIs are too religious minded (except Hammu, on more reason to kill him ), so perhaps, S.Paya could help us (we have gold and are spiritual for more abuses)?

Cheers

Sorry, forgot to post a got it (have it since friday ).

I'm having a look at the save now, post comments soon and play tomorrow.

To improve our eco and strenghten it before the next war, I will try to squeeze in altars in barca, madrid and teo.

We do not have a shrine in Madrid. Should we want one I will build a temple to run a priest (we have currently 27% of GP there).

I will use our (at the moment lazy) jags to scout ham and pericles' land.

I am for taking the Alphabet-for-CoL-and-Meditation-deal.

Techwise: Maths > Construction for obvious reasons.

I don't think we're ready for switching to CS as we need to whip now of all times. Before we get construction we whip infrastructure and jags, afterwards, we whip cats. We should probabely switch after the war(s) to come are over...

We only have Confucianism and Buddhism in our cities so we should keep our head down and not declare friendship with certain AIs yet (plus we don't have any religious civic we want yet (pac/theo)).

BTW, what about this missionary? Should I use it on that city of Pericles'? It would make him convert to confucianism, and therefore add more tension between the AIs and make us have a more relaxed game.

Oh, and I intend to OB with all leaders and get some resource deals going.

I tought about the cow-fish city just west of teno Rusten mentionnes. Thing is 1) we should use all our hammers on military and stabilizing our eco and 2) while the city itself won't cost much, cost of ALL cities increase. Let's waith with that city a bit (tough keep it in mind, it'll make a strong city quickly!).

Agree on almost all of that. Whipping, cats. Yes convert Pericles.

Not sure we want any more Jags. Axes/Spears might be better, focusing on melee counters and catapult attackers, since both our neighbors have anti-melee UUs. Well, not Pericles exactly.

I'm meh on the shrine. It would be OK to try for, but I don't see us getting a lot of Buddhist allies. If we stay non-Buddhist, Hammurabi and Pericles could be the outsiders rather than us.

And it's not like we'd want to go Theocracy -> Paper. With no cottages and our land, we'd probably rather go CS for irrigation, I think.

I would settle another city (northwest, not west) for production, although I see the argument against.

I forgot to mention: I start to feel more confident warring ham than pericles. Pericles seems to have lots of cities on hills (but proper scouting will reveal more). Ham has better land. Let Pericles chop that jungle first I say. Also we're less likely to get dogpiled as ham doesn't exactly have friends...

Cats will be main attackers anyway. That we need a few axes and spears is obvious but do we want axes to be our shock units or leave that to jags?

I'm not sure it's a wise decision to go after Ham given the distances involved. But if we do take that route, we should settle a city to block off the western edge of our penninsula. We don't want Pericles getting any silly ideas. The Confucian missionary in that case should go convert Pericles to create some tension as well.

We should make the alpha trade and then see if we can pick up monarchy (HR). That should help out our economy enough for the time being.

I played 14 turns to stop at turn 100. Quiet turns, lots of whipping (mainly infra).

IHT
Sign OBs with everyone but Toku (guess why...).

Trade for Alphabet from willem. Techscreen isn't showing anything really interesting... just willem being a techmonster... for a change

Only Ham knows monarchy besides willem but isn't willing to trade it for CoL... must be researching it himself...




I also make some insignificant resource deals, a health resource for another (with DeG and someone else IIRC) for the diplo points.

3 Jags are sent to scout in different directions.

(1)
I trade Alphabet to DeG for Sailing and Poly with DeG IIRC (lost pic) and ABC and CoL for Monarchy with Ham. Talk about Highway Robbery...




(2)
Missionary reaches Athenes and spreads religion. I didn't spread in Corinth as it's only at 20% culture and could remain that way until we capture it.




(6)
Pericles just turned himself from a likely into a very juicy target



(7)
We get a great RE:




"... between 100g and 200g...": it was 102g. Whatever, we'll take it

(10)
Ham finishes Aest. Making him spend less hammers on units, more on wonders.

(11)
Maths in > Construction




(12)
Ham gets rejected




(13)
I settle FishCow city. Settler was 2pop-whipped at Teno.




(14)
We get a GP in Madrid...




I cancel the Corn-for-Fish deal with DeG to sell the fish to willem for wine and give DeG Rice for Corn instead

---

Map of Babylon (note Babylon itself: 6 (!!!) resources!):




Map of Greece:




Our army currently consists of 6 jags, 1 axe and a spear.

Techscreen:




Willem Techwhoring as usual, Hammurabi has aest, only 2 AIs have Maths...

Religion:




Still no Hinduspread (the religion we're most likely to convert to imo).

Our workers aren't exactly busy, we need CS to farm most of the tiles. I chopped a few forests and prechopped more awaiting catapults.

GP-management was rather bad, I apologise. I fired the specs in Madrid for infra and growth. We can either settle the GP (a settled GP is nothing to sneeze at) or build a shrine. I think that doesn't make much sense tbh. We could save him in case hamm fails to build the jewish shrine. This one would be quite profitable...

Captain, sir, have fun:
View attachment Compulsive Slaver BC-0375.CivBeyondSwordSave

Peri built the mids in a city just across our border? He's really asking for it, first with his annoying cities and culture and now building a wonder which given the conditions we have to work with will likely be an enormous asset to the Aztecs?

A cat&jag&axe war against Peri is looking more and more probable. It's not like we're on a difficult timeframe against him... even Toku is ahead of him in tech

Add to that that Hammurabi is a more difficult target given that he's got both the aggressive bonus and his PITA bowmen, and Peri's fate is sealed. Even though Babylon is such a city. I'm happy already if we conquer and keep Corinth, just because the mids will be such a boost to our economy.

Considering our prophet I say we have him build a shrine. The income and hammers from a settled prophet will quickly be surpassed by the income & spread of a shrine. Who knows, maybe the added spread rate a shrine offers might convince Pericles to become a religious black sheep.

Too bad we don't have a popular religion to convert to. Otherwise I'd consider bulbing Theology for the bonus exp on our cats and trade possibilities.

Note about the buddhist shrine: we already have a buddhist monastery in madrid so it shouldn't be too hard getting a few missionaries out.

I forgot in my report, that BUG once told me Pericles founded Knossos "in a faraway land". I have no idea where it is.. It's most likely on a small island. I can't figure out where on the mainland it should be (jags are scouting where pericles might've settled) and he had a galley in his cap stationned (as you see in the screenshot showing the missionary.

Also, Willem has quite a big empire and ham will have soon as he won't have much competition for the land (as everyone is at war there ) so we'll have 2 monster-AIs to fight later - I'm looking foreward to those wars

Wow. Babylon is quite ridiculous...

I agree that Pericles just painted a huge bullseye on his back with the Mids. We should definitely strike at Corinth first. It'll basically solve all of our research problems Skip Thebes - we can leave it for later as we don't have much use for those tiles until CS. Although we should at least pillage those horses to make sure he doesn't start hording HA (nasty against catapults).

We do have Judaism in our 3 northern cities, with forests etc., and we don't have to stay in Jud+Theo for longer than 5 turns at a time. We can get Mono say from DeG for Math.

Willem will trade Ivory for our Horses. We might want to do that and research HBR next - not necessarily for this war, but just to get some elephants built while we have the chance.

I like that plan with phants if we can trade for HBR - otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Why would we want OR? I believe I built every building we need in our most important cities...

No, Mono as the Theology prereq. HBR, nobody has it yet.

We're not teching fast enought to justify the delay teching HBR provides. Better strike fast (and make good use of the mids). I would aquire it via trading if it was available but otherwise... forget about it.

Theo makes more sense but I think it's a waste of GP if we use it to bulb theo to get 2 more xp... The payoff of a shrine or even settling is much bigger imo.