Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,452
Nice work! Of course, now I am curious as to how things went against Ragnar's boats.shyuhe said:Things are going well on the war front. We lost 1 treb taking two cities
I know that it feels bad to grow into unhappiness (and this issue may plague us again as we whip more, even if we do have Drama now), but I guess that the point becomes a comparison of the squares being worked:shyuhe said:I'll slow Gold and marble to 6-4 whip cycles, although it'll be growing into unhappiness until we get drama.
Size 2 means not working a Clam, Size 3 means not working a Gold, and let's assume that at Size 5 and Size 6, we gain 1 Unhappy person respectively.
In that case, we'd lose the ability to work a 5th and 6th square when growing past Size 4, so the temptation is to keep the City tiny and always have Happy citizens. But, if we keep the City tiny (whipping down to Size 2), it means not being able to work a Clam for a turn and not being able to work a Gold for a few turns.
I'm drawing a blank as to how to come up with the comparison math here, but intrinsically, it feels worthwhile to work the Resource squares as much as possible. I suppose that the math would involve looking at Foodbox sizes, meaning that we'd need to prove that the extra value coming from the Clam and the Gold would "beat" not working these squares and getting smaller Foodbox maximums from whipping. Without the Unhappiness, then (again, without doing any math), common wisdom suggests that it is totally worth working the Resource squares. With the added unhappiness, it gets closer, but I think that since these squares are really strong (5 Food + 2 Commerce and 3 Hammers + 7 Commerce), they still make up for "working" 2 Unhappy people at Sizes 5 and 6.
So, I guess that the take-away here is that if we have a situation where we only have enough Gold, for, say, 5 turns at a 40% Cultural Slider and 10 turns at a 20% Cultural Slider, then we might strongly consider running the lower-valued Cultural Slider for a longer time period if doing so allows us to keep working all of our Resource squares at the cost of having a couple of Unhappy citizens instead of working Coast squares, versus the alternative of running out of Gold for our Cultural Slider for some turns in the future where our Cities would have to stop working some of their Resource squares and might even begin to lose Food in their Foodboxes.
So, yes, if we have the Gold to support having 0 Unhappy people, great. However, if Gold remains tight, then it is worth considering having the odd Unhappy person if that citizen would have otherwise only worked a Coast square.
Of course, this fact means that if Gold is tight, we might need to look at our Cities on every turn (or use the F1 screen) to determine how high to set the Cultural Slider. After the Cultural Slider is set, we may need to check every City to ensure that it is working the correct squares. For example, Paris might auto-work a Cottage after having played with the Cultural Slider, so we shouldn't trust the City Governors to do their jobs properly.
Ragnar has Horseback Riding = War Elephants. I really think that we want to target his Ivory soon, particularly since he is in war mode.shyuhe said:And techs
We should also consider tech trade deals: will we want War Elephants of our own? If yes, then Horseback Riding might be in order. Will we want to build The Heroic Epic? If yes, then Literature might be in order.
I honestly thought that the plan was:shyuhe said:I think we should send all but 1 or 2 boats west to get ready to pick up the remnants of the Willem front so that they can advance towards Cathy. We need to start preparing to open up the eastern front as the west has more than enough troops to eliminate Willem and start on Cathy.
1. Capture Willem's Cities
2. Wait for Willem's Cities to come out of revolt
3. Aggressively whip Willem's Cities
4. Attack Cathy with our new troops from Willem's Cities plus other troops that we have built
Attacking her prematurely just means facing a ton more Longbowmen. Assuming that she hasn't switched Civics, we'll have a turn or two where she switches Civics to war-like ones, but after that small window of opportunity, she'll be able to whip out Longbowmen. I don't think that our current forces will be able to capture enough of her Cities to prevent this doomsday scenario.
So, I would prefer to wait to attack her until Willem's old Cities have been given a chance to whip up an army.
Unlike versus an AI that does not have Feudalism, we actually care A LOT about every turn that the war drags on versus Cathy. If another AI whips an Axeman or an Archer, who really cares. But each Longbowman from Cathy makes taking her Cities considerably costlier, so much so that we'd actually LOSE a lot more turns by attacking before we have decisive numbers than we would by waiting to attack until we can strike hard in the initial blow.
I'm not saying don't attack Cathy. I'm saying let's take the time to build up an overwhelming force against her--which may come by sea and by land--before we trigger war with her.
In the meantime, Ragnar has presented himself as a convenient and in some ways, a crucial target while we wait for the army to DECISIVELY destroy Cathy has been raised from Willem's Cities.
a) We're already at war with Ragnar
b) Ragnar has learned Horseback Riding and can field War Elephants
c) Ragnar appears to be currently beelining Monarchy--he probably still hasn't been doing any trading, but Mysticism and Polytheism must have been pretty cheap for him--what, a tech per turn or every 2 turns?
d) Once Ragnar adopts Hereditary Rule, Ragnar will start to love many of the AIs. Ragnar can trade Ivory if he loves an AI enough. In particular, without looking at the game, I recall him having a high level of liking Cathy, which will increase with Hereditary Rule. Do you really want Cathy to be fielding War Elephants when we have started an early war that drags on because we can't decisively take down her Cities with their Longbowmen quickly enough that she has plenty of time to build more Longbowmen and War Elephants?
e) Once Ragnar learns Monarchy, Ragnar has the second highest preference for researching Feudalism out of any of the AIs, which is the highest out of the AIs in our current game
f) War with Ragnar has broken our "blocking" of Resource trades. Recall that we were trading him a Fish Resource and a Clam Resource. I forget which one, but one of those was a Resource that HE DID NOT HAVE. Therefore, as soon as he likes an AI enough to be able to trade him Ivory, that AI can trade him his missing Seafood Resource and the trade will happen immediately. This trap was potentially set up intentionally, but even if it wasn't, it is a trap that can definitely see the dangerous spreading of War Elephants abroad
As a side note, I am not even worried about Willem's Ivory, as it is not connected and he probably doesn't even have a Worker there to connect it. Given that we are not using our Workers, I really don't want to keep a City like Willem's Ivory City, since it would just mean taking on a useless City with few or no good squares to work, as well as no nearby Workers to improve it. Willem does not even have Horseback Riding ANYWAY, while his Ivory City is probably unproductive enough to not be able to build many units, so taking out his Ivory City is of low priority, especially compared to taking-out Ragnar's Ivory City.
We do not necessarily have to push the war against Ragnar any further (for now) than capturing his sources of Ivory--or at a minimum one such source so that he can't trade one source--but it will take a good number of turns before Willem's Cities will be whipping units, so, with our fast-moving Galleons, we might very well have a case for taking our Ragnar's other Cities.
On that note, it would probably help to build a Pikeman, so that we could garrison Ragnar's Ivory City with a Maceman + a Pikeman (or even also build a Crossbowman plus a Pikeman), since in the time that it takes to capture this City, then destroy Willem's Ivory City, then get back on boats and decide whether to go for Cathy or for Ragnar's other Cities (only if we have the time window to take Ragnar's Cities), Ragnar could counter-attack the Ivory City, and he'd be most likely to counter-attack with Chariots, Horse Archers, or War Elephants, making that Pikeman a strong investment, as long as we have a second unit (like a Crossbowman or a Maceman) to help defend against attacking Axemen.
If we don't have the Hammers to build a Crossbowman, overflow Hammers plus some manually-invested Hammers might get us an Archer, which could be upgraded to a Crossbowman using Gold.