GO1 - The Tsarina

1. General Olaf
2. Yoshi <---
3. Mosher <--- dropped out
3. hoplitejoe <--- skipped
4. woopdeedoo <--- Just played
5. Toxicman007 <--- up
6. strijder20 <--- on deck
7. Dhoomstriker
 
Zzzzz.
I propose we skip Toxicman? I already sent him a PM, and he didn't reply.
 
I VMed him, and if he doesn't reply in the next 48 hrs, it's a skip.
 
In the meantime, I don't see why strijder20 can't put together a rough plan. Worst case, someone else plays out the plan for him... which isn't all that bad of a thing to do if you consider that I've been helping people to plan their turnsets for most of this game.
 
That's a good idea.
 
Haven't got time now yet - I will update in the weekend/Friday.
Plan is REXing, obviously, and pummeling small backwards nations. What else? :rolleyes:
 
Should have put a :sarcasm: in that post.
Dhoom, of course I read your splendid strategic revision :)
 

We seem to be not the only ones who have rexed… Poor Wang Kon. Exploration revealed he indeed had only 3 cities. By 1200 AD.
Is this Prince?


The thing next to Hannibal’s name is bad news for our little war… I considered going MT, skipping Engineering and waiting for war until Cuirassiers, but teched Engineering anyway later on.


I don’t want to use Mr. Engineer for a golden age… He is better at building the TM.
(Which is basically the same thing, but it just … feels better.)



So I readjust the arrangement in GP farm and run 7 specialists there, netting us a GP in 9 turns.


And this is why I didn’t use the GS for a golden age.



I normally wouldn’t have accepted this, but the Cossack being our UU and Cuirassiers already visible at the zenit, I do it anyway.



The still unknown Buddhists build a palace. Whatever. With our population, they won’t secretly snag a diplo victory &#61514;
Or wait, only converted population counts… Well, it’s still not very likely to happen.



Some completely useless wonder finishes. I should have stopped it’s production for failgold. Sorry! Well, it does give the denial-to-ai benefit and a little more score.



I’ll take that for trade routes which , thank you. It also reduced espionage costs, making all his cities visible and reveal a rather satisfying fact: his army is almost non-existant and I can’t spot a SoD.



We meet a non-factor, who hates us for trading with Cyrus.

And Hipatia, who looks surprisingly manly, gets born and triggers a GA. I switch to CS and hire some scientists. The golden age doubled our research output at break-even gold, from 250 to 500, and my scientists micro added another 250 beakers to it. We are soaring through the techs now.
I recommend we go Liberalism -> switch free speech (bureau is useless here anyway. Barely worth it’s upkeep) and free religion and take nationalism, then go MT and gunpowder. In the meanwhile, attack Hanny with the little stack in the northern city.
 
Save.
 

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Dhoom, you're up.
 
Nice work, strijder20! :goodjob:

Skip me, I have no Civ 4 access.

Horse-based units, while it is nice to have the odd one available, aren't really all that much use when almost all AI Cities can be captured by amphibious assault, so we'll probably still focus mostly on Maces + Trebs + Galleons.

Building Wonders for failure Gold or to completion means building far less units. Units, units, units, units. That's about all that we should be building in any of our mainland Cities at this point. This fact is the difference between early game wins and modern era wins. When you have a tech advantage, you want to set aside Wonder-building, set aside Building-building, and just spam units. From everywhere.

New Cities, however, should minimally be building a Granary and possibly a Lighthouse if they have Seafood Resources, so a Size-1 City that doesn't have a Granary but is building a Maceman is not really building the right thing. Nearly every other City should be producing units, though. Barracks can come later, after we've killed one AI.

Units, units, units, units, units... have I stressed it enough yet? ;)
 
OK, then, I'm up. I'll play over the weekend (in other words, probably tomorrow).
 
Why use Liberalism on Nationalism? Do we have any sort of competition for Liberalism? I find such a possibility to be highly unlikely. If the goal is to go for Military Tradition, why not save Liberalism for that tech?

If we don't want to run Bureaucracy (which seems weird since I recall having Cottages and an Academy in our capital, which almost certainly makes the Civic worth it), then perhaps we can run Vassalage... but then we'd need Feudalism, which we are trying to avoid getting in trade until all of the AIs already have it. Free Speech does not pay for itself since we have very few Towns and won't be getting many more (Farms are better for us here in most cases). We don't really need the Cultural doubling effect, so if Vassalage isn't available, sticking with Bureaucracy should work out well for us.

The trickiest part is that we don't really want to keep more than 3 Cities per island... keep the best 3 on an island and raze the rest (or capitulate the AI with its other Cities)... having more than 3 Cities on an island will be expensive due to Colonial Maintenance Costs... keeping a 4th City on an island will be far more expensive than will be running Bureaucracy.
 
Why use Liberalism on Nationalism? Do we have any sort of competition for Liberalism? I find such a possibility to be highly unlikely. If the goal is to go for Military Tradition, why not save Liberalism for that tech?

If we don't want to run Bureaucracy (which seems weird since I recall having Cottages and an Academy in our capital, which almost certainly makes the Civic worth it), then perhaps we can run Vassalage... but then we'd need Feudalism, which we are trying to avoid getting in trade until all of the AIs already have it. Free Speech does not pay for itself since we have very few Towns and won't be getting many more (Farms are better for us here in most cases). We don't really need the Cultural doubling effect, so if Vassalage isn't available, sticking with Bureaucracy should work out well for us.

The trickiest part is that we don't really want to keep more than 3 Cities per island... keep the best 3 on an island and raze the rest (or capitulate the AI with its other Cities)... having more than 3 Cities on an island will be expensive due to Colonial Maintenance Costs... keeping a 4th City on an island will be far more expensive than will be running Bureaucracy.

Last time I checked, using Liberalism on MT would require 7 turns of teching, and our GA is only 7 turns. We would miss out on the FR , and possible FS switch.
I microed a bit, though, so it may have changed.
Bureacracy is netting us a mere 22 commerce and 8.5 production per turn. In a golden age. The commerce goes through an average booster of 50%. Most cities have that. It's upkeep is 20 more than FS. I counted 5 towns, which is 10 commerce, which may be just enough to make the civic worth it. There are many more hamlets/villages being worked, though, and the AI lands will probably have some towns in it.
FR probably doesn't need explanation with us still in paganism.
That doesn't make the fourth city not worth it. A commerce focused city can easily pay for it's upkeep, as far as I know. Of course, there is no need to keep 6 or more cities, or to keep junk cities.
EDIT:
Some more remarks.

Don't settle Yoshi Port. It has 2 net food.

Keep the barb city. It has a fish.

We can bulb steel if we wish to do so - if you set all cities to wealth production for the entire length for the golden age, it would be achieved just after the golden age. This would mean self-teching Nationalism. We could use our cannons + maces to take Persepolis, the MoM city. Then use the TM rush-builded with a GE in Athens (Best production site atm, and GE hammers get boosted by population) to switch to FR (and FS?) and FM (Tech economics while in Golden Age). Use the GM + next GP popped thanks to golden age (remember to set GP farm to full scientists, we don't want a merchant as we can't start a GA with two merchants) to get another MoM golden age. As I discovered, golden ages boost our research with 100% atm, and if you count in the prod bonuses they are definitely worth it. We could then go Cuirassiers + cannons to take over the world.
 
Bureacracy is netting us a mere 22 commerce and 8.5 production per turn. In a golden age. The commerce goes through an average booster of 50%. Most cities have that. It's upkeep is 20 more than FS. I counted 5 towns, which is 10 commerce, which may be just enough to make the civic worth it. There are many more hamlets/villages being worked, though, and the AI lands will probably have some towns in it.
Okay, that argument is fair enough. However, it means that we want to focus on taking over AI Cities to make the switch really worth it. Build units, units, units, units, and more units. ;)


FR probably doesn't need explanation with us still in paganism.
True, Free Religion definitely tips the scale in favour of the early Liberalism (taking Nationalism with it). Fine by me.


That doesn't make the fourth city not worth it. A commerce focused city can easily pay for it's upkeep, as far as I know. Of course, there is no need to keep 6 or more cities, or to keep junk cities.
It's all relative. If we start taking over multiple AI islands, which is what we are set up to do if we can get those units built, then our Maintenance Costs are going to start going through the roof. They might not be too bad on Prince, but that fact doesn't mean that we should be developing bad habits, since I think that one of the goals was to improve the playing style of everyone in the game so that they could feel more comfortable playing on a higher difficulty than they normally do.

The third City on an island which does not contain:
a) Your Palace
OR
b) Your Forbidden Palace
OR
c) Versailles

already starts to costs you a reasonable amount in Colonial Maintenance Costs. The forth City costs a LOT in Colonial Maintenance Costs and actually also increases the Colonial Maintenance Costs of every other City on that island. Check it out yourself. Keeping a fourth City on an island thus very quickly stunts out research rate, as it means having to focus more of our Commerce into Gold, but we have only a few Gold-multiplying buildings (although I do remember whipping a few Markets at least), thereby reducing our return on every Commerce that we take in.

Basically, once you've kept that 4th City on an island, you'll want Courthouses in nearly every City on that island to make up for having kept that 4th City. If the 4th City has 17 or so population, then you might be able justify keeping it due to the fact that you can use a lot of excess population points to whip Courthouses, but even then the population points are focused in a single City instead of spread out amongst multiple Cities.

If keeping said City is the only way to get a unique Resource, it could be justified if said Resource lets many Cities empire-wide to grow 1 size larger, but here, we are Creative, so our borders will expand twice in newly-captured Cities within a reasonable timeframe (3 Culture per turn in Cities with a Religion in them under Paganism or Free Religion). Thus, I wouldn't worry much about missing Resources, as our 3 Cities per island should be able to get any such Resources within our borders quickly.

Yes, "3 Cities per island" is a general guideline and you can often find exception cases to just about any rule or guideline. However, it is a good guideline to get in the habit of following since far more often than not, keeping a 4th City on an island will cost you more than it gains you.


We can bulb steel if we wish to do so - if you set all cities to wealth production for the entire length for the golden age, it would be achieved just after the golden age. This would mean self-teching Nationalism. We could use our cannons + maces to take Persepolis, the MoM city.
Trebs work just as well as Cannons in many cases, due to the way that a Treb's bonus works. As long as we're fighting AI units inside of Cities (which we should be doing in most cases due to us being able to drop armies adjacent to AI Cities thanks to having Galleons), then the two unit types will be roughly the same.

At this point, we want our Hammers to go into unit-building, not Wealth-building. If we had a Great Merchant, then sure, we could use it to execute a Trade Mission for extra Gold. In fact, we could be running Merchant Specialists instead of Scientist Specialists in a City or two, such as our Great Person Farm, to try and generate a Great Merchant or two over time.

Spending our Hammers on Gold is more suitable for a situation when you are BEHIND technologically, such as what often happens on Deity level. We're far enough ahead that we want to focus almost all of our Hammers on units (with exceptions for Granaries and possibly Lighthouses where appropriate).

One less Barracks (i.e. I suggest skipping the building of Barracks until a bit later) means one more unit that can be thrown into battle. I'd rather have 5 more Macemen in a stack of 3 Macemen and 3 Trebuchets and lose 3 of those 5 Macemen in battle while capturing the City two turns after landing (bombard for one turn then attack) than to only have 3 Macemen and 3 Trebs each with 1 extra promotion but being unable to capture a City for about 10 turns.


(remember to set GP farm to full scientists, we don't want a merchant as we can't start a GA with two merchants)
Wait, WHAT??? We have a Great Merchant and Galleons? Well then we should be shipping him off to an overseas AI with a large-population City, as long as we have Open Borders with said AI. The City with The Temple of Artemis in it is probably a good bet, but any large-sized AI City should do the trick.

I'd rather have a couple of more Trade Missions from Great Merchants than run a 2-Great-Person Golden Age. If we really want such a Golden Age, though, we'll want to switch from running Scientist Specialists to other types of Specialists in multiple Cities. I personally wouldn't make it a priority unless General Olaf wants to do a lot of micromanagement and would just keep it simple by running a few Merchant Specialists in 2 Cities that might generate a Great Person before the end of the game.


As I discovered, golden ages boost our research with 100% atm
Which is fine, but what we want are units, units, and units. Units require Hammers, not Science. ;)

Once we finally start capturing the AIs' Cities, you'll find that your business model of staying at a 100% Science Rate is no longer sustainable using Golden Ages, thanks to our increased Maintenance Costs from owning said Cities. However, it might be sustainable due to running Great-Merchant-generated Trade Missions.


We could then go Cuirassiers + cannons to take over the world.
But why? Maces + Trebs + Galleons will be more than sufficient to take over the world. The higher in tech that we go, the more Hammers that each unit will cost, meaning less units.

As I understand it, there is at least one AI without Longbowmen even. The longer that you wait to go to war, the higher the techs that you will face from the AIs. Sure, we can have Cuirassiers and Cannons but then every AI will have Longbowmen and many will have Musketmen. Meanwhile, we would have even less units since each unit would cost more Hammers to produce. So, would we really come out ahead?

Sure, once we get Steel, we can upgrade any Trebs that survived into Cannons, but even doing so is not a priority. The priority is attacking the AIs before THEY advance much in tech level.

As soon as we research Gunpowder, the easier we make it for the AIs to research and trade it around themselves, so the more that we focus on tech, the faster the AIs will catch up in techs, too.

On the other hand, the more that we focus on building big stacks of units (even unpromoted units), the faster the AIs will lose their biggest and best Cities and the slower they will tech.

So: Hammers into units.
 
OK, then, I'm up. I'll play over the weekend (in other words, probably tomorrow).
Make that tomorrow, starting today, sorry.
 
No, Dhoom, we don't have a GM, sadly. If someone switches our GP farm to full merchants, it will pop in 6 turns, though.
I was referring to the Economics merchant.
We aren't that far away from MT - Gunpowder, only about 10 turns, so we could just tech that while already starting our offensive, right? It wouldn't even lock macemen. And cuirassiers will reduce casualties taken -> more units.
If some AI manages to get a knight SoD, maces and trebs won't be of much use.
I don't know what's best - cannons or trebuchets. With cannons we'll be able to bombard cities down fast (and teching Chemistry already gives us Frigates for the same purpose) which will greatly reduce casualties taken and thus results in more units.
All AIs we know don't have Edu or Guilds, so don't worry about making it easier for them to catch up.
I suggest taking Cyrus before Hannibal, as Hannibal is a puny 5 city-state while Cyrus's economy is probably on the way of recovery.
And Golden ages are still a must have, in my opinion : more production, and more gold ( we could do a quick switch to US and rush-buy all our troops).
 
As long as our Hammers are going into units instead of buildings (except for Granaries + Lighthouses), then it doesn't really matter what units we build.

We just need stacks of units to land all at once. Throw in the odd Pikeman for each stack and there will be no worries about Knights.


The only way that we can screw up is to attack when we don't have large enough stacks of units to take down their Cities quickly.

The longer that we dilly-dally after declaring war, the more stacks of 6, 7, 8, and more units we'll see defending Cities.

4 Trebs, 1 Pike, and 7 Maces will take down even the best defended AI City after landing and optionally bombarding for 1 turn before attacking, while smaller stacks can go up against other AI Cities.

Whether those Maces are Maces or Cuirassiers will not make a difference, as long as we have that level of numbers. The only way to failboat is to go in with 8 or less units per City and hope to win.

Survivability does NOT matter on this type of map because we can strike at multiple AI Cities at once.

Going after Hannibal next is still a solid play because we don't have a large enough force built up to go after a larger AI, while his area is still close to ours, allowing us to have potential efficiencies like stacking fully-loaded Galleons just inside of our Cultural Borders (to keep Unit Supply Costs down) until a turn or two before we launch the war.

Casualties are fine and are expected--we just need sufficient units to defeat their major Cities after 2 turns of war. It doesn't matter if we lose a bunch of units since we don't have to plod our troops through land to reach other Cities--almost all Cities are reachable from the start of declaring war.

You only really need to worry about massive enemy forces being built up if you stay at war for a long time, which tends to happen on a land-based map. Here, since we can strike at all of their major production centres and capture or raze them within 2 turns, there will be no build-up of AI units.


Sure, we can keep on teching, sure we can take Nationalism with Liberalism so as to open up Free Religion.

However, when we take Nationalism, we'll also be able to run the Nationalism Civic. Why not run that instead? Then we can draft a ton of Maces really quickly. Getting a TON of units in a short period of time is our weak point. Nationalism will save us in this regard. It won't matter that units won't have any promotions--we just need large numbers of units. Galleons, Trebs, and the odd Pikeman can be manually built while a ton of Macemen can be drafted each turn.

So, Civics on the last turn of the Golden Age (don't let the Golden Age run out before switching Civics) can be:
Police State, Nationalism, Slavery (for whipping buildings in captured Cities), Decentralization (since we won't have another Economic Civic choice), and Free Religion.

Then we just need to remember to draft Macemen each turn up to the maximum amount allowed (probably 3 per turn but sometimes 4 per turn are allowed to be drafted--the map size will determine the maximum amount allowed to be drafted per turn). The key points for drafting are:
1. The Cities in which we draft must be at Size 6 or higher
AND
2. The Cities in which we draft will get 3 Unhappiness per draft operation for the same length of time as whipping, so we can't keep doing it in the same City over and over too much
AND
3. Each turn you need to do the drafting--if you forget a turn, you can't "get back" those drafting attempts on the following turn
AND
4. Drafting from Cities that are working Coast squares are far better choices than Cities which are working Mines--i.e. If a City has production coming from Mines, don't draft away said citizens, but if a City has used up all of its Mines and has started to work Coast squares, then sure, draft there if we have 3 or more excess Happiness
AND
5. Drafting is weirdly implemented, since pressing the Draft icon will take you out of the City screen, so you'll need to remember to enter the City screen for a different City to draft the next unit until you have drafted the maximum amount of units that can be drafted per turn
AND
6. Don't expect to be drafting from AI Cities since we need to have 10% of the Culture be ours... thus, whipping Granaries and Courthouses and possibly Lighthouses in captured Cities would be what we'd build in them, followed possibly by Pikes/Archers/Longbowmen if we have them to act as permanent City defenders


BAM, drafting will help to give us our instant army, which is exactly what we need right now.
 
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