RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

Who's next, me?

I love it if the AI I want to attack declares on me. This usually means their units are out in the open, waiting for me to pick them off, and doesn't provoke bad boy-points for warmongering from the other AIs.

I'm a bit concerned about Monty but we don't have the luxury to not go all-out on Oda. The most important thing is beating his army before he can upgrade to swordsmen. I wonder what he got as his first medieval tech, but it's definitely bad news as it's most likely either pikemen or crossbowmen. Another reason to take him out quickly. The rough terrain around Tokyo is actually good because our horsemen don't get combat penalties when defending on it but it's not so large to prevent us from attacking the city in one turn.

Let's talk a bit about strategy. In the last days I formed an opinion that ICS does not want culture buildings. We can buy a few city states to pick up the policies we need for happiness (Liberty up to Meritocracy and the base Freedom policy) and ignore the rest completely. The advantage is that this frees resources for production and research, and spiraling out of control will be much faster this way. The policies that would be worthwhile (in the order tree) come too late to be really relevant so we can afford just skipping them if it buys us crucial early-game advantage in my opinion. However, this is something I'd like to get your opinions on - if you all vote for taking culture I'll take one for the team but I'm convinced ignoring culture is the stronger strategy.

Expansion-wise we need to stay compact for defensiveness. I would puppet all the Japanese cities even though they're not in our lattice except for Kyoto for land-grabbing purposes (as they nicely cut off our peninsula). I'd like to settle another city on the hill behind the river south-west of Istanbul. This city would serve as a potential stronghold against Montezuma, who will attack us probably sooner rather than later, and as a connection to preserve our assets in Helsinki who are obviously incapable of defending themselves.
 
There's just one problem, and that is Montezuma's hostility, and his proximity to Helsinki. It may yet turn out that our long-term investment in Helsinki was too bold.

If you take Japan out quick enough you may be in a good position to continue with Monte. War will be inevitable anyhow, and Helsinki would be a good staging platform.
 
1 cultural CS will give at least 6 monuments' worth of culture towards SP, I think building monuments is just inefficient when playing at 3-hex spacing unless we need border expansion somewhere specific, and going colloseum -> lib -> market is better
 
Wow, very exciting turns there! :eek: It looks like the maritime alliance indeed paid off very well, and we were still able to create enough gold to rush that third horseman. At this point, I'm not too terribly worried about Japan; I think we have good odds to start taking their cities soon, unless Nobunaga starts showing up with mass pikes. But I'm very worried about Montezuma declaring war on Helsinki/us while we're preoccupied with Japan. I'm... not sure what we can do about that, other than hope for the best.

In other news:

- Like the idea to skip culture completely and get it from cultured city states, further proving how broken some of this game's core mechanics are.
- Agree that we should try to get a settler out soon for a third city, probably after the current round of builds. (We'll have wines soon for another 5 happiness.)
- Think we should probably get Archery tech soonish, to give us the ranged unit option.
- Don't forget to adopt a social policy of some kind ASAP, whether it's the worker speed one (probably what we want) or the start of the Honor tree.

Roster:
Sulllla
luddite (pi-r8)
SevenSpirits
alpaca <<< UP NOW
uberfish <<< on deck
 
haha that worked out perfectly! We get all the advantages of selling gold to Japan and declaring war, without any diplomatic penalty to our reputation!

that is worrying that montezuma is hostile. I'm surprised by that- I thought the "hostile" status was triggered by him having a much bigger army than you, and with 3 horseman that should be enough for him to give us a little respect.

On the plus side, Helsinki has city walls and a river in perfect position to help it defend. Monty should have trouble attacking that city.

uberfish- what rough terrain? the two tiles above Tokyo are open terrain.
 
Who's next, me?

I love it if the AI I want to attack declares on me. This usually means their units are out in the open, waiting for me to pick them off, and doesn't provoke bad boy-points for warmongering from the other AIs.

I'm a bit concerned about Monty but we don't have the luxury to not go all-out on Oda. The most important thing is beating his army before he can upgrade to swordsmen. I wonder what he got as his first medieval tech, but it's definitely bad news as it's most likely either pikemen or crossbowmen. Another reason to take him out quickly. The rough terrain around Tokyo is actually good because our horsemen don't get combat penalties when defending on it but it's not so large to prevent us from attacking the city in one turn.

Let's talk a bit about strategy. In the last days I formed an opinion that ICS does not want culture buildings. We can buy a few city states to pick up the policies we need for happiness (Liberty up to Meritocracy and the base Freedom policy) and ignore the rest completely. The advantage is that this frees resources for production and research, and spiraling out of control will be much faster this way. The policies that would be worthwhile (in the order tree) come too late to be really relevant so we can afford just skipping them if it buys us crucial early-game advantage in my opinion. However, this is something I'd like to get your opinions on - if you all vote for taking culture I'll take one for the team but I'm convinced ignoring culture is the stronger strategy.

Expansion-wise we need to stay compact for defensiveness. I would puppet all the Japanese cities even though they're not in our lattice except for Kyoto for land-grabbing purposes (as they nicely cut off our peninsula). I'd like to settle another city on the hill behind the river south-west of Istanbul. This city would serve as a potential stronghold against Montezuma, who will attack us probably sooner rather than later, and as a connection to preserve our assets in Helsinki who are obviously incapable of defending themselves.

I agree with this. Meritocracy and Freedom are such strong social policies that you don't really need anything else. Order is nice, but it's really unnecessary, especially with the Forbidden palace. And yeah, definitely puppet the Japanese cities for a while to block off the peninsula. We can burn them down and replace them with our own once we have a little more breathing room.

I don't think we should settle any city west of Istanbul, though. That would annoy Monty even more, perhaps provoking a DoW. Instead, I'd suggest north to grab the cotton, and clearing out the forest west of Istanbul so that our horsemen can run freely. If possible, station 1 horsemen in Helsinki territory to protect it.

edit- for the war, what about a direct strike on Kyoto? It looks like all 3 of our horseman could attack it at the same time, and then Nobunaga would be cut in half.
 
1 cultural CS will give at least 6 monuments' worth of culture towards SP, I think building monuments is just inefficient when playing at 3-hex spacing unless we need border expansion somewhere specific, and going colloseum -> lib -> market is better

You can do the math on it pretty easily. giving the cultural CS 250 gold will buy us 30 influence, which will extend the alliance for 20 turns. So that's 12.5 gold/turn. In return, we get 12 culture/turn, right? We can get the same from just 6 monuments, at a cost of only 6 gpt. However the monuments don't give us resources or military aid, and we have to spend time building them. So, if we have a city with good production and nothing important to build, monuments are useful, but we don't need to build them everywhere.
 
[\DELURK]Just curious, but did you work the unmined gold tile from turns 18-31? If not, you could have saved 50 gold as this tile became workable when the 2nd city was founded.

I mention this only because I think it reinforces a few issues and goes against some common misconceptions:
1. ICS settling is strong because each city gets 7 workable tiles when settled and can share to existing cities. Buying some or all of those tiles would be cost prohibitive.
2. ICS is great because that 2 space road is fast/cheap to establish a trade route (which has no modifiers for distance traveled (?!))
3. Buying tiles early often isn't the best solution -- I think a lot of people buy tiles too often when they should instead build a settler and a second city and save the money to buy off city states.

This game looks like a great setup because in a lot of ways you have yet to do anything "cheesy" or even game-breaking. Instead its just a series of logical and relatively simple decisions (for experienced civ players). The interesting test will be confirming that you can consistently out-war the AI once they've reached the medieval age and start spamming longswordsmen (and longbowman *shiver*) at you.
[\LURK]
 
Having caught up with the thread I'll also add that Japan's performance so far is one of the best I've ever seen. I've seen Diety civs expand to 3 cities or build the pyramids or build up large armies or declare war relatively early, but never all of these.

And yet he'll still die...because horsemen can attack and retreat :crazyeye:
 
Having caught up with the thread I'll also add that Japan's performance so far is one of the best I've ever seen. I've seen Diety civs expand to 3 cities or build the pyramids or build up large armies or declare war relatively early, but never all of these.

And yet he'll still die...because horsemen can attack and retreat :crazyeye:

Yeah this will change soon, though. When you see my write up you'll see a total screw-up Oda made of the tactical game :lol:

Just fixing up the screens for you guys.
 
Just curious, but did you work the unmined gold tile from turns 18-31? If not, you could have saved 50 gold as this tile became workable when the 2nd city was founded.

Really good question here. I can't speak for luddite, but I know that I was working the gold tile for my last few turns, and I'm pretty sure that that continued into the next turnset. We were building a settler, after all, so food didn't matter. Buying the tile was also probably worth it because it allowed us to mine the gold faster with our worker, thereby allowing us to sell it for the big 300 gold payout sooner. However, your overall point about ICS grabbing tiles for free is 100% correct, and another one of its major benefits. Pack that tight grid and you should almost never have to spend money on buying tiles, saving you a lot of wasted money. I've found myself buying tiles less and less with each game I play, largely because my cities are getting closer and closer together.

Looking forward to that alpaca turn writeup too! :D Everyone is doing a great job of illustrating their turns with pictures. This could become a famous thread, if we don't get ourselves killed.
 
[\DELURK]Just curious, but did you work the unmined gold tile from turns 18-31? If not, you could have saved 50 gold as this tile became workable when the 2nd city was founded.
Yeah I was working it. I remember I had to manually select it, because the governor wanted to work food tile. The liberty bonus for settlers, only applies to production, not food, so you have to manually select hill tiles so that the AI doesn't steal production away from you.
 
I'm pretty sure that would be infamous :mischief:.

Darrell

lurker's comment: It may become famous, but it will not be like the original RB1, as it won't be famous for showcasing a strong plan in a good game, but famous for showcasing how broken a game is. That makes me :(, as I really had high hopes for this one.
 
RB3

Hey guys, first succession game for me. I'm confident I won't screw up too badly, but I can't guarantee there won't be screw-ups ;)

Click the images to see a full-sized version. I added target arrows to some of them to detail the attacks as they might be interesting for players who are looking for some tactical guidance. They are colored in the order of movement, red is first, then blue, then green and teal is last.


Turn 55

Nothing much to do. I picked Citizenship as our second SP and moved the scout a tile back. Oda totally screwed up with his warriors, one moved in the ZoC of our horseman and one attacked the horseman standing on a hill there. He also moved an archer into nice hit&retreat range.

Napoleon offers a pact of secrecy against Alexander which I declined.


Turn 56 - Oda's fail



I decide to unravel the line of Oda's units from the north. The archer is on rough terrain but archers are weak enough that our horseman should be able to finish him off with a flanking bonus even though he's hurt. The move reveals another warrior in Tokyo. I decide to move onto Kyoto next turn, two of our horsemen have a promotion ready to fix them up after the attack and the third one will have after he attacked. I would like to heal the scout but decide I need that intel so move him east.



We'll get Calendar in two turns and I want to improve the wine resources ASAP so one of the workers pre-builds a turn into another farm and will move onto wine the next turn. The other will do the same on the hill, then move and immediately start working the turn after. I like farming a bit for these plains cities because I think it's better to grow a bit faster at this stage and working farmed hills with Civil Service is a no-brainer. Greece and Siam signed a research agreement.


Turn 57 - alpaca's fail



The next turn reveals an archer and a warrior. I will take the warrior but the archer has an excellent position so instead of attacking him I will have to bite the bullet and ignore him. Our horsemen reveal another archer, Oda sure has a lot of those. He offers a white peace but I refuse. Unfortunately I did something stupid and had one of our horsemen has to end his turn next to Kyoto so I had to use up his instant healing promotion

Napoleon asks for war against Augustus, which I refuse. We have our hands full with Japan and Aztec and we don't even know where this "Rome" is anyways.


Turn 58 - Counting the days



Calendar. Finally, we'll soon be rolling in cash! Also, we get another horse and a warrior. I build two plantations and then stop a bit to think. Monaco is getting yellow so Augustus is beating them up quite soundly - he'll be another painful opponent for us. Unfortunately we're out of horses and since I don't particularly like any of the other options, I settle on settlers.



Kyoto fell, I will puppet it. Got a worker out of the deal, too. Unfortunately, one of our horsemen is red with 29 xp... so he'll have to heal a bit. You can see two archers there which I will probably be able to pick off the next turn. My next target is Tokyo. Osaka doesn't have a lot of production and I feel like taking Tokyo first is better because our newly built horsemen will be able to reinforce our little army. I make sure our horses stay out of archer range and move the scout a bit, maybe he can pick off a worker next turn.

Now to decide our research path. I can see three options: The first is to go for Archery and Mathematics for some ranged defense and the Courthouse. The second is to research Writing for scientists ASAP. The third is trapping to get some trading posts up and running, especially in our puppets. I want a follow-up build for my two settlers so I go for Archery. Afterwards I think we should go for Construction because we will need to start building Colosseums.

As you can see, Kyoto has the Pyramids, Cotton and Silver (Cotton unimproved as of yet so the medieval tech wasn't Theology, either). Tokyo also has silver. Since both of our cities are building settlers, I sell the silver to Augustus. We'll get a second one soon anyways and money now is better than money later. All the roads in Kyoto cost a lot of maintenance, which is annoying.

Genoa wants us to kill Monaco. Looks like Monaco is the hate object of all the other city states.

Ramesses offers a pact of cooperation which I tentatively accept. Oda, meanwhile,


Turn 59 - Oda's second fail



Luckily for us, Oda Nobunaga decided that Osaka is better than Tokyo because it's his new capital and offers us a number of juicy targets: Workers plus military units. Maybe I can get our horseman through without healing! I go for maximum flanking bonus against the grassland archer and...

... ah, yes. Horsemen can beat archers even if they have just one hit point. I admit it was a bit of a gamble but that horse would have been unusable for at least five turns if I hadn't tried it. The warrior is a problem, though, because attacking the tile would leave us vulnerable to attack from Tokyo so I simply ignore him, expecting him to move back to Tokyo the next turn. Despite my previous thinking, I will go for Osaka now because Oda so stupidly sacrificed his archers. We have enough workers for a long time, too.


Turn 60 - Always count on the stupidity of the AI



Well look at that: Another worker. For me? Aww shucks, thank you Oda my mortal enemy and unworthy adversary. And right on our way to Osaka, too. Speaking of which, Osaka is being harassed by a barbarian Brute. Har har.



Osaka has another worker so I decide to sell one since we're losing money already. They have nothing very useful to build, either. Thanks to the Pyramids & Citizenship combo, our vineyards are already improved. I look for buyers and find a vict... um I mean friend in Rome who have a fairly low score but a lot of money. Ramkhamhaeng has enough money for a research agreement and philosophy. I don't take it because I feel like we don't want to risk picking up Bronze Working any time soon with our puppets.

It may make sense to spend the money on Brussels but I'm afraid that when Caesar beats Monaco he will get more influence than we do and our money will be wasted. Brussels has gold so we could keep selling our own and use Brussels' but for now I opt not to spend. A colosseum is only 680 gold after all.

Osaka shoots at the brute, by the way. I think Oda wants to be beaten senseless... or already is.


Turn 61 - Cleaning up Osaka



Monaco was beaten as you can see but I think I over-evaluated the influence swing that would yield to Augustus. I will ally them at the end of the turn. I like to gift them a full compliment of 1000 shiny pieces of currency so I'll wait to see how much Osaka yields and sell another wine if necessary. That city state alliance will be useful to grab Meritocracy and, later, freedom, so I hope they will be our allies for a while. Who knows, they might also be useful against Monty?

Our scout captures yet another worker near Tokyo. He's in shooting range now but it won't do more than one or two damage, which is well worth it for a worker (or 20 gold if we sell it).



The Brute moved into range of Kyoto so he will offer another target for a promotion-yielding horseman training. I will send a worker up to improve our new silk and already sent one down for our cotton.



I wonder what this is. Crop circles? Looks like Alexander is up to no good and doing occult magic!

I stupidly removed one of the roads near Kyoto last turn to save some money but I'll rebuild it because I figured connecting Tokyo to Istanbul will turn a profit if the other two cities are connected, too. Osaka has another two horses which I'm going to improve soon. Our army is ready to vanquish Japan the very next turn and I hit "End Turn" with trepidation.


Turn 62 - Warmonger's delight

I'm a happy panda. Not only do we research Archery but Napoleon declares war on Augustus. This probably means Rome's legions will be occupied with someone else for a while and aren't going to bother us. Yay for Nappy the conqueror! Tokyo attacks our scout for 3 damage and 2 xp, which I'm happy to take for the worker we got out of the deal (and it saved our warrior from being attacked).



Sure enough, the last Japanese stronghold falls and Oda surrenders his hair to us. Oh, no, sorry he surrendered it to baldness and just bowed.



You know what? I forgot to do what I planned to because of all the writing and didn't ally Brussels last turn. This is rectified now but costs us 8 culture. My bad, sorry guys. Brussels doesn't reveal anything much but I'm happy to see Helsinki built a spearman on top of their two archers to defend themselves.



Ramkhamhaeng entered the Medieval. Kyoto builds a granary, not bad but not very useful, either. Tokyo has two horses that we can put into additional horsemen if needed.

You see these horsemen? Except for the one north-east of Tokyo they all have another promotion left. This puts us in very good shape should Alex or, more likely, Monty decide to attack us.

Technology-wise, I decide to push Construction back for another five turns in favour of Trapping. Our ultra-fast workers will run out of things to do soon and spamming trade posts will keep them occupied for a while.



It's a bit hard to see but Istanbul claimed that wheat tile, which is useful to get another two food. I will put our army into position on our western border when they are healed, poised to strike against Oda. The one without a promotion will go to Osaka as garrison, I don't trust this Alexander fella one bit.

Ramkhamhaeng asks us to declare war on Alexander. Since Alex is not yet openly hostile, I refuse politely. Rome and Egypt enter the medieval era.


Turn 63 - Peace at last



Let's see how long it will last. 'Stanbul finishes its settler. I consider where to settle for a while and then decide to take a break for an hour or two to do some work, my deliberations are to be found in the following paragraphs (this is the new session in case that is logged, I needed my CPU for simulations so I switched off the game). One option would be this tile between Tokyo and Istanbul. It has one wheat and a bit of river and would be useful to claim tiles for our capital, but on the downside it is close to Monaco and will likely tick off Augustus.

Down to the south-east of the land-formerly-known-as-Japan there are some slightly more interesting tiles but that would surely annoy Alexi and Ram, so that would be the "suicide now, pretty please!" option. Instead, I think we should look to the inside of our land.

There is another source of gold just north of Osaka. It is also close to Alex, though, so we might want to decide to save it for later and buy a tile from Osaka when we have Mathematics instead, to block him from settling there. Far out north, there's another source of cotton next to a river. Normally I wouldn't even consider it but since it looks like this will be our peninsula, I'm not at all averse to settling a bit further out to keep some barbarians from going Goth on us. North-east, near the coast, there's another horses and some seafood as well as cattle.

Lastly, we could also settle somewhere between our existing cities, which will save on road maintenance and is the option I prefer. The wine resource is in our lattice and would give us a cash injection. We could then proceed to settle a city between that city, Tokyo and Kyoto, minimizing our land (and score!) and lattice defects. This is what I decide to do after my break, unless I see things differently then - 'coz, hey, it's ICS baby!



I set most of our troops to heal, send the settler towards one of the designated spaces, reorganize so that Istanbul will start growing again while building a horseman. I then took a look at the demographics screen as is customary for me to do after each war and look what I saw: Montezuma had the smallest military forces of the world! So we don't have to fear an attack from him, and, even better, can decide to stage one of our own. Alex has the largest military, though, which is bad.


Turn 64

Siam cancels our pact of cooperation because Rammy "can't overlook your warmongering". Oh well. Our money troubles should be somewhat alleviated by finishing the road to Tokyo this turn. We have Cotton now and Silk soon. I'm also hooking up another wine so I'll sell one. Unfortunately, except for Siam who won't pay a lot now because of our conquest and Rome, who already get wine from us, nobody has money. I decide to wait a few turns, this is deity after all so somebody should get some money soon. Montezuma greeted me with "Hello again, my friend" when I checked if he already has wine, which was weird seeing he's still hostile to us.



My Little Pony starts on yet another horseman because our military is still too frail for my taste, especially considering Alexander's large army which means I don't like being the easiest target.


Turn 65



I found Edirne. If luddite is allowed freaky names, so am I! Ayshe's Vineyard it is. For want of something more useful to build I settle on another monument. I check again for buyers and settle on Monty for 125 gold plus 5 gold per turn. I wanted to sell him wine before he hooks up his own source and I think we'll go to war with him soon. I sell another one to France for 255 + 1 gpt.

Trade got us out of our small financial crisis and we'll soon get that cash starting to roll in for real. I send our scout to scout out the Aztecs. I don't want to send a horseman because I know the deity AI to be paranoid and become afraid of a single military scout in their vicinity.



I switch around a few tiles between MLP, now size 4, and Istanbul so that the latter will grow a little more quickly.

After the end turn, somebody built the Oracle. I guess it's Siam because they were real early to Philosophy but am not sure of course.


Turn 66 - Monument Builders



Trapping is finished. I hook up another wine but I'll start researching towards Construction now. The silk we'll get in a few turns is only going to carry us so far so we're going to need those colosseums some time soon.

I found Edirne again and this time keep the name. It will also build a monument - remember, that early culture is still something we need, we're just not going to build monuments once we really start expanding. There's also nothing very worthwhile available to build as our army is already going to be large enough to cost some serious cash with the two new Horsemen I'm building. I could build scouts to gift them to Helsinki but I think at the moment the Monuments are still useful.

I'm also going to start building some roads to Ayshe's Vineyard and Edirne now.


Turn 67 - Gangbang



Uh-Oh. Looks like Ramkhamhaeng is not the only one concerned about our warmongering. Legions and Hoplites are definitely bad news. Guess they had a secret agreement to take our head. I call off the war preparations against Montezuma as we'll have our hands full just surviving and scout towards Monaco instead.



Luckily the attack was not only unprovoked but also unprepared (which is why I didn't anticipate it) so we'll have a few times to move the units to defensive positions and bring our workers to safety if necessary. Both the Silk and Ayshe's Vineyard are now hooked up. I will rework a few farms to trading posts around our puppets to prevent them from growing out of control. The scout you see will most likely be free xp for our horseman in Osaka soon.

We got Silver and Wine back from Augustus. Napoleon entered the Medieval era. I am vastly disappointed in him because of his inability to keep our back free from Rome.


Turn 68

Still nobody has money! I sell Silver to Ramesses anyways for 208 + 2/turn. It is also possible to trade wine for ivory, and I decide to do that. This is more of a strategic trade than really needing the extra happiness. We'll need it in 30 turns, and we should be able to renew the contract then. If we don't sign it now, chances are the ivory will go to somebody else. Also, Siam still refuses to pay proper sums.

Meanwhile, Monty entered the Medieval, somebody built the Great Wall and our puppets are growing like there's no tomorrow.



Scouting near Monaco doesn't reveal anything conclusive but I don't want to push an attack at this point. Defending against two deity AIs is not a mean feat so I'd rather take a defensive stance for the time being. I do see another Roman settler, though, which I will try to catch before he can found a city, unless that happens the next turn.




Turn 69 (1240 BC)

Masonry is finished, Caesar founded Neapolis and signed peace with Napoleon. There's a warrior and two archers near Monaco, another warrior near Neapolis and somewhere in between I thought I saw another one flash up shortly.



It was Alexander who built the Great Wall. No sign of troops from him yet. I decide to end my 15 turns one turn early to debate tactics with you. The good news is that Augustus either doesn't have iron working yet or, more likely, no available sources of it. So his warriors are still warriors.

I feel like we might want to press an attack against him to make sure we wipe them out before he can upgrade them. There's also the question of liberating Monaco for huge influence points.



Our army is in good shape, our economy is humming, we have a decent cash stockpile and our score is rising. All things considered, it looks like we handled things fairly well so far.

To uberfish!
 

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Very well done. :D

Well written and informative.
 
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