ALC Game #23: America/Lincoln

Der Graf said:

[convince]

You WILL get a -2 diplo demerit from everyone else for razing a Holy City. No matter if the religion has spread to another city or is anyones state religion.
And these -2 will stay for the rest of the game, there's no way to compensate.

[/convince]

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Is that from looking at the code? I've razed Holy Cities before without any penalties. I remember it was a problem if it was the AIs state religion, not otherwise.

vicawoo: Yes, it's "pick religion".

And I also agree with patagonia's advice. Aside from building markets for gold and merchant slots currency will also let you simply build gold. It may prove useful if you manage to take a lot of Monty's cities really fast. Great round and keep up the good work!

Hey guys I've been following the ALC's for a while and thought I'd finally post. These are great and have really helped my game. I only play on Noble/Prince so go easy on me.

Great war against HC. I'd vote for accepting his peace terms and taking those techs off his hands before you wipe him from the earth.

While Monty does have you boxed in from expanding to the north it works both ways. He can't get anymore land to the south and it appears that Zara has the coast controlled on his continent. I would say wait some time on the war with Monty as you tech ahead of him and annihilate him with maces/x-bows. Without anywhere to expand he won't grow all that powerful tech-wise and if he does DoW on you park some of ur forces on a wooded hill and ur border cities. We all know he'll lose an entire SoD rather than realize he's beaten and pull back to fight another day.

As an American I would love to see you claim Manifest Destiny as you push to the western ocean and take all that was once Native American land. (If it were Sitting Bull it'd be even more accurate)

One question. You guys talk about switching tiles between two close cities...How do I do that? There are times when I find I want one city working the tile and it appears unavailable to it, instead showing up in the BFC of the other city.

Polobo said:

We are not currently at war with Monty and since it is trade there will be no required peace for either party.

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Sisiutil had previously negotiated a peace treaty with Monty. I'm not sure when it will wear off. My point was to do the tech trades and use the remaining "no-war" time to capture the barb cities and get in position to get Monty's clam/wine/FP city west of Washington.

One question. You guys talk about switching tiles between two close cities...How do I do that? There are times when I find I want one city working the tile and it appears unavailable to it, instead showing up in the BFC of the other city.

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Open up the city screen in the city that you want to work the shared tile. Now click on the shared tile, even though it is greyed out. That will force the city to work it, and take it from the other city.

This is most often done with food tiles, when one city is stagnated and the other can use the food, or with production/commerce tiles when one city has whipped down its population and isn't able to use the shared tile.

IMHO, this is a lot of extra work, but some folks swear by it. I typically just like to have shared forest tiles for the extra health, if anything. I'm still getting over my anti-overlap prejudice.

@ DerGraf, you only get the diplo penalty if that is their state religion.
Also the tech trades lead to WFYBTA and no they don't make him the most advanced. Hatty has currency and zara has MC and aesthetics.
@Sis, I agree with Patagonia with regards to getting the 4xp for a GG then settling him for the boosted exp.
@Scarredman Hatty's chariot is probably scouting the land. she is +7 with monty so probably not going to war with him anytime soon. They share a religion and both are running hatty's fav civic OR so they are going to be friendly with each other soon.
Techwise I would get construction. War with Monty is inevitable. Cats would be a handy dandy thing to have. Speaking of war with monty, adopting Hatty's fav civic OR would be a handy thing to do. If you get her to "Friendly" then your eastern borders should be fairly secure. And i think Friendly negates the wfyabta. And the fav civic will negate the diplohit for DoW on Monty. As you are both Buddist he may not declare for a while and you need to get rid of that city W of washington so you can resettle on the wine.

Thanks Slobberin.

Sisiutil said:

I think the reason I usually don't is because I can have a Medic III Chariot easily available after the first GG, but a Woodsman III/Leadership/Medic III Axe takes a lot longer. So yes, it will have slightly better healing rates, but I'd rather have pretty darn good rapid healing rates ASAP. The earliest wars are the most crucial ones, and the toughest. I'd rather have my units healing rapidly during those wars rather than during later ones.

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You're Charismatic in this game though, and a chariot Medic III doesn't heal better than a warrior/spear-/axeman Woody III + Medic I. It's four promotions versus five (if you don't take Leadership yet), and the latter keeps improving for future wars.

(And in games featuring the Khmer, you don't have to worry about their UU.)

Mesousa said:

You're Charismatic in this game though, and a chariot Medic III doesn't heal better than a warrior/spear-/axeman Woody III + Medic I. It's four promotions versus five (if you don't take Leadership yet), and the latter keeps improving for future wars.

(And in games featuring the Khmer, you don't have to worry about their UU.)

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I prefer a scout/explorer. They can't get woodsmanIII but are never the "best defender". If they are then you're screwed anyway.

Whoah, Sis. 3 rounds in 4 days? You're not giving teh peanut gallery enough time to tear your strat to pieces. I think you're suffering from post-protective syndrome, so just let that inner barbarian out to play. Great job putting the screws to Huayna, BTW. Now lets hope that first GG is named Grant and not George "WATB" McClelland. And hope the second one is Sherman.

I think you should just take math from HC (if he'll give it), then wipe him out after 10 turns and gear up for the big war with Monty (who's overextending himself with that rex) Const/curr/hbr for cats/phants, find a good forested hill and let him suicide his stack, then take as much as your economy will handle and "Sherman" the rest. Good luck!

We need more civics changes. I am used to 6-7 civics changes per round in ALC's.

mweins29 said:

As an American I would love to see you claim Manifest Destiny as you push to the western ocean and take all that was once Native American land. (If it were Sitting Bull it'd be even more accurate)

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Surely you mean "love" as in "irony that is too sweet" rather than "love" as in a projection of pride for a process of systematic thievery, murder, and enslavement..

He'll surely expand westward as part of a winning strategy. Unlike the Aztecs of CIV IV, the Native Americans weren't threatening to rain a super stack of doom upon American cities or otherwise threatening the survivability of America, so I don't think my bleeding heart (it's a fault, but what am I to do?) could blame Sis for pillaging their lands.

I'm just sayin'!

BTW, what does "WFYABTA" mean?

@ CivCorpse, Agreed, Sis, you have definitely changed for immortal. We are used to watching you waste hundreds of hammers on civic changes early in the game.

But... I laugh because I know that I do the same thing... And its always nice to laugh at someone for doing something you do yourself!

@ mattkaru "WFYABTA" We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced ... It is actually a very complicated concept in my opinion. Basically, it is what the AI says to you if you want to trade techs, if you have received to many techs from other AI's. Certain AI's have different thresholds.

The concept, is that all the AI's have a moment that they stop tech trading with other people (or AI's). This moment is called WFYABTA. We are worried that sis wont be able to trade for techs later in the game if he trades alot now. Also, if you are friendly with someone (even Monty) they will NEVER have WFYABTA with you... same thing if AI's are friendly with other AI's. BUT, late game, the AI usually doesn't trade with you because "We would rather win the game."

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206578

This is probably the best source of information on it on this website... Like I said, it can be complicated, and the AI can do weird things...

Hope that helps!

Dont take the trade... specifically for WFYABTA. Not worth it. Those are some small time techs and will be better researching when you need them. Finish off HC and buddy up to Hatty. Then war with Monty, let him come to you and attack, take out his SOD, and go back at him.

Regarding WFYABTA; Rusten cosied up to Peter of Russia his last Deity game; once he got him to Friendly he didn't have any tech trading problems (as far as I could see; he made winning at Deity look so easy it was scaring).

Shouldn't it be fairly easy to get Hatty to Friendly, running her religion as well as her fav civvies?

Assuming you feel at least half-confident about this, I'd take those trades, if for no other reason that you do expect a late game in this game: who'd better to showcase an ability to handle WFYABTA than an American leader, with his late game features?

Mukuu said:

@ mattkaru "WFYABTA" We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced ... It is actually a very complicated concept in my opinion. Basically, it is what the AI says to you if you want to trade techs, if you have received to many techs from other AI's. Certain AI's have different thresholds.

The concept, is that all the AI's have a moment that they stop tech trading with other people (or AI's). This moment is called WFYABTA. We are worried that sis wont be able to trade for techs later in the game if he trades alot now. Also, if you are friendly with someone (even Monty) they will NEVER have WFYABTA with you... same thing if AI's are friendly with other AI's. BUT, late game, the AI usually doesn't trade with you because "We would rather win the game."

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=206578

This is probably the best source of information on it on this website... Like I said, it can be complicated, and the AI can do weird things...

Hope that helps!

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That actually makes sense. I haven't encountered it in my own gameplay (which has been off and on) but I've never played the higher difficulty levels so I guess I've always been at an advantage as far as tech research goes. >_>

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

Monty being +7 with someone wouldn't stop him and he did try to get you to cancel your trade with Hatty. He gets jittery if someone places a unit on his border. She's best friends with Hammy, I think and to get to Egypt, Monty has to go through America to whom she has just gifted 140 gold. A common war will grant friendly status with both hammy and Hatty and WFYABTA won't apply. it also doesn't apply to techs the ai does not normally research. They will offer good or reasonable deals to acquire them. Finishing Aesthetics and trading will probably net you techs like construction and currency or HBR.

Take the techs offered by Monty and HC, wait ten turns and finish off HC, but keep the city.. Will having cats help in a defensive war aginat Monty? Not that much. Scotland Yard in Cuzco -does that mean you have the Great Wall now? - will make spies effective, if you apply all espionage points against Aztecs, in taking down defenses in Monty's bigger cities.

The ai has watched you bypass one of HC's cities en route to his capital. Monty may well use the same tactics.

Vassals can spoil all the "friendly negates WFYABTA" fun because one pleased vassal on either side will let the team attitude drop down to pleased. And with the crowded map the likelihood for vassals in your game is high.

Nice play. Take peace and start cranking out lots of scientists from teching to Code of Laws. By the way it says this thread is the pre-game show.

Raze Maachu Pichu, we don't need another religion complicating things

Heh, I didn't mean a shot at you Sis for always listening to Validator, the advice provided is often very good, especially when it is contrary to the popular belief. I'm still not sure about this move because Huayna was never going to amount to anything and could have been eaten up later.

Interestingly you haven't fallen behind in power but Zara is blasting ahead in technology. If he is semi isolated on an island, he could become a serious nuisance tech wise. I'm not sure you'll be able to quite rest easy even with Incan and Aztec land in hand.

Take that offer from Huayna and start going after Monty next, he is barely ahead of you powerwise. You've beaten other leaders with a power disadvantage easily... this part of the game should not be too difficult, but I would cripple Monty take something valuable techwise from him and finish him later. I get the feeling Zara is going to want revenge for the Saladin game and make this one a misery for you.

DMOC said:

Nice play. Take peace and start cranking out lots of scientists from teching to Code of Laws. By the way it says this thread is the pre-game show.

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Thanks, fixed.

And thanks for all the advice. I think I will take the trade deals--Priesthood leads to Monarchy, after all, and with Polytheism I just might have an outside chance at the Great Library. But then I'll wipe out Huayna in 10 turns. Otherwise I'd lay odds he'll become Hatty's vassal and if I'm going to be friendly with her then he becomes untouchable.

On techs I'm torn. As I just mentioned, seeing as how so few of the AI have Aesthetics, I'm tempted to go that route to Literature and take a crack at the GL in Washington. I can usually work Aesthetics into deals for techs like Monarchy, Calendar, and Currency by researching part of those techs until the AI will trade. But with the Aztec threat looming, I need military, too.

Well, I'm off to play the round. I'm hoping to post it tonight.

Whoa, not one, not two, but THREE ALC rounds in ONE WEEK?