RBtS1b - The Thief Economy

Well then that makes Kodii skipped and pindicator up, I think.

Indeed it does:

Roster

Kodii (on the run)
pindicator (up in court)
sunrise089 (on deck)
Swiss Pauli
ungy

Got it! Trying to find a picture of Darius with pie in the face, but so far no luck.

Thoughts from the save:

• The stack outside Helio looks weak, and the stack in Thebes looks a little strong. I do not have experience with early rushes in BtS, so please somebody tell me if I shouldn't be taking 1 chariot & 1 axe out of Thebes to help with the attack on Helio.
• Espionage -- Why are we putting EP points into Hatty??? She is going to be dead/a non-factor, and those will be wasted EP points. Unless anybody has an objection, I'm going to throw those all to Darius, or maybe split between Darius & Wang Kon.
• Why are we building a Library anywhere?

Will play tomorrow. Please post your thoughts.

I'd suggested an axe and a spear out of Thebes in my report. I forgot to switch the EPs. Might as well focus them on Darius, but there's so few it's not important at the moment. The library is to whip away angry pop and use the overflow into the barracks: we have way more food than our one happy resource can support and we need a Library for National Epic.

Swiss Pauli said:

we need a Library for National Epic.

Click to expand...

Ah, I was figuring it was something like that. But I kept thinking "Why would we want to build the Great Library?"

Had a look at the save again, more to look to the future, but have some observations of immediate relevance:

- A Holkan needs to move out of Thebes to guard the Axe/Chariot against Hatty's WC (titter).

- Hatty's got 8 to go on Alpha, and we have 11, so we might be able to snag Alpha for peace (she will make peace now, so Helio can be captured without worrying about holding it to a counterattack).

Longer term, I have the following ideas:

- Once we have Alpha, switch sliders from beakers to EPs (obvious, I know, but I would have forgotten to do it).

- Happy problems: Hatty has spammed us with Hinduism and Darius is running HR so we will get happy most rapidly by stealing Medi, Priest (temples) and Monarchy. (Darius lacks Metalcasting and Maths.)

- National Epic: I'd propose to stuff this in the Chicken (honk!) and run Merchants for cash bombs as it's only after Constitution and Democracy that we can run large amounts of (S)pies. As Darius is currently researching Currency, we might want to put a market there and start the Merchants before NE. Glad we've got Marble as I've found it very hard to come by in BtS.

- Tech Path: largely dictated by Darius, of course, but Feudalism through to Banking will be important to us, as will Maths-Construction. The relative importance of CoL will depend on whether we feel we can keep going/ redeclare quickly and wipe out Hatty.

- Land: aside from Whale City and Hatty's holdings, we're clearly a bit boxed in by Darius, aside from a fishing village at the tip of the Chicken's promontory. I'd like Hatty to clear some jungle for us before we move to wipe her out.

These are my thoughts so far and I really like to get as much input as possible as this sort of game is entirely new to me.

Nice going Swiss Pauli.

Tactics wise I think Thebes too strong and attack on helio too weak. 1 axe and 1 holkian fine to defend. Also we forgot about holkian on the copper--bring that along.

I would finish Hattie off. We'll get enough loot to get us to alpha and then we can live of the pie bomb while we get our empire humming.

Long term we have to take out Darius--might depend what we can steal as to when. It will be really expensive to steal the late game techs as we will be up against defensive buildings and compared with normal research prodution espionage will not have the +bonuses. So we need an overpowering empire.

Lots of good points. I would like to get a team-wide vote on finishing Hatty: yay or nay? I'll think about it, but I do agree that the larger our empire, the more we can take advantage of the per-city bonuses of most EP generating buildings (as opposed to the percentage-based bonuses of most gold or beaker enhancing buildings). I think that if we can get to CoL with the EPs we got from the pie bomb, then we should go after as much of Hatty as we can.

I'm sure you guys all read T-Hawk's article on : conversion with specialists, and that's certainly going to play a part in this game (except subbing EPs with beakers, of course). I'm not sure quite how that will play out with this game, seeing that most spy specialists don't come around until much later in the game. In a theoretical world, with markets everywhere it would be better to run a higher gold rate and stuff the EP rate with spies. However, we can only run 1 spy per city until Constitution, it seems that running merchants to suppliment our EP fix is the way to go.

Also agree with waiting on the NE.

I also think we should finish Alphabet the usual way. Better to play it safe as that's what we've been doing. Besides, after we take Helio we may beat Hatty to Alphabet.

Oh man, I'll digest this and play several hours later tonight. Any final thoughts before then, please post!

(Oh, and speaking of looking ahead, does anybody know of all the bonuses and negatives that we get for stealing technology with Spies? I know trade routes, religion, open borders, and stationary help reduce cost. Distance counts against it. Anything I don't know?)


EDIT: One more thing that I haven't seen mentioned. Castle's give +25% EP bonus. We want these! So let's build walls when we have the opportunity to make way for Castles. Nationalism also gives +25% EP, so I imagine that will be our civic of choice. And this brings the question of civics up: what do we imagine our optimum civics will be? (Off to re-read earlier posts to make sure this hasn't been covered yet.)

Whether we finish off Hatty sooner or later depends on two factors: whether we want to (maint crash versus more cities), and whether we have enough troops to do so (which we'll know better after the battle for Helio).

I'm in the unsure camp on the former: without the ability to research techs, new cities will take relatively longer to get up to speed, esp. as the AI will have whipped as much pop as it can into units. Also, I can't recall whether Darius has CoL, and we also need to steal other techs before we can steal this.

The battle for Helio could be brutal (tougher than Thebes) because it's on a hill, so if you haven't played by now, then maybe pause to review after this point.

EDIT: Cut my post into half. This is after all, your thread, not mine.

I played a game influenced by this thread greatly, so I wanted to share some info

1. Spies that are further away from your lands get caught sooner. Tested.

2. Question about counter-espionage In later game when poisoning my 20-size cities got really annoying, i dedicated one spy to perform counter-espionage every 15 turns. I'm not sure if counter-esp helps with your spies not getting caught. Do you have any info on this?

3. To win on higher difficulty level, i think (thus I might be wrong ) it's not enough to "just steal tech" from enemy to be Espionage-effective. You also need to poison water supplies, incite riots, destroy tech-buildings and similar stuff in their research-producing cities, to cut the pace they discover stuff.

And for end a little trick I found to be very effective.

Once you discover "the other continent" and get access to all civs, capture or build a new city close to your lands and hand it over to the tech leading civ (as a sign of good will ). And let the stealing begin... I noticed no penalty of staling multiple techs in subsequent turns, the city is close to your lands and you can re-deploy the spies super-fast.
The biggest bonus of this is that the distance penalty keeps being LOW (i had 30%) and thus the (basic cost) 11.500 , techs cost me around 3800 when all the calculations are done. Since i get around 800 (Infantry era), that's pretty okay a price.

Looking forward to your next chapter of this SG!

Cheers,

Kirby

Start my turnset by re-allocating the EP weights. I also take Chichen off of its Library and put it back to barracks. After the barracks finishes we can whip some units.

Move an axe, chariot & Holkan out of Thebes.

T159 - 245BC
Thebes comes out of revolt. Whip away anger with a barracks

T160 - 200BC
A little careless of me, leaving an axe by itself. Hatty takes a WC out of Helio to kill it. But it pulls out a defender, so it's time to strike.

T161 - 185BC
Hatty goes after another axe, but this one is one defensible terrain and wins.

Assault on Helio:



lose (char v arch) - lose (axe v arch) - lose (axe v axe) - lose (axe v axe) - win (holk v char) - win (holk v char) - win (holk v char) - win (axe v arch) - win (axe v arch)

Science goes to 80% to get Alphabet in 2 (we will beat Hatty to Alph!)
Re-arrange current builds to complete on Alphabet.

I think we have enough troops to press on and see what Hatty has left.

T162 - 170BC
Thebes' borders pop & Wang Kon asks for OB.

T163 - 155BC



Science to 0%! EP to 30%.
We have failed in the quest of the War Chariot.

War weariness starting to creep in. Whip away two angry people in Lakamba & Chichen Itza for our first spies.

T164 - 140BC



T165 - 125BC
Shaka demands clams and I give it to him. Cancel this deal on Turn 175!

T167 - 95BC
Confucianism FIDL -- somebody has CoL for us!

T168 - 80BC
Spy arrives in Gordium. Will have maximum discount on Turn 173!

Overview of new and old Egypt



Memphis is defended by 5 archers and a 6th is just outside. All our troops are unmoved outside the town (fortified for turn's sake.) We could shift all our troops to Elephantine and try to capture that, but I propose we go for peace. War weariness is starting to creep in & Hatty is researching Iron Working. So why don't we save our EPs against Darius for later infrastructure techs and invest some against Hatty, stealing IW from her? Besides, we won't be able to do anything with that jungle until after we get IW ourselves.

I started running out of things to do with workers. I mostly was building cottages and roads.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/45336/RBtS1b_BC-0050.CivBeyondSwordSave

EDIT: One more thing I forgot.

Which tech do we want to "research" first? (Those rates will go down until the spy hits max discount on Turn 173.)

Hatty is very tough to rush, that's for sure!

From the screenshots and the save, I have the following observations:

- Taking Memphis will cost a lot of units and I don't think it's worthwhile because:
a. that archer on the hill hasn't come from Elephantine, so there's another city in the fog to swap us with culture (unless we raze it);
b. razing's not worth the hammers lost in the assault;
c. we've got her horses and Darius has cancelled the Iron deal;
d. let her clear the jungle and we'll come back with cats (which have been toned down, not nerfed completely) and maybe Calendar to harvest the happy;
e. we're very unhappy indeed, and we could use some of these units as MPs because I think the best tech path right now (as previously mentioned) is Medi - Priest - Monarchy.

Speaking of Darius, he's just about to plonk a city down just south of Mutal: handy for tech stealing, but a bugger for close borders (and another reason to keep our units alive).

Postpone walls: they don't bring a decent return on hammers without stone, and the EP bonus is nowhere near, so a worker would be better as there's a lot of forest to cottage in Egypt, even though our core is well cottaged.

EDIT: Elephantine could be even harder (40% culture and on a hill), so I really wouldn't want to risk that.

I think we stop and take peace with Hattie.

Agree with the analysis of limitations on Memphis, and the key gems tile will likely soon be in Elephantine culture and don't think we can take both. Hattie is not too popular, and crippled w/o Thebes, so I think we can get her before LB.

We left too many units lying around for defense--the holkian on the copper for example, and with our SOD by Memphis a single holkian is OK in Thebes, Helio.

I think we should send a spy to Hattie, allocate all our esp there, and steal what we can from her, especially the little techs. That will help keep relations better with Darius.

We should build a bunch more spies, as we need several for each of Darius and Hat.

First tech to steal from Darius is definately currency. Then we can whip up some markets and make some use of our pop as well as get a big boost to economy.

Might as well gift something to Wang for relations.

Kirby said:

And for end a little trick I found to be very effective.

Once you discover "the other continent" and get access to all civs, capture or build a new city close to your lands and hand it over to the tech leading civ (as a sign of good will ). And let the stealing begin...

Click to expand...

This seems like it would be hugely effective also because the crappy city you gift will likely never get the defensive bonuses the rest of the empire will have which will double the cost.
Might be contra the spirit of things--dunno about that.

ungy said:

Might be contra the spirit of things--dunno about that.

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I'd debate that. This is all about exploiting Espionage to its utmost, correct? Otherwise, why else allow the GW-pie-in-the-face on Darius? If we can find and exploit some tactic that gets it publicity (and hopefully also gets it fixed), I'd say that is exactly what this SG was intended for.

ungy said:

We should build a bunch more spies, as we need several for each of Darius and Hat.

Click to expand...

Agree wholeheartedly! I have 2 finished spies and 2 more in production currently, IIRC

lurker's comment #2

You could cap Memphis with a Spy using Support City Revolt which will make the city revolt for one turn. A revolting city looses all culture-based bonuses, effectively completely removing the 40% bonus for one turn.

Although, all the other valid points about letting her clear the jungle first are valid

pindicator said:

I'd debate that. This is all about exploiting Espionage to its utmost, correct? Otherwise, why else allow the GW-pie-in-the-face on Darius? If we can find and exploit some tactic that gets it publicity (and hopefully also gets it fixed), I'd say that is exactly what this SG was intended for.

Click to expand...

Agree as well. Besides having a fun and challanging game, I'm also interested in showing any balance issues or "gamey" play-mechanics of the Espionage features.

Also, I'm going to have to sadly ask for an auto-skip through the 1st or 2nd of September. I will still be able to post. Details here.

EDIT: Crosspost. Unless we try the City Revolt spy option, I support making peace.

Duplicate post - sorry.