SGOTM 13 - Gypsy Kings

We might be able to gift him a city, but since he has more than 3 cities he would only accept a city that is w/i 9.5 tiles of one of his other cities.

Yeah, I checked earlier that he wouldn't accept any current city we have, but didn't have time to post.

By the time we have the settler ready, we might be able to give him a city on those small islands west of GH. The advantage of gifting him a city would be we get a massive cultural bonus to the spy mission cost. This would rapidly fade since he is creative and putting his own culture into the city, but for the first few turns we would get ~50% discount due to culture.

Sounds like we'd have to own the city for a turn or two to get some monument+artist culture into it.

I suspect if we went this route we could pick up the espionage we need on him by running a few spy specialists (which are better than scientists under representation 4 espionage and 4 science each vs. 6 science) in the time it would take us to organize a settler to gift him the city.

Yeah specialists are probably the way to go here.

However by the time we organize all this I'm not sure we will have wanted to delay teching as much as we would have to.

Agreed. I kinda like the Mach->Eng play, so long as Eng doesn't mess with the bulbing ordering. Finishing Compass to bulb Mach is not clearly ridiculous, either.

However, even once we've done all of this, we're still setting up to trade Feudalism for Optics... and then hoping for Eng+Guilds(?) for Astro?

I suspect the spy is more likely to succeed in switching him from his favorite civic. I'm not sure but I don't think we can ask him nicely to switch away from his favorite civic.

My suspicion also.

I would do the following
1) tech hard ourselves
2) build up espionage on Willem using spy specialists (more efficient that using the slider)
3) build a settler with the intention of settling a crappy city and giving it to Willem as close to us as possible but still within 9.5 tiles of one of Willem's cities
4) build a spy and have him wait where we plan to build the city ~4 turns before the city is planned to be founded if possible
----the spy will get his stationary spy bonus even though there wasn't a city there while he waited
5) Use the accumulated espionage to either switch Willem's civic or even steal a tech from him we might want.

Seems fairly sound, and if it doesn't work, we've still got our EPs later to revolt a city on him, and we've still done some of our teching.

I'm guessing we are going to have to tech machinery then engineering while we build up and set up Willem's espionage city. I'm assuming Willem is beelining astronomy so the tech trading/stealing opportunities might be available still with him.

We could also do the same to Cathy, but she is farther away so it would cost more and take longer to set her up in a similar fashion. She has a few techs we would want to steal later in the game. Like civil service.

Yeah.

I'll do some digging in the code tomorrow to better understand the city-gifting mechanic, because we are going to have to run a tight schedule to get a spy there, then a settler there with about the right number of EPs in the kitty. Also check that the civic switch away from favourite is possible! Also check what diplo benefit we get from a city gift (if any), and whether we'll have reset the Taoism turn timer to zero by then. Also check how much culture is good for EP discounts.
 
Hoping for WvO to tech Astro is a bit of a self-kick-in-the-teeth, though. We'll need Frigates to counter his chunky Galleons, but that's in the plan already.
 
Sounds like we'd have to own the city for a turn or two to get some monument+artist culture into it.

yes we would have to own for 1 turn. But just 1 turn.

Agreed. I kinda like the Mach->Eng play, so long as Eng doesn't mess with the bulbing ordering. Finishing Compass to bulb Mach is not clearly ridiculous, either.

However, even once we've done all of this, we're still setting up to trade Feudalism for Optics... and then hoping for Eng+Guilds(?) for Astro?

maybe, but we might be creating a monster.
Or just 1 bulb into astro and trade Eng for the remainder.

I'll do some digging in the code tomorrow to better understand the city-gifting mechanic, because we are going to have to run a tight schedule to get a spy there, then a settler there with about the right number of EPs in the kitty. Also check that the civic switch away from favourite is possible! Also check what diplo benefit we get from a city gift (if any), and whether we'll have reset the Taoism turn timer to zero by then. Also check how much culture is good for EP discounts.
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yeah some people give a +1 for city gifts and some don't. I don't know who or how that works.
I don't know how the Taoism timer resets. I think we might lose 1 turn per turn.
I know that the turn we gift a city to someone (if we have put culture into ourselves by keeping it for at least 1 turn) will give a 50% culture discount to espionage cost.
I don't know if a diplomatic switch away from a favorite civic is possible (I'm assuming no)
 
There's a desert tile 9E of WvO's capital, which bc says is in range for gifting. That's 13.5 tiles from our capital. We have seven non-English courthouses where it could be rational to run spies, plus 20 building :espionage: for 48:espionage:/turn. We won't need to use that much. It will take 11 turns to build a settler in GH, and 6 turns to build a spy in MC. We have some bored galleys. It will take 13-14 turns to tech Mach+Eng.

That all syncs beautifully to trade Eng for Optics in about 14 turns. Optics would otherwise cost us 5-6 sustainable turns of :science:. Then we finish Feudalism, do Guilds, and we're all set to poly-bulb Astro+Gunpowder+Chem while teching out CS+Nationalism and whatever is left of the bulb tree. We will have at least four GScientists by the relevant time (one now, one in two turns, and more in probably 8 and 10 turns each after that). If we want Steel, it will be better to tech it alone than tech Paper+Edu+Lib. Maybe we'll trade Guilds for part of Astro out of WvO.

We won't be unhappy to capture this city later on, with clams and fish to draft from. Meanwhile WvO will take ages to organize his own workboats.

This plan would slow the theatre from MC out to T221, when the rest are done by T219 (in FH, SM, BF, PC and London). So I think we should relieve MC from theatre duty (it hasn't started yet) and use a chop to get a theatre in Nottingham instead. FC, CC, SR, SL and Canterbury would be too slow, and I am excusing York and Hastings because of their main fish that they have to fry. That will slow down setting the ivory, but we are not in a rush for the ivory site.
 
Can FH build the settler instead?

Not in good time.

GH is better running specialists for us I think.

It is achieving a similar effect... instead of running merchants to allow us to push more :science: through the slider, it's using its food to build a settler to get us a lump of "free" :science: in Optics. GH is never going to build a Gmerchant during the :science:-push - it' s only ever going to run 6 sustainable merchants, and that won't compete with CC unless CC stops trying.
 
Okay GH might produce a Great Merchant by T243 by my calculations and only if CC slows down for the 1050 :gp: person. So I'm okay with the plan to build a settler in GH. A spy in MC and chopping a theater in Nottingham.
 
OK I did some code-digging and my scratch-of-the-beard impression is that an AI's impression of the value of the city gift is worth an amount comparable to the amount we got from the gift of Drama.

So I reckon that we can be confident of +4 from "fair" trade, to go with +1 peace, +2 OB, +2 resource trade and +2 Tao from the espionage civic shift. That's the required +11, and bc reckons we'll get +1 from city liberation for insurance.

So I'm going to spreadsheet the build of a settler in GH and a spy unit in MC, start running spies in most of the cities with courthouses, but exempting London which has growth to be doing, and aim for a city gift swindle on WvO in around 14 turns.

I've got some time now, so I'll try to play out the rest of my turn set.
 
OK I finished the turn set - it went better than expected. No time for a full report now, but Cathy teched Mach, so WvO would trade it, so I finished Feud to trade for Mach+320 gold. Awesome. Continued with Eng per plan. Got another Gscientist. There's a useful attack vector on Joao via Hittite. We got a second iron from Canterbury, so I gave up on the warriors plan. Two on queues in MC and FC are now spears, i.e. pikes-to-be later. Accordingly, I cancelled metal deals with Joao and WvO. Got cash deals out of various people for spare resources. Got WvO's +2 trade diplo bonus before cancelling. Cathy is settling Hittite island. We have enough EPs coming in for a civic switch mission, spies mostly/all off now. Spy and settler still building. Galleys in place for various plans. Need some cover for Hastings from barbs. Theatre plan is going nicely.

Save is here http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm13/Gypsy_Kings_SG013_AD0595_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

Will play up the test game tomorrow and comment further.

Session log
Spoiler :
Here is your Session Turn Log from 520 AD to 595 AD:

Turn 208, 520 AD: oh bugger... WvO went Free Religion
Turn 208, 520 AD: he had Shwedagon Paya
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) (5.50) vs Victoria's Swordsman (4.00)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Combat Odds: 79.7%
Turn 208, 520 AD: (Extra Combat: -10%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: (Extra Combat: +20%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: (Fortify: +25%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: (City Attack: -45%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: (Combat: -50%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) is hit for 17 (83/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) is hit for 17 (66/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) is hit for 17 (49/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) is hit for 17 (32/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) is hit for 17 (15/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 3 (Paired Clams) has defeated Victoria's Swordsman!
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Swordsman (5.52) vs Victoria's Swordsman (3.63)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Combat Odds: 94.8%
Turn 208, 520 AD: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: (Fortify: +10%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: (City Attack: -85%)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 25 (75/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Swordsman is hit for 15 (77/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Swordsman is hit for 15 (62/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 25 (50/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 25 (25/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Victoria's Swordsman is hit for 25 (0/100HP)
Turn 208, 520 AD: Napoleon's Swordsman has defeated Victoria's Swordsman!
Turn 208, 520 AD: You have captured Canterbury!!!
Turn 208, 520 AD: The English Civilization has been destroyed!!!
Turn 208, 520 AD: RIP Vicky
Turn 208, 520 AD: Canterbury has a Military Instructor, for what little that is worth
Turn 208, 520 AD: You have constructed a Courthouse in Marbled Clam. Work has now begun on a Spy.

Turn 209, 535 AD: Hypatia (Great Scientist) has been born in Clam Chowder (Napoleon)!
Turn 209, 535 AD: Clam Chowder celebrates "We Love the Prime Minister Day"!!!
Turn 209, 535 AD: You have trained a Work Boat in Fish Hills. Work has now begun on a Theatre.
Turn 209, 535 AD: Christianity has spread in Nottingham.
Turn 209, 535 AD: The Temple of Solomon has been built in a far away land!

Turn 210, 550 AD: Logging Game to File: Napoleon.txt
Turn 210, 550 AD: wltk in cc
Turn 210, 550 AD: You have discovered Feudalism!
Turn 210, 550 AD: Clam Chowder celebrates "We Love the Prime Minister Day"!!!
Turn 210, 550 AD: You have constructed a Lighthouse in London. Work has now begun on a Theatre.

Turn 211, 565 AD: Fish Hills has grown to size 5.
Turn 211, 565 AD: London has grown to size 6.
Turn 211, 565 AD: Nottingham has grown to size 4.
Turn 211, 565 AD: York has grown to size 7.
Turn 211, 565 AD: Canterbury has been pacified.
Turn 211, 565 AD: Joao II has 3 gold per turn available for trade.
Turn 211, 565 AD: You have discovered Machinery!
Turn 211, 565 AD: Clam Chowder will shrink to size 10 on the next turn.
Turn 211, 565 AD: Silver Lode will grow to size 2 on the next turn.
Turn 211, 565 AD: Joao II has founded Leiria in a distant land.
Turn 211, 565 AD: Barbarian's Axeman (5.00) vs Napoleon's Axeman 1 (Fish Hills) (6.75)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Combat Odds: 21.3%
Turn 211, 565 AD: (Extra Combat: +10%)
Turn 211, 565 AD: (Combat: -50%)
Turn 211, 565 AD: (Combat: +75%)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Barbarian's Axeman is hit for 23 (77/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 1 (Fish Hills) is hit for 17 (83/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Barbarian's Axeman is hit for 23 (54/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Barbarian's Axeman is hit for 23 (31/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 1 (Fish Hills) is hit for 17 (66/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Barbarian's Axeman is hit for 23 (8/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Barbarian's Axeman is hit for 23 (0/100HP)
Turn 211, 565 AD: Napoleon's Axeman 1 (Fish Hills) has defeated Barbarian's Axeman!
Turn 211, 565 AD: While defending, your Axeman 1 (Fish Hills) has killed a Barbarian Axeman!

Turn 212, 580 AD: Silver Lode has grown to size 2.
Turn 212, 580 AD: Isabella has 80 gold available for trade.
Turn 212, 580 AD: Willem van Oranje has 1 gold per turn available for trade.
Turn 212, 580 AD: Stone Mountain will grow to size 5 on the next turn.
Turn 212, 580 AD: London will grow to size 7 on the next turn.
Turn 212, 580 AD: Hastings will grow to size 2 on the next turn.
Turn 212, 580 AD: Deal Canceled: Copper to Joao II for Silk
Turn 212, 580 AD: Deal Canceled: Iron to Willem van Oranje
Turn 212, 580 AD: Deal Canceled: Stone to Willem van Oranje
Turn 212, 580 AD: we had the plus diplo from trading
Turn 212, 580 AD: can't find the stack I thought cathy had east of rotterdam
Turn 212, 580 AD: Deal Canceled: Marble to Ragnar for Wheat, Gold Per Turn (1)
Turn 212, 580 AD: You have constructed a Theatre in Paired Clams. Work has now begun on a Catapult.

Turn 213, 595 AD: Stone Mountain has grown to size 5.
Turn 213, 595 AD: London has grown to size 7.
Turn 213, 595 AD: Hastings has grown to size 2.
Turn 213, 595 AD: The borders of Canterbury are about to expand.
 
Well done mabraham!

The Roster order is.....

mabraham = just played...:)
adrianj = UP NOW
Ronnie1 = on deck
bcool = in the hole
grifftavian = waiting
Thorn = waiting
da_Vinci = waiting
 
Set up galley chain for the spy to fortify on the target island (1-tile desert island 9E of WvO's capital, sorry I forgot to mark it), then use one galley to move the settler there afterwards. Other galley is free to do something.

Gift the new city to WvO after we've put a turn of culture on it (artist) and use the fully-fortified spy to switch him to Pacifism. Then trade Eng for Optics+cash.

Tech Guilds after Eng. We probably want to bulb Astro at some point, but it will cost us the Colossus, so we want to be finished growing off coasts and starting to run specialists or work our hammers tiles on land. We have two Gscientists saved already and one will come in each of the next two sets. I suggest one bulb on Astro, finish it after Guilds, bulb Gunpowder, double-bulb Chemistry, then tech CS and Nationalism. Judge at the time whether to wait for another GPerson for a civic-switch Golden Age.

Ferry is trying to help shepherd workboats across the void to Nottingham, but will need to go and rescue the worker south of SM this turn or next. Ideally, one of those workers will go to PC and do its workshop, while the other is finishing the remaining workshops around PC and SM before linking up to head to England.

Nottingham chops theatre and then settler.

Hastings has our settled GG, and is on track to have good tiles to work at size 4-5. I suggest Gquarry at size 3, and whichever of Gfarm or Gplantation is ready at size 4. Meanwhile, put out some more Gmines, chop once our second marble is connected, and then work on Gworkshops and finally Pworkshops. Try to finish the western side first, and the non-road tiles first, so that when we're done improving Hastings, the workers are in useful positions to move to improve other cities.

Under no circumstances should a worker in England use their entire turn for purely movement. We're desperate for worker turns, so pick something useful to do along the way, put a turn on it, wake up, and continue.

York needs to think about focussing some hammers for FP now. Later I think York will be relegated to doing not much for us, because Canterbury has a settled GG from Vicky, so we should gear this place to be a military production site. It will have its workboat planted next turn, and we want to grow it to work all the Gmines and Gworkshops that are available - taking tiles from York once FP is up.

London is probably ahead of time to get its theatre out to sync with the other theatre completions by T219. It can probably chop out a barracks as well in that time. Then Globe Theatre, of course. Chop with extreme prejudice. Grow hard, but work the Gmines when reasonable. Definitely do not work cottages.

Speaking of barracks, do we want any more anywhere else? I think not.

GH grows to size 9 and runs seafood, gold and six merchants.

FC and MC finish their poxy spears next, they'll be useful pikes shortly.

Need more workboats for ivory and Hittite sites.

PC can either build some more navy, or preferably catapult and trebuchet to take to hit Joao with. He's got no metal, so we don't need to bring much stuff there.

BF, FC and SM generally build navy. We'll upgrade galleys to galleons and triremes to caravels and frigates. Don't start new triremes, however.

If SR can build two missionaries next, we can spread Taoism to Hastings and York and run Theocracy later for some extra XP for our units from our big production cities. BF could maybe help with this, because it also had Taoism spread. SR is more efficient, because it already has the necessary monastery.

Keep an eye on CC's health. We've got two food to spare for oversights, but if it starves, it will hurt us. We should be fine, though.

Take Hittite however seems best. Move on to the barb city SW of Hittite and prepare to hit Joao.

Hastings needs some proper defence, because it's the only English city vulnerable to barbarians. I reckon the other cities can be left pretty empty for now.
 
If aj doesn't respond in the next 6 hours or so I think we have to skip him.

The Vikings are in war prep mode, mabraham did you notice when this happened?
I think Willem has 1 gold we can renegotiate a resource trade to get it.

And I think we should consider canceling the corn for gems trade with Cathy (I think we are only helping her, our mortal enemy who now has macemen. We have plenty of happiness.)

the rest of mabraham's suggestions look good to me.

Instead of spreading taoism, We could conceivably change to christianity and theocracy during a GA near the end to get a bit of experience for our major production cities. At that point have our state religion in CC isn't that important.

York conceivably could build a christian monastery after the forbidden palace if we thought some other city would like christianity. Maybe MC?
 
If aj doesn't respond in the next 6 hours or so I think we have to skip him.

Assuming he's back in NZ, that deadline would be about 9am Monday. I'd give him a few more hours - he's often logged in at work...

The Vikings are in war prep mode, mabraham did you notice when this happened?

T209

I think Willem has 1 gold we can renegotiate a resource trade to get it.

Sure

And I think we should consider canceling the corn for gems trade with Cathy (I think we are only helping her, our mortal enemy who now has macemen. We have plenty of happiness.)

Sure

the rest of mabraham's suggestions look good to me.

Instead of spreading taoism, We could conceivably change to christianity and theocracy during a GA near the end to get a bit of experience for our major production cities. At that point have our state religion in CC isn't that important.

York conceivably could build a christian monastery after the forbidden palace if we thought some other city would like christianity. Maybe MC?

Yeah, Christianity looks useful for those two cities. Wouldn't stress much about spreading to any others, though. Would rather have some units than some missionaries.
 
Yea I got it.

I'll post a draft plan in the next 12 hours.

Really surprised about aj.....maybe he was only back in internet range, not game range. :confused:
 
Hi guys. Really sorry to disappoint, but my schedule isn't allowing me to do much more than read the thread, and even this is intermittent.
Really surprised about aj.....maybe he was only back in internet range, not game range. :confused:
This pretty much sums it up. Internet range = iPhone = basically anywhere I have spare time. Game range = my home computer, ironically where I have the least free time.

I'd like to remain in the discussion, but I'd prefer to be skipped when its actually time for me to play a turnset.

I sincerely apologise, as I feel I was part of the reason GK formed up again for this SGOTM and now I am barely playing :(

For what it's worth, I am really enjoying reading the thread and seeing the great discussion going on. And I am more than happy to contribute to the discussion whenever/however I can.
 
Back on topic:

Mab - Really nice turnset :) It's great to see Vicky eliminated. She deserved it for living on our planet :mwaha:

Willem
What victory condition are we targetting here? Conquest requires us to kill everyone. If this were our goal then I would suggest we take out Willem next. He seriously only has 3 cities?? Even if he built a few longbows we could still kill him off pretty quickly, and now might be our best opportunity, ie, before he grows and before he gets access to his UU.

I take it he already has Optics and likely Caravels? If we dumped our entire army on his doorstep on the turn we declare then there's still not a lot he can do about it.

The only reason I wouldn't go for Willem right now is if we're planning Domination, and keeping him as a trading ally for the rest of the game. Even still...

I guess what I'm saying is, why are we trying so urgently to befriend him? And all this just to trade for Optics?

Edit: reading a bit more thoroughly now. Yes, we should be able to peacefully ask Willem to change back to a religious civic, ie, Option 2 in Mab's earlier list. However! He won't go for it, since it will "Go Against everything he stands for!". I like Option 4 - Hit Willem and extort for peace! Then finish him after 10 turns, or repeat for another tech or two.

War Plans
I think we should continue with our warring efforts against SOMEONE. With our heavy bulbing tech path, we don't actually have that much more normal research remaining do we? Any city that is sufficiently developed should be building nothing but units, focussing efforts in to :hammers:.

Joao is also an attractive target to remove sooner rather than later. Containing him once he gets Carracks could be a real pain.

Otherwise, in general, just go for whoever is weakest.
 
Back on topic:

Mab - Really nice turnset :) It's great to see Vicky eliminated. She deserved it for living on our planet :mwaha:

And exiling us to Elba with her powerful navy... :p

Willem
What victory condition are we targetting here? Conquest requires us to kill everyone. If this were our goal then I would suggest we take out Willem next. He seriously only has 3 cities?? Even if he built a few longbows we could still kill him off pretty quickly, and now might be our best opportunity, ie, before he grows and before he gets access to his UU.

I do agree it would be nice to kill him soon (he has four cities BTW), but we're rather out of position for it. We have about six offensive units and one catapult that are between them guarding England and moving on a cheap barb city that otherwise Cathy would capture. To go after an AI with longbows (and by the time we arrive, maces), we'd need to bring up several trebs, a pike and a crossbow or two. That's at least 15 turns away by the time PC builds anything and ships it off, and our navy is rather dispersed (two galleys south of England, two in the west preparing to move the WvO spy+settler, one preparing to rearrange workers). In principle, we could take our existing forces, dump them on the west side of Cathy's land and walk them across to the east of WvO in time to link up with reinforcements from the home islands. I don't think we have enough stuff to prepare a pair of stacks on either side of WvO. Or, we could use our existing units against Joao fairly soon after just a cat and a treb arrive.

England is busily building infrastructure for the army of the future. The home empire will be open for unit production as soon as it finishes the theatres, SR its granary, GH its settler and MC its spy. However, I'm reconsidering my earlier comment that was negative about barracks. Under nationalism they give +2:), which is (roughly speaking) two-thirds of another draft. So we get a fair chunk of an additional unit drafted to offset the time taken to build the barracks, and we get the extra 1 or 3XP on every unit.

I take it he already has Optics and likely Caravels? If we dumped our entire army on his doorstep on the turn we declare then there's still not a lot he can do about it.

Agreed, but we can do the same to Joao faster, because we don't need to bring up more than about a pair of siege weapons (from PC, who's up for building rax-enhanced units right now), and we're on his doorstep already. Joao also doesn't have metal since we stopped trading with him, so we shouldn't meet any significant opposition, so we don't have to bring very much.

The only reason I wouldn't go for Willem right now is if we're planning Domination, and keeping him as a trading ally for the rest of the game. Even still...

We haven't formally discussed it, but Conquest seems much faster. I expect that there's too many little islands to get up to the land percentage. I did post very early in the thread how much each land tile is worth for Domination. We could count tiles, but we can't see the empires of Izzy or Ragnar, nor half of Joao.

I guess what I'm saying is, why are we trying so urgently to befriend him? And all this just to trade for Optics?

We've been planning the befriending operation since we got Taoism back in my turn set before this one. We got serious about it when it was actually time for us to switch to a religion. If he hadn't switched away on us at just the critical moment, we'd have been in position now to have traded with him for Machinery. As it was, we had some compensating luck in Cathy teching Machinery. Currently, we plan to finish our settler and spy, run the mission and acquire Optics for Engineering. We ran about 15 total turns of spy specialists to get enough EPs for the mission - and got 4:beakers: each as well. So that sounds to me like a quite low-cost way to to gain a handful of turns of tech rate. We're a chance to still have the spy to use for a revolt on Amsterdam later. If we're lucky, we get to capture this city back in the opening turn of war against WvO and its pair of seafood will make it draftable soon.

Edit: reading a bit more thoroughly now. Yes, we should be able to peacefully ask Willem to change back to a religious civic, ie, Option 2 in Mab's earlier list. However! He won't go for it, since it will "Go Against everything he stands for!". I like Option 4 - Hit Willem and extort for peace! Then finish him after 10 turns, or repeat for another tech or two.

Sounds reasonable - but we can't get an attack organised faster than we can do this espionage manipulation. By the time we do get an attack organized, he's not likely to have any tech we want to trade for. We have to tech Guilds next to open our bulbing path. There's a chance we might hit him after he's got CS, but we'll research that during the war against him, rather than extort for peace. Basically, I think the timing for option 4 doesn't work, because our military is too weak and out of position.

War Plans
I think we should continue with our warring efforts against SOMEONE. With our heavy bulbing tech path, we don't actually have that much more normal research remaining do we?

Correct. Finish Eng, then Guilds, Civil Service, Nationalism, and put 4-5 bulbs on Astro, Gunpowder and Chemistry. Possibly some slow-tech finishing of Astro or Chemistry according to the bulb and/or GAge timing.

Any city that is sufficiently developed should be building nothing but units, focussing efforts in to :hammers:.

Yep, caveat my earlier comment about barracks making our units more effective, and paying off with another drafted unit later. Then again, a unit now takes a city sooner... My instinctive decision is always for the long term, but that's not always right in a racing situation.

We do need naval units (galleys or caravels, not triremes), trebs, a crossbow or two (only if hitting WvO or Cathy soon) and a pike or two (from the two spearmen that are already on queues, I suppose). Nothing else.

Joao is also an attractive target to remove sooner rather than later. Containing him once he gets Carracks could be a real pain.

Otherwise, in general, just go for whoever is weakest.

Yes, Joao is an attractive target for those reasons, and we're in position for him sooner rather than later. We scouted south of England to create this option, and it is there and about as good a situation as we could have hoped for. The sooner we kill him, the sooner we draft his people into our into muskets.
 
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