SGOTM 03 - Geezers

From the resolutions screen under Victory Conditions, diplo victory currently requires 592 of 955 votes. That's 61.99%. It doesn't say how many votes you need for secretary-general.

(EDIT: Ah, Sam's just said the same thing! Should've read your post more carefully, sorry!)

All looks good on the save. Julius has a lot of gold, we should perhaps sell him something Probably worth making sure we don't make peace with Frederick, in case we need to be at war with him again for the diplo vote

Hittite certainly looks ripe for capture later on, either for us or to gift to Toku to try and make him our opponent

DynamicSpirit said:

All looks good on the save. Julius has a lot of gold, we should perhaps sell him something Probably worth making sure we don't make peace with Frederick, in case we need to be at war with him again for the diplo vote

Hittite certainly looks ripe for capture later on, either for us or to gift to Toku to try and make him our opponent

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I think I will take a look see at Hittite then to see what we have there. We only have 3 Cats so will probably build 1 or 2 and may load another galleon in prep.

No one has commented on whether it is advisable to try and turn Louis Pleased or whether it is best to wait until we see the count.

Dagnabit said:

No one has commented on whether it is advisable to try and turn Louis Pleased or whether it is best to wait until we see the count.

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I don't think it's a good idea. Both Ghandhi & Vicki are annoyed with him. As far as interpreting his relationships is concerned the simplest way is to click on his icon on the Relationships screen. All the Glance screen does is summarise the information from the Relationships screen in a table.

Turns uneventful. Disappointed to get Great Merchant but used him to research Mass Media which is expected in 2 Turns. Next GP is expected in Athens in 6 turns. Toku big force in Tokyo. JC quiet entire turnset.

I have some errands to run so will post the rest later.

Save is here:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/Geezers_SG003_AD1580_01.Civ4SavedGame

Here is the Session Turn Log from 1550 AD to 1580 AD:

Here is the stuff between the lines:

Turn 320 (1550 AD)
Traded Econ to JC for 670G
Traded Paper to Hattie for 200G
Increased GPT with Mansa,Monti
Upgraded 3 Galleys to Galleons (460G)
Sent caravelle to Barbarian shores

Turn 321 (1553 AD)
Nothing for workers to do so put them to sleep in New Novgorod, St Pete, and Sparta
Radio in 5turns

Turn 322 (1556 AD)
Decline Peace Treaty +60G from Fred
Toku completes Versaille
Gandhi changes to Free Market
Hittite gas 2 warriors and 1 Lbow guarding copper (not mined) Hittite is actually a pretty good City with Silver, Sheep, Oil, Deer, and Copper. Too good for Toku????
Sparta Market>Cat
We have 15.35% Pop

Turn 323 (1559 AD)
LongBow kills scout looking at Hittite. How barbarian!
Sending Caravelle to visit Toku

Turn 324 (1562 AD)
Decline OB with Cyrus
JC changes to Free Market, and Representation

Turn 325 (1565 AD)
Whole Lotta Buildin’ Goin’ On:

New Novgorod CH>Observatory
Sparta Cat>Observatory
Rostov Market>Observatory
Athens CH>Granery
Guangzhou CH>Library
Toku’s city of Kagoshima has 2 Elbows 1 Pike; Izume 1 Samari, 1 Elbow

Turn 326 (1568 AD)
Decline Cyrus Open Borders
Discover Radio enter Modern Era. Mass Media in 8turns
Toku has 2 Elbows in Nagasaki
We have 15.94%Pop

Turn 327 (1571 AD)
Shanghai culture expands
Toku’s Nagoya has 2 Elbows
Beijing unhappy-whip temple for 1 Pop
Sparta has reached health Limit with nothing to build that helps so need to find more resources to trade for (or take)
Moscow stagnant at max hammers- could use Lighthouse
Galleon is pre-built (1turn remaining)in Moscow que

Turn 328 (1574 AD)-Yikes!
Almost a big . Looking at Coppertowski and seeing it ready for GP next turn, I looked at Athens to see when it was turning and it would also produce GP next turn! Not taking a chance I temporarily fired Scientist and Engineer for 1 turn inAthens.

Beijing Temple>Cat
Hangzhou Granery>Hindu Temple (feeling effect of Mao culture at only 30%Russian)

Turn 329 (1577 AD)
Great Merchant AretasIII born in Coppertownski-used him to research Mass Media (now 3turns)
Rehired Scientist and Engineer in Athens 7turns to next GP
Mansa goes from Friendly to Pleased when I refuse to stop trading with Monti (Pleased)
Trade Mansa Radio for Corporation,Chemistry, and 330G
Trade Gandhi Sci Meth for 190G
Trade Vicki Physics for 250G
Renegotiated gems with Hattie and Lost 2GPT??
Athens Granery>University
Tokyo is Loaded!

Turn 330 (1580 AD)
Mass Media in 2turns, Athens GP in 6turns
Workers all asleep
2 Galleons now loaded
We can upgrade caravelles to frigates

dagnabit said:

Mansa goes from Friendly to Pleased when I refuse to stop trading with Monti (Pleased)

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Now that's a real pain. Mind you I probably would have made the same decision.

Trash Team has a great mid term spoiler. Looks like they were not as fortunate early against Mao. They also have a growly JC. Can't tell where they are headed. Diplo? or Starwars?

OK Team. I may be crazy but why don't we take toku out and use his share of population for our advantage. When I read Toku completed Versaille, I read it as an omen for another Russian Expansion Phase. Just an idea.

I am all for taking out that Barb City and keeping it. That would be a nice staging area and we can invite our buddies for the party. We just have to capture the Versaille City.

I will down load and post my thoughts.

Htadus said:

OK Team. I may be crazy but why don't we take toku out and use his share of population for our advantage.

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I think there are two main disadvantages with that idea:

1. It will take us a while to build an assault force and even longer to take out Toku. If we want more cities it would probably be better to finish off Mao.
2. It doesn't resolve the issue that at present we will be against one of our allies for the UN election. That's where Toku would be ideal.

Sorry to disappear for awhile again guys...at least I didn't miss a ton
Its pointless to court Louis XIV because he's +17 with Toku...no matter what he'll vote for Toku.

Here's an idea for making sure Toku is our opponent for the Elections though...We should research Biology after Mass Media, then when we get it, gift it to Toku and trade it to all our diplo buddies. That way our opponent and our friends all grow, hopefully enough to give us the 62% of the vote we'll need.

Thrallia said:

Its pointless to court Louis XIV because he's +17 with Toku...no matter what he'll vote for Toku.

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And also we might end up losing a potential buddie.

Thrallia said:

Here's an idea for making sure Toku is our opponent for the Elections though...We should research Biology after Mass Media, then when we get it, gift it to Toku and trade it to all our diplo buddies. That way our opponent and our friends all grow, hopefully enough to give us the 62% of the vote we'll need.

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Problem with this may be that such a gift might make one of our friends unhappy or curious. Also we will have to hold it back from Hatty to prevent her from growing. Also x2, most AI, as I observaed put very little effort to irrigating land versus cottaging.

really? most AI I've seen have too many farms compared to cottages.

A gift to Toku won't raise any eyebrows amongst our friends...a gift isn't considered a trade because we got nothing out of it.

Got it and looked at the save.
We discover Mass Media in 2 turn and head for Biology (7 turns) before heading to Rockets. We can use emansipation to get some happiness points. So we need Democracy.

Moscow generate 45 hpt now and if we give up Free Speach, we can have 67 hpt. I would like to do a civic switch to Bueracracy. Also the Cap need 4 more turns to complete the Uni. I recommend we pop rush it for 1 pop. Since the city is stagnenet it wont grow untill we are done with the UN but we can still work the same hammer tiles by loosing the cottage. We will loose 2 beakers which will be compansated by the University.

Athens will give us a GArtist and...I got to go .... Please leave comments about the next tech and pop rush. I will start a couple units during the turn set.

Thrallia said:

Here's an idea for making sure Toku is our opponent for the Elections though...We should research Biology after Mass Media, then when we get it, gift it to Toku and trade it to all our diplo buddies. That way our opponent and our friends all grow, hopefully enough to give us the 62% of the vote we'll need.

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I can see the sense in that idea if we gift biology only to Toku, but if we gift it to our other friends too, won't that lead to Monty's population growing too, thus nullifying part of the effect of giving it to Toku, as we'll still end up facing Monty as an opponent. (Even if we only give it to Toku there is still some risk of it leaking out, eg. via the French, but that may be a risk worth taking). I think if we want to get Toku's pop up the safest way is still to capture Hittite and gift it to him (perhaps settle a couple of other cities nearby and gift those too, if he'll take them). But until we have the first UN vote and can see how many votes everyone have, we're in the dark; right now we have very little idea how the pop sizes compare; would it be an idea to send some caravels round to count?

I think it's safe-ish to say that in order to win we will need to take someone out, so it's probably a good idea from now on to start building an invasion force, so it's ready when we need it. I'll happily take out Mao now if he has no friends who could get put off voting for us by another "you declared war on a friend". (OTOH If can we declare war on Mao and get some of our friends to join in for the "mutual military struggle"? (Obviously make sure our troops are in position so we get all the cities) . However, beyond that I'm unsure about to taking too much action until we have built the UN and had the first diplo vote so we can see what the voting situation actually is.

I agree we don't know how the vote will go and it may be a good idea to try and count city size. It may also make sense to start taking some more territory as we wait for the UN. Instead of trying to keep Monti out of the vote, what do you think happens if we take Mao and Toku out and go against Monti? Upgrading a couple Caravels to frigates will allow us to effectively blockade all of Tokus troops in Tokyo. We can take almost all the rest of his cities with little effort after we take Hittite. I would do the same with Mao concentrating on his population cities first.

Bottom line is we are still reducing votes against us while we wait instead of trying to build up votes to a potential advisary. Just a log to throw on the fire

DynamicSpirit said:

However, beyond that I'm unsure about to taking too much action until we have built the UN and had the first diplo vote so we can see what the voting situation actually is.

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IIRC the winner of the vote for SecGen needs a simple majority. Having been caught out in the past in my offline games we need to be pretty sure that we'll actually win that vote before we finish building the UN. Dagnabit's estimate earlier was that we had just over 50% of votes assuming we were up against somebody like Toku. If that turns out not to be the case we had better start praying to the RNG gods.

DynamicSpirit said:

I think it's safe-ish to say that in order to win we will need to take someone out, so it's probably a good idea from now on to start building an invasion force, so it's ready when we need it. I'll happily take out Mao now if he has no friends who could get put off voting for us by another "you declared war on a friend". (OTOH If can we declare war on Mao and get some of our friends to join in for the "mutual military struggle"? (Obviously make sure our troops are in position so we get all the cities) .

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Ermm, Monty is friendly with Mao. The majority of the other civs who like Mao won't vote for us anyway.

Rats. I've just noticed that Hatty's second in pop now. In fact looking at the score leaders the top six below us are pleased with us. It's beginning to look as though we may have to plan on the basis that one of our 'friends' will be our opponent.

Sam_Yeager said:

Ermm, Monty is friendly with Mao. The majority of the other civs who like Mao won't vote for us anyway.

Rats. I've just noticed that Hatty's second in pop now. In fact looking at the score leaders the top six below us are pleased with us. It's beginning to look as though we may have to plan on the basis that one of our 'friends' will be our opponent.

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That makes it more imperative we maximize our population and try and assertain voting block pops. For sure we should take Hittite ASAP, and hold it until UN is built. I just realized my theory on blockading Mao doesn't pass the sniff test as we would have to start outside his cultural boundry. I am sure he would sorti from Tokyo as soon as we declared. With 3-4 Frigates though we might sink him at sea I don't know how much population gifting a city gives but with both Hattie and Monti growing we would be taking a chance giving Hittite away.
Question: I may be thinking about this wrong. Does our opponent change between votes if we (or they) alter their size to produce a new #2? If so other than taking and growing Hittite I agree with Simon, we build a Naval Armada (love that Navy stuff! ) and see which way the wind blows.

Dagnabit said:

Question: I may be thinking about this wrong. Does our opponent change between votes if we (or they) alter their size to produce a new #2? If so other than taking and growing Hittite I agree with Simon, we build a Naval Armada (love that Navy stuff! ) and see which way the wind blows.

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Yeah, AFAICS which leaders get to be in the vote is calculated afresh for each vote, so if one civ overtakes another in size, that could easily change who our opponent is between votes.

I agree on taking Hittite early - if we can take it while the barbs have it that means we can get it without upsetting anyone else. Also, if we can send even a small force over there now, we may find we can capture it at an opportune moment when an AI has attacked it and weakened its defenders.