RB29b - Cultural Extermination

[Kylearan]

Hello and welcome to Team B's thread for RB29 - Cultural Extermination, a new Succession Game from the people at Realms Beyond! This time, we've taken Arathorn's Passive Aggressive variant ruleset and adopted it a bit to fit with Civ 4 (well, Sulla did).

Variant Rules:

• We may never capture or raze a city by military means, ever
• Our units cannot enter enemy territory without Open Borders
• We must win by Conquest, although all victory conditions except Domination and Culture are enabled

Settings:
Leader: Catherine of Russia (Creative/Financial)
Map: Standard Pangea
Difficulty: Prince
Speed: Epic
Opponents: Tokugawa, Caesar, Napoleon, Temujin, Roosevelt, Bismarck

Since we're playing the same save as at least two of the other teams, we are not allowed to read their threads to avoid spoiler information!

Roster:
Kylearan
regoarrarr
EricStratton
Ruff_Hi

Regoarrarr and myself haven't played CIV in months, so expect some from us. But this is meant to be a relaxed game and no die-hard competition anyway, so let's just have some fun!

Here's our start:

[Kylearan]

I'll play my first turnset tomorrow, so we can discuss how to start this a little bit now. I think it would be very important for us to found as many religions as possible, so I will go for Buddhism, then Hinduism in the beginning unless someone has a good reason not to.

Since barbs are turned off for this game and we're ignoring worker techs in the beginning, I also think it might be a good move to go settler first. This would have the additional benefit of having at least one religion not go into our capital but into our second city. What do you think?

Last but not least, where should we found our capital? Any reason not to found on the starting spot?

-Kylearan

[ruff_hi]

YAY - same save as everyone else. Guess I will use my second CFC id to read other threads (joke). I would head for Hinduism because an AI is sure to pick up Buddhism. Heading for Budd could mean we miss Hinduism too.

Founding in place looks good to me. We need to spam settlers. Is settler first the quickest way to the 3rd and 4th cities?

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Originally Posted by ruff_hi

I would head for Hinduism because an AI is sure to pick up Buddhism. Heading for Budd could mean we miss Hinduism too.

As far as I can see, none of our opponents starts with Mysticism. This is Prince only, and we're financial and creative, so we can work the lake after a couple of turns for 3 commerce. Bearing this in mind, I don't think anyone will beat us to Buddhism, and seeing that most AIs go for Buddhism first instead of Hinduism, there's a good chance we can found both religions. Not a sure thing of course, but I think we have very good odds here.

I think it is very important for us to found as many religions as we can, so I'd take the risk - but let's hear what the others think about this, too.

We need to spam settlers. Is settler first the quickest way to the 3rd and 4th cities?

Normally, worker first would speed up our settler spam, but since we will be busy founding religions in the beginning (maybe even going for Judaism too), I think settler first will get us a second city up the fastest. If then both cities start building a worker, assuming we are researching worker techs by then, I think we will be able to expand very quickly after that. But that's my gut feeling only, not backed up by any mathematical analysis. :-)

All this is based upon my belief that founding religions is more important than being able to found one or two more cities in the land-grab in this kind of game. If anyone disagrees, feel free to voice your opinion.

-Kylearan

[Swein Forkbeard]

Don't forget about Stonehenge.

[ruff_hi]

Originally Posted by Kylearan

As far as I can see, none of our opponents starts with Mysticism. This is Prince only, and we're financial and creative, so we can work the lake after a couple of turns for 3 commerce. Bearing this in mind, I don't think anyone will beat us to Buddhism, and seeing that most AIs go for Buddhism first instead of Hinduism, there's a good chance we can found both religions. Not a sure thing of course, but I think we have very good odds here.

Ahh - good point. I am so use to playing random AIs that I didn't notice that our future targets had been pre-selected. In that case, ... "hydra, here we come!". Well, multi-religion nation here we come.

[EricStratton]

Religions and settlers - sounds good, Kylearan.

While I do like the idea of getting Stonehenge I think it's more important that we get settlers out. But on Prince we should be able to wait a while before even attempting to get Stonehenge if we decide we want it.

[regoarrarr]

Just checking in here. As I mentioned over on the RB thread, if I seem to go "missing" for awhile, please email me and smack me around. My address is super double dan (all one word) at that g mail place.

Originally Posted by Kylearan

so we can work the lake after a couple of turns for 3 commerce

And the first bit of arises. As Cathy, at least AFAIK (and the leader picker seems to confirm) we don't start with fishing (rather Hunting and Mining) so we can't work the lake (or the fishies) till we learn Fishing.

Still I think that settler on the spot and Buddhism -> Hinduism seem logical, with settler first. So if we say Mysticism->Meditation->Polytheism, that will take care of the first 50? turns or so. None of those tiles (unworked anyways) gives more than 3 h+f, so no need to grow to size 2 before the settler.

[regoarrarr]

And, showing particularly bad form by (continuing to) reply to myself, it actually might be worth the risk to take Fishing after Mediation, so we can build work boat and work the lake / fishes. With the people we have as opponents in the game, it is certainly reasonable to think that they aren't going to prioritize the religions

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Originally Posted by regoarrarr

And the first bit of arises. As Cathy, at least AFAIK (and the leader picker seems to confirm) we don't start with fishing (rather Hunting and Mining) so we can't work the lake

Whoops, my first indeed. I hope it won't get much worse than that...

Of course you're right, no lake for us in the beginning. But I think we will be able to get both religions nonethess.

-Kylearan

[regoarrarr]

I agree - but I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to try to squeeze in Fishing in between Buddhism and Polytheism

[carlosMM]

[lurker]On Prince, given the right start, I sometimes manage to grab all 7 religions. What really sucks is going for Budd, then Hindu, and getting beaten by one turn on each. The other way, round, it is usually ensured that I get Hindu, even if I lack Myst to begin with.

What stupid little me would do is research fishing now, and pray for Myst from a hut. It is not that rare..... [/lurker]

[regoarrarr]

Okay after a bit of mathing up, I think the best move is Fishing FIRST, even before Mysticism. Here's my reasoning.

First, let's assume we do the 3 religious techs first. If we also do a settler first, we will stay at Size 1, and we will output 10 commerce per turn (8 from the palace, 1 from the center square, and a max of one from any of our land based tiles). At least as far I could tell we don't have anything that puts out more than 1 cpt.

Looking up tech costs, we have Myst at 50, Meditation at 80 and Poly at 100. Given that we're at epic (+50%, right?) that should be (75+120+150) 345 beakers needed. So we will hit Myst at turn 8, Meditation at turn 20 and Poly at turn 35 (more or less).

If we go for Fishing first (40 base beakers or 6 turns on Epic), then we unlock the lake (2F3C since we're financial), and thus we make 12 bpt. So Mysticism on turn 13, Meditation on turn 23, and Poly on turn turn 36. So we lose 3 turns on Meditation and 1 turn on Polytheism, but we already have Fishing.

It is a risk, sure, but this IS Prince, and none of the other leaders have Mysticism either or are particularly likely to chase a religion.

We also have the option of delaying our settler to grow to size 2 and/or make a workboat. If we wanted to try something like that, since we don't really have anything else to build (no Stonehenge or workboat but I guess we could put a few shields into a barracks or warrior), then I say put 6 turns into a settler, then when we get fishing, build a workboat (45 hammers on epic, or 15 turns if we have something that produces 1F2H1C which I'm not sure that we do, in which case we'd have to sacrifice commerce for production) and let Moscow grow to size 2.

We could run some more numbers if we think this is worth pursuing.

[ruff_hi]

I vote for doing something so different from the other 3 teams that it either makes us HEROs or GOATs. No middle road for us!

That said, fishing first certainly seems like the way to go (if we trust regoarrarr's numbers).

[regoarrarr]

Originally Posted by ruff_hi

That said, fishing first certainly seems like the way to go (if we trust regoarrarr's numbers).

Ooh, ooh, IF we trust regoarrarr's numbers!?!?!?

Them's fightin' words!!

[ruff_hi]

wait wait ... don't you mean "thems be fighting words"?

[EricStratton]

Fight!

Taking a work break so bear w/ my stream of consciousness. I reran rego's numbers and I don't see anything wrong w/ them and decided to go a bit further. I don't usually do this w/ my games (I don't consider myself that hardcore) so if my numbers are all wrong, I apologize for the waste of time.

So we'll work the cows first, I assume (3F1C)? It'll take Moscow 11 turns to grow to 2 (33F to go from 1 -> 2, right?). In the first 6 turns we'll get Fishing (w/ 0 overflow) and put 12 hammers into something (warrior?). At this point if we stay on the cows we'll have 5 turns to pop 2 (15F), 8 turns to Mysticism (not taking into account a pop increase), and (assuming we swap prod to a fishing boat) 23 turns to the boat.

But if we switch to the lake (2F3C) when we get Fishing at turn 6, we'll have 8 turns to pop 2 (15F/2) and 7 turns to Mysticism (75b/12) and still 23 turns to the boat.

I guess there's also a third option of swapping to a grassland forest to get the boat down to 15 turns but it would cause pop 2 and Mysticism to both take 8 turns.

So taking the first two scenarios separately:

1. Stay on Cow (3F1C) when we get Fishing at turn 6:
5 turns later = Turn 11 = pop -> 2. Work boat has 18 turns (or 35h/2) remaining. Mysticism has 25b left.

We can then work both cow and lake. This would bring our commerce to 13 while still bringing in 3F/turn. Pop 3 would come in 12 turns (36F/3), Mysticism would come in 2 (25b/13) while the work boat would still have 18.

So 2 turns later we get Mysticism. W/ the overflow Meditation goes down to 119b (or 10 turns).

2. Swap to lake (2F3C) when we get Fishing at turn 6:
5 turns later = Turn 11 = pop 2 still has 3 turns (or 5F) left. Work boat has 18 turns (or 35h/2) remaining. Mysticism has 2 turns (or 15b/12) left.

So 2 turns later we get Mysticism. W/ the overflow Meditation goes down to 111b. 3 turns later when we hit pop 2 it'll have 75b left; commerce goes up to 13 bringing the number of turns remaining down to 6. Meaning in reality Meditation only took 9 turns total.

So unless my numbers are wrong (and there's a halfway decent chance they are ) if we stay on the cow we'll get Mysticism in the same amt of time but working the lake first will get us Meditation 1 turn sooner.

Lemme know where I screwed up.

[Swein Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by regoarrarr

And, showing particularly bad form by (continuing to) reply to myself, it actually might be worth the risk to take Fishing after Mediation, so we can build work boat and work the lake / fishes. With the people we have as opponents in the game, it is certainly reasonable to think that they aren't going to prioritize the religions

Don't take the risk! On a Noble game which I never will get around to playing, I was being Augustus Caesar (so this was of course on Warlords) and founded Buddhism, then I went for Hinduism but the "great" Queen of Great Britain known as Victoria founded the Om religion a few turns before I would have done so.

By the way, Om is a Hindu letter which serves as the Hindu symbol in Civ4. I know this because I myself am Hindu.

[EricStratton]

Found my first error.

Originally Posted by EricStratton

2. Swap to lake (2F3C) when we get Fishing at turn 6:
5 turns later = Turn 11 = pop 2 still has 3 turns (or 5F) left. Work boat has 18 turns (or 35h/2) remaining. Mysticism has 2 turns (or 15b/12) left.

So 2 turns later we get Mysticism. W/ the overflow Meditation goes down to 111b. 3 turns later when we hit pop 2 it'll have 75b left; commerce goes up to 13 bringing the number of turns remaining down to 6. Meaning in reality Meditation only took 9 turns total.

This should've been "1 turn later we hit pop 2". So to correct it:

1 turn later when we hit pop 2 it'll have 99b left; commerce goes up to 13 bringing the number of turns remaining down to 8. Meaning in reality Meditation only took 9 turns total.

Not a big error but an error.

[EricStratton]

Originally Posted by Swein Forkbeard

Don't take the risk! On a Noble game which I never will get around to playing, I was being Augustus Caesar (so this was of course on Warlords) and founded Buddhism, then I went for Hinduism but the "great" Queen of Great Britain known as Victoria founded the Om religion a few turns before I would have done so.

Ok, let's see how it'd go if we didn't go for Fishing taking into account population increase:

10 commerce as rego explained so Mysticism in 8 turns (w/ 5 left over). The very next turn we hit pop 2. So now we work...what? Our choices appear limited w/ regards to commerce w/o Fishing. In fact, unless a border pop reveals a river, oasis or a commerce resource to the north I think we're out of commerce spots. So whether or not rego meant for his numbers to take pop increase into account they are correct - commerce is flat until we get Fishing/cottages. (I just realized rego was keeping his population flat by making a settler. So it works out the same either way).

What this means is that if we go Fishing first (and switch to the lake when Fishing comes in) we get Fishing at 6, Mysticism at 13 (5 turns later if we don't go Fishing), Meditation at 22 (2 turns later).

Let's see if I can take it to Poly:

Starting from the end of my now correct (I hope) post:

When we get Meditation at turn 22 we have 5b overflow leaving 145b left for Poly. @13/turn = 12 turns w/o another pop increase. We hit pop 2 at turn 14 so w/ 3F surplus we should get pop 3 at turn 26.

From turn 22 to 26 we're putting 13b into Poly's 145 remaining beakers. At turn 26 we're at 93b left (145 - (13 * 4)) and just hit pop 3. We put the new population to work on the coast getting us 1F3C or 16C total. This means we'll get Poly 6 turns later or on turn 32 - 3 turns faster than if we don't get Fishing first.