RR13 - Hearts and Minds

After the stupid fact that the mapmker forgot to tick Domination victory out ( the guy is really stupid, isn't he ? ), I decided to make another game with the variant of RR12

The variant, for those that don't remember it

Well, to be honest, the prospect of a variant win in RR12 was somewhere in the 50/50 when we hit dom win in 1901 AD ( that by itself was a good feat ,as one of the players pointed out ). There were still 3 civs basically untouched and one city that we absolutely needed to spread culture into was in the most incovenient spot possible ...

OTOH we learned some stuff in there:

-War is essential for this variant, because the revolt odds drop drastically with garrison and the AI knows it ( not exactly fresh news, but it enters better in the head after seeing a AI clinging desperately to it's cap and pumpimg units and culture to try to avoid the flip )

- The AP is a very powerful tool in getting cities , but it requires some hard work. Using religion to gather cash and lower the espionage cost is also a nice bonus

- The culture buildings are only of primordial importance to get to the cities in the border. After that, espionage output is king

- you need to start in this business as soon as possible. Most of the times , the revolt odds top around 10%, so you need in average around 9-10 turns before the first revolt ( a warning one )

- You can get enourmous war sucess score just by clearing AI garrisons piecemeal

- ( courtesy of LKendter ) The variant is about sheer # of cities. Small cities with merc and SoL still produce plenty of EP *and* you need a ton of small cities to build spies like crazy

Ok, we still haven't made the decision on the leader. I'm personally leaning to try Asoka of the Indians: nice civilian UU, UB that replaces a building that we were going to make en masse anyway and pretty decent traits. ... but the decision is not already made and I can see the case for other sugestions ( like Darius or Frederick ). So feel free to speak your mind .

Roster

r_rolo1
Thy_Spellcraft
nocho (?)
lymond
LKendter
vranasm
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Alternates
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(?) means pending confirmation

P.S No CFC cookie for the first to say from where the title comes from. This one is not exactly hard , especially if you're american

Checking in - I still like Asoka. Better workers when we can't steal them (leave our borders), and don't want to build a lot...

Add to lessons learned: The variant is about sheer # of cities. Small cities with merc and SoL still produce plenty of EP *and* you need a ton of small cities to build spies like crazy.

Checking in as well!
And concerning the leader I'm fine with Asoka.

@LK

Added You are absolutely right, a city with the regular EP buildings ( courthouse, jail, Sec bureau and Inteligence agency ) + 2 spy specs from merc + SoL = ( 2 + 4 + 8 + 8 + 2*4 )*2 = 38*2 = 76 EP ... and this without adding anything else ( slider, SY, settled spies ... ) . Better even if we are also running Rep for our teching needs

And true, we need a ridiculous ammount of spies to keep the game going. I'm starting to think my estimate of 400-500 that i made for this in the last game was on the low side

Edit. 2 votes for Asoka + mine . Unless we get one or more extra players to the roster ( I would like to ), this decides it

Here!

Asoka works fine for me

do you need some more meat to screw the game up?

I did culture conquest on settler challenge from general forum if it counts for anything ;-)

Well, if you can handle monarch you are good enough Consider yourself in ( if you want to OFC )

P.S I'll PM Tatran for the starting save then, since it looks that Asoka is a winner

monarch shouldn't be problem (imo).

From what I got in the test more problematic is rng then anything...

I didn't follow the previous game tightly, but I guess things like sistine chapel could be useful to a degree?

Or you plan to take over from buldings culture to spy culture much sooner then after Jails?

Being it on Monarch we certainly could think about a lot of wonders and useful ones...

Well, we gave a good run on sistine in the previous game and, in spite of being useful in the first cities, the EP usage for culture took over fairly early ( basically as soon as we started going againt enemy caps ). As LK pointed out, the key for this is getting a lot of cities getting us EP from the buildings and start warring the targets soon enough...

r_rolo1 said:

Well, we gave a good run on sistine in the previous game and, in spite of being useful in the first cities, the EP usage for culture took over fairly early ( basically as soon as we started going againt enemy caps ). As LK pointed out, the key for this is getting a lot of cities getting us EP from the buildings and start warring the targets soon enough...

Click to expand...

I see. I agree with spies being more powerful endgame.

What about GSpy?

I think I even used esp. slider a lot in the challenge game (it even was always peace to make things worse ;-)).

Asoka has cheaper courthouses... so when I think about it, it will be about ICS with some Oracle->CoL?

I dunno how far with plans you already went ;-).

We are going to make something close of what we made in the previous game, just faster basically settle some blocking cities to have some culture fast in a enemy city ,tech to the EP buildings, spread some culture via spies, make war to clean garrisons as soon as we can get to the cities, spread more culture via spies until it gets to the other cities of the enemy empire, spread more culture via spies ...

We, in the last game, hitted dom in 1901 AD with 179 turns to play, so IMHO if we stick to the plan we used there and make it faster we have a pretty decent possibility of getting the result we want

Lurker's Coment:

Subbed. I lurked in your last game and it was very enjoyable.

Another reason to pick Asoka is that the Indians start with Mining and Mystisim. Not only do you get a double discount for Mansory (Gwall and a whole lot of other wonders) but you get a shot at an early religion AND quicker CoL for courthouses. The more I think about it the better Aoska seems suited for an EE

Screenshot of the start + save

lurker's comment:

Ouch ... Cows glitch.

Checked victory conditions - no domination possible. Was diplomatic to be allowed? I can't recall.

I see no reason not to settle in place. We do need to know a bit more about the area to decide if production or income capitol.

Western cow area is worth exploring. If there is anymore food, we have city #2 with decent food on a river.

Do we want to try and grab a religion? Would make AP latter game a lot easier. We know from 12 how much that helps our variant. My gut is let someone else get it, and then we join the popular faction.

Cam_H said:

lurker's comment:

Ouch ... Cows glitch.

Click to expand...

no it's not, because there is corn ;-) and this makes the start very good one.

I like the start... I see no reason not to SIP.

We are playing with huts?

SIP has 5 or 6 hills, so it will have a strong production base. I'd move the warrior 1SW on the cows, but don't think he will reveal much that would change anything. Don't see any real reason to move. A wacky move would be to actually settle on the FP to pull in the riverside plains cow. We would still have 3 hills if I'm reading that tile 1E of the hut correctly. I think there may be a good chance we pop horses in the BFC if we make that move. However, SIP is fine and we'd have a decent 2nd city just east.

Not sure on AG>AH or AG>BW. Both would be strong, but we need to calculate the worker turns.

I can't remember if we play with huts/events on, but I prefer them off. I know they were on in the Toku game, but can't remember now if they were on in RR12.

I would probably go with agri->ah->bw with popping the hut with border pop (better chance for tech).

cows paired with another food source is so strong tile so i wouldn't waste turns not working it.

If we have some turns spare (between ah finish and finishing corn farm) we could farm the FP too.

Yeah, if we SIP, I say we don't cottage this city. Just food and hammers. It will allow for fast expansion and possible HE city later. We can move the cap later to a better commerce site.

I think we have horses 1NW of where the warrior sits or 1N of the hut. Could be iron or copper, but I think it's horses.

Checking in!

SIP looks fine. I miss the double gold from last game though.