RBTS6 - Finally Ready for Noble!

[Compromise]

I like the tech path you wrote out, Darrell. I guess I'd follow that path but if we happen to clear our continent before we've reached the end of it, immediately finish Astronomy regardless of where we are on the path.

The name of the game from here on out is speed. We now have a window of tech superiority. But it's going to close, and we won't get another one.

I'm just not sure about Courthouses. I literally don't have a sense of whether it's better to get a few or forgo them altogether. 180H for ~5gpt means roughly a 40T payoff. I'm inclined to just push for units and get rid of the tech leaders--on our continent--asap. We could whip Courthouses in particularly nice cities on the other continent that are worth keeping (though I haven't looked for any).

I'd start razing on the other continent; I just don't see how we can afford to keep many, maybe even any. That way we don't have to lose SoD members for garrisons. And if we pillage the land, we want the other AIs to put some effort into building settlers and expanding into undeveloped territory. If the capitulations start coming our way, we can always quickly pop some sistine-spreading cities on our continent to get to Domination quickly.

I'm not opposed to an immediate Golden Age, though I could be persuaded to wait until we have our continent and the ability to build cannons.

 

[Sullla]

A few quick points before posting the turn report, as the discussion has continued while I was playing. First of all, trying to go for Conquest instead of Domination is just silly. Why make things harder on ourselves? Our continent alone will give us ~40% of the land requirement. All we have to do is research Communism for State Property, and all of our fears about having too many cities will instantly disappear. To top things off further, there are two AI civs on the western continent (Monty/Izzy) whose land would easily put us over the Domination limit, and are extremely backwards. Why take on Hannibal and Huayna Capac if we don't have to?

Anway, that's my 2 cents. Now for the report.

(0) 1700AD Our financial situation isn't QUITE as dismal as we've made it out to be. Guess how many courthouses we have so far? ONE! A single one for our whole empire. I really think this is something we should remedy, some of these troop builds can be canceled in favor of courthouses as they complete.

I guess I'll hold off on finishing Astronomy research as a result of the discussion we're having. Our civ really, really needs those trade routes to connect to the eastern half of our territory though. Those poor cities are hurting very badly on health right now. I'm not sure why we burned down ALL the forests at Mesa Verde and Sakae either; that only created a health problem that didn't exist before...

Honestly, our cities are hurting for health and happiness in the worst way. Thank goodness we can take out our frustration on the Portugese.

(1) 1702AD Isabella adopts Bureaucracy civic, which should give you an idea of how the other continent is doing about now. Another turn of bombardment drops defenses in Lisbon to 20%, down from 64%. I swear, I really hate these castles in Beyond the Sword. Takes too damned long to bombard each city, and you can normally use spies to game the system completely. But enough complaining from me...

(2) 1704AD Trebs finally drop Lisbon down to 0% defenses. Rather than sacrifice our remaining trebs to do suicide damage, I decide that the better strategy is to go with our rifles on the attack... the reason being that we're already getting 88% odds against Joao's top defender (his only City Garrison II longbow), and rifles are relatively cheap for our civ. Trebs are actually more valuable in this context. So here goes the Battle of Lisbon:

Cover rifle kills longbow (95%)
Combat II rifle kills longbow (95%)
Cover rifle kills longbow (96%)
Cover rifle kills longbow (95%)
Cover rifle LOSES to longbow (96.5% - got a little unlucky here!)
Cover rifle kills longbow (99%)
Combat rifle kills war elephant (99.3%)
Combat rifle kills horse archer (99.9%)
Combat rifle kills horse archer (99.9%)

Unfortunately, there are still three units remaining in the city, and we only have two more attackers left, both of them at half health. The only option is to wait another turn here to attack further. War weariness has spiked ENORMOUSLY on this turn, from 300 to 425 on the score box, thanks to that RIDICULOUS Statue of Zeus wonder. This is a broken game mechanic, plain and simple. I have no idea what Firaxis was thinking when they designed the wonder ("let's take the least fun aspect of Civ4's gameplay and make it even less fun!")

(3) 1706AD Izzy asks us to go to war with the Aztecs. Uh, no thanks, we'll pass on that. (Only a matter of time until we cross the seas and go after your sorry civ!) We are one turn away from completing Astronomy research, so I swap us over to Chemistry, as planned.

Cahokia now has four unhappy faces from war weariness. We have lost... ONE UNIT... in this war. I freakin' HATE this system! Lux tax to 20% to compensate.

Joao was nice enough to move a worker into his capital this turn, which means a free unit for us:



About time, eh? Lisbon comes with an Academy, aqueduct, market, grocer, courthouse, and three wonders: Apostolic Palace, Sankore, and the hated Statue of Zeus. Taking these AI cities intact seems like a good idea in most cases, since we can steal their infrastructure (which we badly need, to be honest!) Even better, our war weariness magically gets cut in half, yay! (Yes, I'm rolling my eyes at the stupidity of the whole thing. )

Onward to Evora and Guimaraes!

(4) 1708AD Wang picked up Constitution this turn. Great news for us, as he continues to go after peaceful techs while ignoring the Gunpowder/Replaceable Parts lines of the tree that lead to rifles. (He'll probably get to rifles anyway before we can finish him off, but the slower he is in heading there, the better.)

I also sell Priesthood tech - Priesthood! - to Montezuma for 85g. Good Lord, someone please help that poor fellow out.

(5) 1710AD Joao poisons the water supply at Poverty Point AGAIN! My goodness, he really must have it in for that city...

We get a peek into Evora, which has a castle for extra defense but not much more:



Just a matter of moving over to the city with our big stack, which will take 3 turns.

(6) 1712AD In a classic case of AI tile mismanagement, Joao has two workers busily toiling away on two hills outside the same city. One is building a mine on a windmill tile. The other is building a windmill on a mine tile. I think someone's been smoking the pungent weed there...

(7) 1714AD It takes 8 Accuracy trebs to drop the defenses of a castle from 100% to 50%. Seems like overkill to me, but at least we'll have the defensive bonuses eliminated in time to attack next turn.

A lighter moment against the barbs down in the south:



(8) 1716AD Since Evora is on a hill, the best we can do even after bombing defenses is 73% odds against Joao's (only) City Garrison II longbow. We do win that battle, then the next one (87%) and the following (74%) to eliminate all three longbows. The remaining trash (horse archers and a catapult) are then cleaned up without losses. Ironically, we did better here than at Lisbon, where the mathematical odds were much more strongly in our favor. That's probability for ya, strange things can happen.

Unfortunately, Evora only comes with a lighthouse and harbor, but more importantly it is on a GOLD resource, which does wonders to help out our large cities (since we took time to build a lot of forges). Happiness crunch is much reduced! We're down to 10% luxuries, and that could be 0% if it weren't for our trade routes/resources not reaching to our eastern cities.

(9) 1718AD Positioning outside Guimaraes. We have "enough" trebs at the moment, so I'm swapping some of our cities over to courthouses as they finish builds. We don't need a TON of courthouses, but a few will help out for sure when the Colossus disappears on us.

(10) 1720AD Joao attempts to recapture Evora, with a horse archer against rifle attack. That's pretty much the definition of "suicide" right there... Another horse archer charges into our territory near Mound City, to no purpose. A rifle cleans that up with ease. What is he thinking?

Battle of Guimaraes
Cover rifle kills longbow (87%)
Combat rifle LOSES to longbow (87%)
Combat rifle kills longbow (87%)
Combat rifle kills longbow (87% - notice a recurring theme?)
Combat rifle kills maceman (80%)
Rifle cleans up horse archer (99%)

And the Hanging Gardens are ours! The extra health makes a noticeable difference immediately in our eastern cities, taking Sakae and Snaketown out of starvation. We also get a granary, forge, grocer, colosseum, and courthouse in this city, although it will be pretty useless with no resources. Have to keep it though for that extra health.

Now that was an entertaining round, perfectly set up by Zeviz on his turnset. Cheers! As far as the war goes, I would suggest splitting off a detachment to the north to capture Lagos, while the main stack heads for Coimbra, and the reinforcements move up to take out Oporto. Shouldn't take more than 10-15 turns to do in Joao from here.

 

[Sullla]

Dotmap for the north:



Pretty simple, really. I advise keeping all the cities except Korea's Pyongyang, which we'll move two tiles west to the rice. Obviously we want Seoul and its half-dozen world wonders. There's not much point in moving the northern fishing villages around; might as well keep them in place to save the trouble of building a settler and take advantage of captured infrastructure. We could move Oporto, but where? The only location I can see is NW onto the spices, and that doesn't seem worth it, IMO. We have enough happiness to last us the game with captured gold and soon-to-be-captured Notre Dame (in Seoul).

Note also that Lisbon somehow manages to miss every river in the vicinity and is NOT connected to our trade network. Had to be captured though, as we wanted those wonders!

Now a mini-dotmap for the south:



With just two more cities on the red and blue dots, we can grab pretty much every tile in the south (for Domination purposes). This is assuming that we reach level 3 culture (150), which should be eminently doable with a captured Sistine. I would suggest we found these cities sooner rather than later though, just to get started on culture production.

We're steamrolling along at this point, and the happy/health crunches have been greatly reduced from the start of my turn. Maybe 30-40 turns (another full rotation) before the whole continent is ours! Go make it happen.

 

[Compromise]

Nicely done Sullla! The battle drums are rumbling. Okay, for victory, Domination it is.

If we pop a Scientist in 3T, save him for Sci Meth. Use best judgment on others, though I'd hold off on the Golden Ages until we get all the cities on our continent.

I'd change the initial build in Lisbon to a Forge and whip it next turn when we come out of revolt. Same thing with an aqueduct in Guimaraes.

I'm also all but certain that when we take Oporto (I guess we can keep it though I personally would lean toward razing it since Poverty Point, Rice city and the Christian Holy City should capture its tiles), our health resources will come back since we culturally control rivers near Lisbon which flow east and west.

 

[darrelljs]

Nice ! Got it, will play in about 16 hours. Will sort through the advice later .

Darrell

 

[Zeviz]

Good progress.

I am still worried how we are going to pay for Domination victory, so I'd try to build a Courthouse in every city. (Chop trees that aren't required for health or immediate work, and use whip overflows from minor units to make progress towards the building.) Aside from that, everything looks good.

 

[timmy827]

Lurker comment:
I would hold off on settling the filler cities on your end (due to $ concerns). If you only need 150 culture - the wines one can have a theater chopped right away; then with two sistine artists it's at 15/turn, very quick. Even the ice village can produce 5/turn from the getgo by building culture (again, assuming sistine), 6 with a missionary, so it's not worth it until you think the end is 30 turns away.

 

[Compromise]

This post is about whether or not to keep or raze the remaining cities on our continent.

Our economy has stagnated:
I looked back over some of the screenshots. On T8 of Zeviz's report, we were at +30gpt @ 10% luxury. By the end of T10 of Sullla's report, we're at +6gpt @ 10% luxury, and that's with 3 more cities that will be coming out of revolt soon. When they come out of revolt, I think we will be losing money at 10% luxury and will be making hardly a trickle at 100% cash.

The importance of the Colossus:
And this is with the Colossus still adding almost 50% to our commerce.

Try this: Go through each of our cities. Count off the coastal tiles "1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3..." as you cycle through the cities. Every time you say "1" click that tile to make him a specialist. This simulates losing the Colossus. Right now, before the formerly Portuguese cities are out of revolt, we're at -19gpt at 100% cash. We need the Colossus for as long as possible.

I think we need to be razing cities rather than keeping them, especially ones on our continent that we can quickly resettle once we've taken care of the other continent.

In looking at the map of remaining AI cities on our continent that Sullla posted, I just don't see how it's worth it to keep. My thoughts:

Joao's cities:

Lagos at 150 culture will add 2 tiles (!) that Guimaraes won't already grab for us. I say raze it.

Oporto has three 2F tiles that don't overlap with Lisbon or Riceville (Those are deserts, not floodplains!). Raze.

Coimbra, the Christian Holy city, has a chance of paying for itself. Grudgingly keep.

Korea's cities:

Pyongyang: Raze to make room for rice city.

Seoul. Keep for Sistine and because it has +5F with a lighthouse (Too bad we don't have enough theaters for Globe )

Pusan: Adds 4 tiles that Seoul@150culture doesn't. Raze

Wonsan: Adds about 10 tiles that Riceville, Seoul and Christian Holy won't add. This is a toss up. I'd probably keep it because it should have enough population to whip a courthouse immediately. Then it can serve as another rifle draft, galleon whip location.

Golden Age:
A Golden Age will help, because we'll get 10T of roughly +1gpt per pop point. Maybe 500-600 gold per age once we own our entire continent. But we're not going to get more than 2 golden ages, tops. Likely just one.

Courthouses:
Courthouses will help a bit, but we're going to be hard-pressed to find a way to build them in any reasonable amount of time in our existing cities. They should be the very first things whipped in any city we keep if they are destroyed during our invasion.

Founding other cities:
As timmy827 said, I think we want to hold off for as long as possible on founding other cities. If they can't help the war effort, we can found them later when we've switched to caste system and can run an artist from Turn 1. (Assuming our settlers aren't all just disbanded from revolt, of course )

 

[Compromise]

Domination numbers:

We now control 229 land tiles and have 22.50% of the world's land.
There are 61 more tiles in the south part of our continent.
There are 151 more tiles in the north part of our continent.
So our continent has about 43.3% of the world's land.

We need 651 tiles, or about 200 more tiles than what we have on our continent.

(All numbers subject to slight miscounting errors.)

 

[Zeviz]

Domination numbers:

We now control 229 land tiles and have 22.50% of the world's land.
There are 61 more tiles in the south part of our continent.
There are 151 more tiles in the north part of our continent.
So our continent has about 43.3% of the world's land.

We need 651 tiles, or about 200 more tiles than what we have on our continent.

(All numbers subject to slight miscounting errors.)

In other words, we are nearly bankrupt already, and we'll have to triple our number of cities to reach Domination. It looks like the answer is clear:

Raze everything except cities with good wonders.

And we are forgetting one more thing: Inflation. According to Compromise's calculations we are on the brink of disaster already, but this is when inflation is about to start really hurting us. So even if it looks like we might possibly be able to hold on to the rest of our continent, we'll find ourselves in the red 50 turns from now, when inflation starts to really kick in.

So here are my suggestions:

1. No more cities kept except Seoul. (Christian holy city will not pay for itself because we are about to raze the rest of Christian cities.)

2. No more units for the next 4 turnsets.

Yes, you've heard me right. I suggest we stop training units and focus exclusively on infrastructure. That was the secret of my fast victories in RB's AW events: I had put most of my cites on Corthouses, Markets, and Banks, while only a few dedicated military centers trained units.

 

[Zeviz]

Here are the suggestions to save our troops from disbanding when cities come out of resistance and we get Astronomy:

1. Raze everything except Seoul.

2. Cities:
Khorusan (eastern size 6 city) - Whip Corthouse now. Overflow into Market. Chop the Market. Convert Scientist to Merchant.

Snaketown (ne corner) - wait until Maceman has 1 turn left. Whip with overflow into Courthouse. Put in another unit. 2-pop whip for maximum effect into Courthouse. Then we'll be able to put Courthouse at the top of queue and 3-pop whip it.

Nacogdoches (near Snaketown) - wait ? turns to 2-pop whip Trebuchet with overflow into Courthouse. Put in another until. 2-pop whip for maximum effect into Courthouse. Then leave Courthouse on top of queue.

You get the picture.

Note that Courthouses should stay on top of the queue when you press End Turn to get chopping and overflow production credited to them.

We shouldn't be drafting any more Rifles until every city has a courthouse, and every unit we whip should put largest possible overflow into a courthouse.

3. Save Golden Ages for emergencies. (I can guarantee that there'll come a point when we find ourselves with negative income and no way to improve that. At that point, GA would be a life-saver.)

I can't overemphasize how dangerous our economic situation is, and it's about to get much worse, because we are getting to the times when inflation will really kick in.

 

[Rowain deWolf]

That's quite an interesting and great game

But I do have a question.

Wouldn't the income from intercontinental traderoutes (perhaps with Huyana) easily pay for the loss of Colossus?


Good Luck

 

[sooooo]

Yep, even on an archipelago map I usually find that astronomy trade routes give more money than loss of colossus. On a continents map it should be worth it. When you declare on Wang you'll have no external routes at all, very bad. I think you need to build harbours, custom houses, research astronomy and grow your cities.

 

[darrelljs]

My goodness...some Panicky Pete's here . We have a lot of ways to up our income. We could run Caste System (or whip Markets) and hire a pair of Merchants in every city. We could research Astronomy, drop out of Mercantilism, and watch the trade income pour in from Huyana Capac and Hannibal (still my preference). We can trade Iron and Stone for gold income. On the expenses side, we still have Courthouses and State Property in our future. To advocate razing all the cities is saying we want to take the long route to Conquest. To advocate we stop drafting . I dunno...both Compromise and Zeviz seem to be on the same page with this one and they've got a great track record. I'll hold off playing my turns to see what Sulla thinks, and if everyone else is thinking along thses lines I'll bow to the wishes of the team.

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

Just took a look at the save...most remainging cities have enough population to whip Courthouses as soon as we take them. I could see razing Lagos I guess, but razing the Church of the Nativity . Even with just four Christian cities left (and we should be able to keep 7) and a Bank, it more than pays for itself. I see no reason why we can't drop back into OR during a GA and spread the faith around (heck, those cities get an extra two hammers even if we don't swap to Christianity, not a bad deal). Isabella has Divine Right, so Spiral Minaret is probably not happening, which is a shame.

The Power graphs shows Joao is clearly gassed, and Wang Kon doesn't have Iron, so the worst he can have is Maceman and Longbows. We are 70 EPs from seeing his graphs, so I plan on switching EPs off him and onto Izzy and Monty. He is willing to trade Economics, but we'd have to get him almost to Calvary/Rifles to do it . Maybe vassalize him with Pusan left for that tech, and demand Fish as tribute?

There isn't much opportunity to drop Civics costs. Theocracy to Pascifism saves us a whopping 14 gold/turn, but we'd still end up losing cash. Everything else is pretty darn cheap. The Big B would actually cost us 17/turn. Anyway, I'll hold off playing until I get more feedback on the path, this is a pretty major fork in the road.

Darrell

 

[Sullla]

Well, with all due respect to Compromise and Zeviz, I never had the feeling at any point in time on my turnset that we were on the verge of bankrupcy. Switching gears and burning down every city strikes me as little short of craziness. There are literally tons of things we can easily do to stave off economic collapse:

- Like, you know, build courthouses? We still have one. One courthouse. I queued up some more, which will start completing soon.

- We are a mere two techs away from State Property civic, which will eliminate all distance maintenance costs. With State Property, there will be no reason not to grow as big as possible.

- Swap to Caste System and hire merchant specialists.

- Build Wealth in cities (we haven't even touched this option yet).

- Foreign trade routes with Hannibal/Huayna Capac post-Astronomy. I'm not even sure we would need to do this, but it's an option.

- Selling tech for gold to backwards civ - another desperation option we haven't even begun to explore.

I just see the whole notion of backing off from Domination as counter to the whole spirit of the game we've played so far. Why have we been successful? Because even though our individual cities have a low output of food, shields, and commerce, we have offset quality with quantity. The key to winning this game is to grow as large as possible, and then crush the AIs with sheer weight of numbers. Backing off from that is playing scared, plain and simple. And I'd rather not see this team play scared.

Come on, do you REALLY think this team is so poorly trained at Civ4's economics that we can't find a solution to the situation? I have more faith in our abilities than that.

PS I also don't believe in vassalizing AIs. This continent is ours. Ours. Gimme gimme gimme.

 

[Sullla]

Sorry for double-post, I oped up the save and wanted to make a few more comments.

- We're running 10% lux tax, which is only needed to keep the eastern cities (not hooked up to our trade network) from starving. That's 15gpt saved right there post-Astronomy.

- Distance maintenance costs are 50gpt on the Financial Advisor screen. That's... a lot! State Property civic alone would allow us to go from 10% science to 40% science at break-even.

- We can raise another 24gpt just by running 4 merchants in Cahokia (rather than the production-centered configuration we have going right now) at no loss of population.

- I thought I'd mention again that two of the three cities we captured already came with courthouses intact, and the third one has enough population to whip a courthouse if desired.

In other words, with even minimal changes we can raise/save quite a LOT of gold. Don't be fooled by the settings on the turn I just played. We were doing OK financially, so I had every city configured for production. We can just as easily swap things around and configure our cities for gold too.

After looking again at the save, I'm actually more convinced than ever that changing our strategy midrace is a really, really silly idea. I mean, our plan is WORKING! Why would we want to stray from it when our hard work is finally paying off?

 

[darrelljs]

Okay, so that is two for razing and two against. Tie breaker goes to the sponsor, or failing that the guy who is up . I'll play in a couple of hours. I really like the idea of going with four Merchants in our capital, I might just do that right away.

Darrell

 

[MyOtherCar]

Don't raze, at least not on your own continent. As Sullla said, you have plenty of options to raise more cash. I think what you're not used to, is that you have relatively low income, compared to, say, an emperor game. But remember this is noble you're playing. Just my 2 cents (1 cent after courthouses).

Btw: even if I don't post a lot, I check this game (and the B as well) several times a day and am enjoying it immensely.

 

[Compromise]

Before commenting, I'd like to say that I enjoy a good, civil discussion between people of good intent and good manners. And this is just such a discussion.

Now, on to some responses.

- We're running 10% lux tax, which is only needed to keep the eastern cities (not hooked up to our trade network) from starving. That's 15gpt saved right there post-Astronomy.

The 15gpt will probably go away when the three cities Sullla took come out of revolt. And as soon as Oporto is razed p!), Lisbon/PovertyPoint borders will reconnect our east and west coasts.

- Distance maintenance costs are 50gpt on the Financial Advisor screen. That's... a lot! State Property civic alone would allow us to go from 10% science to 40% science at break-even.

I agree with State Property; it will be a lifesaver. It's also over 50T away. (Less if we pop our scientist.)

- We can raise another 24gpt just by running 4 merchants in Cahokia (rather than the production-centered configuration we have going right now) at no loss of population.

This will cover two or three of Wang's cities.

- I thought I'd mention again that two of the three cities we captured already came with courthouses intact, and the third one has enough population to whip a courthouse if desired.

Yes, we need courthouses in all the cities we capture. The cities will still be expensive to own. Courthouses only save us about 5 or 6 gpt for each city.

...After looking again at the save, I'm actually more convinced than ever that changing our strategy midrace is a really, really silly idea. I mean, our plan is WORKING! Why would we want to stray from it when our hard work is finally paying off?

I don't think we're changing our strategy so much as fine tuning it. By the time we get to the other continent, I hope we have or are close to State Property.

Also, as we prepare to move on the other continent, our troop supply costs will be much less. (Though once we load the galleons, that'll spike again.)

It's not that I think we're going to start losing troops to revolt, I just think we should be judicious about which cities we keep from here on out. And don't found new ones yet.

Good luck Darrell! All you have to do is please everyone on the team!