SGOTM 05 - Geezers

[AgedOne]

Are we planning on having a Great Person farm anywhere?

We've got to decide just what sort of an economy we are going to run, haven't we?

I know we've got a few cottages, and we are working the gold, but is this going to be enough?
Obviously we can't run anything that relies on religion for income. Gt Prophets would have worked well, but can still be some use for income if we settle them in cities (or have I got that wrong?)
Of course Gt Scientists will allow us to reduce the tech rate - but still keep up a reasonable research pace.

Can we afford the time to convert a city into a GP farm? I'm wondering whether the answer is going to be - we can't afford not to. I know things will look better once we have a bunch of courthouses, but still not brilliant. Converting a high-food city to a GP farm might make enough difference to keep up tech pace with the AI.

Nothing stops a domination push quite as quickly as finding your opponents have got lots of shiny new upgraded defenders.

 

[Harbourboy]

If we find a site with 2 or 3 good food resources, then a Great Person farm would be a great idea. I wouldn't advocate converting anything into one though just for the sake of it, as we are not Philosophical or Pacifist.

Just to let you know that I will be away for a few days on business (which makes me sound more important than I really am). So if my turns come around soon, you'll need to skip me until I let you know I am back.

 

[The-Hawk]

OK, I am halfway through my turnset, major events! Decided to take a pause for some team consultation.

More details later, but three things worth mentioning now:

1) Sally forth

turn 0 - decide not to burn any MP's (although I was moving an axeman to the city with the lone level 0 archer to disband him next turn).
IBT - Sally lands 2 chariots right next to Ning-tsai. Good thing we had a Keshik sitting in reserve that was within 1 turn. (Unlikely Sally would have defeated the axe and archer in Ning, but why tempt fate!)

So, based on this, I decided not to disband any units. Sally can go up and down our coast at will, I think we should hang on to our military. Besides, our exploring galley will be coming home soon (no more routes to the north), so we can move some axemen into attack roles.

2) Izz-she a wimp?

After turn 4, Izzy offers peace, I accept. Since she is on the eastern side of lush island, I figure it is safe. I'm pretty sure WW dropped in two cities (not 100% sure). Based on this, I think we take peace if any other offer it.

3) Where is the last place you'd expect Confusianism to be founded?

Confusianism is founded. You guessed it... by Alex in Corinth!

I would assume this changes our view on razing Corinth. I think a spammed religion with a holy city might be just the ticket. Also, Theocracy might be a nice civic for a later time. Oh, and by the way, it would appear Corinth has Iron (Alex build a grassland mine, although a barbie archer is about to disconnect it.) I think iron is another reason to keep Corinth, just in case our mainland does not have it.

Anyhow, our army is poised by Corinth. I almost went ahead and captured it, but decided to pause and make sure all of you are on board with the change in plan.

I still have the ball, I will finish my last 5 turns tomorrow evening. Between now and then, please let me know if you agree with keeping the Holy City of Corinth????

 

[Sam_Yeager]

1) Sally forth

turn 0 - decide not to burn any MP's (although I was moving an axeman to the city with the lone level 0 archer to disband him next turn).
IBT - Sally lands 2 chariots right next to Ning-tsai. Good thing we had a Keshik sitting in reserve that was within 1 turn. (Unlikely Sally would have defeated the axe and archer in Ning, but why tempt fate!)

Phew! Perhaps we'll need to consider an expeditionary force against Sally if he keeps making a nuisance of himself.

3) Where is the last place you'd expect Confusianism to be founded?

Confusianism is founded. You guessed it... by Alex in Corinth!

I would assume this changes our view on razing Corinth. I think a spammed religion with a holy city might be just the ticket. Also, Theocracy might be a nice civic for a later time. Oh, and by the way, it would appear Corinth has Iron (Alex build a grassland mine, although a barbie archer is about to disconnect it.) I think iron is another reason to keep Corinth, just in case our mainland does not have it.

Absolutely.. whether or not Corinth has iron confucianism will do very nicely for happiness.

 

[markh]

I am all for keeping Corinth.

I cannot look at the save, so I am not sure whether it is possible, but I would try to get COL from Alex for 10 turns of peace and then eliminate him. We could then research IW immediately.

 

[drhirsch]

Still for razing Corinth.

A shrine is almost never worth it, IMHO. In the late game you will make some money, that you could have had easier and earlier (when you need it) by simply settling the Great Prophet.

I will take ages for Corinth to offset the -8 or -10 gpt it will cost, if ever. A large hit at our economy in a moment we can't afford.

And don't forget, we will need to build tons of missionarys to make use of this religion.

 

[Pariah]

Still for razing Corinth.

A shrine is almost never worth it, IMHO. In the late game you will make some money, that you could have had easier and earlier (when you need it) by simply settling the Great Prophet.

And don't forget, we will need to build tons of missionarys to make use of this religion.

It may surprise you once the shrine is built. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if we raze the founding city before a religion can spread, the religion is lost permanently. Cultural victory will be easier if we keep it.

I'd build a courthouse and market there ASAP - and who is to say our economy won't expand enough to support Corinth comfortably?

 

[drhirsch]

I have used to build many shrines in my old, religious days back
And I still build them sometimes, but mostly I will settle the Great Prophets and rarely I will lightbulb them.

Did you ever try to settle an early GP (say, from Stonehenge)? I may surprise you, once it is settled ^^
I think a cultural victory is somewhat unprobable now, so this is not my concern anymore

 

[Sam_Yeager]

A shrine is almost never worth it, IMHO.

I must admit I wasn't really thinking about a shrine. I was thinking more about the happiness in our cities.

And don't forget, we will need to build tons of missionarys to make use of this religion.

From my point of view I was only thinking about spreading it to our cities. After the demise of Alex that will only be five at most. With luck it will spread to some of them naturally. At present I don't even see a need to adopt the religion.

EDIT: I agree that settling the GP is advantageous.

 

[drhirsch]

Any chance to find out, when the last Great Person was born for Alex?

There might be soon a second Great Prophet arriving form him, and he will use him to build a shrine. In that case keeping Corinth would be ok

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Any chance to find out, when the last Great Person was born for Alex?

A swift look at the eventlog reveals that Zoroaster was born in Athens in 155 AD. This probably means that Alex lightbulbed CoL.

I didn't realise that the AI was intelligent enough to lightbulb techs. Is this something new in 1.74 or have I just never noticed it before?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I cannot look at the save, so I am not sure whether it is possible, but I would try to get COL from Alex for 10 turns of peace and then eliminate him. We could then research IW immediately.

I think we need to have alphabet before we can do that.

 

[AgedOne]

Is there a serious chance that keeping Corinth, with Confucianism, can help us to improve our WW to the point where we can sort our whole economy out?
I find it difficult to believe that - at this stage of the game - Corinth will do that for us. Maybe it will eventually, but we need to be making an impact very soon. In the short term, Corinth will be a severe money drain, at a time when we can least afford it.

Unless anyone can present some convincing evidence, then I'm with the "Raze Corinth" crowd.

CoL is still quite a long way off, sadly. We're going to need to get there before we can start any serious progress towards domination (And I don't think there is any other candidate victory for us)

 

[The-Hawk]

Wow, glad I asked! I thought this was an easy decision, but it looks like we are split.

If I'm interpreting correctly... The-Hawk, markh, and Pariah are in the "keep it" camp. drhirsch and AgedOne are in the "raze it" camp. Sam started in "keep it", not sure he is still there.

The "raze it" gang raises some good points. If we keep Corinth, we risk severly stunting our already stunted tech rate. In fact, it is possible that Corinth bankrupts us at our current military level. Corinth and Athens together might be even worse (although Athens seems to have some cottages and may break even).

However, Corinth is a big prize. If we capture Stonehenge, then we will get a shrine for free. Given Corinth has two food bonuses, we should be able to whip a monestary and maybe even a missionary or two before Cyrus pillages our fish and crabs. Once we get IW, the iron mine will make Corinth a decent production city. Remember, we are going for dom... at some point, we will have a bunch of cities on lush island. I think the shrine pays for itself in the long run. Given war weariness will be a major factor, the happy face from a religion is a big plus. And, don't underestimate the value of Theocracy for our later military.

Here is a third option we might consider: Maybe we should leave Corinth alone for a while. We pillage the Athens to give Alex something to do (but not the cottages! we want them!). Then we make peace (hopefully for a tech if he has Alpha). We tech to CoL, then take both Athens and Corinth. In other words, we delay the economic hit until we have the ability to build courthouses.

My issues with the third option: We are low on gold and teching at 20%, so it is going to take forever to get to CoL. Meanwhile, Alex will resettle the silver island. Not a huge problem since we have military there, but it means we are almost back to square one. This option is less risk, but sets us back a ton of turns.

If I were playing this myself, I would grab Corinth and Athens asap, then worry about getting my economy back to life. It will be a struggle, maybe a disaster, but I think a cautious approach simply means we lose to the other SGOTM teams. Of course, as an HOF player I am conditioned to take big risks, maybe this approach is too risky for SGOTM where we can't spin up another game if this one flushes down the tubes.

Side note: I was planning to follow Constr with IW. However, this dilemma shows we need to get CoL next. The fact that we are considering razing a city like Corinth shows we need to get courthouses before we can do any serious conquest.

Captain Mark.... I think this decision warrants more conversation, so I'd like to delay another 24 hours before I finish my turnset. This will allow another round of points and counter-points before we make a final decision.

 

[Harbourboy]

Yes, all those HoF games does make one more of a risk-taker, because the next game awaits after every failure. But then again, why shouldn't we also "live free and die hard" in this game as well? There are no prizes for 5th place.

I hate the idea of razing holy cities, especially just for the sake of some short term economic difficulties.

By the way, I am still not here. Forget you saw me.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Sam started in "keep it", not sure he is still there.

For various reasons I'm still up although I'm off to sleep very shortly. I'm still in the 'keep it' camp. I know it's going to hit our income but I think it's worth it. Main reasons are:

• Happiness. WW is bad and is likely to get worse. Our only other source of happiness currently is the silver (I think we can ignore the calendar resources for a long time). Certainly an option but it doesn't advance us in terms of establishing a presence on lush island. I still don't know whether it's in our interests to adopt the religion yet.
• Possibility of iron by Corinth. My thinking here is that it won't help us to pillage Alex's copper if he has iron on tap. Equally it is possible that we don't have iron on our original island either in which case we need to acquire it.
• Apart from granaries there's not much we can build in our cities at present due to the unit costs. The exception is a few cats with which to attack Athens. Temples/Monasteries will give them something to do.

It is possible that we may need to run 10% research or even nil research for a while, although the money from Alex's cities should stave that off for a bit.This leads on the subject of our next tech.

We already have beakers towards IW whereas we have none towards CoL IIRC. I would therefore vote for IW next as CoL will take ages. Equally we can find an immediate use for IW on our island cutting down that wretched jungle and bulding cottages.

N.B. We may need some of the religious techs first to buld temples etc. if we haven't already 'learnt' them. However I think they're only a couple of turns now.

 

[AgedOne]

I wasn't firmly in the "Raze Corinth" camp. More like I was looking for some convincing evidence one way or t'other.
Having read the last few posts, I'm wavering even more now.

Iron. Yes, it might be our only reasonable chance. (Tho we could raze and rebuild)
Happiness. I'm seeing more benefit of getting all of our cities building happiness projects. Might give us an anti-WW boost sooner rather than later.

The other thing is The-Hawk's comments about takings risks.
I'm aware that one of my failings in CIV is not taking the correct risks. That's why I never get early victories. I'm probably leaning too much towards caution and pessimism in saying that the economy will stop dead if we take Corinth.

Perhaps we should take it and absorb the painful aftermath. Then we can start seeing the benefits.

 

[drhirsch]

For various reasons I'm still up although I'm off
We already have beakers towards IW whereas we have none towards CoL IIRC. I would therefore vote for IW next as CoL will take ages. Equally we can find an immediate use for IW on our island cutting down that wretched jungle and bulding cottages.

I don't see the benefits of IW. You need some population to work cottages, and our population is very limited. AFAIK we could get 2 spots where we can work a cottage, I think this is not enough to further delay CoL.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I don't see the benefits of IW. You need some population to work cottages, and our population is very limited. AFAIK we could get 2 spots where we can work a cottage, I think this is not enough to further delay CoL.

Seems to me that Turfan & Ning-hsia could benefit from from some jungle clearance. It also opens up swords which would be helpful in taking cities. My main problem with researching CoL is the sheer amount of time it will take. It may well be that taking and razing cities may be a better way of maintaining our income for the time being. It might also help in slowing down the AI's research.

However just to muddy the waters further I think there's also a case for Monarchy for happiness to raise our pop caps. One good reason our pop is limited is trying to absorb the WW within our existing caps. If we can get more citizens working cottages then that would help pay the maintenance and hopefully keep our science from falling too much.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Now that I think about it there might be a lot to be said for running a pillaging economy. A couple of keshiks pillaging the AIs cottages and resources would help our economy and slow the AI down. Toku would be a good first target. Since Cyrus is near he would also be a good target. Especially since he seems the most advanced of the AI.