Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,457
Tianjin and Macau currently do not have any Cultural Buildings in them. (If you zoom in on a City, you can see Buildings in Cities.) For example, Xian has a Monument, a Granary, and a Library, so it is a pipe dream to Culture-flip the Culturally-established Xian, but the other two Cities are outputting 0 Culture per turn, which, for now, makes them very easy prey for Culture-flipping.
For the Summer Palace (Stone City), we need Confucianism + an Odeon, giving us 6 Culture per turn. A cheap Theatre could add another +3 Culture per turn and once we have a Castle, that's 10 Culture per turn.
For Tianjin, where we must build an Odeon in Stone City and where we'd steal the City's Pig after 5 turns, we have a good chance of Culture-flipping Mao's City.
We may have less of a chance with Marble City Culture-flipping since we don't need an Odeon and a Theatre, but we could build them. At a minimum, we'd see if and when Mao sends units toward the Barb City so that we can capture it first and can be the ones to capture and Liberate that City to Mao.
So, the odds aren't high of Culture-flipping both Cities, but if we flip one and capture the Barb City, that's already +3 Liberation credit. We will add +2 to Resource trades over time, can earn +4 for trading techs, and might later be able to bribe Mao into a mutual war to seal the deal.
If our Culture-flipping efforts fail, we could instead send 1 or more Settlers later on and Liberate Cities to Mao peacefully near the end of the game, since there's so much unsettled land around him.
From what we can see, he has these units roaming around:
1 HA
2 Chars
2 Impis
1 Archer
He also has at least 3 Military Units in every City of his that we can see.
But, it's not what we can see that matters, it's that we have no way to stop Shaka from Whipping Military Units each turn before our forces can arrive at any of his Cities, which will mean stacks of 6 or 7 Units in every City that we face, hidden behind City Walls, with a stream of Combat II Impis, Combat I Horse Archers, and Barrage Catapults being sent our way turn after turn.
It's not about what he has but what he will whip that will make it going to be suicide to go after Shaka before our Cultural Borders have encroached on his Cities.
Further, we have no means to cut off his supply of Copper easily, as it is buried under his capital.
I don't even know how to comment here. We seem to be thinking in the opposite way on nearly every issue.
Caravel 1 is gong to unload inside of the City to the south of it so that the Jewish Missionary can explore to the east and then the west of Elizabeth's island. Then, it will reboard the Caravel and spread in Paris, as we have no peaceful way of making Louis a voting buddy.
RE: We must raze Amsterdam
Religions spread via Trade Networks. Isabella has Buddhism and Judaism "physicially closest" to Japan and Russia, but those Religions must follow Trade Networks. So, for a Religion to get from her to Japan, it's got to travel south-east past Mansa, north-east past Louis, north-east and east past Mao, and finally end up in Toku's area. It's actually one of the furthest distances in the game. The only further distance is for Islam, founded by Elizabeth, to one of Toku's Cities.
However, as soon as we learn Astronomy, Trade Networks get set up via direct distance by water.
As a result, Hinduism will be the Religion that is the CLOSEST Religion to each of Louis, Mao, and Toku out of ALL of the Religions in the world.
Distance is the primary factor for auto-sprading.
The whole part about "Judaism having minorly better odds of spreading" is only a statistically insignificant factor in that the game rolls a dice and says "did Religion A spread to this City this turn? No? Did Religion B spread to this City this turn? No? Did Religion C spread to this City this turn? Yes? Then don't check for Religions D, E, F, and G." (I mention Judaism since I know that Judaism is Religion A, but I forget the order of the other Religions... it hardly matters, though, as it would only matter in the most minor of ways for 2 Religions being founded in the same City as each other.) That factor is completely insignificant when compared to distance.
There is no greater important thing for us to do to set up an AP Victory than to raze the Hindu Holy City (or to get Amsterdam into Barbarian hands, which is impossible to set up due to Amsterdam's position).
Why do we need to whip Hindu Missionaries? We cannot get Hinduism widely-enough spread to stop the next AP resolution's voting results.
So, all that we can do is go after Elizabeth, take out the Apostolic Palace City, and if we get stuck into enforced Peace with her, we'll have the option of becoming the AP Resident in the next AP Resident election.
If she doesn't stop the war against herself or if Shaka defies it, then we take down all of her Cities and we'll have all of the Hindu votes that we'll need for a long time.
Our Military is TRAPPED on land by Willem's ex-area. The only way to get it untrapped is to get some Galleons. But, Galleons are too expensive to whip, so we must first get some Galleys, with Utrecht being a good place to make one or two Galleys. Other Cities will have to make Galleys, too.
RE: More Forests to Chop at Marble City... what do you want to Chop the Forests into? A Confucian Missionary and 2 Work Boats. Then, what do we need more Chops for, especially that Whipping couldn't do better? Instead, if we settle to grab one of the Fish in our big fat cross, we can Whip many more times than an additional 2 Forests can bring us in terms of Hammers, especially with a 30-Hammer Forest Chop simply becoming a 24-Hammer Forest Chop. Getting either Fish in our big fat cross will additional set up a Culture-flipping opportunity and will still leave us with the desired 3 Forests, in addition to the future Whipping power of having a Fish Resource to work.
The last that I saw, there wasn't a race to get The Taj Mahal built, as no AI has Nationalism and most AIs do not have the pre-requisite techs to go after Nationalism. Wouldn't it be better to have some of Elizabeth's Cities also benefitting from a Golden Age, plus also having grown any of our Cities where we're thinking of hiring Specialists during a Golden Age?
Unless we intentionally delay The Heroic Epic, we'll have it before we can settle on the Marble, while delaying it just means whipping Military Units without its benefit, as there aren't other useful Buildings to build in that City, so we don't really gain anything by delaying The Heroic Epic.
So, I don't see an absolute rush to get the Marble connected, just a rush to get the City settled before another AI settles there to grab the Resource.
We will not lose a population point in Utrecht because we have a Lighthouse, so we have 8 squares (including the City Centre) that produce 2 Food each, which can feed all 8 citizens. Remember that Amsterdam's Cultural Borders will disappear once we raze Amsterdam.
Counting, we can make at most 6 base Hammers * 1.25 with a Forge giving us 7 final Hammers plus 2 Culture from being Creative.
So, we would build T128 Galley
T129 Whip the Galley
T130 Culture -> Galley
T130 or T131 probably take Liberalism, then whip the resulting Galleon, so as to not delay Astronomy too long
Why do you want to meet Catherine? We're best off delaying contact with her as long as possible. The sooner that she meets us, the faster her Research pace will be. If she also knows 1 or more other AIs, perhaps because she knows Toku but Toku "blocks her" due to Toku being famous for not Opening Borders or perhaps because she knew some players from the start of the game, then we could change the situation from "no tech trading" to "massive tech trading" because we change the monopoly-threshold numbers for techs just by meeting her.
We should not meet Catherine at all until we have Galleons filled with units to land on her shores. Those units may units of conquest or those units may be our end-game Musketmen and Tanks.
Even if we never decide to attack her, her potentially getting in the trading game, be it from unlocking monopoly-blocked trading to having liberal trading, or be it from her teching Compass -> Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Optics due to getting piggyback Research from having met us, she could speed up the global tech pace of the backward AIs, which only hurts us and in no way helps us.
Even if AIs don't trade around Military Techs, if they trade around other techs, that means less techs that we can gift at the end of the game to try to gain "You Shared your Technological Discovery" positive AI Diplo with AIs as a last chance to boost the chance of getting a voting buddy, although we'd also have to watch out for Worst Enemy relationships when doing so.
Why would we want to Chop Confucian Missionaries in New Amsterdam? Why not a Granary, a partial Lighthouse, and then whip a Buddhist Missionary for Piscatorium?
Even if we try for a Great Engineer, it's worthwhile to have a Great Prophet as a backup option... even if we don't use it for Isabella #1, a Great Prophet combines very well with other Great People types for launching a Golden Age, but if we instead, say, hire Artists, Scientists, or Merchants in Piscatorium, we may end up with duplicate Great People, which cannot be used in a Golden Age together.
Sure, it would be nice to have Confucianism in Elizabeth's Cities if we were going to whip Buildings there. But, what we should be doing is:
1. Capture Elizabeth's Cities
2. If earlier-captured Cities have come out of City Revolt, whip Military Units out of then
3. Cease Fire with Elizabeth once she only has the gifted City on the island to the south of York
4. Position our Galleons so as to be able to amphibiously assault each of the Cities that we captured from her
5. Liberate all of the Cities that we captured from her back to her
6. Declare war on Elizabeth
7. Immediately recapture all of her Cities
8. Once her Cities come out of City Revolt, whip Military Units out of them
9. At some point later, after she is willing to Cease Fire with us, we can repeat steps 5 through 8, giving us a voting buddy. We can then selectively Liberate enough Cities back to her near the end of the game that have Hinduism and Confucianism in them so that she won't become our voting opponent.
But, there's no rush to get Confucian Missionaries for her Cities now, as we won't be using Confucianism for the Organized Religion bonus in her Cities.
I've already discussed Feudalism... taking it only makes it easier for the AIs to trade it around or get free Flasks when self-teching Feudalism themselves. It'll be easy to get in trade later, when we need it. It's only use is to unlock Guilds, but getting Guilds now isn't possible without giving away Education, which we don't want to do, so that we can be the ones to self-tech Economics... which, we'll have to do after building Walls and a Castle in our Summer Palace City.
That's another reason why 5 Forests to Chop is overkill at Marble City... once we've Chopped our 3 Forests, we'll want to send our Workers to connect-up the Stone at Stone City so as to get to work on building the City Walls and Castle there, after which point we can research Economics.
A Galleon chain to Isabella is a poor way to go to war with her. She has nowhere to send her troops, so on the turn that we declare war, we should have 2, ideally 3 sets of fully-loaded Galleons outside 2, ideally 3, of her Cities, so that when we declare war, she'll have the least amount of time to prepare.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, is already involved in a war, so if we only hit her at one City initially, she won't be building any more troops than she already has been for her war on Shaka.
Also, logistically, if we can get boats to ferry our Military Units from Willem's ex-area to Elizabeth's area quickly, we can get the war started very quickly.
In fact, it may be worthwhile to use our first couple of boats to simply drop off as many troops as possible at York and only then send the 2 Settlers, 1 Maceman, 1 Confucian Missionary, and 2 Workers via 2 Galleons toward Mao's area.
As Cactus Pete experienced the hard way with Willem, BtS AIs can get a large number of Military Units spammed as soon as the war starts. Our best bet is to hit an AI really hard at the start of the war, taking down key Cities and key Strategic Resources.
Galleon-chaining a war against Isabella means a slow war where she has time to build War Elephants out of every City. Yuck. What a mess that would be.
Yet, we don't have enough forces to be able to quickly hit Isabella from multiple sides at once. Our forces also aren't in a good position to hit Isabella. Elizabeth is the natural next target, both for capturing the Apostolic Palace and from a logistical standpoint given where our units are currently located.
At the very minimum, we should make:
1 Galley out of Utrecht
1 Galley out of Sleepy Sheep
2 Galleys out of Piscatorium
1 Galley out of Athens
It's probably not worth delaying Astronomy for a second Galley out of Utrecht unless we can Chop into the second Galley and instead just Whip a Galleon out of Utrecht as the second boat.
I think that we need to get far more alignment between us before anyone plays, as we seem to be talking in totally different directions on nearly every point.
