Leave a trading partner on the continent?

Background:

Started up an emperor fractal game, standard size, marathon, 6 AIs .. haven't beat Emperor yet. Playing as Augustus Caesar, ended up on a smallish continent with Sitting Bull and Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh had no access to Bronze/Iron at the time and I decided not to let him get to the point where he might expand to get it, so I wiped him out. Sitting Bull has some bronze and is building up Dog Workers, but I would still be easily able to wipe him out, he's behind in tech. We share a religion (Judaism), he's the founder.

Issue:

I assume I should leave him around for now, so I have someone to trade with? Optics is still a few techs away, so I'm not going to be meeting another civ for quite some time.

My completely subjective feeling is that having more land + a religious city are very advantageous and that they offset the issue of becoming isolated for a while. One of the biggest problems in isolated starts seems to be the availability of good land, but in this situation, you'd be isolated, but with the land of 3 civs, so if you can get SB's land while researching towards optics, that would put you in a great spot.

Most AI won't trade if it's only you and them left, since they feel every tech is a monopoly tech. Better to take them out early, then expand the rest of the continent at your leasure. Beeline for Optics to meet people to not fall too far behind.

mariogreymist had a pretty good point a few week(months) ago when he gave me some advice on a game I had posted. He said as the human player, you are better off having two AIs with you than one or you are better being alone on the land mass than with one other AI. I think that's good advice.

Having one AI means it won't trade techs with you because it will have monopoly on the tech. So if that AI won't trade, the only thing it's really doing is taking up more of your land. More land would mean more $$ to bring your tech rate up and research these yourself.

I thought it made perfect sense.

Ahh -- good to know. I think had I known about the monopoly techs, I still would have taken Gilgamesh out as he's just too much of a threat in general. Guess I'll get ready to mop up Sitting Bull and beeline to Optics.

You can still tech trade, but said AI must have a friendly attitude towards you, in which case monopoly becomes irrelevant.

You don't want to overexpand and crash your economy.

I would suggest you get your economy to a good point before you take out SB. That is, you want to at least tech to currency, and to get your happiness level up via Monarchy, Calendar resources, or religion.

You do want to attack SB before he can tech Feudalism. Protective longbows with 6 exp to start are no fun.

you can vassalized that ai. BTS 3.19 AI vassals are forced to trade w/ masters. Also, you can direct them to specific techs, and in effect you can research faster than by yourself.

Yeah, I'm on my way to currency if I recall right. Haven't picked up Monarchy or Calendar yet. Sitting Bull is way behind me, I have at least 5 techs I can trade him and none vice-versa.

Are the dog soldiers going to be a huge issue for praets? With no promotions/bonuses, it's 8 vs 8, right? Add in his protective and city bonuses, and I'm wondering if I'm going to need to wait until I get Construction and catapults before mounting an assault.

Edited out: thought I could take out his copper and limit the # of dog soldiers, but just read they don't require copper. nuts.

Dogs and super-protective archers are tough. Cats will surely help, but Praets are very strong on their own. You'll take more losses with Praets, but if you have a bunch lying around, might be easier for a quick strike. You can always strike fast, and then just fortify a few praets on a hill forest and choke him down until you get more catapults.

I missed that you were Rome... well, dogs are better vs praets than axemen are, but either way praets are slightly superior strength-wise (assuming built with barracks) but inferior cost-wise. Ideally, you'd have some other unit type to deal with dogs. Chariots are probably the easiest, being cheap and already available. Horse archers easily beat dogs, but they require more research. Praets with city-attack will beat dogs in a city if they have little or no culture. Otherwise, build chariots to soften up defenses.

In any case, the AI doesn't know that dogs are good defenders; it will use archers for defense. Once you've beaten SB's initial stack, you won't see many dogs. If you find a stack of dogs in a city, attack some other city, because the dogs are the AI's attack-stack and it will eventually move the stack out of the city to attack you. Then you can let it hit you, presumably into stiff city-defense bonuses. Or mop it up in the field, with catapults or horse archers.

As for vassalizing SB: it's not a bad idea. At Emperor, AIs do research faster, so there is some value gained there. The downside is considerable, though. First, it does require higher tech. Second, native american culture doesn't go poof unless you genocide them, so you have to deal with unhappiness and possible revolts from that. Finally, once you meet the world, either you stop feeding tech to the vassal, or you risk him trading your shared techs away from you. If you're first to Optics, you can prevent him meeting anyone for a while by not trading him Optics. But eventually the other AIs will meet him, and the problem comes up.

2 is better than 1.

0 is better than 1. Unless the 1's friendly.

Saladin, Isabella, Charlemagne, those are the ones I usually keep around. They're easy to get to friendly. Sometimes you can get another one to friendly without too much trouble, with an earlyish favourite civic like bureau, or HR.

On higher levels, the AI will outtech me unless I beeline and backfill, so I prefer to have trading partners so I don't get bogged down teching stuff like calendar/monarchy/guilds, that kind of stuff.

With your tech lead I really can't see that Sitting Bull has anything to offer you other than his land. His holy city only makes it more desirable to conquer him. I say do so if you can.

Sitting bull is philosophical, if he has the means to generate any great prophets it may be worth waiting to get your economy up and let him build the shrine. You could even feed him techs that lead to priesthood with no real benefit to him.

turkis said:

Sitting bull is philosophical, if he has the means to generate any great prophets it may be worth waiting to get your economy up and let him build the shrine. You could even feed him techs that lead to priesthood with no real benefit to him.

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I know he has the Temple of Artemis, not sure what else off hand. I just hit currency and my slider is at 10% science, so even declaring war vs him and just razing cities instead of holding is getting awfully tempting. Researching construction now, going to move some cities to research science/wealth, get construction, and move in for the kill.

Couple barbarian cities I'm beating up in basically unsettable land.. have a huge desert behind me that transforms into tundra.. grabbed 1 city there for the resources (deer, fur, and incense). About to hit 1 AD, will post a save soon, could use some general advice still as I haven't beaten an Emperor game yet.