aCK-3 The Cat with the Hat

[pholtz]

Well, we dont' have a spy in his territory now. By the time we get one there, he probably won't have that kind of money. I stole all of 15 gold from him earlier. Nationalism is getting to be an old tech I think. HC has it. Sury has it. Can I really turn down 1000 gold? I saw your question Silver just before I was going to do the deal. I'll wait for your response now before I do it or end the turn.

Oh, Hannibal has it too.

 

[S.ilver]

I'm going to further elaborate on my thinking and Philosophy regarding transitioning more to a CE. I'm not a player who believes in running the so called "pure" economies in any shape or form. Specialists will always have a place in the GPP city, and in tweaking the output of individual cities. And cottages will also always have a place (unless you're one of those masochistic types who love the "no cottage variant").

The point is not to get rid of all specialists, it's to start having us lean more on cottages than specialists. We're being out-teched by HC, I know. He's financial, but that's not that huge of a deal. The point is that cottage yields outstrip specialists yields in the late game. We're not really going to see a marked improvement in our economy until we start laying down more cottages.


On some other points.

CR3 Gunpowder units make up the core killing squad in almost every game I've played that has involved a fight. Look up "Bigmen" in any of the SGs I've previously played in. They're good, and I make a point of keeping them alive (which isn't hard, because the AI ALWAYS camps in its city waiting for you, making CR units even more valuable) and eventually having the cash to upgrade them. It's not an urgent priority, but it usually ranks higher for me than "cash rushing a building" or even "deficit spending for research".

We're in building mode right now, and the affects of individual great people are starting to wane. I think it would be a good time to get Democracy for Emanci, in order to grow those cottages (after Rifling of course). We can lay some extra cottages down while we're waiting for Emanci, and fire off a Golden Age once we have our lands retooled (read: fewer farms; they're good for growing in more rapidly, but we need more useful improvements).


I'm not a huge fan of food based strategies, especially late game (i.e. drafting, etc). It's different in the early game when it's a lot harder to come by hammers from your improvements, but again, we're hitting the stage where technology is starting to boost our hammer yields. I feel it is counterproductive to encourage excessive growth in order to use drafting to any large extent. I recognize the merits of saving hammers on unit production, but I prefer my units to be better promoted, rather than more numerous (because you pay more maintenance for more units and get more war weariness for getting them killed; so zerging the enemy is a bad idea most of the time).


At any rate, we definitely need to consolidate an economic base before we decide to conquer more territory. Maintenance is soon going to be a non-issue with State Property, and I see us killing off that tech sooner rather than later, if only because Biology is very near it.

 

[S.ilver]

Yeah, after further thought, might as well take his gold. Will he throw in anything else with it?

 

[pholtz]

Well, he is the first with Scientific Method. We can trade him Replaceable Parts for Sci Method. Together with the other deal. Not sure if I want to do this. For some reason he won't take RP for Sci Method by itself. I guess he really values Nationalism.

 

[S.ilver]

Well, we DO want SciMeth... are we still missing Liberalism as well? And can we broker SciMeth to the others?

EDIT: And the fact that he won't give us straight SciMeth for Parts, but will if we combine the other deal, means that he's ripping us off on the Nats for Cash deal.

 

[pholtz]

And with your discussion on CR Riflemen. We have a few units that are CR3 now. One maceman and 2 Swordsmen (possibly others). It will take lots of gold to upgrade them. Thessalonica is putting out 9 Experience units now. Just one short of CR3 macemen. So what are your thoughts on our gold. Should I keep about 2k or so for upgrades? Or spend it on tech. We are ahead on military tech now. We are the only one with Replaceable parts and the only one researching Steel. I think we have a good chance of a tech advantage initially in our war with HC. He doesn't have that many cities, a tech advantage to take the first 2 or so can decide the war quickly I think.

Edit: hmm sounds like this is a big decision. I'm going to post the save.

 

[pholtz]

Ok, sounds like this is a big decision, and it will probably be worth discussing. So here is the save.

Decisions.

We can trade nationalism to Japan for 1000 gold.

Do we start gearing up for war? Should I make CR2 macemen for upgrade?

We have 1200 + in the bank now. With the 1000 trade that will be over 2000. That sounds like enough to upgrade a few units to riflemen CR3.

Right now I'm proposing to keep the money. Research Steel then Rifling. Upgrade our units now with macemen/crossbowmen, and maybe a few more cataphracts. Once we research steel, Start making Cannons.. probably won't be worth upgrading any catapults we have now. If we switch civics to more military ones, Thessalonica can make CR3 macemen directly. Anyone know the cost of upgrading macemen to Riflemen?

Once we research Rifling, upgrade the units we can and attack HC.

Berlin is just about to finish the NE. After that, it should probably make the Hippodrome (so someone can build Globe), then it can go full specialist. That should help the research/money.

 

[S.ilver]

Thoughts...


If we can bag SciMeth and not have to waste time teching it... I would probably do so. It'll save us some time, and we're not really losing anything anyways, since we don't have the wonders (except ToA, and that's negligible... 1 free priest and boosts to our internal trade routes... whatever). The important thing is it opens up the route to Communism and Biology. Need to pick up Liberalism from some sucker, but Lib is cheap, and we can probably package a few of our techs to get Lib + Demo.

While we're doing this, tech Steel -> Rifles -> Communism. Start building massed cannons, as siege is important. When we hit Communism, we should be in decent shape if we want to try and attack HC. We can use drafted rifles (I'd rather not) or we can build them. The upside to building them is that it will take slightly longer, and we'll have more time for workers to get our lands in shape, and our economy will have a bit more time to strengthen.

This is all assuming that we are looking to fight immediately. I agree that financial civs and civs running away with tech generally need to be killed. The problem is that if they have a tech advantage, they can bribe other civs (i.e. Japan) into attacking us.

 

[IamJohn]

What do we have in the way of siege? That's one thing that concerns me if we're considering attacting, otherwise there is going to be pretty large attrition of our more elite units, and building it is going to take quite a chunk of hammers...

 

[S.ilver]

Oh nice... When did we go to Friendly with Japan? The git cannot be bribed into attacking us if we're friendly.

Ugh, but I notice that Capac has Cuirs. Those will not be fun for flank attacks...

EDIT: Best wait until everyone has had a chance to chime in. Remember we still need to build the Cannons, and we still need to tech both Steel and Rifling. Capac is teching very fast, while our economy is not going to get much better without work. Work that won't get done if we are busy preparing to smash his head in.

 

[pholtz]

Remember, HC has the Buddhist shrine. We take that and most of our economic problems dissapear

Edit: ok, a bit of an overstatement, but the shrine would be very very nice to have !!!

I won't be continuing the turn until tomorrow at the soonest.

And John, I think we can build a force of cannons pretty quickly as soon as it gets researched. Thessa is a unit producing powerhouse. By then we'll have several other towns capable of helping. Ulundi has just about everything it needs now, I didn't see anything else to make other than a Jail. So it will be producing cannon also.

 

[pholtz]

I found a chart with upgrade costs.

Axeman - > Rifleman = 245
Swordsman - > Rifleman = 230
Maceman -> Rifleman = 140

From these numbers it will be easy to figure out the total cost. Silver, any idea how many CR3 Riflemen you would want before we invade?

Would it be worth upgrading CR2 macemen with 9 exp?

Remember we adopt one military civic, feudalism or theocracy and Thessa spits out units with over 10 exp, that's 3 promotions. That means we can make some Formation Riflemen to protect from the Cuirs.

Edit: sorry that's wrong. Mounted units would have over 10 exp because of the Stables. Without civics changes our ground units have 7 exp on creation, 9 with one civics change, 11 with 2 changes.

 

[IamJohn]

If we're going to attack we need to go all out imo, civics changes all the way if we can.

 

[The Simple Mind]

Not at my civ computer so will look at the save tonight.

Getting Cuzco would provide a huge benefit to us. As we're going for war I'd vote for changing the civics.

Would it be worth upgrading CR2 macemen with 9 exp?

What about using them to help finish off cities, get their additional 1XP, promote then upgrade. Assuming we can build plenty of seige, then HC's defenders should be sufficiently weakened that CR2 maces have good odds.

 

[pholtz]

If we're going to attack we need to go all out imo, civics changes all the way if we can

.

As we're going for war I'd vote for changing the civics.

The problem with this is that we need OR to remain friendly with Sury I think. If we change OR to Theocracy, it has to be done before the war, make the units, then change back before the war starts. We want to be friendly with both Sury and Toku while the war is going on so HC can't bribe them to fight us.

I'm going to go ahead and continue my turn set. I'll make the recommended trades with Toku. And even if we don't go to war, our military badly needs upgrading. We need to increase it's power just to stay safe. So I'll continue working on developing our cities while starting a military buildup. I'll try to keep 1500 at minimum in the bank for unit upgrades.

 

[pholtz]

I started off by making the deal of deals with Toku

Spoiler :

Do we have oil? Yes! The first near Constantinople, you can see our newest city bottom right.

Spoiler :

The second not far from Ulundi, under the ruins of a city, I wonder who destroyed it?

Spoiler :

This one isn't in our boundaries at the moment, but I see no reason to worry about that.

1550: (13)

Berlin: National Epic -> Hippodrome
Nicomedia: messed up, Hammers into Monastery are lost, started Forge. Starting to work a workshop.
Thessa: Crossbowman - > Maceman

1555: (14)

Nicaea: University -> Forge

HC comes to me offering this:

Spoiler :

Sorry HC, but no way!

1560: (15)
Thessa: Maceman -> Crossbowman I delete a swordsman.

Kassite: Library -> Forge

Berlin grows to 16, I hire all the Merchants I can keeping the Hippo being done next turn. We are now pulling a profit at 70%

1565: (16)
Bad news



I don't think it affects my turn, as I need to build military for defensive purposes anyway.

Berlin finishes the Hippo. Starts working 7 Merchants. We are now -17gpt at 80%. Nah, make it -23 as Berlin starts on a Buddhist missionary. Antioch was never converted for some reason.

1570: (17)
Thessa: Crossbowman - > Cataphract

Constantinople: University - > Hippo

Angora: Lighthouse -> Forge

1580: (19)
Sury will sign a defensive pact if we wish.

Thessa: Cataphract -> Maceman

Ulundi: Jail - > maceman, I adjust the tiles to create more merchants, maceman will be done the same time Steel is, so it can start on cannon.

1585: (20)

Zulu borders changed, took some squares away from Ulundi.

Constantinople: Hippo - > Bank

We have enough Hippo's built to put a Globe someplace. Continuing the turn until Steel is discovered.

1590: (21) Pirates that have been sailing off to the SE have finally threatened the clams near Constantinople. My bad. We need another Caravel to clean up these pirates. Constantinople is switching to build one, but we'll lose the clams.

1595: (22) Looking over our old deals we were trading silver and gems to Sury for rice and 15 gold. I stopped, them. Now trading marble for 15 gold. We are about to get a second fur online, so trading him fur for rice now.

1600: (23) Nobamba: University -> Spy

research is at 100% to finish steel a turn early.

1605: (24) Steel is done!

I had built a mine on a second source of copper, and since Hannibal had iron anyway, I am trading him the second copper for 2 gpt.

 

[pholtz]

Here is the save. Not sure what to do now.

Toku will declare on HC if we give him Steel and money. Hannibal will buy Music from us for all his gold, we should do that.

Do we want to start a war? And who with if we do? If so we should probably go full war prep now including civics changes. If we are going to fight Sury we don't need to worry about OR.

I would vote for full war prep now, and war once Rifling is researched. We are the only one with steel but HC is researching rifling and will have it before us.

Full civic for war is Police State, Theocracy and Feudalism. Every city should start on a barracks if they don't have one at the next opportunity. Every city with a barracks should start on units. I've got our power relationship with Toku, the leader from .5 all the way up to .6 . I've stopped deleting units as our finances are in pretty good shape for now. Oxford and Globe can be built someplace.

And I'm sure there are lots of other options and considerations.. but all I know for sure, is that the game will be lost if we don't start fighting someone soon. We aren't teching fast enough for space, we can't do culture. We are number 3 in population and it is doubtful we'll get the UN built first. War is the only thing left.

 

[Whosit]

Sorry, I skimmed through your report. Don't have much time during the week to do . . . much.

Just a random thought: Even though we're probably not ready for war . . . if we sic Toku on Capac, and trigger Sury's pact, then WE can declare on Capac without, well, maybe without, worrying about Sury. So long as Sury is still Friendly, Capac won't be able to bribe him against us.

 

[IamJohn]

Nice job pholtz! As a warning if I'm the next in line to play I'm not going to be able to get this in until Friday night, so if silver wants to go he can, but otherwise we're going to have to wait, as there's just no way I'm going to have the time until then.

 

[S.ilver]

Using Toku to trigger HC's pact would be hilarious. Let's see what we can do in that department. I'll take a look at the save in the afternoon. Can probably play it either Wednesday afternoon, or Thursday afternoon.