aCK-3 The Cat with the Hat

[IamJohn]

. Since you've gotten two differing opinions, you get to do what you want

Fine with me. Your the one playing the turn, you get to make the decision, it's no big deal either way.

 

[The Simple Mind]

1050BC (0)
Looking at our mighty empire of three cities, the world must be trembling with fear. Well, maybe ol’ battleship is.

Reviewing our cities, I make the following adjustments:

Constantinople – despite my initial thoughts of change the library to a military build, I decide to keep producing the library. Strength wise we are ok compared to Shaka and the extra beakers will be needed. Tiles worked are all good.

Thessalonica – no change required.

Berlin – building a barracks (6). Decide to change to settler for blue dot blocking city. Swap tiles worked from bronze + forest to bronze + riverside corn. Settler due in 11 turns and we get an extra beaker.

1025BC (1)
Knew there was something else I meant to do in previous turn. Change spy points away from Germany to:

Thessa completes granary. Select worker to help with the road building projects to yellow and blue dots.

The German archer in the forest east of Berlin wants a piece of our worker and moves onto the corn south of Berlin. Check the odds for attacking with Hamilcar (86.6%), Hoof of Doom (94.1%) and standard axe (94.8%). It would be nice to get some XP into Hamilcar but take the safe option and use the standard axe. Axe wins and is renamed Feathers Killer.

Hamburg suffers a slave revolt. Good, let them suffer.

Settle Adrianople on yellow dot. ABCs goes from 7 to 6 turns, expenses go from 11 to 14 gold per turn, boo. Work the corn to grow and select library.

Ol’ battleship has a scout 1W of the corn. Adrianople’s chariot is 1 XP short of next promo so send him on a killing spree and he survives without a scratch.

Another archer appears 3W of Thessa. Send Hoof of Doom to help keep clear the path to Adrianople for the workers to connect our cities. Chagrin is sent to Adrianople to farm that corn.

1000BC (2)
Shaka and Toku found new cities.

Toku still refusing to open borders so time for the chariot to go exploring.
That pesky archer is loitering around Thessa. Looks like he could be going for our horse pasture. If he does, it will be the end of him!

Thessa whips a worker. We’ll have those roads built in jig time.

Axe pillages Hamburg’s wine farm and gets 3 gold. Hamburg still in revolt, what a shame.

975BC (3)
Resolve and Belief (renamed workers) begin road to Adrianople (still not a catchy song title).

950BC (4)
Toku founds Nara, he is certainly spreading himself. Chagrin begins farming Adrianople’s corn.

925BC (5)
Whip the library in Constantinople. Pillage Hamburg’s wine cottage and boost our coffers by 11 gold. The pigs will be next.

900BC (6)
And now he has no bacon! We only get 3 gold but I’ll take it. Feathers Killer kills German archers at 88%. Once he heals I’ll send him scouting down to the marble in case there is a barb city.

875BC (7)
We get:

I select

to allow us to build wealth and get Code of Laws.

Dial up ol’ battleships and he offers:

Lets see if we can do better than that.

Now that’s much better and we can be happy neighbours again. But we’ll be watching you so don’t be thinking of settling any pain in the ass cities again.

Now do we have iron,

Three sources but none in any of our bfcs. Shaka has iron but hasn’t mined it yet. I think a few more axemen are required.

Techs before peace treaty:

After peace treaty:

Not too shabby. A monopoly on ABCs, hopefully for a while.

Settler for blue dot whipped in Berlin.

850BC (8)
I have a chat with HC:

And he accepts.

Berlin completes settler who is sent on his way to blue dot and it begins a library.

HC has mined iron in bfc.

825BC (9)
Nothing

800BC (10)
We get a good event with only one option available to us:

775BC (11)
Farm completes in Adrianople.

750BC (12)
Nothing

725BC (13)
Well would you believe it, Shaka’s been in builder mode.

Whip library in Berlin.

Damn! Bismark has a settler in Hamburg and there are still 4 turns left on the peace treaty.

Settler creates Nicaea at blue dot. Select monument to pop borders as it will only take 23 turns compared to library’s 68 turns. Even though I said to Pholtz to start with a library but it will take sooo long.

700BC (14)

I don’t think so. Where is your loyalty people?

Berlin grows to size 2 and first scientist selected.

Hamburg’s settler stays put. He has 3 workers within reach. Let’s see what we can get when peace is over.

675BC (15)

The Oracle has been built by one of the unknown civs. Hopefully it’s a civ that founded Hinduism and/or Judaism and they concentrate on religion, though they never selected Code of Laws as the free tech.

Shaka adopting police state could be worrying. At the moment we are 1 to 1 strength with him and we are no 2 in soldiers. Looking at the Sit-Rep, we are unlikely to be the target.

650BC (16)
Nothing

625BC (17)
Our peace treaty with Bismark has completed its 10 turns. Looking at the diplo

Shaka prefers us to Bismark, Toku has us equal and HC doesn’t know him.

Look at that, 3 workers ripe for the picking. Time to grab us some workers.

And now we have 7 and at war.

600BC (18)
Time to start pillaging and moving the captured workers to safety.

575BC (19)
We get a bad event which I haven’t made a note of. I’m sure it was a slave revolt in Thessa and that was why it shrunk to size 3 in 550BC. I’ll need to check the log.

Adrianople’s Axe attacks the German archer in the bfc and wins. Ol’ battleships is willing to offer hunting for peace. I accept

550BC (20)
Ol’ battleship gets a bad event.

No thanks mate. Our food is yummy and we need it to grow. The 2nd option only gives a +1 diplo boost which would change his attitude to –5. I take the 1st option.

Son of a hun. Ol’ battleship has sent out a settling party now that we are tied to peace. No doubt he’ll settle the iron but where?

525BC (21)
Workers work and everyone else is holding their breath to find out where the settler will stop.

500BC (22)
And Frankfurt is settled on the iron (again).

At least he didn’t pick the hill. Once currency is in we’ll need to start massing axemen.

485BC (23)
Look who the cat dragged in

Sury is known to all the civs we know and he has ABCs. We accept open borders to allow our chariot to continue exploring.

470BC (24) to 410BC (28)
Worker actions and some exploring. Library whipped in Adrianople.

395BC (29)
And finally we complete

and select Code of Laws as a placeholder.

Overview in next post

 

[The Simple Mind]

Our empire:

Spoiler :

Diplo

Obviously Ol’ battleship is far from happy with us but everyone else is ok and we aren’t anyone’s possible target.

Tech:

We’re good. No one is willing to trade Maths. Shaka has had it for some time. I wonder if he is in builder mode again and going for Hanging Gardens.

Info:

We are keeping up with Shaka on manufacturing, food and power.

We’ve dropped to 3rd in soldiers but we have 3 axes in production at the moment.

The World

Our lands

Shaka’s

Sury’s

HC’s and Toku’s

Some thoughts and comments:

City specialisation:

Constantinople – production / military pump. I have slowed grow due to happy cap.

Thessalonica – Currently building wealth to help economy and science rate. Decent production centre. Possibly produce & whip a library to get rid of unhappy citizens or build settler to stall growth.

Berlin – this has got to be our science city but we need to get the happy cap up so we can work another scientist. The border pop in 30 turns will bring mined silver into our culture and all happy caps will increase. GP due in 11 turns with a 2 to 1 chance that it’ll be a spy.

Adrianople – a science city or a production city. Once the borders pop and the cows are pastured, we can work 2 scientists and still have reasonable production. Granary and barracks need to built.

Nicaea – I’d use this city to build wealth or military.

At some point we will need another settler to get the magic sixth city unless we decide to war again. Ideally we would want to claim iron (or take Frankfurt) but there are no good locations jumping out at me.

Diplo

I still think we need to keep Shaka sweet so that he doesn’t declare and we can get him to close borders with any 3rd party that declares on us. He likes us on a par with Sury and better than the other 3. He has gold to trade but we can only offer him bronze or horses . When we get the additional cows we might be able to do a deal. Selling him Mysticism should help. No harm in selling Sury Mysticism as well.

As no known civs have Poly or Mono or their associated religions, I assume the final civ must be on an isolated island. Possibly Spain?

Techs

I have selected CoL but no beakers have been invested. I’m not sure this is the best tech to research. Our main cities are at or close to their happy caps. One way round this would be to get Monarchy, adopt hereditary rule and pump out units. This has the added benefit of keeping our strength up.

To get Monarchy we need Med / Poly then Priesthood or Poly then Mono. HC is willing to trade Med and has Priesthood. We could trade ABCs to him for Med+Archery+Cash then research Priest+Monarchy or research Med and hopefully HC will trade Priest. Alternatively, we could research our way through the three. I don’t have a note of how long this would take.

I don’t see CoL as essential right now as we are a small empire and we would need to invest a lot of hammers into courthouses to save maybe 4 or 5 gold per turn. The major benefit is if we found Confucism we could spread it to our neighbours and create disharmony. However, there is no guarantee we’ll get confu as the unknown civ probably has a head start and could be religion hogging.

Great Person

Either spy or scientist due in 11 turns. If a spy, do we settle in Berlin? Will pollute our GP the whole game but provides culture(?) to fight off Hamburg & get silver quicker plus the extra spy point. If scientist, the bulbing options aren’t great at the moment, do we build an academy in Berlin?


Units

We have 7 workers so when borders pop we will be able to get resources and any new cities connected pretty quick.

There are two chariots fog busting. I can’t remember if they are active or on sentry.

Two apologies, one small one big.

Small apology – I played an extra four turns until Currency was in. I hope that was ok as it seemed to be the natural stopping point for discussion.

Big apology – I have forgotten the bloody save . I’ll attach it tonight when I get home.

TSM

 

[IamJohn]

Good set of turns. We're looking much better.

Do we want to declare on Germany again to raise his new city when we get a chance?

Once you have a save posted I'll look at our tech options.

I'll play and report in roughly 36 hours.

 

[The Simple Mind]

Do we want to declare on Germany again to raise his new city when we get a chance?

If we do I would suggest that we need enough military to wipe out Germany. This would benefit Berlin by getting rid of the motherland unhappiness. If we raze both Hamburg & Frankfurt we could settle a city on the desert tile 1NE of Frankfurt to claim the iron and pigs.

As promise the save file.

 

[pholtz]

I think Germany's usefulness is over. We got the tech we can get from him and some workers, now is the time to finish him. The happiness penalties to Berlin are becoming too great a cost. Right now Hamburg has only one archer. If you can time your attack when this is the case, you wont need much to take Hamburg.

As far as CoL, I think we need it. We are barely in the green at 60% with one of the cities making wealth. We need to expand a bit but can't until we do a bit more to get costs under control. Also even if we don't create a state religion, we need the happiness that temples could give us. Right now the happiness cap is really hurting us.

As far as long range. The Inca's scare me. If they are going well when the middle ages are reached they can start teching like crazy. We could try for a diplomacy win but we would get out tech'ed if that failed and then lose a space race. I think we need to take down Shaka next, but after Germany is gone, and we get expenses more under control and get Construction. It's interesting to see Toku out in the lead, but he almost always falls flat on his face later in the game. If we could spread our religion to Toku, get him to convert.. but that will take a while.

Take a look at the tiles being worked. Thessa might want to work the cottage, even at the cost of a couple of coins now, to get the cottage worked a bit. Berlin probably needs to switch back and forth between food and hammers, alternately growing and starving to keep the population from growing any more. We need to create a mine on on one of the hills to give more options for Berlin.

Even with the workers we got from Germany, we could use a couple more.

Edit: forgot to say we also need the spy points from courthouses

 

[The Simple Mind]

We certainly need Col particularly for CS, Philo and any possible attempt at Lib race. I’m just not sure there is much benefit to us going for it before Monarchy.

CoL

Courthouses would help us but we’ve still got to invest the into them and the cities that would benefit the most from them are the cities with poorest production (at present). Also, if all our cities were to get courthouses we would only save 6 or 8 per turn (I don’t remember if this is one of the multipliers that is rounded down).

Getting Confu would be good for us to spread to either Sury or Shaka to create disharmony with the Buddhists. If we get Confu then it will cost us hammers to spread religion and build temples for 1 for the happy cap. And we still need Med to build monasteries to guarantee it’s spread and priesthood to build temples (the 2 prereq techs we require for Monarchy). If we don’t get Confu we aren’t able to increase the happy cap at all. I concerned that the unknown civ seems to be hogging religions and they are likely to have priesthood so might have a head start on researching CoL.

It allows caste system. As we are spiritual, we could switch between this and slavery when we want. This obviously benefits us when we are pushing for GPs though Berlin would be restricted by the happy cap.

Monarchy

I’m not sure how long it would take to research to this but I think it might be a few turns longer than CoL. Though we have the option to trade with HC to speed this up.

If we get a religion spread to us we would be able to build the associated buildings as we have Med + Priesthood.

Two possible ways to increase the happy caps:
- when in hereditary rule we can pump out units . Improves individual city happy cap
- assuming we declare war on Germany and raze / capture Hamburg, we will be able to improve the wine at Berlin. Empire wide improvement to the happy cap.

HR also benefits us by being HC’s favourite civic. Should keep him sweet.

As we are talking about wiping Ol’ battleship off the face of the planet, we will need to build plenty of units to guarantee a short victory. Hamburg only has one archer at the moment but we can’t attack it until turn two of the war and we’ll probably be facing a 2nd archer by then.

HR encourages us to build units so keeps up our military strength, reducing the likelihood of a war declaration.

Also, if the Buddhists attack Shaka, we should have sufficient military that we could join in and maybe snatch a city or two. The prize would be if we could get Ulundi.


I’m in favour of tech Monarchy then CoL whereas Pholtz techs CoL first. IamJohn, looks like you have the casting vote. What would you choose and why?

 

[pholtz]

I dont' know about John, but you've convinced me TSM

 

[IamJohn]

Sorry about the wait, I'll have the turns up in a few hours.

 

[IamJohn]

And it's here! :O

Turn 1
Cities are maximized, nothing much to do.

Turn 2
Nothing...

Turn 3
Kill a barb archer sitting on a hut, and get Horseback Riding! The other teams sue the pRNG, we laugh a maniacal laugh, it turns out that taking the pRL(etter)G hostage was a good idea after all....

Turn 4
This is basically our turn. Hopefully I should have a big enough army to kill Germany by the end of the turn.

Turn 5
Nothing.

Turn 6
I've stacked up a decent number of troops, and get a chance to snatch a worker, so I declare on Germany (again).

Turn 7
Lose one axe but take the german iron city (Franfurt). I think about it for awhile, but ultimately decide to raze it. All that's there is the iron, with no buildings, and only one pop anyway. It'd be a long time before it'd be useful imo. In the end though we get an 11 xp chariot, as well as another great general, who I'll let sit till we can decide what we want to do with him.

Turn 8
Moving the troops into place to attack Berlin.

Turn 9
Nothing...

Turn 10
Shaka offers to buy mysticism, I agree because we really need to the gold, and he should get it soon anyway.

Turn 11
Viktor Griph (Great Spy) born in Berlin. I send him off exploring. If someone wants to do something with him feel free to recal him.

Turn 12
Zip...

Turn 13
Zatta...

Turn 14
Zoop....

Turn 15
Boom! (nope, that was just me pillaging for much needed gold....)

Turn 16
We get Code of Laws! Unfortunately Confucianism has already been founded elsewhere.

Turn 17
Make a trade for meditation and archery + cash for horseback riding.

Turn 18
Use cash to research priesthood in overdrive.

Turn 19
Shaka decides to make life interesting for HC, all the better for us, we just need to be careful about taking sides. I cancel open borders for HC since we do not want issues with demands to cancel treaties.

Turn 20
Germany is totally a non-factor atm, they have 4 archers with unfortunately mountain promotions from their barracks, but they've been starved down to pop 1, and aren't doing much anyway since I'm occupying any land that would be useful to them. I'm waiting for them to be willing to give up math for peace before I'll accept since they don't have anything else worth taking.

Turn 21
Trade code of laws for Monarchy and 30g from Sury. We don't have a monopoly anyway, so I figure it's worth it since we need happiness so desperately.

Turn 22
We finish revolting, civ is in joyous happiness at our (non)overwhelming military might.

Turn 23
Building and futzing with citizens...

Turn 24
More building...

Turn 25
Sury decides that the best way to win is simply to take. He demands Currency. I think about this for awhile and decide not to give in. I'm really tempted to, since we really need friends, but this is a monopoly tech, that we could definitely get something for, and we really need trade material? I'm definitely not sure if this was the right decision. What do you guys think?

Ouch, I refuse and he goes from pleased to annoyed, with a -2 effect to diplo. I think giving it probably would have been the right move.

Turn 26
Nothing

Turn 27
Kill 2 archers, lose an axe.

Turn 28
Nada...

Turn 29
We hit 500,000 people. World cowers in laughter.

Berlin expands and starts getting silver from the old german hills on the northern coastline.

Turn 30
We discover polytheism, which opens our options a bit. I set research on math in the mean time.


Empire:
South:

North:

We may want to consider making this deal for money, as we are in serious need for cash (only 2g in the bank, and we're attempting to build market places and courthouse throughout the empire, so not a ton of gold coming in...)

Alright, we're at 25 AD and we're 3rd in score (we just passed HC). We're hopefully going to be doing well soon economy wise. If we want to we can upgrade a chariot or two to horseman, and then finish off Germany. The main problem with him is that as soon as I declared he had pumped out 2 archers right after each other, which had a barracks and so had hills promotions, which makes taking the city hard atm. What I've been doing is generally strangling him. He's stuck at one pop, and isn't really going to be able to go anywhere, so if want to just let him sit for a bit it'll be okay. Remember though that troops out of our territory cost money. I declared a bit to early and I didn't have enough troops in the north to take the city immediately, which screwed up everything, so that was mea culpa, I was too focused on having everything right for the bottom city.

Right now we're about to start math, which Germany has, but isn't willing to give up. I posted our tech choices earlier.

Thoughts? Shaka and HC are wailing away at each other, which is really nice since A) both of them now have a "most hated" which isn't us, and b) Shaka is obsessed with attacking someone other then us. My instincts are to hole up, (finally) finish off Germany and try to rise up economically. Is that the right move you guys think?


And the save:

 

[The Simple Mind]

I’ve downloaded the save and will look at it tonight when I’m at my civ computer. A few thoughts / comments:

Tech Trading

I hadn’t thought about trading CoL for Monarchy when I was comparing the benefits. Well done on getting both by turn 21 .

Shaka deal – take the 100 coins for Med. Basically we should be selling any of the non-military techs that we don’t have a monopoly on.

Currency – I’d have done the same thing. Whether or not it is the correct move I’m never sure . I hate giving away monopoly techs for nothing unless it’s a well armed Monty who comes asking. We can trade currency for any decent techs plus cash. There is no significant benefit to us keeping the monopoly.

Germany

Did you attack Hamburg or Frankfurt first? Hamburg was always going to be the problem as it is on a hill. I would have sent all our available forces against it first. Attacking via the wine to it’s northwest. This would have allowed us to attack on turn two and meant ol’ battleship would have only been able to whip one archer.

We’re going to struggle to destroy Hamburg if it’s got 4 archers. Do we build a posse of horse archers plus axes and attack? HA’s are strength 6. How will they fare against hill promoted archers? I presume we’ll need 2 HA for every archer plus some axes for mopping up.

We need to get rid of Germany asap. I suspect that when one of the other civ’s gets Fuedalism ol’ battleship will vassal to them right away and that would create significant problems for us.

Builds

Markets – how much do they benefit us at the moment? Berlin’s market is 3 turns from completion. How much extra gold are we going to receive from it? Berlin has some riverside tiles but doesn’t have any cottages. Would it not have been better to make more units for attacking Germany or a settler for the 6th city?

Great Spy

I don’t like sending GSpy out on scouting missions. I worry that they will get caught (not sure if they can be). We should either re-call and settle or use him for spy points against HC or Sury (whoever is the tech leader) and start stealing techs.

Sixth City

Where do we want to settle this? There aren’t any great locations left. Three choices:
- pig /iron – once we get rid of Germany
- Plain hills to claim the cows northwest of Capital
- A city southeast of capital claiming a combination of iron/clams/marble/dyes. This wouldn’t be the greatest city but we could use it to grow the capital’s cottages and switch them when we get CS.& run Bureaucracy.

Lots to think about.

 

[IamJohn]

Germany

Did you attack Hamburg or Frankfurt first? Hamburg was always going to be the problem as it is on a hill. I would have sent all our available forces against it first. Attacking via the wine to it’s northwest. This would have allowed us to attack on turn two and meant ol’ battleship would have only been able to whip one archer.

I attacked with the right method, I just did it too soon, I saw the worker in the open, and decided to snatch it before he could run off with it, but I didn't have enough troops to reliably destroy Berlin when I did. I pulled the trigger too soon.

We’re going to struggle to destroy Hamburg if it’s got 4 archers. Do we build a posse of horse archers plus axes and attack? HA’s are strength 6. How will they fare against hill promoted archers? I presume we’ll need 2 HA for every archer plus some axes for mopping up.

I'll run some tests in 12-18 hours and see how hard it would be.

We need to get rid of Germany asap. I suspect that when one of the other civ’s gets Fuedalism ol’ battleship will vassal to them right away and that would create significant problems for us.

Definitely agree.

Builds

Markets – how much do they benefit us at the moment? Berlin’s market is 3 turns from completion. How much extra gold are we going to receive from it? Berlin has some riverside tiles but doesn’t have any cottages. Would it not have been better to make more units for attacking Germany or a settler for the 6th city?

Berlin is the city that's building gold so we can research, it's helping quite a bit at the moment. Longer term, it does have some cottages, and should eventually work some of the sea tiles if we decide to put moai there (I don't really see a better site?)

Great Spy

I don’t like sending GSpy out on scouting missions. I worry that they will get caught (not sure if they can be). We should either re-call and settle or use him for spy points against HC or Sury (whoever is the tech leader) and start stealing techs.

I can say definitely that GSpys can not get caught (they're liked a lot in MP for that fact), and in addition HC/Sury don't have a huge amount in the way of techs to steal (and we'll need to build spies as well as risk our rep with those two to get it). I'm not terribly good at spying, I don't use it enough, but I just don't see much benefit in using it to steal techs when we can use the great spy to scope out enemies while being permanently invisible, it's a benefit that's very long term imo, while attempting to steal a tech just doesn't seem to give a big enough benefit. Even if that doesn't matter you also need to remember that we have an instant golden age when ever we want it, which is something that is very powerful if we push the button at the right time.

Sixth City

Where do we want to settle this? There aren’t any great locations left. Three choices:
- pig /iron – once we get rid of Germany
- Plain hills to claim the cows northwest of Capital
- A city southeast of capital claiming a combination of iron/clams/marble/dyes. This wouldn’t be the greatest city but we could use it to grow the capital’s cottages and switch them when we get CS.& run Bureaucracy.

-I like the pig/iron city, and I like the sites that are east of our capital, there are a couple of grassland that will be slow to grow, but can eventually grow into good city sites. If we want to we could consider trying to get colossus, we have copper, which would halve the production time and if we planted several coastal cities it could pay for the cities almost immediately.

-I already have a worker roading to the city site in the south by the marble/dyes/iron, that seems to be a site that would should settle pretty soon.

-We're doing pretty well for happiness at the moment, we should place a priority on growing cities out if we can.

 

[pholtz]

I've got the download but won't have a chance to look at it until after work late tonight. A few thoughts from a quick read of the turn and comments.. I need to reread them.

- Eventually we will have to go after Shaka. Our territory isn't good enough to hunker down and go for a peaceful victory, and I don't think we can wait or would want to do an amphibious invasion, so that means Shaka. So I'm not sure we want to trade with him.

- How about joining the war against Shaka? I'm not saying that we'll invade, we aren't ready for that yet, but declare war to get some good relationship points with the Buddha crowd. We need to build military anyway to finish off Germany, I think we would have enough for any defense.

- We need to finish off Germany... three ways to do it
1 - build enough to finish him off brute force
2 - peace, in ten turns he'll probably send off another Settler weakening Hamburg, attack it then.
3 - wait for catapults

It will probably be tomorrow before I've studied the turn for further comments.

 

[IamJohn]

I tested attacking germany with HAs, unpromoted we'll need 8 to 10. They start with around a 10% chance of winning, and work their way up from there. Generally though once we attack and die/run from the battlefield we can kill them easily.

 

[The Simple Mind]

Trades

If we trade Med to Shaka for 100 gold is there a diplo hit with HC & Toku? I don’t think there is as we aren’t getting a tech in return. Is that correct? If it is then I think we should definitely make the trade as we need the gold and Med is a low level non-military tech.

I meant to check last night but would Sury give us Maths + gold for Currency? If so, I would be for doing this deal as well.

When we get maths, do we want to construction for catapults?

GSpy – I never realised they were immune to capture . Knowing this and reviewing the tech screen, I agree with IamJohn about not settling him. I take it the plan should be then to use him to scout out Toku’s land and use him for a golden age at a suitable time.

Ol’ Battleship

I not for making peace. At present, due to our military strength, none of the other civs would join a war on Bismark’s side. If we make peace would this change? Unlikely but you never know.

Do we know if any of the other civs are close to feudalism? Bismark would definitely vassalise during a peace treaty.

Last time we made peace he settled a second city during the 10 turns of peace. I don’t think he has the resources to do this now. Though if he did it would be good for us if he split his forces in Hamburg to garrison the second city.

Looks as if we’ll need to whip & chop at least 8 Has. Do we build stables first for additional promotions? Remember we have the horse whispering event. I never did look this up. What are the benefits?

Shaka

Our next target. I don’t think we should enter a phoney war with Shaka while ol’ battleship is still around. A two front war is never a good idea. Once ol’ battleship is six feet under, the majority of our offensive units can be stationed at Adrianople & Nicaea. A phoney war or a real war become viable options as we don’t have to worry about defending the east.

 

[IamJohn]

Trades
If we trade Med to Shaka for 100 gold is there a diplo hit with HC & Toku? I don’t think there is as we aren’t getting a tech in return. Is that correct? If it is then I think we should definitely make the trade as we need the gold and Med is a low level non-military tech.

From what I've seen the probability of a diplo hit goes up as the relative beaker cost of the tech goes up. In this case the size of the trade (and the fact that we haven't traded all that much) should hopefully mean we won't get a diplo hit. And in any case, getting a diplo hit with Toku won't matter much since he's going to (and already) hate us no matter what we do.

I meant to check last night but would Sury give us Maths + gold for Currency? If so, I would be for doing this deal as well.

Do we know if any of the other civs are close to feudalism? Bismark would definitely vassalise during a peace treaty.

Here's a screenshot of the current tech/money situation.

Last time we made peace he settled a second city during the 10 turns of peace. I don’t think he has the resources to do this now. Though if he did it would be good for us if he split his forces in Hamburg to garrison the second city.

Remember that his one city is down to one pop, has no improvements to the land around it, and atm all significantly useful land that is workable is being occupied by our troops.

Looks as if we’ll need to whip & chop at least 8 Has. Do we build stables first for additional promotions? Remember we have the horse whispering event. I never did look this up. What are the benefits?

We need 7 stables to fulfill the quest requirements, which we can't do since we don't even have 7 cities. I don't remember what the quest gives though.

Shaka

Our next target. I don’t think we should enter a phoney war with Shaka while ol’ battleship is still around. A two front war is never a good idea. Once ol’ battleship is six feet under, the majority of our offensive units can be stationed at Adrianople & Nicaea. A phoney war or a real war become viable options as we don’t have to worry about defending the east.

I agree, and I don't think we have enough units to make a phony war viable anyway imo. Right now we should just be happy he's distracted.

 

[The Simple Mind]

Checked the trade options and:

• Shaka - 100 for Med - accept
• Toku - 50 for Poly - I think we should accept. Same scenario as the Med deal to Shaka, it shouldn't lead to any diplo issues. He could possibly get from HC so I think we should grab the money while we can. Possible +ve diplo for fair trade etc.
• Sury - wont trade maths for currency. Does this mean he is probably researching currency?
• Bis - wont give us maths for peace. Is this likely to change the longer the war lasts?

Looks like we'll have to invest a few turns into maths and ask around again.

Question re BUG: Beside some of the leaders there are numbers (Toku +20, Us +7 and Shaka -7) what do these mean?

 

[pholtz]

Ok, I like all this discussion, lowers the chance I'll do something really stupid. I still need to study the save, but the following seem to be the things to do.

- don't get into war with Shaka, phony or otherwise until Germany is finished

- make some tech trades for money

- How to defeat Germany hasn't been decided yet, and I think its the goal of my turnset. Right now we need to build up our military, and improve our economy. The units in Germany's area cost us extra money. So I think peace is best for 10 turns (at least) while we build the stables/units necessary to take him down. What promotions did your HA's have John? I have found that Flanking II is best against archers on the flat, I'm not sure about on a hill. To get Flanking II or Combat II I'll need stables. So it might be a bit building the military unless ol'Battleship weakens Hamburg enough which I'll be in place to take advantage of.

As I said I need to study the turn yet to figure out order of builds... stables.. courthouses ... units.

 

[pholtz]

Finally getting a chance to look at the save, have some comments and further questions:

- Why no whipping? I dont' see any whip unhappiness. I think, once a city gets rid of previous unhappiness it should be whipped again until the core buildings are produced. I'm planning to whip what I can the first turn. Larger cities require more maintenance, and if they are working unimproved tiles with the extra person don't do us any good.

- financial situation is a bit worse than I thought. In retrospect I think we built the fifth city a bit too early. I'm going to have to get courthouses built as soon as possible. Also while a market will give us a little less than one gold in Berlin, it will open up the Merchant specialist for 3 more. (However, a courthouse would give us over 2 gold immediately so it should have probably been built first). In general we need specialists over working any unimproved tile. I don't think we are ready for another city yet.

- speaking of unimproved tiles, we need to keep the workers going. Poor Nicaea has no improved tiles. I'll consider building one more worker at least. Need to study this a bit. I just read and noticed the worker building roads to the south for some future city. Nice idea, but while we got citizens working unimproved tiles, something that needs to be put on hold.

Great Spy - good questions, just read your response, I didn't realize that they couldn't get caught, so sending them on scouting missions isn't a bad idea. Three choices.

1 - settle him in a foreign country. The Inca's nomally out tech others, so I would say there (where he happens to be)
2 - Start a golden age to help get us past this slow spot.
3 - Continue spying, go though Japan's area and see what's on the other side. (I'll do this unless outvoted.)

Great General - We could settle him so that we get two cities (one with a stable) producing 5 exp units. I would suggest Constantinople - a stable, and Berlin - the GG, as they have the largest production capability. I would try to get a second stable built, (in Adrianople?) so we can produce good units with three cities. Could also build a stable in Berlin since it has more production and can build a stable easier, and settle the General in Adrianople.

Before I looked at the save I thought maybe I could finish off Germany, now I'm not so sure. Hard to build an army when you don't have any gold. If I can't finish Germany, I'll at least get an army ready for the next player.

I plan to wait a day for any responses, insights, then do my turnset.

 

[IamJohn]

- Why no whipping? I dont' see any whip unhappiness. I think, once a city gets rid of previous unhappiness it should be whipped again until the core buildings are produced. I'm planning to whip what I can the first turn. Larger cities require more maintenance, and if they are working unimproved tiles with the extra person don't do us any good.

Whipping is one thing that I'm not terribly good at predicting whether it's a good idea or not. Remember though that for a large part of my turnset we had terrible problems with happyness, and whipping would only have made it worse. Additionally I didn't have a huge amount of stuff that needed to be whipped, really I only started building buildings once we got the ability to build courthouses, with some building of markets, but they arn't all that amazing except for a couple cities. As for units, I didn't want to build too many of those since we're already having so much trouble with the finances.

- financial situation is a bit worse than I thought. In retrospect I think we built the fifth city a bit too early. I'm going to have to get courthouses built as soon as possible. Also while a market will give us a little less than one gold in Berlin, it will open up the Merchant specialist for 3 more. (However, a courthouse would give us over 2 gold immediately so it should have probably been built first). In general we need specialists over working any unimproved tile. I don't think we are ready for another city yet.

This is why I didn't build any settlers during my turnset. As for the market/courthouse I thought I checked it and we wouldn't have gotten as much as 2 gold in the capital, sorry about that. As for specialists I was trying to emphise food production, as we just recently started getting enough happyness to start making more people, so I was putting priority over specialists (which is what I had been doing before monarchy came in)

- speaking of unimproved tiles, we need to keep the workers going. Poor Nicaea has no improved tiles. I'll consider building one more worker at least. Need to study this a bit. I just read and noticed the worker building roads to the south for some future city. Nice idea, but while we got citizens working unimproved tiles, something that needs to be put on hold.

yeah, there's only one worker in the south, all the rest are fixing up the two mostly unimproved cities in the north, but I don't think it will take long, remember that we have several workers that we've gotten from germany, not just the ones we've built, I think the hammers and food would be best invested in something else imho.

Great Spy - good questions, just read your response, I didn't realize that they couldn't get caught, so sending them on scouting missions isn't a bad idea. Three choices.

1 - settle him in a foreign country. The Inca's nomally out tech others, so I would say there (where he happens to be)
2 - Start a golden age to help get us past this slow spot.
3 - Continue spying, go though Japan's area and see what's on the other side. (I'll do this unless outvoted.)

From my point of view I think exploring is the best option, and he could come in handy if we want to keep him for the war with shaka, that kind of unrestricted mobile visibility could be really useful.

Great General - We could settle him so that we get two cities (one with a stable) producing 5 exp units. I would suggest Constantinople - a stable, and Berlin - the GG, as they have the largest production capability. I would try to get a second stable built, (in Adrianople?) so we can produce good units with three cities. Could also build a stable in Berlin since it has more production and can build a stable easier, and settle the General in Adrianople.

I'm less enthused about stables, they seem a rather unit-only bonus for something we won't be building a huge amount of. 1 or two though could be good.