Acronym's Bucket List Succession Game - sign-ups open!

[Lanzelot]

Preflight: Send the three workers to work as suggested by CommandoBob. Adjust MM a bit: K'stadt can grow in 3, Hamburg's scientist can work on a coastal tile without a happiness problem. Of course I have to raise the science slider to 10% now, but it costs only 3 gold, while we gain 2 food.

IBT: Seoul completes the Pyramids. Grrr. I would have loved it, if London had got it...

T111, 330BC: Oasenstadt: settler -> settler
Send first units from Eisenstadt and München to form a blockade against 3 British units, spear, archer, sword.
Lux can be lowered, scientist back in Hamburg

IBT: London completes the Great Wall instead.
But now the good news: Trondheim had also been building the Pyramids, and now the Vikings switch the Mausoleum from Bergen to Trondheim -- and complete it!

T112, 310BC: Königsberg: worker -> worker
Neu-Oslo founded: worker

IBT: China and Korea sign a peace treaty.

T113, 290BC: Wilhemshaven founded: harbor
Scandinavia now knows Republic. Darn, they had almost 300g, which we could have "harvested"...

T114, 270BC: Republic comes in. I give China Philosophy for 1g and then Republic for Construction.
India is still not willing to give Currency and Monarchy for Republic, Construction and 500g!!
I take Currency and 2g for Republic.
For Currency, Ragnar is forking over silks, wines and all his gold (243).

We get Engineering as our freebee!

I start Literature at 90%, due in 7 turns.
Kolossusstadt is switched to a Marketplace.

IBT: England and Scandinavia sign a peace treaty.

T115, 250BC: zzz

T116, 230BC: Oasenstadt: settler -> settler
Hamburg: horseman -> aqueduct

Let the Revolution begin! We draw 4 turns Anarchy.


T117, 210BC: zzz

T118, 190BC: The decision now needs to be made, whether #10 should be settled on the gold hill or on the grassland. At the moment, the grassland is blocked by an English unit, so I move the settler onto the gold hill for now. However, a look at the food map shows, that even on the grassland a city would have enough food for size 12. The disadvantage is only: a lot of marshes and jungles need to be cleared, before even one tile with more than 1 food would become available. On the hill we would have a grassland right from the start. However, whether the town is size 2 or size 3 for quite some time, doesn't matter that much, but a free aqueduct is a free aqueduct, so I decide to move the settler onto the grassland, in case the English free it next turn.

T119, 170BC: Move settler on grassland.

T120, 150BC: we become a Republic.
Goldstadt founded. Starts on a courthouse.
MM and slider adjusted for Republic. There is a bit of delicate MM still necessary, so I'll play two more turns.

T121, 130BC: Köngsberg: worker -> granary
München: barracks, horseman.

IBT: India and China sign a peace treaty.

T122, 110BC: Kolossusstadt: marketplace -> temple (prebuild for library!)
Eisenstadt: temple -> barracks

Upgrade 5 warriors to swordsmen for 300g.
Cash-rush an archer (3s for 12g) in Oasenstadt and switch back to settler.

Handover notes:

• Oasenstadt is going to pick up the forest on growth for a total of 10s, so will finish the settler.
• Literature will be finished next turn, don't forget to switch Kolossusstadt to library. Afterwards one roaded river-swamp tile in Neu-Oslo can be changed back to the BG for one extra food. (I just took the swamp for this turn, as otherwise we would be exactly one beaker short for Literature...)
• The next player can have fun attacking Scandinavia with 5 swords and 7 horses. We are average compared to them, so they should not pose any problem. We will lose the two luxes from them prematurely, but I want to capture Trondheim asap, as it would be a good place for our Forbidden Palace.
  Just be careful: there are an archer and a swordsman near Siedler von Catan. Just wait until they have gone away, before attacking...
  The war against Scandinavia should net at least Aarhus, Copenhagen, Bergen and Trondheim (not necessarily in that order...) and then make peace for whatever we can get. Afterwards we turn our attention to the preparation of an England campaign. Is everybody fine with using a RoP rape for capturing London on the first turn of war? Then we we don't need to fight the Great Wall. Once the Great Wall is ours, we can build any wonder we like (Lighthouse?!) in order to start our GA.
  
• Oasenstadt can now build settlers in 3 turns: on the first turn use 4 floodplains for +10fpt to grow to size 6 immediately. Then set it up for +5fpt and 8shields as it is right now. And in the third turn cash-rush an archer so the shield-box has 20s. But I think, we only need 2-3 more settlers from Oasenstadt, then it should grow to 12 and build library and marketplace. More settlers can be built slowly now in crap outer towns, once we have more territory to expand again.

 

[choxorn]

I'd rather not take rep hits from either the deal with Scandinavia or RoP-raping England. We need to be able to make deals with the AI if we want to have a decent research rate. We only need to wait another 10 turns or so, and we're at a point where we probably need to be building Markets, Libraries, and in some cases Aqueducts in our cities more than we need to be building military.

I know that getting the Great Wall would make a GA easier, but if we get the Mausoleum, we can easily get a GA just by building either Sun Tzu or Leo's Workshop, two wonders we'd probably aim for building anyway.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Breaking deals with the AI is bad and should only be done if you are close to conquering the planet or you no longer have any need to trade with the AI.

ROP rape is just as bad and should only be used if victory by domination or conquest is a sure thing within the next handful of turns.

I've got the save and will go ahead and post my action plan now. I think I am up if I'm not mistaken unless Acronym comes back. I'll wait a few days just in case Acronym comes back and wants to continue playing. If he doesn't come back by...let's say the 11th or 12th I'll go ahead and start playing.

Assessment

In the world rankings we are last compared to all the civs we know. That's ok, we can get this back up.

Diplomacy

England is polite to us. No current deals are going on other than a peace treaty. We are weak militarily.

We have a trade with the Vikings where he gives us silks and wines lasting for 11 turns. They are polite with us. Attacking the Vikings now would be suicide. First, those luxuries are keeping the people happy. Second, breaking the deal will have negative effects outlined earlier in my post.

Japan is annoyed with us and is behind several techs. We are weak militarily compared to them.

China and India are both polite towards us and we are also weak compared to them.

Trading Plans

At least 3 of the AI civs have monarchy and we don't. We have Engineering and they don't. I'm not going to trade Monarchy for Engineering, it's not worth it. Instead each and every turn needs to be spent looking at all AI civs to see if they have researched feudalism or monotheism. Once an AI civ acquires this tech we can start trading whatever they have for Engineering.

Building plans

We need more workers. Am I correct in thinking that after Konigsberg builds the granary it is going to be a worker factory? If so then that's what I will focus on for that city. Our capitol is a settler factory and I'll probably chuck out a few this turnset. I will find cities on site number 11 and 9 in that order based upon this map post.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13303446&postcount=202

I'd like to find a city on spot 11 asap to get access to dyes.

We are going to need libraries in our empire since we are in a tech race to build the spaceship. I will change the build in Kolossusstadt to a library and will slowly build libraries - one or two at a time - in each city.

Our military is too large for an empire our size. I'm not going to disband any units and will probably only recruit a couple more horsemen. Workers are more of a priority than military at this point.

 

[Lanzelot]

Breaking deals with the AI is bad and should only be done if you are close to conquering the planet or you no longer have any need to trade with the AI.

ROP rape is just as bad and should only be used if victory by domination or conquest is a sure thing within the next handful of turns.

Well, at the moment England and Scandinavia have no contact to the rest of the world. If we manage to eliminate them, before they get contact, no one will find out, and we keep a clean reputation...
Also: we are not shipping anything to the Vikings, they are shipping luxuries to us. We can attack any time, it won't result in a rep hit! (Only the RoP rape against London will be problematic.)

Instead each and every turn needs to be spent looking at all AI civs to see if they have researched feudalism or monotheism. Once an AI civ acquires this tech we can start trading whatever they have for Engineering.

Good idea! The AI loves Feudalism (new form of government, a wonder and new weapons...), so they are probably already researching it. Also: we will probably find Korea any turn now. (Has this game been started with "culturally linked start positions"? Then they'll probably be on the same continent with China and Japan.) After Literature, it is probably best to stop research for a while, until we find Korea, gift them up into the middle age, and hope they get a different freebee, which we can trade. The best case for us would be: Korea gets Monotheism, we trade it for Literature/Republic/Engineering/whatever and then we can research Theology, while the AI does Feudalism for us.
Just try to keep England/Scandinavia backward. Don't want to fight pikes... (One more reason why we should attack soon.)

Am I correct in thinking that after Königsberg builds the granary it is going to be a worker factory?

Yep. After the granary, it should be able to build 2-turn workers at size 6.

I will find cities on site number 11 and 9 in that order based upon this map post.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13303446&postcount=202

I'd like to find a city on spot 11 asap to get access to dyes.

This map is not up to date: 11 should be founded on the coast. (This will still bring the dyes into our territory, because the "gap" between Neu-Oslo and #11 will be automatically filled!! No need to settle next to the dyes tile...)

Our military is too large for an empire our size. I'm not going to disband any units and will probably only recruit a couple more horsemen. Workers are more of a priority than military at this point.

Once we capture a few Viking towns, the military will no longer be too large for our empire... So starting the war now is also important for lowering our unit upkeep.

Don't worry about losing the silks and wine shipments: if you capture Copenhagen and Bergen in the first 2-3 turns of the war, the silks are already reconnected to our trade network! And Trondheim with the wines will follow a few turns later. We are talking about less then 10 turns with a slightly higher lux rate. While we wait for meeting Korea, it can easily been done.

Let me sum up the pros for an early war with the Vikings again:

• Hit them, while they are still weak from the English War.
• The sooner we get Tronheim, the sooner can setup the Forbidden Palace there! It's excellent land in that area, and we are quite late with our FP anyway.
• Reduce unit upkeep.
• Get it over with, before they get Feudalism (pikes)

There's only one con:

• We'll need a higher lux slider for a couple of turns (at most 10), until we have captured their silks and wines.

 

[tjs282]

Aaaand... once again, Lanzelot beats me to the punch, says everything I was going to say, and answers all my questions/concerns

Spoiler :

Do the English and Vikings already have contacts with any of the offshore Civs? If not, is breaking deals with them actually going to harm us for the rest of the game?

As I understood it, the AICivs only get distrustful and refuse to trade fairly if they 'know' that you broke a deal (with them or someone else). So any deals broken before the betrayed Civ has made contact with others -- even if they get contact on the very next turn -- don't have a negative effect on your trading reputation with the non-betrayed Civs. Have I got that right?

If so, then really the only planning consideration would be to sign the ROP with Liz before we break the Lux-deal with Ragnar. But we do need to capture London before the other English towns, not just for the Wonder-GA, but because otherwise we'll have a much harder job taking any other English towns by force, with all their free Walls boosting their unit-defence bonuses. And once we've got the Great Wall, we'll have those bonus-Walls instead, which will blunt any English counterattack...

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, I would be very wary of starting any wars before we have access to (more) Luxes -- with our cities still so small, WW is going to be a killer on our fledgling Republic otherwise.

It will still take a lot of time to hook up 'our' Dyes, and once we DoW the Vikings, we will lose the Wines and Silks until we can take Trondheim and Bergen. Do we actually have navigable (Lux-) trade routes to any offshore Civs yet? If not, we won't be able to import any, either...

So I'd suggest splitting our forces, attacking C'hagen with mostly Swords plus some Horses, and going after Bergen with mostly Horses plus some Swords. Some Workers will need to hook up Bergen ASAP to get the Silks back, and then we can send both forces to converge on Trondheim, for the Wines. Once it falls, if Ragnar will talk to us, we can maybe demand Aarhus (and/or Stockholm?) in exchange for peace, if possible...

@MRG:
Before you found any more cities, please make certain (this time) that you are putting them in the best place, with everyone's agreement. For example, CommandoBob's Spot11 is 1 tile inland, but I suggested -- and Lanzelot agreed -- that planting a city on the coast between the 2 Banana-tiles would be preferable. The Dyes would/do fall in the BFCs of both 'Bananabucht' and Neu-Oslo, and we might even get them within our borders before cultural expansion, due to the overlap of the city radii.

That said, Lanzelot's last dot-map has Goldstadt on the Hill, not the Grass. I understand why Lanzelot changed that, but I'm now wondering if that might make it worth reassessing both Spots 11 and 9? e.g. Moving CB's Spot11 1N would put it 2 tiles from Catan, Goldstadt and Neu-Oslo, but it would also leave enough space to put Bananabucht 2SW from CB's Spot11.

And for the record, I'm still not convinced of the usefulness/efficiency of placing a city on Spot9. I'd rather exploit the fish from the southern peninsula, especially if we are going to build on my Spot11 between the bananas. And if we are going to plant a more northern Dye-city and a more southwestern Banana-city, then Spot9 becomes completely redundant. (I'd still prefer to get the Bananas and Dyes with 1 city though.)

 

[Lanzelot]

Some Workers will need to hook up Bergen ASAP to get the Silks back,

As far as I remember, Bergen is already connected to our road network: via Copenhagen.

Yes, we should spend a bit of time now discussing our dotmap. (Especially as we can now produce a settler every 3 turns. BTW: Is it clear to everyone, how this works?)
Can someone post a first draft?

Edit: and we need to work out a good warplan. Scandinavia does have a few swordsmen running around (left over from the British War), so if we don't play carefully, it can easily backfire...

 

[choxorn]

The Vikings lack both Iron and Horses, and they're smaller than us at the moment. Waiting a bit to attack them won't let them get much stronger, but it might give us better time to prepare. Just looking at the save, we have a huge force stacked up outside of Copenhagen- that's good, but we have almost no military anywhere else, and we should probably at least expect someone to come out of Bergen towards Neu-Oslo and Goldstadt, both of which are very poorly defended at the moment.

At the very least, we need to wait to see what those two units to our South do and organize in such a way that we can adequately defend all of our eastern border, not just the Northern part.

We should attack the Vikings fairly soon, but it can wait 11 turns or so.

As to contact with the other continent, we need Astronomy to trade with them, but Galleys can easily cross the narrowest point between them- China already has a city on that island and I imagine they'll contact the Vikings and England soonish.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with tjs on moving city #9 across the strait onto that hill, but we kind of need to build a boat to do that.

 

[tjs282]

Yes, we should spend a bit of time now discussing our dotmap. (Especially as we can now produce a settler every 3 turns. BTW: Is it clear to everyone, how this works?)

Oasenstadt can now build settlers in 3 turns: on the first turn use 4 floodplains for +10fpt to grow to size 6 immediately.

That's clear enough. But I'd have to download the current savegame -- which I haven't been doing routinely for other people's turnsets (my hard-drive is filling up...) -- to decide where to put the fifth citizen for max spt + IBT-shields...

Then set it up for +5fpt and 8shields as it is right now. And in the third turn cash-rush an archer so the shield-box has 20s.

I get this too, I think. By cash-rushing to 20s in the production box, and then getting another 8 shields plus ≥2s on IBT growth to Pop7, you make the 10s you need to finish the Settler and drop back to Pop5 on the 3rd IBT.

Can someone post a first draft?

Of the dotmap, not until I get home and download the save.
(On which subject, in keeping with other M$ products, MSPaint is a fairly cruddy utility... So can anyone recommend a more object-oriented -- but still relatively basic -- WinXP-compatible graphics utility that could be used for dotmapping...?)

 

[CommandoBob]

(On which subject, in keeping with other M$ products, MSPaint is a fairly cruddy utility... So can anyone recommend a more object-oriented -- but still relatively basic -- WinXP-compatible graphics utility that could be used for dotmapping...?)

I've use PAINT.net (paint.NET ?) from time to time. It is a freebie, developed by some of the people that developed Paint.

Neatest thing I found in Paint.NET is that it can add arrowheads to lines.

My box is WinXP.

 

[tjs282]

Thanks for that tip, CommandoBob -- I've just had a look at the website, and it looks like it does exactly what I was hoping for -- layers! Awesome!

EDIT:
Damnitall -- just looked a little deeper, and the newest version (v4.0), released about two weeks ago, is not compatible with WinXP (min. OS requirement is now Win7 SP1).

No older versions are hosted/supported at the homepage, so I'll have to go looking for v3.x somewhere else if I want to be able to use it...

 

[CommandoBob]

Try this site:

http://www.oldapps.com/paint_net.php

I just Googled for paint.net download older.

 

[CommandoBob]

T114, 270BC: Republic comes in. I give China Philosophy for 1g and then Republic for Construction.
China is still not willing to give Currency and Monarchy for Republic, Construction and 500g!!

???

Something must be missing or incorrect. If you traded Republic to China for Construction, how can you offer them back in trade again to China?

 

[Lanzelot]

???

Something must be missing or incorrect. If you traded Republic to China for Construction, how can you offer them back in trade again to China?

The "second China" should read "India"... I've corrected the turnlog.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Can someone make a correct dotmap for where the next two cities should be placed? Thanks

I'm in agreement with getting rid of the Vikings after the 11 turn deal is completed. If they lack iron and horses then it should be pretty easy.

 

[Lanzelot]

Why wait so long? 2-3 turns should be enough for final preparations. They only get stronger now, while we mostly want to build libs and markets. At the moment we are still strong ("average" in F3 usually means that the human player is stronger, because the AI distributes all their units across the entire empire 2 units per town and a few running around, while we can concentrate our complete firepower (14 units) on a single spot... So that means, we have a 7-1 superiority...)

Go Germany, go...!

Oops, different game...

 

[tjs282]

So that means, we have a 7-1 superiority...)

Well, there's a nice coincidence...

 

[tjs282]

Thanks for the link, C-Bob -- I'd started looking, but hadn't got very far.

Have DL'd Paint.net v3.5.11, and am now learning how to use by trying to make an updated combined dot- and foodmap. It is indeed a much nicer tool than M$Paint , although I haven't yet figured out if/how it can (also) do single-colour replacement Got about halfway done yesterday evening, and will try and finish/post it tonight, if I don't get a better offer (or Lanzelot doesn't beat me to it again )...

So far it seems fairly obvious that all the cities that we have or could plant on the Jungle/Marsh areas have more food than we know what to do with -- or at least, they will do after the terrain's been cleared... The Plains/Deserts/Coast (i.e. our core) cities are going to be a lot trickier though -- and guess which ones I started food-mapping first...?

 

[Lanzelot]

(or Lanzelot doesn't beat me to it again )...

You are pretty "safe" until Saturday... Too much work at the moment...

 

[MrRandomGuy]

I started playing a few turns last night and worked out where to put the settler so that we could get the dyes and bananas

The other city site spot is still good right?

 

[Lanzelot]

We are still working on the dotmap, hold yer horses...