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

[Lanzelot]

The slaves can already improve the tiles around Trondheim.

BTW: it's really pityful, what the Vikings dared to hand over to us: they have 3 wines for a potential +5fpt, and none of them is irrigated yet! Aren't they ashamed? Oh, what could a human player have done with such a juicy start position...

 

[CommandoBob]

Don't forget to join the next couple of workers that roll off the assembly line in Königsberg to Kolossusstadt. (And then 1-2 to Hamburg, once it has grown to 7.)

Thank you.

Joining workers to cities is not a normal Civ reflex for me. 'Workers are used to improve tiles, not enlarge cities'. I am having to rethink that.

 

[Lanzelot]

Think of it like that: "growing Kolossusstadt from 7 to 8 requires 40 food, which at +2fpt takes 20 turns. Building a worker in Königsberg takes only 10 food and 2 turns, so we can grow 10 times as fast via workers."

10s is certainly not too high a price for that.

 

[CommandoBob]

0 0370 AD

Kolossusstadt: Heroic Epic -> Leonardo's Workshop (placeholder for Copernicus' Observatory).
Oasenstadt: barracks in 1 -> Heroic Epic in 15.
Aarhaus: rLongbow in 38 -> library in 38.
Walstadt: harbor in 27 -> library in 37.

With the Mongols get MA vs. China, Peace, Chivalry, 2 gpt and 186 gold in exchange for Invention.
We declare War on China.

With Japan we get MA vs. China, Peace, and 14 gold.
With India we get MA vs. China, Peace, and 34 gold.
India declares War on China.

Goldstat works the BG instead of everyday, dull grass.

Trondheim: vPike in 13 -> worker in 3, rush slave for 24 gold.
Copenhagen: settler in 6 -> worker in 1 (loss of 4 shields).
​

[IBT]
Elizabeth politely demands Invention. We politely refuse but we do serve tea first.
Elizabeth replies 'Oh, why do I even bother? Your puny civilization isn't worth the effort it would take to destroy.'

Good. You keep on thinking that. We will let you have that delusion.

Trondheim: worker -> worker in 5.
Bergen: worker -> worker in 5.
Copenhagen: worker -> settler in 30.

Palace Expansion. We build a golden palace. We need some steps, though.

1 0380 AD

Westenburgberg new citizen in cranky, so we make it a taxcollector.

Workers
At München, the slaves head towards Catan, 4 workers move 1N onto another hill and 1 worker heads to Aarhaus.
One worker at Catan begins to trade some jungle for grass. The other one has already started.
Stack of 5 workers near Bananenbucht head towards Aarhus.
Three workers that mined Dyes move to the English banana.

New worker in Bergen heads to Trondheim.
Slave in Trondheim moves towards Odense.
Salve in Copenhagen heads towards Catan.
​

[IBT]
Königsbeg: worker -> worker in 2.
Eusenstadt: library -> vMace in 7.

Korea is building Knights Templar (Chivalry).
China is building Knights Templar.

2 0390 AD

England has learned Invention.

Workers
Four workers 1SE of Eisenstadt, mine that hill (3 turns).
One Slave heads towards Catan.
New worker in Königsbeg heads to Kolossusstadt.
Two slaves enter the jungles of Catan.
At Wilhelmshaven, two workers load onto Galley and sail towards Fischberg. Workers are offloaded 1SW of Fischberg, not the best spot but close to where they need to be. Third worker moves towards Kolossusstadt.
Stack of 5 workers heads north.
Three mountain roaders at Neu-Oslo head towards München.
Slave into jungle between Bergen and Odense.
Irrigate Wines at Trondheim.
Worker moves 1S of Aarhus.
Begin to road the English bananas (3 turns).

Rush slaves in Bergen for 32 of 462 gold.
Rush slaves in Trondheim for 32 of 430 gold.

In Hamburg, now size 6, we go to +4fpt.
​

[IBT]
China (? cities) and Japan (13 cities) make peace.
And thus Japan is forced to declare War on the peaceloving German people.
And then Japan brags about starting to build The Great Lighthouse (Map Making -> Magnetism).

Trondheim: worker -> worker in 5.
Bergen: worker -> worker in 5.
Wilhelmshaven: library -> vPike in 5.

Vikings are building The Great Library (Literature -> Education).
India is building Knights Templar (Chivalry).

3 0400 AD

Galley sails back into Wilhelmshaven.

Workers
Two slaves join two workers in jungle cleansing; drops it to 6 turns.
Third slave enters that jungle tile.
Stack of five workers splits up, three go 2SW of Aarhus, one goes 1SW of Aarhus and the last goes into Eisenstadt.
Worker into Wilhelmshaven.
Join worker into Kolossusstadt.
Start road 1S of Aarhus.
Three workers for München split up, too. One to the forest 2SE of München and two onto the grass.
At Bergen we uncover a BG. Three of the four workers mine this BG, last one heads to München.
Slave in Bergen heads towards Odense.
Slave in Trondheim heads towards Odense.
Two workers begin a jungle road 1SW of Fischberg (5 turns).
2NW of Odense, lone slave begins a jungle road (18 turns).
​

[IBT]
Königsbeg: worker -> worker in 2.
Neu-Oslo: worker -> walls in 10.

Vikings are building Knights Templar (Chivalry).
Mongols are building Knights Templar.


4 0410 AD

Workers
New worker in Neu-Oslo head towards our core.
München's grass workers begin to irrigate (4 turns).
Mining-Dye worker joins them; will begin to road next turn.
Worker in Eisenstadt 2N.
Begin road 1SW of Aarhus.
Begin road 2SW of Aarhus.
Irrigate 2SW of Aarhus.
Load worker into galley in Wilhelmshaven; galley sails south and boots out worker.
Third slave joins the Catan party, finish in 5.
New worker in Königsbeg heads towards Kolossusstadt.
Start a forest chop 2SE of München.
Second slave joins the Odense road gang (9 turns).
Third slave arrives for the Odense road gang.

Rush slaves in Bergen for 32 of 403 gold.
Rush slaves in Trondheim for 32 of 371 gold.
​

[IBT]
Trondheim: worker -> worker in 10.
Bergen: worker -> worker in 10.
Goldstadt: courthouse -> library in 10.

Sun Tzu's Art of war is built in Karakorum, Mongolia.
India is building The Great Library (Literature -> Education).
India is building The Great Lighthouse (Map Making -> Magnetism).
India is building Knights Templar (Chivalry).


5 0420 AD

Galley sails back into Wilhelmshaven.

Workers
Third worker joins the jungle roades at Fischberg (2 turns).
Worker arrives in Kolossusstadt.
Begin road 1E of Aarhus.
Begin road on mined hill 1SE of Eisenstadt (2 turns).
Start road on open grass at München.
New slave in Bergen heads towards Odense.
Three workers mine the BG at Goldstadt (2 turns).
The Neu-Oslo worker continues core-ward.
Move onto the other bananas at Bananenbucht.
Third slave joins the Odense slave gang (5 turns).
Slave in Trondheim heads towards Odense.
​

[IBT]
Königsbeg: worker -> worker in 2.
München: library -> market in 15.

England is building The Great Library (Literature -> Education).
England is building Leonardo's Workshop (Invention).
Vikings are building The Great Library.
Vikings are building Knights Templar (Chivalry).

6 0430 AD

Spacebar the galley in Wilhelmshaven.

Invention is known by everyone except the Vikings.

Aarhus is connected.

Workers
New worker stops in the capital, heading towards a new home.
Lone worker moves onto hill 1NW of Eisenstadt.
Irrigaters at München help road the grass.
Slave enters the Odense roading tile.
Another Slave helps the other slaves road the jungle there (3 turns).
Begin to road the other banana tile at Bananenbucht (3 turns).
Worker joins Kolossusstadt, now size 9.
Irrigaters help road at Aarhus.
Begin to irrigate 1S of Aarhus.
Begin to irrigate second Wines at Trondheim.

Rush slaves in Bergen for 36 of 335 gold.
Rush slaves in Trondheim for 36 of 299 gold.
​

[IBT]
We have a boat bothering the Mongols. We can disband them, since we have mapped out the world.

Trondheim: worker -> courthouse in 80.
Bergen: worker -> library in 40.
Hamburg: library -> vKnight in 9.

China is building The Great Library (Literature -> Education).
Mongols are building The Great Library.

7 0440 AD

Walstadt is cranky, new citizen becomes a taxcollector.

Disband both curraghs.

Trondheim and Bergen are now both at size 1.

Workers
Workers move to 1N and 1NE of Aarhus. to road.
Road the hill 1NW of Eisenstadt.
Road 1SE of Aarhus.
Begin to mine the hill 1S of Eisenstadt (already roaded), 3 turns.
Complete forest chop for München's market; begin to road the exposed grassland.
Move two workers to the hill 1E of München.
Mine 1SE of Goldstadt is done, move those workers onto jungle 1E of Goldstadt.
Slave in Bergen heads to Odense.
So does slave in Trondheim.
Slave joins the Odense road gang, 2 turns.
Worker arrives in Hamburg.
Jungle roaded at Fischberg; 3 workers move 1W to repeat.
​

[IBT]
Königsberg: worker -> worker in 2.
Eisenstadt: Mace -> Mace in 5.
Wilhelmshaven: Pike -> Pike in 5.
Bananenbucht: worker -> walls in 10.

8 0450 AD

Korea knows Gunpowder.
England knows Theology.

Neither one is willing to trade.

Ok, that is a good thing. Would we really sell Gunpowder to England just before we plan to have a war? Nyah.

Chinese rSword is 2N of undefended Trondheim.

Load Pike into galley; galley sails 3S.

Wake and move Mace Army into Trondheim.

New Mace in Eisenstadt heads towards Trondheim.

Workers
New worker from Banana Town heads to our core.
Three workers start jungle road 2W of Fischberg (3 turns).
Join worker to Hamburg, now size 8.
Irrigate 1SE of Aarhus with two workers (2 turns).
Begin to road hill 1E of München (3 turns).
Add a worker to road work 2SE of München.
Start a jungle road 1E of Goldstadt, for faster troop movement towards England (3 turns).
Another slave joins the roading bunch to Odense (1 turn).
That stack now has 6 slaves in it and adding one more with not speed it up any. Send our last, uncommitted, slave towards Catan.
New worker in Königsberg moves towards Hamburg.
Begin roads 1NE and 1N of Aarhus.
Move onto last untouched plains around Aarhus.

To rush the courthouse in Trondheim we need 316 gold. We have 271. We wait.
​

[IBT]
Palace Expansion; we add some steps that make it easier to get onto the front porch.

England is building Sistine Chapel (Theology).
China is building The Great Library (Literature -> Education), again.


9 0460 AD

Chinese rSword 1N of Trondheim.
Mace Army kills it (1 of 1).

Galley unloads Pike in Fischberg and sails back to Wilhelmshaven.

Mace moves towards Trondheim.

Pike moves to 2SW of Fischberg.

Workers
Start a road 1N-1NE of Eisenstadt.
Worker arrives in Hamburg.
Jungle is traded for Grassland at Catan. Workers move towards the banana tile being worked by Fischberg. Slaves begin road (2 turns).
Lone worker moves closer to the core.
Second banana roaded at Bananenbucht; 3 workers mine the BG 1NE of Banana Town (2 turns).
Irrigate the grass 2SE of München (2 turns).
Slave slinks towards Catan.
Odense road gang (6 slaves) moves to 1NW of Odense, still in the jungle.

To rush the courthouse in Trondheim we need 312 gold. We have 279. We wait.

Drop science to 30%, Theology in 1, +57 gpt, 279 gold.
​

[IBT]
Theology -> Education in 18 turns at 30%.

Königsberg: worker -> worker in 2.

Once again, China is building The Great Library (Literature -> Education).
Mongols are building The Great Library, again.


10 0470 AD

Galley sails into Wilhelmshaven and gets parked.

Pike moves to 1S-2SW of Fischberg, on the choke point between us and England.

Army heals in Trondheim.

Mace arrvies in Trondheim.

Workers
New worker in Königsberg moves towards Aarhus.
Lone worker moves towards Aarhus, too, joinin the new worker on the trail.
Slave joins the other slaves at Catan.
Mining workers 1S of Eisenstadt move to 1N of Goldstadt, to mine that hill.
Move worker onto hill 1NE of Eisenstadt, to road.
Irrigate 1SE of Aarhus (2 turns).
Add worker to Hamburg, now size 9.
Two workers move onto banana tile SE of Wilhelmshaven.
Worker irrigates over the Wine Mine at Trondheim.
Six slaves begin the last part of the road to Odense (3 turns).
​

And the save is attached.

 

[CommandoBob]

Random Stuff
Lots of things to do that were and are important, but nothing really exciting.

We made MAPT deals wtih the Mongols, Japan and India. Japan later made peace with China, so now we are at war with Japan.

We did kill a Chinese rSword that dared to mess with Trondheim. But that was all the combat we saw.

Our Mace Army is healing in Trondheim.

We disbanded our curraghs.

Kolossusstadt and Hamburg are now size 9 due to worker additions.

I think I meant to change Catan from Market to Mace but never did, so it is still making a Market.

So is München.

No new cities.

Sun Tzu's Art of war was built in Karakorum, Mongolia.

We have just learned Theology on the last IBT. England knows Theology, too, but hasn't tried to sell it around. We can and get good money for it. As starters, Mongolia, just slightly richer than us, offers us all their gold, 367 pieces, and 60 gpt in exchange for this tech.
And that still leaves Korea, India and the Vikings.

We have not adjusted the science slider this turn.

We do have enough cash to rush the courthouse in Trondheim, which needs 308 gold and we have 336. But I do not feel comfortable rushing such a large amount on the last turn of this turnset. For me, it falls into the same category of bad manners as making all possible deals with Theology.

Our lone Pike that is 'overseas' needs to be fortified next turn.

'Overseas' we are close to connecting all our cities. We needed to road three jungle tiles. One is done, the second will be done this IBT, leaving us just one more. Once the harbor in Fischberg is done, we can put poeple back to work over there. I think that the harbor will complete at the same time we finish that last road.

We don't have many cities making quality miliary units. Just Eisenstadt (Maces), Hamburg (Knights) and Wilhelmshaven (Pikes). Once the Heroic Epic completes in the capital, four turns away, it can spend 15 spt on buliding 5 turn Knights.

I think we need to compare our dotmap of tiles worked per city to our current citizen allocation. Or was that dotmap for use after we got our borders settled and our contient subdued?

We haven't done anything to the forest between Oasenstadt and Eisenstadt. It is currently being worked by Oasenstadt but a forest chop would/should go to Eisenstadt. If we don't chop it, we need to road it to get the extra commerce from the road.

The only other forest tile we have is 1NE of Goldstadt.

Most of our core hills have been mined and are being worked.

We need Pikes in Neu-Oslo and Bananenbucht. I should have dealt with this on my turns but missed by focusing on worker tasks.

We can bribe the Vikings into an MA vs. Japan for Iron. Japan has a city at the north end of our continent and it would help us if the Vikings would remove it. I don't think we want this MA tied to a Peace Treaty, if we make it. We can also get them into an MA twofer, Iron for MAs vs. Japan and China.

Worker Locations/Tasks (NW to SE)
One worker 1N of Aarhus, road, 1 turn.
One worker 1NE of Aarhus, road, 1 turn.
Two workers 1SE of Aarhus, irrigating, 2 turns.
Two workers 2NE of Oasenstadt, no movement, headed towards Aarhus (not on auto-move, however).
One worker 1NW of Eisenstadt, roading a hill, 3 turns.
One worker 1N-1NE of Eisenstadt, road, 2 turns.
Three workers 1W-1SW of Fischberg, jungle road, 1 turn. Need to move 1W to build another jungle road to connect all three cities in this area.
One worker 1NE of Eisentadt, no movement, planning to build road here.
Two workers 1S-1SE of Wilhelmshaven, no movement, jungle road planned here, since Fischberg works this tile of bananas.
Four slaves, three working on a road, one with no movement left, 1NW of Catan, road, 1 turn. They plan to mine next turn.
Four workers, 1N of Goldstadt, ready to start a mine here next turn.
Two workers 1E of München, roading that hill, 1 turn. Plan to follow with mine.
Two workers 2SE of München, irrgating grass, 1 turn. Plan to help mine next turn.
One worker 1N of Trondheim, irrigating a mined Wine plain, 4 turns.
Three workers 1NE of Bananenbucht, mining a BG, 1 turn.
Three workers 1E of Goldstadt, roading a jungle. 1 turn.
Six slaves 1NE of Odense, roading the jungle to connect Odense, 3 turns.


We have several workers than can join Aarhus once everything around it is roaded and watered. In addition to the two that could join shortly.

Military
29 Worker
10 Slaves
02 Horeseman
06 Pike
01 Galley
01 Army (Mace)
08 Mace
00 Curragh

Current Units: 47
Allowed Units: 28
Support Costs: 38 gpt

Eduction in 18 turns, 30% science, +58 gpt, 336 gold (no slider adjustments yet).

 

[choxorn]

Looked at the save. I see China's just about dead- should we send a small force to grab that city on our continent and the one on the island, before someone else does?

Looking at trades:

Korea will give us Gunpowder for Theology, 334 gold, and 15 gpt, or Theology and 34 gpt.
Mongolia will give us 367 gold and 72 gpt (all they have) for Theology.

Mongolia's deal sounds really awesome, but we still have 10 turns left on the MAPT deal, and if they sign peace with China (and declare war on us), we'd lose all that money. For that reason, I'd suggest keeping an eye out on the offers people give, see if anyone else gets Gunpowder, and after 10 turns or when China is destroyed, whichever comes first, see what Mongolia is willing to offer.

I'd also suggest not including Mongolia in any more MAPT deals for a while- if they have that kind of money, staying at peace with them so we can get that money through trade is better than getting war happiness from them fighting us.

Anyway, I think:

Lanzelot <-- UP
MrRandomGuy <-- On Deck
tjs
choxorn
CommandoBob <-- Just Played

Acronym: AWOL

Lanzelot, IIRC you decided to play 12 turns last time you were up and 8 this time, is that right?

 

[CommandoBob]

Looked at the save. I see China's just about dead- should we send a small force to grab that city on our continent and the one on the island, before someone else does?

I don't think we care about them that much. If those cities were closer, maybe, but not where they are. Plus, it would take away from the upcoming war with England.

Also, China, even as a 1 City Civ, can still serve a useful purpose as everyone's favorite scapegoat, for other MAPT deals. We can use their international mistakes to our advantage.

I think that Lanzelot's plan is to crush England, conquer the Vikings and make this continent totally German. I don't think he plans to invade the other continents or islands.

 

[Lanzelot]

One can see, that we are finally catching up and getting back into business here... While Theology took us ~12 turns, Education (which is even more expensive) can already be done in a mere 8 turns at a slight budget deficit.

However, I have to scold a little carelessness in micro management here. This must have escaped your attention:

And note: instead of the un-improved forest, Oasenstadt can use Königsberg for 5 extra bpt and 1 extra spt! (Königsberg has another fully improved hill further east, which is currently unused. What a waste.

(Aargh, I just realize, that I misspelled the above sentence and forgot a "hill" in there...1 ) Anyway, what I meant by it: Oasenstadt could have used Königsberg's hill, while Königsberg still had another improved hill to work on elsewhere. By this single tile re-assignment we would have gained an additional 50 beakers and 10 shields over the course of the last 10 turns.

Now the situation is even worse: Königsberg is now building workers at 19 shields a piece!!!! (2 x 9 + 1 on growth). Why that? Königsberg could use two roaded hills (while the workers do other more important stuff) and one of the mined hills could have been given to Oasenstadt (speeding up HE by 1-2 turns) and the other one to München. (With a worker join, München could now make 12spt instead of 8spt - a whoopy 50% increase and marketplace in 9 instead of 13 turns, just by a little tile re-assignment accompanied by a worker join.)

And:

BTW: let it use the mined plains tile at 0fpt and 7spt (if necessary, we can give Kolossusstadt the irrigated plain Hamburg is currently working, because Hamburg still has an unused irrigated plains further east). At 7spt Copernicus will finish in 36 turns, which will coincide perfectly with our expected arrival time of Astronomy.

Kolossusstadt is still running at 4spt?! At that speed we even run the risk to lose Copernicus to one of the AIs (especially if a cascade is going on at that time).

These are just a few examples to illustrate that such seemingly "minor details" can indeed make a big difference. If these things add up over the course of the game, the impact can indeed by huge, e.g. it can mean the difference between launching the ship at 1800 AD or at 1400 AD (or on Deity: the difference between losing the game or winning it).

Also worker management still needs to be improved. For example: why did we build two roads on the banana jungles at Bananenstadt?!? That took 18 worker turns and did not serve any purpose at all. Also the two mines on the dyes and BG tiles are completely wasted, as corruption eats that extra shield anyway. That's another 12 worker turns. Instead of that, the swamp tile for Catan could already have been fully improved.

Ok, here are now my
Plans for the game:

• First the trading:
  Korea would be willing to give Gunpowder for Theology and virtually all our gold. No way. This would cripple us too much. Instead I agree with Choxorn's proposal: sell Theology around for as much gold as we can get, then we can run some deficit research and get Education done in 8 or perhaps even 7 turns, while still being able to do all the necessary cash-rushing in Trondheim. Then Education will hopefully still be a monopoly tech by the time we get it, and we can use it to buy Gunpowder (plus some more gold) from Korea.
  BTW: the Mongolia deal is great, even if Mongolia breaks it after a couple of turn. If it runs the full 20 turns, it`ll net us over 1700 gold, but even if we only get 500g our of it, it'll still be great. (And if we collect everybody's gpt, it reduces their research capability, so it increases our chances of getting Education first!!)
  In any case: keeping Mongolia out of any future MAPT schemes sounds like a good idea, we can indeed prosper more by trading with them than by getting WH from a war with them.
• Forbidden Palace: where are all the slaves that should be improving Trondheim's vicinity and chop a forest or two into the courthouse and marketplace? I see only one lonely worker doing improvements at Trondheim at the moment... So my plan is: rush courthouse now, move some workers back to Trondheim, once they are done with their current tasks at München and Bergen, plant and chop two forests into the market and then join them in, once Trondheim has enough improved tiles for 9-10 citizens. That should be enough for FP in 25 turns. (Trondheim has 11 workable tiles, and I'll try to utilize as many as possible, maximizing for shield output. Perhaps we can even bring it up to 5spt and FP in 20 turns.)
• Do the tile re-assignments as indicated above. The HE can still be pruned down from 4 to 3 turns, and the market in München from 9 to 6 turns. Also bring Kolossusstadt up to 7 or perhaps even 8 spt. Otherwise continue our core build-up in the same manner as CommandoBob already did during the last 10 turns. And: perhaps I can bring Oasenstadt up to 20spt during my turn set. That would be perfect for 2-turn maces or a university in 5 turns...
• Catan with 4gpt does not yet need a market, but it'll hit size 6 soon, so could use an aqueduct. Ok if I switch?
• Hareid could use a courthouse or a harbor?!
• Any ideas for Odense? It's a crap town now, but will perhaps contribute a little bit, once the FP in Trondheim is up. So perhaps also a court/harbor?
• Do we really want walls in Neu-Oslo and Bananenstadt? Hmm, perhaps yes. We might be looking at a longer defensive war against the Brits. Is it ok for everyone, if we use a dirty RoP rape against them? That question hasn't been answered yet, but I think it could become acute soon. Another question: are we already strong enough to attack now? Or wait until we can use our GA to beat them? Both plans have their pros and cons: taking London the turn before Copernicus finishes, holding it for at least one turn, starting the GA and then using it to beat them down, sounds like a very neat plan, but the drawback is: by that time they'll definitely have muskets. And if we attack soonish, the war might backfire and we won't have the Great Wall by the time Copernicus finishes, which would mean "Bye-bye GA" until Newton...

Ok, too tired for more ideas now. Let me know what you think.

BTW: to answer CommandoBobs question: the food map is meant for the time once all core cities have reached their full size of 12. In the meantime, some tiles may have a different improvement, e.g. first irrigate them to grow as quickly as possible and afterwards mine over the irrigation to turn excess food into shields.
Which I will do now for Wilhelmshaven: it currently wastes 3 food every turn!! (Something like this always causes "almost physically tangible" pain to me...) I'll mine 3 irrigated plains now. Once it has an aqueduct, it'll grow by worker-joins anyway.

 

[choxorn]

On Military: We're weak compared to England, Japan, and Mongolia, average compared to India and Korea, and strong compared to Scandinavia and China.

We have 1 Galley, 2 Horsemen (who could easily be upgraded to Knights, and I'm wondering why they haven't been yet), 6 Pikemen, and 8 MDI, 3 of which are in an army.

That's probably not enough to fight England with.

On Trades: Well, I already mentioned two possible trades. In addition to that, We could say screw Gunpowder and get 141 gold and 57 gpt from Korea, get 38 gold + 33 gpt from India (though like Mongolia, we have an MAPT deal with them), or... 32 gold and 0 gpt from Scandinavia, which really isn't worth it.

All told, the Mongolia and India deals would be risky, but all three of them add up to 546 gold and 160 gpt (enough to pour all of our money into science and lux and still run a +100 gpt surplus and get Education done in 7 turns)

 

[tjs282]

[*]Hareid could use a courthouse or a harbor?!
[*]Any ideas for Odense? It's a crap town now, but will perhaps contribute a little bit, once the FP in Trondheim is up. So perhaps also a court/harbor?

My n00bish instinct would be to build harbours for food first (although most/all of the extra commerce would probably be corrupted -- at least until the FP is complete or a courthouse was built?). Especially in Odense, which (presumably) still has a lot of jungle/swamp around it...

That said, though... When I looked at Choxorn's end-of-set screenie, I didn't much like Odense's location (or Hareid's, come to that). I thought Odense would have been better built on the other side of the river (4SE of Bergen, 1SW of present location), to get access to the Marsh tile that neither Neu Oslo nor Bergen can reach. Hareid I thought would have been better on the coastal desert, but if we do put a first FP-ring city on the riverbank ENE of Bergen (per Lanzelot's dotmap), then that probably wouldn't be worth doing. But disbanding Hareid and founding a new (2nd FP-ring) city on the Plains SSW or the Marsh(Grass)land 2S of its current position might be a good idea instead (especially if we do move Odense as well...).

Finally -- what about the Hill 1E of Copenhagen as an eventual 1st FP-ring city site? If it gets freshwater access from the river along Copenhagen's SE side, then I like that position (much) better than the Hill 2NE that you(Lanzelot) have X'd, since 'my' Hill-town would also be able to reach those 2 Floodplains (including the WheatFlood! ) during its growth phase.

[*]Do we really want walls in Neu-Oslo and Bananenstadt? Hmm, perhaps yes. We might be looking at a longer defensive war against the Brits. Is it ok for everyone, if we use a dirty RoP rape against them?

Walls are certainly not worth building, if you don't have a decent defensive unit behind them... And shurely if we backstab Liz with RoP betrayal, and successfully take London (I assume we'd be aiming to do that within 1-2T of our treachery?), we'd immediately get free Walls in all our cities anyway...? So rather Harbours/Courthouses (if we don't have those already? Haven't looked at the save) for the coastal/river food/commerce...?

Which I will do now for Wilhelmshaven: it currently wastes 3 food every turn!! (Something like this always causes "almost physically tangible" pain to me...) I'll mine 3 irrigated plains now. Once it has an aqueduct, it'll grow by worker-joins anyway.

3 FPT wasted? Autschi Autschi Autschi...

 

[MrRandomGuy]

We shouldn't do a ROP rape. That makes it difficult for us to trade with any other nation. In a game like this we want to have good trade reputation for techs.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

I've looked at the save.

If we are going to war the English, the best way to go about this is to center our forces upon Liverpool. Liverpool is the best area to start the war because the other two cities on our border have rivers and will get the defensive bonus. Once Liverpool is captured move onto Hastings then Nottingham then finally London.

Once London has been captured the rest of the war will be a cleanup operation. AI civs rarely recover from a lost capitol so by this time we will probably just have defensive units to deal with along with the occasional offensive unit.

We might lose the cities on the peninsula, but that will be ok. We will get them back at the end of the war. There is no need to overextend our forces by defending them when our core is more important.

 

[choxorn]

Like I said a few posts ago, we have a single-digit number of offensive units unless you count the mace army as more than one.

We're not going to be able to actually fight them for a while.

 

[tjs282]

We shouldn't do a ROP rape. That makes it difficult for us to trade with any other nation.

As far as I understand it, RoP-abuse doesn't automatically ruin per-turn trading reputation, so long as we wait to commit the betrayal until after the obligatory 20T is over.

True, no-one would ever sign an RoP with us ever again, but do we really care about that? Our betrayal of the English would be the first strike in our campaign to push them (and the Vikings) into the sea anyway (they float, they'll be fine... ), and gain Exclusive Possession of our continent. Once that's achieved, we'll never need to sign an RoP with anyone else. We're not going for a Diplo vic, after all, so we don't need any RoPs for good relations with the remaining offshore AICivs (although we should probably aim to build the UN, simply so that no-one else can)...

So how about the following: First of all, we still need to make the RoP-to-be-broken don't we? Once the 20T starts ticking down, we use that time to build Pikes/ Maces/ Knights out of all our Barracks, and maybe Trebs from all non-Barrack cities, and move the majority of those units to the Hills outside London. Then we simply wait for the RoP to expire (turn on 'always renegotiate deals', so we can be sure of cancelling it?). When Liz asks us to leave during the IBT, we lie and say we will, but instead we DoW her on our next turn, attacking London with everything we've amassed there. Would this work?

(This is the part I'm not sure about: How does the AI-diplomacy algorithm 'decide' between requesting the removal of foreign units vs. making a 'leave or declare' demand? Since we've never been to war against the English -- and we still have reasonably good relations with them, right? -- I would not expect an immediate demand on the IBT after the RoP expiration, but is that expectation justified?).

However, if we can only DoW on the IBT after the RoP-expiry, then that presents a more difficult problem. An Army of Pikes would be really helpful in this case, to cover our attack-stack, because then the English would be less likely to attack it -- but in practical terms, we can really only get an Army from an MGL, because we don't have the time/shields to build the MilAcad anywhere yet. So in that case maybe we would need to start -- and finish -- another leader-fishing war with the Vikings before we turn our attention to the English. We'd probably also need to use our fast units to pillage the roads to London, to slow down reinforcements...

Once Liverpool is captured move onto Hastings then Nottingham then finally London. Once London has been captured the rest of the war will be a cleanup operation.

What you're advocating here, is that we should attempt to take 4 walled cities in succession, instead of just one, without having any movement advantage on English soil. Your screenie appears to show that the English haven't built any roads between those 4 cities So even assuming that it would only take 1T to capture each of the first 3 cities (and that's a big 'if'!), it would take at least 13T for our SoD just to reach London -- and there probably wouldn't be much of it left by the time it got there, due to casualties sustained during our city-attacks, and English counterattacks while it's marching between cities. And we simply don't have -- and are unlikely to acquire soon -- the military strength or Lux-power to sustain such a long, plodding war.

Conversely, abusing an RoP will get our units to London in 10T (e.g. down that spine of Hills/ Mountains) without any harassment/losses, and we can then immediately bring all the military strength we can muster to bear on that one crucial target. London has the Great Wall -- and that's why we want it (yes we does, precioussss, we wantss it...). Once we have London, all the free Walls in the other English cities will disappear, which will make taking them all a lot easier (and if we can hold onto it long-term, those Walls will effectively be moved to our cities instead, strengthening the defenders in all our small border towns). And more to the point, if we've already finished building Copernicus before we take London, doing so should trigger our GA (right, Lanzelot?), which we could then use to build MOOOAAR units from our Barracks-cities, and Universities in our high-commerce river/coast cities, boosting both our Science and our military, for the cleanup operation -- because, as you say, the AI will have immediately thrown most of its offensive units at London, and (hopefully!) lost a large percentage of them.

That said, if we want to be able to continue our push, we will certainly need a connection between the ex-English cities and our core -- so maybe if we could take London with the first stack (I suspect the English capital would move to Notts), and Liverpool shortly afterwards with some of the GA-built units, then demand Hastings as part of a soon-to-be-broken peace-deal, would that make sense? We could then use the peacetime turns to stack-build a long road while we're re-arming for our next assault...

In a game like this we want to have good trade reputation for techs.

Do we? Really? We are aiming to become tech-leader ASAP, if we're not already (and not to put too fine a point on it, we would almost certainly be tech-leader already, if our Republic-Slingshot had been properly executed all those turns ago...).

So they will be begging us for our techs, not the other way round, and since this is an SG, we'd presumably be aiming to trade mainly via tech-for-tech deals or lump-sum gold anyway, not per-turn anything? Although let's not forget all the excess Luxes and StratRes that we'll have available to gift or sweeten deals if necessary (2 Wines, 1 Silks so far, and at least 1 more from London, plus a second Dyes from Stockholm -- plus eventually all the ex-English Horses and Iron).

And smart tech-brokering could still keep us 1-2 techs ahead of the closest AICiv (probably Korea?) -- especially if we can also keep them all fighting each other, e.g. through tech-for-Horses/Iron deals.

 

[choxorn]

Then we simply wait for the RoP to expire (turn on 'always renegotiate deals', so we can be sure of cancelling it?). When Liz asks us to leave during the IBT, we lie and say we will, but instead we DoW her on our next turn, attacking London with everything we've amassed there. Would this work?

(This is the part I'm not sure about: How does the AI-diplomacy algorithm 'decide' between requesting the removal of foreign units vs. making a 'leave or declare' demand? Since we've never been to war against the English -- and we still have reasonably good relations with them, right? -- I would not expect an immediate demand on the IBT after the RoP expiration, but is that expectation justified?).

That doesn't work- the Soft "Get Out" option only shows up if one military unit has been in your territory for one turn. If that one military unit sticks around for more than one, or there's more than one military unit, it becomes the Hard "Get Out or Declare War" option.

Also, even if you don't have an RoP, declaring war while any of your units are in that civ's territory does bad things to your reputation.

That being said, signing an RoP now with England wouldn't be a bad idea- we could, for instance, send a fast unit to go explore their road system and check their def- er, I mean, "Pay a friendly visit to our glorious English friends"

 

[dalgo]

What you're advocating here, is that we should attempt to take 4 walled cities in succession, instead of just one

lurker's comment: Just a note on the Great Wall, it only applies to towns with pop 6 or less. So in this case Liverpool and Hastings have walls but Nottingham and London don't.

 

[Lanzelot]

That said, though... When I looked at Choxorn's end-of-set screenie, I didn't much like Odense's location (or Hareid's, come to that). I thought Odense would have been better built on the other side of the river (4SE of Bergen, 1SW of present location), to get access to the Marsh tile that neither Neu Oslo nor Bergen can reach. Hareid I thought would have been better on the coastal desert, but if we do put a first FP-ring city on the riverbank ENE of Bergen (per Lanzelot's dotmap), then that probably wouldn't be worth doing. But disbanding Hareid and founding a new (2nd FP-ring) city on the Plains SSW or the Marsh(Grass)land 2S of its current position might be a good idea instead (especially if we do move Odense as well...).

I think the benefit of relocating these towns would be rather small. One extra workable tile in a very corrupted area - who cares... Also relocating would either take a long time (30 turns) or a decent amount of gold, so I'd say it's not worth it. Especially as Hareid is much better on it's current location than on the desert 1SW: where it is now it can share the cow tile with the Stavanger-replacement and grow quickly! And at distance 3 from the FP both these cities should be reasonable productive, so it's good to grow them quickly.

Finally -- what about the Hill 1E of Copenhagen as an eventual 1st FP-ring city site? If it gets freshwater access from the river along Copenhagen's SE side, then I like that position (much) better than the Hill 2NE that you(Lanzelot) have X'd, since 'my' Hill-town would also be able to reach those 2 Floodplains (including the WheatFlood! ) during its growth phase.

Yes, I like that place 1E of Copenhagen, too. Closer to the FP and can use the wheat. However, it's not on the river. That's why I placed my red cross on the hill 1N of that point. However, that decision is debatable. I'm not sure at the moment, which is better, access to fresh water or the wheat and 1 tile closer to the FP?! Perhaps the better location is worth the 100s investition for an aqueduct.

if we backstab Liz with RoP betrayal, and successfully take London (I assume we'd be aiming to do that within 1-2T of our treachery?), we'd immediately get free Walls in all our cities anyway...?

I completely forgot about this... But you are right, this convinces me now completely: walls are not necessary.

3 FPT wasted? Autschi Autschi Autschi...

Well, I think it was not easy to avoid, as most of our work-force was busy elsewhere. But I'll now make it a priority to move a large number of workers back to our core, at least as long as it takes to get the first ring completely to size 12.

We shouldn't do a ROP rape. That makes it difficult for us to trade with any other nation. In a game like this we want to have good trade reputation for techs.

As far as I can tell from my experience (and I use RoP rape occasionally...), a RoP rape does not effect our trade reputation. It only makes it more difficult/impossible to get further RoPs in the future. And I noticed that if you attack after the RoP has expired, other nations are still willing to sign RoPs, but may require some extra payment (gold or techs).

Like I said a few posts ago, we have a single-digit number of offensive units unless you count the mace army as more than one.

We're not going to be able to actually fight them for a while.

I agree completely. But the question is: what is your definition of "a while". I think we can be ready for action in 10-15 turns. At least for a plan like this:
a) Send our Mace-Army, 5 extra maces and 3 muskets as "London Taskforce", to take and hold London. (Operation "Market Garden".)
b) The rest of our troops sits behind our new nice and shiny walls and rebuffs the English units that'll come through the jungle, while our core is busy building the next task force that allows us to go take over the offensive again. (Hopefully it won't be "one brigde too many" this time... )

I think with a plan like that it is possible to break the major part of English resistance even before the start of our GA. But it'll take iron nerves for a while... It's not everybody's cup of tea to sit tight and defend for a while...

As far as I understand it, RoP-abuse doesn't automatically ruin per-turn trading reputation, so long as we wait to commit the betrayal until after the obligatory 20T is over.

True, no-one would ever sign an RoP with us ever again, but do we really care about that? Our betrayal of the English would be the first strike in our campaign to push them (and the Vikings) into the sea anyway (they float, they'll be fine... ), and gain Exclusive Possession of our continent. Once that's achieved, we'll never need to sign an RoP with anyone else. We're not going for a Diplo vic, after all, so we don't need any RoPs for good relations with the remaining offshore AICivs (although we should probably aim to build the UN, simply so that no-one else can)...

Agree completely.

(This is the part I'm not sure about: How does the AI-diplomacy algorithm 'decide' between requesting the removal of foreign units vs. making a 'leave or declare' demand? Since we've never been to war against the English -- and we still have reasonably good relations with them, right? -- I would not expect an immediate demand on the IBT after the RoP expiration, but is that expectation justified?).

I'm not 100% sure on this, but my memory is, that one the first turn, you get a "soft get out", and only if you spend a second turn in their territory, they'll give you the boot. It could be that if you had a war with them before, or broke a RoP before or have bad relations with them in some other way, you might get the boot already the first time, but neither of that applies to our relation with the Lizzy.

However, if we can only DoW on the IBT after the RoP-expiry, then that presents a more difficult problem. An Army of Pikes would be really helpful in this case, to cover our attack-stack, because then the English would be less likely to attack it -- but in practical terms, we can really only get an Army from an MGL, because we don't have the time/shields to build the MilAcad anywhere yet.

Not to mention the required techs to build the MilAcad...
But that's no big problem: I'm 99% sure that the Mace-Army fortified on the hill outside London would not get attacked, even if a "hard get out" would force us to declare IBT!

What you're advocating here, is that we should attempt to take 4 walled cities in succession, instead of just one, without having any movement advantage on English soil. Your screenie appears to show that the English haven't built any roads between those 4 cities So even assuming that it would only take 1T to capture each of the first 3 cities (and that's a big 'if'!), it would take at least 13T for our SoD just to reach London -- and there probably wouldn't be much of it left by the time it got there, due to casualties sustained during our city-attacks, and English counterattacks while it's marching between cities. And we simply don't have -- and are unlikely to acquire soon -- the military strength or Lux-power to sustain such a long, plodding war.

Yes, any war against the British that does not involve capture of London in the first turn, will be hard and high in casulties... (Now because we are still weak, lateron because we'll meet muskets instead of pikes.)

And more to the point, if we've already finished building Copernicus before we take London, doing so should trigger our GA (right, Lanzelot?),

Actually: no...
Ok, as this point is very important, let me emphasize it for all of us here. The mechanism works as follows: whenever we build a great wonder, the game checks the flags of all wonders currently in our possession, and if we own wonders that match our traits (MIL and SCI), then our GA starts.
But if we capture a great wonder, this check for start of GA is not performed!!
This means we have to capture the Great Wall, before we finish Copernicus!! Otherwise, as I already said: Bye-bye GA until Newton. (Which is more than two thirds of an age later...)

In a game like this we want to have good trade reputation for techs.

Do we? Really? We are aiming to become tech-leader ASAP, if we're not already

Well, actually yes we do. On Emperor the AI can still be counted on providing roughly half of the middle age techs and with a bit of luck 2-3 industrial age techs, so that would be a 50-60 turns earlier launch date than if we had to do everything by ourselves. Also think about the lots of cash and gpt and offshore luxuries that we want to buy to speed up our research. So keeping a good trade reputation is important in science games.

That being said, I'm quite positive that RoP rapes have no influence on the trade reputation. (At least not if we keep the 20 turn rule.)

That doesn't work- the Soft "Get Out" option only shows up if one military unit has been in your territory for one turn. If that one military unit sticks around for more than one, or there's more than one military unit, it becomes the Hard "Get Out or Declare War" option.

Also, even if you don't have an RoP, declaring war while any of your units are in that civ's territory does bad things to your reputation.

That being said, signing an RoP now with England wouldn't be a bad idea- we could, for instance, send a fast unit to go explore their road system and check their def- er, I mean, "Pay a friendly visit to our glorious English friends"

So I'll sign a RoP now and use it at least for reconnoissance. We can still decide, if we also want to use it for the RoP rape, but I would say: if we are ready for war and England still does not have muskets by then, we should grasp the opportunity, even if we risk a trade rep hit! Everything else would take too long and be too costly. And we can still get cash and techs from the AI.

Ah, wait a moment, I just went back to microbe's article about reputation, and ideed my memory was right:

RoP reputation is a related topic but quite independent of trading reputation. It decides if AI is willing to sign RoP with you. Your RoP rep is trashed if you declare war on the AI while you have any units with attack/defense value (including boats) inside AI territory, regardless of whether you actually have RoP deal with the AI. Trading and RoP reputation is maintained separately and does not affect each other.

So we can break as many RoPs even before the 20 turns are up, and will never suffer a trade rep hit!!

 

[tjs282]

lurker's comment: Just a note on the Great Wall, it only applies to towns with pop 6 or less. So in this case Liverpool and Hastings have walls but Nottingham and London don't.

That's technically true, but at Pop7 those cities have the first level of 'population-defence' bonus instead, which is the same as the 'Wall-defence' bonus applicable up to Pop6. Admittedly, I can't remember offhand how big that bonus is (+50%?), but that doesn't really matter to my argument.

Although I should maybe have put 'walled' in inverted commas, the end-result is the same: whether Pop&#8804;6+Walls or Pop&#8805;7, our units would be fighting strengthened defenders in all 4 of those cities, yet MRG is suggesting that (despite our limited military capability vs. the English) we try to fight a 'clean' war to take 3 cities we don't need, before getting to the one that we do, instead of fighting dirty and using RoP-abuse to go after just that one crucial city -- even though he himself then points out that taking London will likely cripple the English for good.

Given our current situation, RoP-abuse is certainly more pragmatic than Queensbury Rules... and in CivIII, when an AICiv is already (on the way) down is almost always the best time to give it a really good kicking...

 

[tjs282]

I think the benefit of relocating these towns would be rather small. One extra workable tile in a very corrupted area - who cares...

Sorry, must still be thinking in Vanilla... But if it's corrupt, then presumably it will be a science farm (which I need to read up on, since it's not generally something I do) --so wouldn't we then need high-food tiles to feed the Scientists, making an extra 3F- (after draining/irrigation) or 4F-Grass (after Steam/rails) better than a 2F Coast/Sea tile...?

Yes, I like that place 1E of Copenhagen, too. Closer to the FP and can use the wheat. However, it's not on the river.

Drat.

Not to mention the required techs to build the MilAcad...

Oh damn, now I feel stupid -- it needs MilTrad (or Nationalism?), doesn't it?

whenever we build a great wonder, the game checks the flags of all wonders currently in our possession, and if we own wonders that match our traits (MIL and SCI), then our GA starts.
But if we capture a great wonder, this check for start of GA is not performed!! This means we have to capture the Great Wall, before we finish Copernicus!! Otherwise, as I already said: Bye-bye GA until Newton. (Which is more than two thirds of an age later...)

Whoa, thanks for clarifying that.

Well, actually yes we do. On Emperor the AI can still be counted on providing roughly half of the middle age techs and with a bit of luck 2-3 industrial age techs, so that would be a 50-60 turns earlier launch date than if we had to do everything by ourselves. Also think about the lots of cash and gpt and offshore luxuries that we want to buy to speed up our research. So keeping a good trade reputation is important in science games.

OK fair enough. But what I meant was more along the lines of, if we beeline to the less-favoured but still non-optional techs (and a lot of the MidAge techs are optionals), we would probably still be able to use that monopoly to do one-time trades and tech-brokering for the non-optionals we don't have, right? So a good per-turn trade-rep would make those deals better for us, but is not absolutely essential to get what we need to progress through the tree.

So I'll sign a RoP now and use it at least for reconnoissance

How about using it for some road-building as well...? Now that K'berg is churning them out so fast, could we spare a stack of, say, 3 Workers to start roading to London? One flat tile roaded every 2T would get those Workers (almost) all the way there, just as the RoP expired (and then they could hide under the SoD). I know that such a road would also provide a route for the English to come back at us, but maybe we could put a Fortress/Barricade on the border near Liverpool, and fortify a decent defender in it...?

 

[choxorn]

Oh damn, now I feel stupid -- it needs MilTrad (or Nationalism?), doesn't it?
Whoa, thanks for clarifying that.

It needs Military Tradition in C3C.