ALC Game #10: India/Asoka

[thefais]

Great series so far! Love how this is going. Hope you do a new civ next!

Edit: Some thoughts, since I posted at the same time as you...

Try for a space race, keeping up with the vikings, or maybe a diplomatic victory: That would really require you to get one of the other civs on the other continent on your team... But churchill would be your rival anyways... Well, the UN is a little far off to say for sure, as Ragnar might end up taking that role (leaving you to take Winnie's vote). Try to take more of the northern japanese cities, if only to keep your civ together in case of a war...

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Various thoughts in no particular order ...

I don't think you want to bother with much (if any) cavalry. Once the enemy has rifllemen, the age of cavalry is over. Maybe a few quick response troops would be useful, but you're not going to get any significant attack value out of them. Make cannons, grenadiers, and riflemen.

If you're going for diplomatic, you might as well accept capitulation from Tokugawa as soon as possible (note: I sort of change my mind on this later in the post). Take any cities with wonders or really good resources, but you'll get his votes automatically if he's a vassal. Also, if he's your vassal, then you don't need to take his cities in order to get access to your new, formerly Japanese cities. You have free passage through your vassals' lands.

As far as diplomatic goes, your continent will get you most of the way. Research Biology quickly and immediately gift it to Tokugawa to help boost his population. Also give it to Ragnar unless you think he's in danger of becoming your rival in the elections (though it might not matter, since he can probably research it himself easily enough). If you do a lot of farming and beeline to Mass Media, you can probably get by with only one of Alexander or Isabella voting for you.

How do relations look between Churchill and the other civilizations? You're going to need to shore things up with Alexander. Free Religion will probably help, but will it be enough? How much of a ding are you taking from Alexander and Isabella for religious differences?

Favorite civic is the other obvious way to get points. That's going to be a tough one with Isabella, because hers is Theocracy. That's a damned if you do, damned if you don't proposition. Alexander loves Hereditary Rule, so you might want to consider adopting that as you close in on Mass Media. You want to do it late enough that you don't hurt your economy, but you need to do it early enough that you accumulate some long term love.

It's going to be a lot of screenshots, but it would be really useful to see the detailed diplomacy information (the full +/- popup) for everyone with you and everyone with Churchill. Also the general attitudes toward Tokugawa (because you want to see if anyone will get mad when you redeclare war).

Keep in mind that vassals get you a -1 with everyone else. They don't like your influence. So that might be a reason to consider just wiping Tokugawa out. Without knowing the full diplomacy information, my intuition is that it's going to come down to Alexander. If you can swing him over to your side, you probably win. If not, forget it. That might be a really close call, and the extra -1 might be the deciding factor.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

Various thoughts in no particular order ...

I don't think you want to bother with much (if any) cavalry. Once the enemy has rifllemen, the age of cavalry is over. Maybe a few quick response troops would be useful, but you're not going to get any significant attack value out of them. Make cannons, grenadiers, and riflemen.

If you're going for diplomatic, you might as well accept capitulation from Tokugawa as soon as possible (note: I sort of change my mind on this later in the post). Take any cities with wonders or really good resources, but you'll get his votes automatically if he's a vassal. Also, if he's your vassal, then you don't need to take his cities in order to get access to your new, formerly Japanese cities. You have free passage through your vassals' lands.

As far as diplomatic goes, your continent will get you most of the way. Research Biology quickly and immediately gift it to Tokugawa to help boost his population. Also give it to Ragnar unless you think he's in danger of becoming your rival in the elections (though it might not matter, since he can probably research it himself easily enough). If you do a lot of farming and beeline to Mass Media, you can probably get by with only one of Alexander or Isabella voting for you.

How do relations look between Churchill and the other civilizations? You're going to need to shore things up with Alexander. Free Religion will probably help, but will it be enough? How much of a ding are you taking from Alexander and Isabella for religious differences?

Favorite civic is the other obvious way to get points. That's going to be a tough one with Isabella, because hers is Theocracy. That's a damned if you do, damned if you don't proposition. Alexander loves Hereditary Rule, so you might want to consider adopting that as you close in on Mass Media. You want to do it late enough that you don't hurt your economy, but you need to do it early enough that you accumulate some long term love.

It's going to be a lot of screenshots, but it would be really useful to see the detailed diplomacy information (the full +/- popup) for everyone with you and everyone with Churchill. Also the general attitudes toward Tokugawa (because you want to see if anyone will get mad when you redeclare war).

Keep in mind that vassals get you a -1 with everyone else. They don't like your influence. So that might be a reason to consider just wiping Tokugawa out. Without knowing the full diplomacy information, my intuition is that it's going to come down to Alexander. If you can swing him over to your side, you probably win. If not, forget it. That might be a really close call, and the extra -1 might be the deciding factor.

Good points. Here's a question for ya Sis....how's Ragnar doing diplomatically, and is he close to Churchill in score and pop? You noted he likes building farms...maybe you should try and set him up as your opponent if the people on the other continent dislike him. He's not particularly friendly, so it's a good proposition. With Toku vassalized, he may have no one eager to vote for him, making your job easier.

As for vassalizing Toku....I think Elmer spelled it out better than I ever could, but, you might want to just lock Toku into those tundra-cities and see if he won't become Ragnar's vassal. That may well be ideal...

 

[curtadams]

I'd go to Free Speech as soon as possible. You're going to need the culture. How does the FS bonus compare to the bureaucracy bonus for research? You should be to the point that FS is better.

Toku should be your priority and def uniting your territory is key. When war starts you're going to get a pretty nasty attack from toku's grenadiers. Culture will help with that too.

I agree a struggle with Ragnar is now the focus of the game. Once you have even Toku's territory Churchill will be left in the dust. Definitely do not go to Free Religion until you're ready to war with him.

I would go for an effectively domination win by taking out Ragnar, eventually. I'd probably win by space race just because I hate transcontinental invasion - they're so much work!

I would probably accept a crippled Toku as vassal just to save the RW time of finishing him off. Really, it doesn't hurt to have an icebound vassal.

 

[TheArchduke]

Space Race or Domination sounds good. In any case as much as it hurts I would get rid of Ragnar as soon as possible.

And don´t rely too much on that ridiculous amount of civic changes you are doing. Remember you won´t always play Spiritual.

 

[pigswill]

Maybe you now have enough territory to go for either diplo or space. What you need for both is city growth; you're ok for territory. Get your cities bigger and you'll probably be ahead in gnp as well. So democracy for emancipation and biology would be useful techs.

 

[cabert]

Good turns, though i wouldn't have gone to peace right now (Toku was only a few cities from capitulation IMHO).

What now?
You could try and capitulate Toku and bribing Alex to a phoney war vs toku, and have his vote. You don't need to change religion at all : alex isn't a very religious guy.
If you give him recent techs, he'll be more than happy ("you shared your technological discoveries with me"), if you switch back to HR after teching to mass media, he'll be even more happy.
Really easy IMHO.
+ if religion is a problem, you can trade him liberalism (if he doesn't have it) for a bribe to go to war with toku, then another tech (recent, like constitution) to switch to free religion.
You don't need to go to free religion if your faraway partners do!

 

[aelf]

Going to war with Toku instead of Ragnar was a good decision. I guess you're left with a powerful Ragnar instead of the other way round, but Ragnar is a better neigbour anyway (as you can see for yourself). At worst, if you think that a war with him would be tedious and even unprofitable, you can live with him.

Diplomatic and space race are the easiest paths to victory that I can see. Domination would be more fun to watch, though, and I think it's possible. All you need to do is take out Ragnar in one or two big wars and then plan and execute an effective overseas invasion to conquer Greece or Spain or both.

 

[cabert]

Going to war with Toku instead of Ragnar was a good decision. I guess you're left with a powerful Ragnar instead of the other way round, but Ragnar is a better neigbour anyway (as you can see for yourself). At worst, if you think that a war with him would be tedious and even unprofitable, you can live with him.

Diplomatic and space race are the easiest paths to victory that I can see. Domination would be more fun to watch, though, and I think it's possible. All you need to do is take out Ragnar in one or two big wars and then plan and execute an effective overseas invasion to conquer Greece or Spain or both.

are you saying that diplomatic isn't a good way to win?
In fact, if you need more ++ from alexander, you may just want until he asks for helps vs isabella, then take her out

 

[aelf]

are you saying that diplomatic isn't a good way to win?
In fact, if you need more ++ from alexander, you may just want until he asks for helps vs isabella, then take her out

Where did I say that? I get a diplomatic win in about half of my games I did say that domination would be more fun. The war with Ragnar would be quite a nail-biter and bring more excitement to the game.

But I could be wrong. The game has shown that the new AI still falls to a large SoD, so a war with Ragnar might simply be a matter of building a lot of units.

 

[cabert]

Sorry sisiutil for this small threadjacking.
I promise I'll stop here.

I don't like challenge for challenge.
The challenge in this game was to face the new AI at monarch level with a new leader. There is no need to select the hardest path to victory, just because you can.

Where you stand now there are 2 really easy victory paths.
Diplomacy and space.
Domination is certainly doable. You don't even need to take down ragnar at first : you could take out the easy pickings on the other continent while they cannot retaliate efficiently. Isabella being the disliked lady she always is, is the best target. After that, you could look at the domination requirement and evaluate if taking out/capitulating ragnar is enough or not.

But why take a path where you need 3 wars, including a possibly hard one, when there is an easier path, requiring only 2 wars, none being hard?

 

[aelf]

You aren't really threadjacking, cabert. This is valid discussion.

I don't like challenge for challenge.
The challenge in this game was to face the new AI at monarch level with a new leader. There is no need to select the hardest path to victory, just because you can.

Ultimately, the aim of these challenges is to have fun and enlighten people at the same time. Sisiutil should do what he thinks is best. If he feels it's more instructive and interesting to go for a domination win, so be it. You know I'm not one of those who dismiss diplomatic victory.

The other view is to win quickly and move on. I accept that.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Where you stand now there are 2 really easy victory paths.
Diplomacy and space.

I'm not at all convinced that diplomacy will be easy. I'll agree with you that domination will be much harder, but the way things stand now, Alexander and Isabella are nowhere near voting for Sisiutil. The handling of Tokugawa is going to be touch and go whether it causes problems with the other civilizations.

One good thing we have going is that if Ragnar does manage to surge ahead of Churchill in population, Churchill probably likes us enough to vote for us. So we might be OK either way on that one. We're up against either Ragnar or Churchill, and whoever it turns out to be, the other guy probably votes for us.

 

[cabert]

I'm not at all convinced that diplomacy will be easy. I'll agree with you that domination will be much harder, but the way things stand now, Alexander and Isabella are nowhere near voting for Sisiutil. The handling of Tokugawa is going to be touch and go whether it causes problems with the other civilizations.

One good thing we have going is that if Ragnar does manage to surge ahead of Churchill in population, Churchill probably likes us enough to vote for us. So we might be OK either way on that one. We're up against either Ragnar or Churchill, and whoever it turns out to be, the other guy probably votes for us.

You're right about the toku thing, although we all know that toku is amongst the not too loved guys, so not much demerit from declaring war to him. That's another reason why I wouldn't have made peace right now.

I'll sum up what I would do to get a diplomacy win :
- beeline to biology (using that GS for lightbulbung may be a good option, although i like the hammer when you settle those guys), then mass media (steel is good too, good enough to go a little off track)
- bribe alex to attack toku when you have something to offer. A good gift is one that makes him available change to free religion.
- bribe alex to free religion if he doesn't do it by himself
- join alex in the war vs toku (best is if he asks you!)
- finish toku. Capitulating is probably not good enough, beware of him vassalizing to someone else that would vote for you (ragnar and alex or churchill if ragnar grows bigger).
- If you're still not in friendly zone with alex, you can switch to HR.
- If it's still not enough, you can bribe (with biology or some very "fresh tech") him vs isabella, and join him.

I think that's all it takes.

edit: Aelf, the threadjacking was about going the easy way or the challenging way.
That's in fact none of my business, since it's totally in Sisiutil's hands.

 

[aelf]

edit: Aelf, the threadjacking was about going the easy way or the challenging way.
That's in fact none of my business, since it's totally in Sisiutil's hands.

True, but I'm hoping our opinions count

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

- bribe alex to attack toku when you have something to offer. A good gift is one that makes him available change to free religion.
- join alex in the war vs toku (best is if he asks you!)

Good ideas. I forgot about mutual enemy points.

I think the order of war declarations (Alexander first or Sisiutil first) only matters if Alexander asks for help. Then you would get "you helped us out" or something similar. But if you aren't confident that he'll ask you to join, or if you aren't planning to be that patient, then it's probably easier and cheaper to just declare the war yourself and bring him in later.

 

[jerVL/kg]

I would not go for Domination...mostly because it's already been done, several times. I would go for Diplomacy instead, with Space Race as a backup.

Have you been sending missionaries to the other continent? I don't see any tiny yellow buddhas or yin-yang symbols there. Tsk, tsk. I'd start converting some of Alex's cities right away -- he'll probably convert to FR instead of another religion (especially since Izzy has been actively spreading her religions) but that's good, you want to break up the happy Confucian bloc.

Ragnar's vote is in the bag; so is Toku, once you vassalize him. Don't worry about Churchill, since he'll likely be your UN opponent. Izzy's such a cold fish, I wouldn't bother making friends with her either. Alex is the friend you need. I'd wait for him to declare on Izzy (he will sooner or later, unless she's too powerful) then join when he asks for help -- or you can declare on Izzy yourself & bribe Alex to join, but you don't get +1 for "you helped us during wartime" that way.

I would beeline to Mass Media, get the UN built, then see what you need for DV. If things go awry, Space is still a viable backup plan. Only Ragnar is anywhere close to challenging you in a space race, and you should be able to beat him easily. Yeah, space race is boring, but at least it's different.

Probably too late for a culture victory...

 

[cabert]

I think the order of war declarations (Alexander first or Sisiutil first) only matters if Alexander asks for help. Then you would get "you helped us out" or something similar. But if you aren't confident that he'll ask you to join, or if you aren't planning to be that patient, then it's probably easier and cheaper to just declare the war yourself and bring him in later.

not really, sisutil must wait 10 turns before going to war vs toku.
I would bribe alex NOW, so in 10 turns, a lot of japanese units will have crossed the ocean and Alex will cry for help .
There is not much lost in waiting 2 turns after the peace treaty expires : more time for toku to send away units. Just don't wait too long : they may be at peace when you declare .

about cultural victory, it's not too late, but there is nothing done yet in this direction, so it would be really hard.

 

[KMadCandy]

And don´t rely too much on that ridiculous amount of civic changes you are doing. Remember you won´t always play Spiritual.

true, but that's a big part of why i read these threads! of course they're fun and sisiutul cracks me up, but i learn a lot of strategy from seeing how he uses the traits he has, and how others who've used them more advise him to as well. some traits work particularly well together ways i'd never thought of til i saw someone post about it, and some i've never tried for more than short games. agressive--well, i just can't make myself go to war until my little empire is set up a little bit. the fast worker is my favorite UU, so it's safe to say i'm a builder.

spiritual is a really good trait. my husband is probably spiritual in 80% of his games lately. i like it too but i don't usually pick it any more, i decided even before reading this thread that i don't change civics enough really. after all there's an opportunity cost involved, you only get 2 civics, so you're choosing not to get the rest of them, and the others are "on" all the time in a way spiritual's not, so i've been messing around with others lately.

this thread is teaching me better way to make use of spiritual. i do the 'switch to theo and vassal' thing when i'm spiritual but it had never even occurred to me to queue up the units in multiple cities on build lists and hold off on the change until they're almost done!! that's a great idea and providing you micromanage the cities beforehand, you can get a lot out of just 5 turns with the new civics, more than you could with 10 or 15 turns if you're not being smart about it. i'll definitely do that my next spiritual game.

so true, don't get used to them, but please do continue to share them with us so that we get insight into that part too!

 

[Technocactus]

And don´t rely too much on that ridiculous amount of civic changes you are doing. Remember you won´t always play Spiritual.

Why not maximise Asoka's Spiritual trait? Make the most of it. You won't do so well if you ingore traits because you won't always have them.