ALC Game 14: Mongolia/Kublai Khan

[LucyDuke]

one other thought: will watching the F8 give us an accurate count?

That's why we should get the count now, before we've got vassals, and just keep track later. It's not difficult if we've got the demographics screen, too.

Slightly off-topic... could somebody's vassal win a domination victory under any circumstances?

 

[Syndrome Zed]

That's why we should get the count now, before we've got vassals, and just keep track later. It's not difficult if we've got the demographics screen, too.

Slightly off-topic... could somebody's vassal win a domination victory under any circumstances?

Hmmmm....only a voluntary vassal state could possibly do it I think, and I'm pretty sure the AI would never vassalize itself if it's more powerful than the potential master. Maybe if two states were close in size and close to the Domination percentage and voluntary vassals, and the vassal's military took a couple more cities than the "master", I suppose that might result in a win for the vassal once the pop in the captured lands grew enough to reach the Dom victory minimum. I don't honestly know if I'm forgetting something that would prevent this scenario - automatic release from vassalage or something like that even for voluntary vassals, etc.

 

[popejubal]

Vassalizing the mystery civ should make Domination a bit easier.

Make a run for Astronomy after you've gotten whatever goodies you are shooting for in the short term and then you'll be able to invade that final continent. Raze a few cities (do you really want to try to survive the cultural pressure that you'll face on a fully occupied island?) and make sure that you attack and raze the Taoist holy city while you're at it. Even after razing cities, you'll still end up with a vassal who controls 100% of the island just because of cultural expansion from the remaining cities.

After you vassalize Mansa Munsa (which I expect is your next target), the rest of the game will just be the process of mopping up the crunchy bits of the remaining civs. Astronomy will make that mop-up happen a lot faster and do away with any pesky land percentage calculation.

 

[PublicEnemy]

I don't know why you need to make Mansa a vassal.

Wipe him out, then do the same to Churchill and the German Laughing Boy.

Ok, that may sound slightly simplistic, BUT, civ isn't always complicated, in this game a clear run to early domination is on the cards.

Just fill in any spare land with settlers, push up the culture slider, stare triumphantly at the screen with a smug grin on your face and you can start on the next ALC.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, I haven't come up with any fancy tricks, I just don't want you to vassalise Mansa and then end up having to travel halfway around the world because you end up with 61.7% of your continent.

 

[cabert]

^^vassalizing Mansa Musa is the single best way to double your research

 

[UncleJJ]

I don't know why you need to make Mansa a vassal.

Wipe him out, then do the same to Churchill and the German Laughing Boy.

Ok, that may sound slightly simplistic, BUT, civ isn't always complicated, in this game a clear run to early domination is on the cards.

Just fill in any spare land with settlers, push up the culture slider, stare triumphantly at the screen with a smug grin on your face and you can start on the next ALC.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, I haven't come up with any fancy tricks, I just don't want you to vassalise Mansa and then end up having to travel halfway around the world because you end up with 61.7% of your continent.

I would say we can afford to vassalise Mansa and get Domination on this continent, although we would have to do the maths carefully and make sure Mansa did not conquer or settle much more territory than he has now. It also depends how quickly he capitulates, we might be able to take several of his larger cities and then grab a few more tiles later using culture aggressively. If he folds too soon he might be too large for the rest of the plan to be feasible.

But in my vision of what should happen we don't want to weaken Mansa too much but rather leave him strong so he can do research for us and trade resources and buy our spare resources thereby funding the later wars. I see taking Mansa as our vassal as a way to speed up the domination win significantly, if we do it right.

If we don't take Mansa as our vassal (only when it is useful to us) then he might vassalise to Churchill or Bismark. Then we are left with a much more difficult and costly war fighting 2 civs at once. Even if Mansa has been weakened Churchill could cause us some damage and grind our forces down and maybe add WW to our other problems. Once Mansa is vassalised we can't deal with him any longer so no resources or tech trades unless we make peace with his master.

So we have four options or possible outcomes for our war with Mansa

1. We beat him down to the right size and take territory we want and he then vassalises to us.
2. We beat him and take all his cities keeping the good ones razing the weak ones. This ia what PublicEnemy wants.
3. We try to carry out option 1 but he vassalises to another civ before us
4. We try to carry out option 2 and be vassalises to another civ.

It seems to me that option 1 has a chance of becoming option 3 but that option 2 will almost certainly become option 4. Options 3 and 4 will result in us fighting two civs at once and hence cost more in losses and war weariness. Option 1 will probably result in the quickest Domination win and hence the highest score.

 

[Disco Bandit]

more playing less talking Sis!

 

[Sisiutil]

I will now steal a page out of aelf's book:

I played the next round last night. I'll post the update tonight, in a few hours.

 

[LucyDuke]

I played the next round last night. I'll post the update tonight, in a few hours.

I expect this kind of thing from aelf, but not you too! You guys keep this up and I'm going to have to play a game myself...

PS Can we please have an F8 screenshot this round? I can't download saves so I can't get it myself and I'm totally distracted by the domination numbers.

 

[TRJS]

Between Aelf and Sisiutil I will spend the rest of my work day (Friday 10.18am here) checking the forum for the much anticipated updates.

 

[Whitefire]

I will now steal a page out of aelf's book:

I played the next round last night. I'll post the update tonight, in a few hours.

You are a cruel, sick man.

 

[Uncle Istvan]

My god, man, don't make us wait like this. I mean, I guess 6 is technically a few, but come on! I need to see the developements. I knew that aelf would be a bad influence.

Edit: I guess 18 is also a few. Maybe. Probably not
Another Edit: I think 27 is probably pressing my idea of "few"

 

[cabert]

So I checked the save (and played a bit following my own advice, but I won't give out the results before the next update of course) :

A few facts about domination and the victory screen :
- it's 48% population and 64% land
- the % owned includes the vassal part

Spoiler :

I had 24% land before vassalizing MM, and 34% after that. One city cannot be 10% land, can it?

I have more to say, but it's a bit too much of a spoiler.

 

[FeedBack]

Sisiutil really learned something from Aelf... How to be mean!
Have you guys considered doing a game alternating the playing between you two? If it was done in Hollywood, it'd be the best suspense movie ever.

 

[BlueSoxSWJ]

So I checked the save (and played a bit following my own advice, but I won't give out the results before the next update of course) :

A few facts about domination and the victory screen :
- it's 48% population and 64% land
- the % owned includes the vassal part

Spoiler :

I had 24% land before vassalizing MM, and 34% after that. One city cannot be 10% land, can it?

I have more to say, but it's a bit too much of a spoiler.

Not really much of a spoiler here, but I'll tag it anyways...

Spoiler :

Isn't there something about land not counting until you've controlled it for x turns? Alternatively, did you also have a city or two come out of revolt on the same turn?

 

[bardolph]

So I checked the save (and played a bit following my own advice, but I won't give out the results before the next update of course) :

A few facts about domination and the victory screen :
- it's 48% population and 64% land
- the % owned includes the vassal part

Spoiler :

I had 24% land before vassalizing MM, and 34% after that. One city cannot be 10% land, can it?

I have more to say, but it's a bit too much of a spoiler.

Domination victory counts 50% of your vassalized land as your own.

 

[cabert]

Isn't there something about land not counting until you've controlled it for x turns? Alternatively, did you also have a city or two come out of revolt on the same turn?[/spoiler]

the thing with x turns is for score only, not for the victory AFAIK.
And about cities coming out of revolt, the answer is no.

Domination victory counts 50% of your vassalized land as your own.

I know this. What I was unsure of was the %land displayed in the F8 screen.

Does it include the vassal or not? I think it does.

 

[Welnic]

Since it is the percentage that you have for a domination victory, it would have to include vassal contribution.

It seems to me that making MM a vassal isn't really worth it. I know that he is the ultimate tech trading partner, but I don't really see this game ending up in a race for the space ship.

 

[oyzar]

Why would you vazalise cept maybe the last city for hapines when you dont have to? Just take the whole continent and win easily.

 

[carl corey]

Well, for one, you don't have to pay the same maintenance as in the case where you kept all the AIs cities. Second, if we leave Mansa with more than one city he's bound to continue to research at a good pace, and will trade with us without becoming a threat. We can always order him to go research Divine Right if he's close to beating us to any tech race. And he'll still have bonuses for research/upgrading/etc so if we can keep him under foot he's a welcome addition. With a continent so big vassalizing AIs might be the fastest way to victory.