ALC Game 17: Russia/Peter

[patagonia]

Well, there's only one thing for it now - punt the axerush and focus on a cossack beeline. It's the only easy way you'll fight your way out of this peninsula.

REX to 6 cities. It doesn't matter if a couple of them are junk, it's the number that's important since this will unlock national wonders fror you.

Get libraries up and start working on GS production. Also, pray that Hinduism spreads to you, that'll be a big help diplomatially. Fortunately Ragnar's favourite civic is HR which you'll want to be running for maximum population growth, so with shared religion and civic bonus you'll hopefully be safe from harm until you're ready to attack him.

Don't waste GS on things like academies at this stage. By the time you can war against him effectively, Ragnar's going to be a tough nut to crack so you'll probably need an augmented beeline (the one that progresses to printing press and chemistry requiring an extra 3-4 GS for rapid bulbing).

In terms of tech, you could go alphabet now, but it'll take an eternity and unless you're first to it you're unlikely to pick up much in return. I'd also caution that none of the AIs yet found are the best traders out there so it'd be a shame to waste WFYABTA backfilling cheap techs this early. Under HR and caste system, Moscow will be a terrific GS pump so I'd burn GS 1 and 2 on alphabet and compass, picking up pottery, sailing and the religious techs to priesthood (opens monarchy for trade and CoL on the way to CS) myself before attempting to backfill. Once those two techs have been bulbed, simply stockpile GS in the capital as they're born ready to blitz through the philosophy/paper/education/liberalism path while researching up to nationalism and then gunpowder yourself. Try to avoid popping philosophy too early. Founding Taoism yourself would be a mistake since Nidaros will make the best shrine city you could hope for and is an obvious target. If another rival founds Tao, it'll also help make Ragnar other enemies.

In terms of tech trades, you should get to nationalism first. Hang on to education for as long as possible and use nationalism to trade your way up the guilds/banking path since this will give you the best possible chance of grabbing economics yourself for the free GM that can power a mass upgrade to cossacks.

 

[uncarved block]

I would guess that Ragnar is going to have to wait until Cossacks, unless the Better AI has changed his tendencies a bit. What I've noticed, in several games, is that Ragnar really, really likes the siege units-- in some cases approaching half of his military. The AI in general loves Mathematics, and IIRC Construction is one tech away. Swords+Cats against LBs is hard enough, adding in all that collateral damage along the way would be a royal PITA, especially if the Better AI will really crank out the defensive units when under attack as Sisiutil notes.

Man, it doesn't look like I'll even be playing BtS at Noble right away

 

[BARBEERIAN]

IMHO you waited way too long to hook up copper and that cost you bigtime. Axerush should've been a priority but you didn't have enough workers to connect it quickly (a worker first which is pretty much an automatic move with expansive would've prevented that). Now your fenced in to a horrible corner of the continent staring at a Hindu bum-buddy block that isn't going to be happy if you attack their founder. This game might very well be a write-off unless you can manage to join the Hindu block and trade trade trade.

Even with trading it's doubtful you'll pull off any sort of victory with that land however. War is the only way you'll get enough land for a win and I would suggest focusing everything you have on taking someone out ASAP or your civ will never bloom.

 

[Porphyrius]

That was pretty fast longbows for Ragnar, wasnt it. I have to admit i wasnt expecting him getting there brfore 500bc.
Then again to be perfectly honest i thought wed get to 7-8 by 800bc or so. Heck even thoough the ALCs have no tradition for fast buildups, in the last one the first war was declared by 700-800bc.

Looking back i can but admit bad luck with initial land quality makes a dreadfull combination with poor micromanagment. It wasnt the copper being far and in a poor neigborhood alone, flood plains instead of decent 3-4 resources in Moscow played their part as well.
Some folks imagine cottaging and immense commerse in flood plains but thats just their future, their present is just an extra over river grass. I have grown to dislike them as sterting resource replacments and seems with good reason.


What now? Well the land we can have is fairly poor and focused on . I doubt we can make a decent tech race against Ragnar's rich cities with a couple of scientists in 3 cities or so (philosophical trait or not). We ll have to focus on a cats/swords campaign exploiting the good our land has.

We are half way to IW and should settle a city when it reveals iron. I doubt either us or Ragnar dont have any iron as its to big a land mass for just our single horses and copper. Haithabu probably has iron in its BFC and hopefully we ll get ours in a more favorable location than copper. If we optimize a settler in Moscow and IW we can get both at 10-12 turns and see if iron needs a new city to claim, otherwise theres always the canal-2*incense city.

As for going for alphabet or maths i must admit im sceptical myself. None of the 3 sharing our continent is a good tech partner and they seem to like eachother than us. Id go alphabet for sure if we catch hinduism but otherwise its a dilema.
Definitely construction over currency/CoL thoough. Maintenance is not that bad if one considers we re allready paying 4 for excess troops and work no furs.(The warriors just need be dumped. )

No need to worry about swords/cats thoough, when deployed in appropriate quantities (the only thing our land favors) they can make short work fo any medieval defences.
I wonder if its worth it to make a naval expedition to get to Nidaros with double speed though, especially if we catch his capital defences a bit off-guard and he doesnt focus on a navy. We ll see in time...

 

[Welnic]

I don't think that you should cancel the Open Borders with Ragnar. It would be nice to pick up Hinduism. If he wants to build a city up in the middle of your territory it will cost him a lot and it will be easy pickings when war time comes. If he wants to build the canal city, or more probably a city that ruins the location for a canal city, then closing borders won't have any affect anyway.

 

[sigmakan]

That was wierd, I played from your latest save file and basically made the same moves you did.

Ragnar built the oracle but instead he took metal casting instead. Guess you got unlucky :/

 

[oyzar]

This is just what i have been saying. you slow down your game for absolutly no reason. you could have taken all of ragnars cities already if you were more focused with different build orders...

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

Yeesh. That makes things tough....very tough. I suppose the only consolation is that....neither Uppsala or Nidaros are on hills. You're definitely not going to get the capital without catapults, unless you build a ridiculously large army. I'd go ahead with attacking him and take Uppsala(he doesn't have many yet) while teching towards construction(keep researching Iron for now, you'll definitely want swords at this point. Hell, you may want a few with cover so you don't get swarmed by longbows....). The reasoning being, one less city means he has one less city making longbows(potentially) and Uppsala is a bit nicer than some of your other settling options. Then finish him in an orgy of collateral and death....

 

[Tyrael]

Ouch. At this point, collateral damage will be key to advancing anywhere into Ragnar's lands. Longbows become archers when hit with enough rocks.

 

[slaze]

Wow. I've never played with Better AI, but if this is typical I'm definately looking forward to BTS.

Running in at strength 15.3 longbows with 5.5 axeman is a little too desperate no matter what the numbers, so put my vote in to regroup. We missed the window, it's time to let Peter be Peter. It that way, I'm in full agreement with the Liberalism beeline taking Nationalism on the way to Military Tradition.

Researchwise, the first step in that direction is Alphabet, and I think we should switch to that immediately; tech trading is what's gonna get us back in this. Of course, all we'll have to trade will be Alphabet, and if even one of our three new bff's researched it too we'll have limited options, but hopefully among the 3 of them we can get either Pottery, Sailing, Meditation, rest of Iron Working or Mathematics in return (although, Pottery may be a little too necessary of a tech to delay; maybe it needs to go first). From there, things get dicey, but I'd argue going Drama to Philosophy. I'm sure some have/will argue going towards Constuction (which has solid trade value), but whatever direction we go, we have to consider the techs we can get in trade. We're gonna have to get to Civil Service (pre-req for Nationalism), and that means we'll need some combination of CoL, Currency, Priesthood, Monarchy ......Well, I think I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's save the specifics of the tech tree for another round. I say you go Pottery -> Alphabet, and then we'll take a better look at where to go. But one more thing. On Monarch I think we can get to Liberalism for sure given we're a philosophical civ and with the abundance of GS's we're going to get, but when lightbulbing Liberalism you have to have Metal Casting, Calendar, Compass and no Machinery. And secondly, as Peter we have some synergy between Currency and Harbors.

back to the game....
Get the canal city up, and before Ragnar does. I'd prefer to do it unwhipped but if a Ragnar settler's coming that way you'll have to whip. You can build one in 4 turns if you have to, investing 15 hammers immediately, grow to pop 6 and whipping, but hopefully you can get the settler done at pop 5, and then whip a library right away from pop 6. Keep a unit on Ragnar's north border to keep and eye on any settlers wandering about, but hopefully a settler from pop 5 will get it the canal founded in time.

Your position is actually very solid, especially in terms of pop 5 cities running scientists. Once you get there you'll be able to tech pretty respectably.

Hereditary rule would sure be nice for the capitol however, combined with CoL.

I'd consider putting cottages down on the south side of the canal city, as you wont get CS any time soon (although anticipate irrigating from the north; you'll want more food as you'll spend the clams on the incense). Its buildings can be built with the chops. You might as well put cottages on the grass at St. Pete, although priority goes to scientists.

You're running out of stuff to build; get Alphabet for Research.

And with 4 spent on unit costs delete some scouts and warriors til it's down to zero, accounting for the axe that's almost done in Novgorod

Edit-Oh and uh... with the oracle that means ragnars gonna pop a prophet for a shrine. No fighting until then

 

[pax]

I don't know how many axemen you have, but I'm going to propose something a little bit wacky. Even though it's Ragnar who has the sweet capital, he's not a viable target. What about a combination of running hard at Code of Laws while simultaneously taking out Mehmed? You (and Ragnar, maybe) rush at Mehmed, take as much of his land as you can, maybe even the captial. Get your courthouses in order, and found a true second capital, with the Forbidden Palace. Put it in Mehmed's capital, put it somewhere more central, wherever you want.

Strategically, this needs some planning. One, you'd need six cities on your side of Ragnar. Two, you need to keep Ragnar happy so that you can keep running troops through his land. Three, you need to put together a serious, independent stack that can run, largely without reinforcement, all through Mehmedlandia. Even with roads, you're looking at ten turns to the nearest Mehmedian city. Four, once the stack is out the door, wrap up CoL, build courthouses back home.

I don't have numbers to back this up, but we all know what matters: land. Land to found cities. Land to have cottages or feed specialists. Land to create extra soldiers. Land to provide resources. Land land land. I've heard it said that land is power....

Something to think about anyway.

 

[aelf]

Tough situation, due to the location of the copper. If you seriously wanted to attack Ragnar, you should have expanded towards him (instead of away from him) and hoped for iron to appear somewhere near. But there's no certainty in that, and there is really no shame in choosing to grab the copper. Nidaros has delicious gems, but it is still a little far away and I think having an empire like yours now plus Uppsala and Nidaros would be a little too expensive and unwieldy at this stage of the game. Might just have worked out, but at least it's not a certainty.

Iron Working, though, was a mistake. I don't know why people still recommend that you research that. As EEE pointed out, you could likely trade for IW if you researched Alphabet. And I agree that even if you don't get IW very soon, copper is enough for your needs at the moment. I guess the mistake arose partly out of the failure to decide whether to persist in trying to attack Ragnar or not. Even without any foreknowledge that he might get Feudalism quickly, rushing/chopping more axes would have been the way to rush him (meaning no monuments and settler). A rush could just have worked then. If he still got Feudalism too early for you, you could just reserve the axes for future use with catapults, and that would mean prioritising Construction instead of the AI's beloved IW. So, if you really wanted to attack Ragnar, you should have gone Maths (or you could research Alphabet and hope that someone would be willing to trade Maths for it, failing which you could still get a GS to lightbulb the latter) and Construction. If you did not want to attack Ragnar anytime soon and chose to settle for whatever land you have and get a solid SE going, Alphabet and CoL/Drama (as a link to Philosophy) would have been the priority.

Well, we're here now, and I agree that the best bet is just to play peacefully for now. Drop IW and go for Alphabet. If it turns out that you get some good production going later on, you can start to mass a catapult army to take on Ragnar. Otherwise, wait for knights or Cossacks.

 

[Uncle Istvan]

I think the best, and most interesting, option here is to beeline for cossacks. I'll leave the research route to someone more adept at number crunching than I, but I think you should stay peaceful until you can strike with your little mounted ruskies. The main reason is that Ragnar, without metal or horsies, will likely not present much of an offensive threat for quite a while, but will provide a buffer from other enemies, likely leaving you safe to develop.

 

[MangleMeElmo]

^^ Agreed. Looks like we'll be going for mid-game Cossack rush. Sisiutil should try to conquer as much of the continent as possible. Domination doesn't seem possible now without an early war, but with all the neighbors' territory, Space Race or maybe Diplomation looks like the best option FTW.

 

[Tyrael]

If we're going to wait awhile to war, the canal city needs to be founded before Ragnar gets to it. One more city for us, one less city for him.

 

[Killroyan]

Rofl, this is a nice twist to say so. Feudalism in 500 BC hehehe. Good job AI and some of us are psychic over here apparantly Even though he has longbows what is stopping you from beelining to alphabet (trade for maths) and construction and just catapult him away with a lot of units? Meanwhile get the other 2 mentioned cities up (canal city first and the fur/clam/deer city). In both cities you can run 1 to 2 specialists. This game is far from over but no one said it would be easy

 

[cabert]

There is something about a plan lacking IMHO.

The exposed initial plan was about a SE.
Your land is poor but with loads of seafood = loads of scientists.
How many scientists are you currently running? I fear it's around 0 while it should be 6 at least if you had gone for fishing early + straight libraries instead of monuments.
Libraries give you culture, you don't need the monuments.

Well, too late for this.

You also don't have granaries (since you don't know pottery). I thought you wanted to use the expansive trait for fast granaries = better whipping?
What happened here?

I didn't show up early enough so I can't expect my advice to be taken seriously now, but I still recommend going for pottery (NOW! you can finish IW later, you don't need it anyway) while slow building your libraries and growing. You can whip the granaries asap and apply the overflow to the libraries. I'd go as far as suggest double whipping if possible (turn 1 whip a granary, turn 2 apply over flow to the library, turn 3 whip a library).
You don't have loads of happiness resources, but with just the furs, you can run your cities at size 3 with 1 harvesting food and 2 scientists.

 

[futurehermit]

So I then sent one of my Warriors to check out his territory. Guess what's protecting his cities now?

CAN I PLEASE ASK WHO CALLED IT

What did I tell you guys??? Build another city before axerushing at your own peril!!!

And why are you researching IW when you could put those beakers into alpha and trade for IW??? I said the same thing in the Cyrus game

No one takes me seriously

 

[OTAKUjbski]

There is something about a plan lacking IMHO.

Too many and not enough .

Whereas I like the collective intelligence nature of ALC's, I believe having "too many spoons in the pot" isn't the best of ideas when playing against a BetterAI Monarch. (Especially a Financial one with 3 Gems!!!)

This comment probably belongs in the ALC Bullpen, but IMHO, S should either listen more to his own advice or simply weigh our comments a little more lightly.

On that note:

Beeline Alphabet

It feels like the Economy is in shambles, but when standing next to a Financial 3-Gem giant, even the best of economies can appear dwarfed.

At the very least, Alphabet will allow us to see just where we stand in the grand scheme of things and maybe even catch up a little bit (though it might cost us Alphabet -- the only tech lead we're likely to have).​

Build an economy

It scares me that by 500 BC, we don't have a single Cottage or Specialist running. We have 20 , and only 10 of that is going to .

Our only real options right now are hooking up Fur and chopping Libraries.​

Focus

For whatever reason, I think we're getting off track. Pick a single plan and run with it ... teching halfway into something then switching for the collective is a waste of (which it appears IW will soon be if the emphasis is switched to Alphabet or w/e .. kinda ironic that's what I'm advocating ).

At the very least, hook up a fur so Moscow doesn't hit the cap.

We have three cities with great seafood resources and a potential for great production (14 in each city with the ability to turn it on / off for growth or specialists):

• Moscow: At 6 Pop -- Cow Pasture + 3 Mines + 1 Farm + 1 Specialist/Farm
• Novgorod: At 5 Pop -- Fish + Cow Pasture + 2 Mines + Fur/Wheat/Specialist
• St. Petersburg: At 5 Pop -- Fish + Fur + Copper + 2 Specialist/Mines

Granted, this takes growth and improvements, but we can immediately focus on building two mines in Moscow instead of the Farms to immediately increase productivity by 60%!!!​

 

[Tyrant Roger]

Very early longbows is a tough break. The best course now is to settle the canal city, research alphabet, trade for ironworks, beeline construction. Build CR swords while you research construction and then cats, cats, and more cats.
Don't build any other cities or improvements. It is time for WAR.

Once you take Nidaros, Ragnar will be done and you can take it and defend it with enough cats. Meanwhile SE your way to lots of GS's.

If you wait for Cossacks, you will be way behind in tech and still in a box. Ragnar will likely have rifles well before you get the flashy dancers. He is financial and will out tech you.