ALC Game 17, Take 2: Russia/Peter (BtS)

[Sisiutil]

Round 8: 1090 AD to 1340 AD

To start off, I double-checked, and I'll be damned, I did win the Apostolic Palace election:

I guess I just assumed I was going to lose it to Gandhi, who built it. I should have read the screen more closely. It didn't make a huge difference--not too many exciting resolutions came up.

Ruska, soon to be renamed Russka, kept pumping out Great People:

It produced two more Great Scientists this round (even without running Pacifism). All of them, as suggested, went towards Academies in my 3 best science cities: Ruska, Moscow, and Rostov.

Another thing I was trying to do was grow my cities, as several of you suggested. St. Petersburg provides an example of this:

Nevertheless, as the round wore on, I started switching some citizens away from food tiles and back to hammers. I still had a lot of builds to complete and I was no longer running Slavery, so the extra population could not be converted to hammers. I still emphasized growth as much as I could. I also put most of my specialists in my smaller cities back out in the fields, again as several of you suggested.

Meanwhile, Mao decided to split off the island he'd populated to his east:

As you can see, this was a beneficial development. I was getting ready to steal Music from Mao, but I managed to come by it honestly instead.

I finally finished founding cities on the island of Russia:

Now, back to the Apostolic Palace for a moment. The only resolutions appearing were to cancel trade with either version of China or to open our borders to one another. I didn't want to stop my trading with the Chinese, so I decided to try for the mutual OB. No dice:

I guess Gandhi has some lingering resentment from the war. Or maybe just lingering shame. "I'm a pacifist! What was I thinking?!?"

I seem to imagine Gandhi sounding a lot like Woody Allen for some reason.

I researched to within one turn's completion of Liberalism and then switched to Banking. As you can see, Gandhi was also researching Astronomy, which took some of the shine off of it as a free tech. I decided to hold out for something better that would give me a big jump on him. Meanwhile, I decided to get rid of that Archer guarding that goody hut outside of Yekaterinburg:

Er... WOW. I can't remember if I've ever, EVER done that before in a Civ game. You'd think I'd remember, that's like a hole-in-freakin'-one. I must confess part of the reason I delayed Liberalism was just to see if this might happen, but I really didn't expect it,

Well! Now I was well-set to get Privateers early, wasn't I? So I decided to finish Banking, then Gunpowder, and then I'd finish Liberalism.

Meanwhile, I began settling the distant stone island:

Yeah, the barbs set up shop to my south--and to the north as well. It gave my city-busters something to do after several centuries of sitting around. I had the cash, so I upgraded them from Swordsmen to Macemen. It would help my power rating too.

Shortly after that, I finished Liberalism:

With Astronomy and Chemistry in place, it was time to start rolling out a fleet of Privateers to plunder my rivals around the world! Avast, ye scurvy dogs!

Well, that was pretty darn effective. I only got 2 GPT for this; I think I need to send more of these ships out to make them effective. Wouldn't Mercantilism affect this too? Though Gandhi was still running Decentralization when I checked.

I razed the poorly-placed barb city in the north of stone island (it missed out on one fish tile) and placed my own city right beside where it had been:

Back home, Moscow was the next city to produce a Great Person:

I wasn't sure what to do with him. As you see, he'll pop part of Printing Press, but that's not a high-priority tech for a SE. Several of you have warned about lightbulbing when you have a clear tech lead anyway. I already have Academies in my 3 best science/commerce cities now, so that seems like a waste. The other options are to settle him in Ruska, use him for a Golden Age, or save him for later--to lightbulb a better tech, start a GA, or found a corporation. Thoughts?

Meanwhile, my Privateers were having a field day. They have no rivals on the sea lanes. Gandhi sent 2 Galleons to try to lift the blockade of Pataliputra, but my other Privateers made short work of them:

...and I earned several XPs in the process. I love these guys! I was also using them to harrass Tokugawa, and I've got some headed towards Germany and China, too.

Finally, as the round ended, I succeeded in clearing stone island of barbarians:

The main decision to make now is whether or not to split this island off as a colony or to keep it as part of my own empire.

And that was the round! A state-of-the-world post will follow in a short while.

 

[Hackapell]

Nice work with the Astronomy.
It's up to you whether or not breaking off those cities is a boon or not. Is the mantinence really bad enough to warrant that? I'm not a math person, so I can't tell you which way to go. With the GS, use him for a GA. You will pick up more GP later, and you have the Mausoluem. Go with that a create a massive privateer fleet in order to pillage money and trade easily and to boost your economy. on techs, go for economics; it seems that no one's going for the free GM, so go ahead and pick that up. Keep going. This game is basically won.

 

[Welnic]

After you set a privateer to blockade, select it again. Then you can see the actual area that the blockade covers. If you set them so that they block two or three cities then they make more.

You are supposed to get the two hammer bonus from the AP religion buildings whether or not you have that religion as your state religion. I have heard that this is buggy though, and you don't always get them. I think that the main bonus you could see from the AP is if someone attacks you you should be able to vote to stop the war.

 

[flamingzaroc121]

amazing luck popping astronomy like that, good job with the rest of the round

 

[jason77024]

In true Soviet revisionist fashion, Russka will soon have two s'es, it always had two s'es, and if you keep doubting the word of glorious leader you will be sent to gulag, comrade.

And I guess you'll have my picture cut out of all the old newspapers & books.

 

[Haika]

Yay for the home team getting Astronomy.
But too bad about Ghandi getting it too. A galleon might not be favored vs a Privateer, but two galleons will take down a privateer. This means that Ghandi will probably not be the best target for mass blockading, as he will respond by spamming Galleons and sinking your ships.

Ghandi is your friend and pretty trustworthy. Are you planning on going to space? If so, it's worthwhile to drag along a trade partner along with you most of the way to reduce your research load. Imagine researching every single space tech yourself . I would probably recommend the following agenda:

Keep your enemies backwards, and your friends advanced: One worry is that Ghandi will trade away Astronomy to random backward civs, raising the overall tech levels. One way to avoid this is to fill up Ghandi with techs. A tech trade can only happens if both sides have something to trade, and if no one else is as advanced as you and Ghandi, what's to worry about?

The strength of espionage. I find that as you pump espionage towards an opponent, they will counter by raising their own espy slider, slowing down their tech rate. If you don't like the keep Ghandi advanced strategy, you can try hammering him with espionage (Don't use the slider, use the powerful buildings that come with Const/Democracy), until he joins the rest of the pack.

Otherwise, keep your privateers out of Ghandi's borders (he won't go out of his way to hunt them down in general) and in everyone else's face, and keep enough espionage on Ghandi so you can see what he is researching (what he/you is researching ) and spread the rest out to suppress the savages.

Some things I found about privateers:
As mentioned, all you need to blockade a town is to have the blockade region cover all the naval exits from the town. One ship can pirate multiple towns, but two ships can't pirate from the same town.

A privateer net: If you keep all your privateers about 4-8 tiles from another privateer, you can increase their survival rate a lot. It's worthwhile to sink random caravel/galleys (you get 90-99% odds) that you find sallying out, but sometimes the RNG will be mean and redline your privateer. In that case, having another one close enough to cover the wounded ship can be a lifesaver.

Quest: Pillage all fishing nets and make everyone east Russian salmon . Great way to get mileage out of extra fish before Sid's Sushi. Also losing a fish resource will generally make the poorly managed AI towns drop down a few sizes.

Promote down the drill line. When fighting weaker opponents, having drill advantage is good for not getting injured as badly. It takes a long time for ships to heal without medics, in hostile territory, far from friendly ports!

 

[NaZdReG]

wow craziest hut tech pop I've ever seen!! nice to see privateers in action, its a period of time that I have been neglecting in my recent games.

looking forward to seeing you procede from here!!

as far as the great scientist.. save him to pop better techs than printing press, or save him for a GA next time you need to switch civics so you can do it without any turns of anarchy

NaZ

 

[Rancid Sushi]

So why are both Chinese leaders in this? Did Mao start a colony?

 

[Sisiutil]

The State of the World, 1340 AD

First off, the domestic advisor:

Yes, Yaroslavl' is building the Taj Mahal. This is why I was hesitating to use the Great Scientist in Moscow for a GA. What happens if two GAs overlap? Do you get the full length of both, or does the first one end in the middle of the second? Obviously you want to get the full benefit of both! If the years add together (for a 30 year GA in this case!) then that would bring on the completion of the Taj sooner.

Or I could just save the GS to lightbulb a different tech once I trade for Printing Press. Or should I just lightbulb PP anyway? It does lead to Rifling, after all, which is now a pre-requisite for Cossacks, I believe.

Civics:

As you'll see, no one else has another economic civic available yet so they're all running Decentralization like me. That's why I haven't changed to Mercantilism despite its obvious benefits to the SE. I usually try to match running that civic against the AI civs running it concurrently. As for Pacifism, Great People have still been reasonably cheap, but a switch to it sometime soon sounds like a good idea. During the upcoming Golden Age makes sense, as that will avoid any turns of anarchy, and Pacifism will combine nicely with a GA's new Great Person point bonus.

And what about Free Speech? It's a lower priority in a SE since I won't see much benefit from its cottage boost. The capital is the only cottaged city and gets more benefit right now, I think, from Bureaucracy. The culture boost would be nice for Vladivostok (which lost its 2nd fur tile to India this round), but there are other ways to get culture there. I could see myself running Bureaucracy a lot longer in this game than I usually do.

Once I gain access to Rifles it might be good to switch to Nationalism for a few turns--maybe save another Great Person for a Golden Age for that--and draft an army that should keep me protected for several years.

As for Free Religion, it was pointed out that again, in a SE, Pacifism is much more beneficial. Nevertheless, it may be necessary in the late game in order to get a science boost, what with all the additional space race techs, and to deal with the happiness caps. By the way, Haika, you do have to research every space race tech yourself. The AI will absolutely not, under any circumstances, trade a space race tech (one that directly enables building any of the SS parts) to you. Not even Mansa Musa, even if he's your vassal and thinks the sun shines out of your nether regions.

Foreign relations:

So right now Gandhi and Mao are my two buddies, but Mao's dislike of Gandhi has put me in the awkward position of refusing Mao's insistence that I stop trading with him. I'm thinking I need to court a different triangle diplomacy partner than Mao, and Bismarck is the logical choice.

The diplomatic relationship "glance":

Huh. Then again, Shaka likes me more than Bizzy does. Go figure. Shaka can be fickle, though, whereas I've found that Bismarck tends to be very loyal. But Shaka could be a useful pet dog, especially if I feed him a couple of military techs. Thoughts?

Active trades--lots of them! I need those happy/healthy resources:

Speaking of resources:

I lost Gandhi's incense when I lost the fur to him; he must be trading it now to someone else. Also, I need to get the additional iron on my northern island on-line. You never know when that might come in handy for a trade. If I decide to make Shaka my pet dog, he could certainly use it. (I am reading the screen correctly, right? Shaka doesn't have iron?)

AI civ civics:

Like I said, no one's running Mercantilism yet. Should I switch to it during the GA anyway and make up for the foreign trade revenue shortfall by running merchants in my smaller cities?

Techs:

As far as keeping Gandhi as a tech trading partner goes, well, he doesn't have anything I want at this stage, and he's not willing to trade DR (he must be building one of the wonders--if he's building the Spiral Minaret and keeps running Free Religion, though, it's another sign that the AI needs further tweaking). If I want to court Bismarck, I could trade Aesthetics to him for the low, low price of 70 gold.

The power graph:

I'm keeping up still, largely thanks to my navy. Though the jump you see that occurred in 1270 or so occurred, I think, because I upgraded 4 Swordsmen to Macemen and a couple of Galleys to Galleons. I also acquired Gunpowder in 1280 and Chemistry in 1285. St. Pete, of course, can now pump out units like there's no tomorrow, in between the occasional civilian build.

Some of you requested a posting of the Espionage graph, so here it is:

Only Gandhi appears to be coming close to spending nearly as much on espionage as I am.

Demographics:

So I've dropped to #2 in GNP, probably to Gandhi as his cottages mature. I'm #4 in power, not too far behind the others, but I still think I need to do some shoring up there.

The map of Russia:

What do you folks think of some more cities on those islands just to my east? It would help ensure a route to stone island, and if I don't do it, the AI will just do so. I have all the resources there, but some extras wouldn't hurt, especially if I found Sid's Sushi Co. There could be 4-5 more cities founded in those islands. I'd have to hurry, though, since Gandhi now has Astronomy. Though I could send Privateers to patrol the area and sink any of his Galleons that show up.

And what about a couple of fishing villages--they won't be good for much else--up on the northern island? It could get 3, one for the western crabs, 1 for the eastern 2 crab tiles, and one for the fish. They'd suck as far as production goes, however. I'm not sure if they'd be worth it just to claim those additional seafood resources and keep them out of the AI's hands.

Also, in terms of city specialization, I was thinking of Yakutsk for the Ironworks, but I'm concerned that it's a bit too far north for the Space Elevator. Yaroslavl' could be an alternate even though it lacks a lot of river tiles.

Now, another possibility is that we plan on invading and conquering much of Japan when Cossacks come along. That might be preferable to building a lot of marginal cities up in the tundra. Toku has some nice resources such as rice and dye, and some very good cities for building something like the Ironworks. And as usual, he's falling behind in techs. VERY tempting. (Then again, India's culture might claim those dye tiles. Hmmm...)

Here's how stone island looks thus far:

Given its proximity to Zululand, it might make sense to groom Shaka as my pet dog. I also want to get Hindu missionaries over there to get those borders popping. I don't want Bryansk to lose its 2nd fish tile to that Zulu city.

Anyway, that's how things are looking. I agree that this is turning into a something akin to a cakewalk, which is an amazing contrast to the previous game where Ragnar totally pwned me.

 

[Sisiutil]

So why are both Chinese leaders in this? Did Mao start a colony?

Yes, he did. There's a large island east of his main one that is now Qin's domain.

 

[EEE_BOY]

Printing Press is required for Scientific Method, keep that in your mind if u want early biology.

Astronomy from the hut, it is not legend any more. great work!

for the colony, i say settle two cities in the island that was cut by the mountain. The capital would be in the center of those islands and liberate your stone city and other cities to this colony. act quick, i suspect u r losing lots of money to maintain those distant island city.
u now have gunpowder, so send only settlers out, the two free defenders from liberate city would be masketman. settle all those islands and gift them to colony, u might end up diplomatic victory.

i think we should aim for the quick space race so the space elevator would not be that important.

 

[kniteowl]

Ghandi is your friend and pretty trustworthy. Are you planning on going to space? If so, it's worthwhile to drag along a trade partner along with you most of the way to reduce your research load. Imagine researching every single space tech yourself

Not sure about BTS but in Vanilla and Warlords, the AI was hard coded not to trade away space race techs for obvious reasons.

So I say Pillage the hell out of Gandhi with those Privateers

as far as the great scientist.. save him to pop better techs than printing press, or save him for a GA next time you need to switch civics so you can do it without any turns of anarchy

Strangely enough the next Key light bulbing techs are Scientific Method, Physic and Biology

BUT

Scientific Method requires Printing Press before it's open for research and Physics and Biology require Scientific Method so Light bulbing PP tech is more of a long term gain for a short term loss by opening up those key SE techs, of course you can decide to research PP tech the normal way.

After Physics and Biology the GS will bulb Electricity then Medicine SID SUSHI!

Currently the GS will bulb you 2844 beakers for an immediate benefit, If you add him to Ruska (current highest beaker multiplier city) as a SS (Super Specialist) he'll give you 9 * 2.45 (145%) per turn that's 22.05 beakers a turn.

How many turns are there in an Epic game? Well I'm just gonna assume 500 turns.

Since you're on turn 288, so there are 212 turn left in the game and if that GS was made a SS he'll produce 4674.6 beakers before the time victory.

Note: you still haven't built Oxford University or UB, so the Beaker count will be a bit higher so I'm gonna ESTIMATE somewhere around 6500 beakers

So the question is do you want the 2844 beakers now or 6500 ish beakers over the entire course of the game. Note: I Haven't included the fact that you will finish the game before 2050.

personally I'd light bulb because I'd rather get 1/3 of the beakers I need now instead or 3 time the beakers later in the game because the End game seems relatively close .. but I'd probably bulb after Printing Press.

As for Golden Ages I'd do it during the construction of my spaceship parts.

 

[Welnic]

Golden Ages do just stack, if you start one and finish the Taj Mahal during it you will end up with 30 years of GA. If you thought that you might need the boost to finish the Taj Mahal first I would probably do it, but I don't think there is much to worry about that so I think I would pop him for a tech.

As far as changing to Mercantilism, you can add up the trade on the Info screen and see that it is 100 commerce. Sounds like a lot to give up to me. I like that you can see that info especially who the good trading partners really are.

 

[EEE_BOY]

two Golden age certainly add up. but using GS to a golden age seems a little waste. lightbulb PP, research steel, then slowly research SM to accumulate gold. when the Taj M complete , using the GA to generate 2 GS by switch to pacifism and free market. lightbulb to physics, biology, electricity and research radio. if u get a GM instead, grab medicine for the sushi co.
though u are tech lead currently, u need to AMPLIFY your advantage by lightbubling to biology and grab those late wonders to secure your lead.

I spot u didn't mention a gem pop up from the mine. U r certainly too lucky then. I am jealous!

 

[Haika]

A golden age will stack in the beneficial way (next one will tack on to the end of this one).

All I can do about my Space Race gaffe is . However, even if you can take Ghandi to AC, you should be able to leverage him some of the way. For example, if you see him researching down the Replacable Parts -> Rifling line, you can trade him from the Nationalism or Scientific Method line. As long as you don't have to worry about him suddenly backstabbing you, every beaker you can trade with him is one less you have to research yourself.

Do you already have an idea for a research path after grabbing econ? If you are going to found colonies, I wonder if it would be worth beelining to Democracy while building the Taj and sending out the settlers, so that you can pop into US during your golden age to rush some workboats/lighthouses/granaries in those colonies and pop back into rep at the end of the GA. Although you generally want to whip infrastructure, those things are the basic tools you need to efficiently whip in the first place. Also who doesn't like the big blue lady .

Can't really tell from the picture, but is there seafood near Goth?

PS, dont know if you had this planned, but you have room for an awesome National Park city between Yakutsk and Rostov.

 

[bonbons]

I agree that Japan's land does indeed look tempting and given his backward state of technological affairs, a cossack attack should be very effective. Furthermore, an invasion of Japan could add a bit of excitement to what is turning out to be a cakewalk. Either way, I would say this one is probably in the bag.

By the way, I love the names of your naval units! I will be following their names

In Conclusion,
"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward!"

 

[CivSetä]

Good job so far!

I would settle all those islands. If you don't change to Mercantilism, those cities will easily pay themselves. And remember how much sushi there is!
I would expand like there is no tomorrow, you can afford it and you can always create some colonies if you take too much. In Yekaterinburg island, for example, is enough room for three cities, same thing with that big island between your main island and stone island. Well, three more vassals could be too much for your diplomatic relations.

I would make friends with Shaka. He is useful, just keep him warring around. Watch out his domination ideas though, maybe trade couple of key military techs to his victims to make sure. And when Shaka is your friend, you can create Stone colony and reduce maintenance a little bit. That island is not a paradise imho. BTW, you don't have to worry about Bryansk fish tile, Shaka can't claim it because there is ocean between.

 

[feldmarshall]

isn't gandhi supposed to know that you are the owner of those privateers, since you guys are the only two who have the necessary tech?

 

[Scarredroman]

Getting Astronmy was most fortuitous.

The line 'I am a pacifist, what was I thinking?' I was hearing uttered by Woody Allen even before reading your next line.

Who would you be using Shaka as an attack dog against? Mao? Denying Shaka iron on the island between Stone and Main would be sound.

You could bribe Gandhi into another war with Tokugawa. He lost a city in the earlier war, and may do again. Keeping Tokugawa around as a backward civ has some appeal.

Gandhi is your main rival: Anything that slows him down is good; anything that helps you reach Cossacks is good.

The only real function a great artist has is to shore up culture in your frontier cities. Vladivostock is in real need of a great artist. Put in the Hermitage and switch to nationhood and Vladivostock is a city of 12000 culture. Let the culture maestro have a taste of his own medicine.

 

[carl corey]

Wow, the holy grail of hut pops! Good job in not hurrying up to take Astronomy as a free tech from Liberalism. Instead the villagers gave it to you as a free tech. Some village that was!