ALC Game 21: Zulus/Shaka

[cabert]

A very intriguing suggestion, especially since, as Scarredroman points out, I'll have another GS pretty soon (faster thanks to a GA, too). A GA would keep the economy afloat for several turns, accelerate the courthouse builds, and allow me to change civics.

I too suggest a GA, for a little relief in the economic department, and for an anarchy free change of civics.
The free hammers won't hurt, too.

If you run caste sytem, you don't ned to build any cultural items. Run an artist (or more than one!) for a few turns and the needed border pop is done.

My opinion on build order :
1) ikhanda (they ar echeap for you and do reduce maintenance!)
2) courthouse
3) catapult*
4) swordsman*
5) impi*

Yes you need impis. They will defend your stack vs HA and allow you to pillage while moving.

Your suggestion has merit. As dire as -11 GPT at 0% looks, I don't think it's as bad as it seems. Courthouses will help, Currency is not far off, and as you say, I can maintain the economy through city captures and pillaging. As I mentioned above, starting a GA, switching to Caste System, and running merchant specialists is also attractive.

currency is quite far off, but you'll get there in due time. A mix of courthouses and units will let you finish this war, hopefully before anyone discovers feudalism. HC is in the ropes, get him down.

 

[Fetch]

Triangle diplomacy: there's a brief write-up on it in my Beginners' Strategy Guide.

From Sisiutil's Basic Strategy Guide 3.1:

9.2 TRIANGLE DIPLOMACY
• This strategy involves choosing two other AI Civs with whom you intend to have and maintain “Pleased”
to “Friendly” relations. All other AI Civs can, to be blunt, go to hell.
• Ideally, one of the Civs should be a “pet dog”—an aggressive Civ you can easily send to attack other
Civs.
• The other should be a peaceful Civ with whom you can trade technologies and resources.
• The best candidates for these roles are mid-to-low ranked Civs, not the most powerful ones who will be
your chief rivals.
• Try to avoid choosing two Civs that will be in conflict with one another—i.e. that share borders.
• If the situation in the game changes, you can always change who your triangle partners will be.

I was familiar with the strategy, just not the name. Thanks Sis.

 

[Artichoker]

I do not suggest starting a Golden Age, for the following reasons:

1) Your major asset right now is your military. Military units can be converted to true value by using them to conquer new land. Since you have not done so (at least not finished), a disproportionately high amount of your assets exists as military units, and disproportionately low amount exists as land/resources.

2) The cost of spending GPs (2 of them!!) at such an early stage is more damaging to your economy, because you have not yet built a GP Farm. So GPs are still scarce at this stage of the game.

3) You are much better settling your GPs, because their science/hammer output will accumulate over time. In the early stage of the game, GPs are most valuable when settled, because they have a much longer timespan in the future when their output will accumulate, and their bonuses constitute a higher proportion of your cities' output.

 

[Kev]

We have to recall that we will actually have two Great Scientists in the next round to work with and discuss options for both. Choices being settle, bulb, Academy, and golden age.

I still think bulbing philosophy with the first one and using the second for the golden age would be preferable in my mind. We don't seem to have a key science city pegged yet, so I'm not keen on the settling or the academy right now. Plus, we need immediate help in our current situation.

In theory, we could bulb twice (what would we get after Philo?), but I think the golden age would help us put things in a better place. Since we really cannot run back-to-back golden ages (need a second great person for the second one), seems that bulbing at least once is in order.

I understand that should we bulb Philo (and take the Inca Holy City soon) that we'll have three religions. This does put a damper on fracturing the Islam bloc. Still, there is Theology and Divine Right (and who discovered Monotheism first?) that we can certainly wait on the AI's to get to, and we can certainly use OR eventually with a bunch of missionaries to spread what religion we wish to specific AI's. With some diplomacy or spies, we can help them to change.

I think, with my limited experience, that I'd use the current GS to bulb. We can hold Philo until some other techs pop up if we'd like. We can continue on our way in this war with plunder and perhaps trading/begging - at least until the second GS arrives. I think that staying in Slavery right now helps us to whip courthouses, military, and key infrastructure in newly-captured cities. Once the second GS shows up, do the golden age. By this time we can go to OR and Caste to hold the economy (along with the golden age) - OR helping us to build the courthouses faster while we're out of slavery and in Caste. This way, we'll be doing the golden age when we have more cities that can benefit.

That's my plan and I'm sticking with it.

 

[Daedal]

2) The cost of spending GPs (2 of them!!) at such an early stage is more damaging to your economy, because you have not yet built a GP Farm. So GPs are still scarce at this stage of the game.

In BTS the first GA only burns one GP. I, too, am hesitant about burning a GS this early on a GA, but that's probably because I can't ever manage to take much advantage of a GA. I'm sure Sisi could pull it off nicely though.

 

[Artichoker]

In BTS the first GA only burns one GP. I, too, am hesitant about burning a GS this early on a GA, but that's probably because I can't ever manage to take much advantage of a GA. I'm sure Sisi could pull it off nicely though.

In that case, the cost of a Golden Age is more reasonable.

However, with a Golden Age in mind, I would expand more through conquest of HC, before starting a Golden Age, so that more land will be gained that can benefit from the Golden Age.


Then there's the question of...is it convenient to have a Golden Age? I do not think so. We can always save the Golden Age for the post-war period, when all of HC's cities have already been conquered. Since the economy is in such bad shape, to the point of hurting science research, we need to improve economy before we do even that.

I suggest a 4-step process:

1) Sign a temporary peace treaty with HC, accepting Monotheism as war reparations.

2) Use the negotiated peacetime to quickly build a Courthouse in all cities with high maintenance. For cities with low maintenance, pump out a few more military units to replace losses sustained earlier (or add to stronger ranks such as Elephants).

3) Go for a total conquest of all of HC's cities.

4) After order is restored in all cities, begin a Golden Age by spending 1 Great Scientist.


As outlined above, the 2nd Great Scientist should be spent to start a Golden Age. As for the 1st Great Scientist, I highly recommend settling him in a city of your choice. This will be a tough decision, but it will pay off in the long run.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

For the record: I'm totally and completely against burning your Great Scientist on a Golden Age.

The boost in and on tiles requires citizens working the tiles, which we have relatively few of and are even contemplating whipping them away.

The boost in requires specialists and wonders -- which we have scant of.

The No Anarchy bonus is cool and all, but we're not really hurting for a switch yet.


If we really want to make the most of a Golden Age:

Wait until HC's cities are conquered and out of revolt to better receive the bonus.

Wait until most/all cities needing a Courthouse are ready for the to make the most of No Anarchy.

Wait until a GP Farm is established to make the most of the .

Ideally, several cities get whipped on Turn 1 of the GA immediately prior to a Civics switch to CS/Pacifism. The new GP Farm would maximize either Scientists or Merchants (either would do wonders right now) to push out another one or two GPs during the GA. By the end of the GA, Civics could be changed again to whatever.

EDIT: Given the total and presumed value (through trade) of Philosophy, bulbing the GS will net considerably more immediate benefit than a GA -- which would primarily benefit in production right now.


-- my 2

 

[Porphyrius]

OTAKUjbski describes well enough that the timing for a GA is bad. On top of that i remain very hesitant about spending a GS for it. Its not a mere matter of what it bulbs for right now. GSs make for 50% stronger bulbs well placed in the lib race later. Actually if we seek maximum religius troubles between AIs (and we should) we are better delaying the bulb.
So its not like we'll have one too much to bulb. Academy/settling him even sound better to me than a few turns in GA.

Besides is the small boost while in GA enough to offset whiping in laying courthouses faster.
Not to mention a turn of anarchy while in bad economic shape is not nearly as bad as when when you are teching/producing like mad.

Furthermore, getting his (very poor) shrine will net us initially no more than a handfull of gold and force us to devlop its religion ourselves if we want to spread it.



Now lets consider how wise extensive war vs HC is. He has (unlike most) elephs so he is amongst the tougher military opponents currently. He has unappealing wonders, mediocre land with poorly placed cities on it. So we are mostlya as i warned, fighting a war out of need cause we dont mean to complicate diplo too much, rather than greed to get the best possible land with least possible effort. So i dont see why we need to finish the war at all costs. Keep i mind the map has no isolation whatsoever to offer, so its not like we can finish this war and then be expected to "lay our cottages in peace" as long as we like to regain economic balance.

In my eyes we should end it and seek better opportunities elsewhere. And we can ofcourse keep HC occupied meantime by bribing other AIs to keep him busy.

 

[BARBEERIAN]

I don't think you should waste a scientist on a GA, even though it may help keep the economy afloat. There just isn't enough of a benefit to be had, it's not really going to add much reasearch mainly just keep you afloat and give you more hammers. Avoiding losing turns at this point for civic switches also isn't that big of a deal. Turns of anarchy are turns you aren't losing money but can continue taking Incan territory. It might actually be beneficial to lose turns at this point, then when you're out of revolt slave courthouses, make peace, work every cottage possible and hopefully things will get back in the black.

As to specifics for the Incan war, keep it going for now just long enough to capture Cuzco and pillage as many tiles as possible around HC's other cities for cash. If he has the Shrine built already (haven't checked the save) then you might consider not razing any of his other cities that have his religion yet (even though the cultural pressure will be a pain for a bit). The extra gold will help you stay afloat at this point. Once your economy recovers DoW and finish him off.

For the GS, bulbing Philo is your best bet right now. Tech rate is slow so you need to leverage every ounce of trading power you can right now to help you keep pace. Philo should open up a few juicy deals.

Techwise, if you can't even trade Philo for Currency than better start trying to self-research it. Calendar will be nice but it won't do enough for your economy to be as high a priority yet. Once the you've slaved enough courthouses and cities start getting back up to their happy cap is when you should aim for it. Right now bigger cities will just add more maintenance woes.

 

[Joseph Goebbels]

Ah... this is very interesting for a newbie.

*subscribes*

 

[Melon Head]

I was initially in favor of the GA, particularly because of all the yelling at you I do about civic changes. That siad, I've since changed my mind. People have made excellent points about waiting until you have more pop, more land, and a more established place. That said, I'm also kind of in favor of changing civics right now. A few things to think about: while in anarchy, you will lose less money. You will also have time to either capture more cities or pillage more tile improvements. Also, a golden age now will increase its cost later.

I think a golden age will be great, once you get a GP farm set up. GA, revolt to pacifism, CS, etc, and you'll have a +200% GP generation for ~10 turns. Revolt out of pacifism at the end of it (keep CS if needed) and enjoy having generated lots of GP points for those turns. You can even starve your GP farm during this period to further increase your points; 10 turns of starvation, if carefully planned (count food in the stockpile) will be survivable. The perfect time for this, to me, looks like after you finish off HC.

Militarily, I'd finish off HC. First, do not keep all his cities. Burn most of them, keeping only the ones most productive and most necessary to outline his lands, allowing you to back-fill once your economy gets back on its feet. I'd think about building a small number of new units, but mostly I'd focus on quality over quantity. What I mean is as follows; you'll be able to kill HC pretty easily now. Just do that. (DO NOT FORGET TO PILLAGE THE IMPROVEMENTS AROUND CITIES YOU ARE GOING TO RAZE-it's extra cash you absolutely need.) Your next war will be, tautologically, either defensive or offensive. In the period where you're rebuilding your economy, you need to prep for the defensive war. I think instead of keeping your power rating high, aim to keep it at about half your near rivals, maybe less, particularly as you make friends with someone with lots of power. Check Aelf's EMC threads for his power graphs to get an idea of what's okay. At the same time, use your military not for garrison duties on the border, but instead for forming a mobile reserve on the border, so that you can annihilate an enemy stack which attacks you, like you did with HC. By the time you're preparing for your next offensive war, your economy will be back on its feet and you'll be set to spam units like Shaka was meant to do.

For the GP you have right now. I'd settle them or build academies. As has previously been discussed, lightbulbing Philosophy isn't that helpful. It gets you further along the liberalism path...but as we talked about in the pre-game that isn't as big a deal with Shaka, and I think a settled GP or academy will give you more benefit in the long term. Also, you can't trade Philo around as much. Bulbing it eventually might make sense, (particularly with no tech brokering) but right now you don't have many people to trade it to. Also, the idea that you want another AI to get the religion is really important. That would be huge, as it will select your next victim for you.

Also, watch out for Hang Kon. He's been a tricky little bugger in my games; he's good at teching and also not terribly reliable as a friend. That said, maybe he'll be good to you. You are Shaka, after all.

 

[Artichoker]

Now lets consider how wise extensive war vs HC is. He has (unlike most) elephs so he is amongst the tougher military opponents currently. He has unappealing wonders, mediocre land with poorly placed cities on it. So we are mostlya as i warned, fighting a war out of need cause we dont mean to complicate diplo too much, rather than greed to get the best possible land with least possible effort. So i dont see why we need to finish the war at all costs. Keep i mind the map has no isolation whatsoever to offer, so its not like we can finish this war and then be expected to "lay our cottages in peace" as long as we like to regain economic balance.

In my eyes we should end it and seek better opportunities elsewhere. And we can ofcourse keep HC occupied meantime by bribing other AIs to keep him busy.

I disagree...I think that HC should be the next target, and that he should be destroyed. The only question is...when should the temporary peace be broken?

You argue that there is little to gain from the spoils of war with HC. I disagree. Here is what will be gained from a successful war:

1) Consolidation of territory with very good access to the coastline.

2) A nearly doubling of resources available, with good possiblities for seafood resources.

3) More land and room for city growth, thus fueling faster research and production.

4) Elimination of the only diplomatically unfavorable rival, which is HC. The only diplomatically borderline rival is Wang Kon, who can therefore be dealt with more efficiently.

5) Access to a new Holy City, whose religion can be spread to improve science output, culture, and happiness.

6) More experienced military units.


On the other hand, choosing a new target besides HC will require Shaka to compromise his diplomatic standing with that rival, and all rivals who have good relations with him. This can have bad long-term consequences.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I'm not sure how No Tech Brokering affects a bulb-to-trade strat, but that's what I'd usually look to in this kind of situation.

Philosophy doesn't seem that attractive a tech here - I don't see us making much (if any) use of Pacifism, and I agree with those who say it'd be better to let an AI grab the religion. But if we can get good trade value from it, then I reckon the bulb is still the best option - hardcore warmongers can't afford to wait hundreds of turns for a settled GP to pay off, and a GA would be terribly weak at this stage.

I think keeping Ollantaytambo was a mistake, and would consider letting HC have it back so we can raze it. In any case, I'd take a short period of peace to recover the economy, then strike again to claim Cuzco and maybe one more city (Tiwanaku?). Raze the rest.

On the diplomacy front, having both Wang and Washington as triangle partners looks a bad option here - one or other will surely be our next target, so why waste the effort getting friendly?

In the medium term, I think the ideal arrangement would be to play America off against Russia, and Babylon against France, while we make Wang our next target. Taking Korea would consolidate our empire (which will be very strung out once HC's lands are incorporated) and open up a path to the northern regions. If Washington can be kept friendly (or otherwise occupied), then after that we'll be free to station all our forces along the new northern border, in preparation for a big showdown with Peter and/or De Gaulle.

Burn most of them, keeping only the ones most productive and most necessary to outline his lands, allowing you to back-fill once your economy gets back on its feet.

Raze yes, backfill no.

Steady outward expansion is the thing - keep the best cities to claim the land, recover the economy, and start preparing for another war.

Filling gaps with lesser cities merely delays the next phase of expansion.

 

[popejubal]

I think a golden age will be great, once you get a GP farm set up. GA, revolt to pacifism, CS, etc, and you'll have a +200% GP generation for ~10 turns. Revolt out of pacifism at the end of it (keep CS if needed) and enjoy having generated lots of GP points for those turns. You can even starve your GP farm during this period to further increase your points; 10 turns of starvation, if carefully planned (count food in the stockpile) will be survivable. The perfect time for this, to me, looks like after you finish off HC.

Me too.

I'm a big fan of all of the things that Melon Head listed. After you have taken as much of HC's land as you want, take 10-20 turns to digest it and then pop the Golden Age. If you burn the current GScientist on Philosophy, you can switch to Pacifism during the Golden Age and get 3x the number of Great People points that you are getting now.

Push Great People in most of your cities to the point of starvation and you'll pop Great People faster than you can say Rumplestiltskin. After each of the cities pops their Great Person, put them back to working their regularly scheduled tiles and get back to the important work of taking over the world.

When the Golden Age is just about finished, switch back to Org Religion and have a ball with all your shiny new Great People and well-digested HC empire.


...as for a Golden Age right now, it seems a crying shame to burn a Golden Age at the moment since at least some of your cities are currently in revolt and you're losing money fast enough that the civic-switch Anarchy turns would actually be a blessing right now. Also, you don't yet have all of the cities that you will end up with, so why not hold off on the GA until all of the HC cities that you don't yet hold are thriving under your velvet-gloved iron grip?

One last thought: Switch out of Slavery for the duration of the Golden Age. Each point of population that is working for you during a Golden Age is worth significantly more than it is worth during a regular turn. Why whip away your population during a GA when you could just wait a few turns and whip them after you've wrung all of the benefit from them that you can. That's the primary reason why I think you should wait 10-20 turns after the war with HC ends to start a GA - so that you can whip necessary buildings and then let the population regrow a bit before burning your great person on your first Golden Age.

 

[Melon Head]

Raze yes, backfill no.

Steady outward expansion is the thing - keep the best cities to claim the land, recover the economy, and start preparing for another war.

Filling gaps with lesser cities merely delays the next phase of expansion.

Good point about not bothering with back-filling, and instead moving on to the next target. I tend to only fight one major war before prepping rifles/infantry, whereas with Shaka, I think you might be right. Plus, it'll let you keep the quality of each individual city very high, as you can be quite selective with them.

 

[schwartz]

since this is my first post in an ALC thread, thanks for doing this, i've learned a ton from these games, still haven't won on monarch yet though...

My feeling from the save is that you can easily finish off HC, he's really weak (seriously, his cities have next to nothing in them...) and the pillage/capture money should be more than enough to keep you afloat until after the war when you can whip courthouses. I'm not really familiar with the bulb paths but i think that bulbing is the best that you can do at this point, if nothing else it gives you a good tech to shop around.
don't know how much it means coming from as poor a player as me, but i thought i'd throw in my .02

 

[Berkobob]

FWIW, I think you should take peace now - 0% on the slider gives you almost no room for error. I think the switch to OR depends on whether you plan to build/chop or whip your important infastructure.

Peter should be your second diplo partner as he is centrally positioned and would be able to assist you in any war you enter into with either Washington or Wang Kon, and later on, DeGaulle. I think your second target should be Washington, as I have found him to be a lot stronger/tougher in the mid-late game than Wang Kon.

 

[DrJambo]

I've never been a big proponent of warring to raze cities. If you're forced down this avenue due to a struggling economy then you're better off going for peace at this stage.

Regarding whether or to not to burn a GP for a GA, I reached a similar point in my Emperor game as you are now with Shaka. Got embroiled in an early war and as a result of taking one or two cities my tech rate crashed to 0%. I needed courthouses as you do here, but I also wanted to maintain the offensive since I had the upper-hand in the war. I also desperately wanted to make a three-way civics switch (to Theocracy, Bureaucracy and out of Slavery to Serfdom or Caste System). The civics changes shows that I was a little further advanced in my game than you are now in yours, which is worth noting.

In the end I DID use a GP for a GA. This allowed me to make the civics changes saving me 3 turns of anarchy, build necessary courthouses to rescue my economy, AND maintain a slightly reduced war effort. My GP was a prophet though and not a scientist.

If you go for peace then I wouldn't use the GP for a GA. Instead I'd settle the scientist or build an academy and focus on courthouses and building up for the next offensive. I would certainly not advocate bulbing Philosophy as a good option. You're one of the tech leaders and opportunities to trade Philosophy for anything of note will be slim. Plus, you'll found another religion and ideally you'll want one of the other AI civs to do that! HC will not be the most popular of leaders with the other AI, so I wouldn't worry about repercussions from a future DoW if you settle for peace now.

If you stay warring then unless you're planning to raze cities (which, as I've said, is kind of pointless), I think you'll have to burn the SP for a GA. This will enable you to build courthouses and units and allow some resurgence of your economy, at least until you reach Currency, which is a major target! Reaching Currency as you fall out of the GA will help hugely if you've taken extra cities onboard!

That's all. Good luck.

 

[Phatkarp]

Ah... this is very interesting for a newbie.

*subscribes*

Ditto.

I think the answer to every noob "help me" thread should be a reference to any/all of these threads. Except for the 5 pages of debate over the initial settle. The hot air/pay-off ratio is too high, but I suppose that is part of the fun.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Deleted 2x post