ALC Game #24: Hammurabi/Babylon

[CivCorpse]

RE: civics. Representation for the boost. all that food means a pile of specialists. This game should be over by the time any new cottages mature. Vassalage if he can't snag the pentagon, Bureaucracy if he can. Moving the capital to his commerce city that has the Christian shrine. Emancipation because of WW/we demand emancipation will be too much. Free Trade and free religion.

Nationhood might be a nice option as well as police state once he has fascism.

 

[Sisiutil]

Ragnar, huh? My only concern there is that he's so backwards and weak that he'd likely capitulate to another civ pretty quickly. And since I'm not the biggest, baddest bully around, some of the other civs might not hesitate to jump into a war with me.

So I don't know if it's feasible or sensible to just march my current stack up there. I would like to know Mehmed's power rating before taking any such action. Besides, one war just ended, I should do a little economic shoring up before getting involved in more foreign adventurism.

Maybe we should discuss war preparations--what would be required, do you think, before launching the next war? Destroyers protecting all seafood? Assembly Line and several units upgraded to Infantry? Industrialism or Flight? And should Ragnar (who has several friends) or Darius (who doesn't) be the next target?

 

[SnowlyWhite]

you have sushi, you have mining, you have ton of land; you won.

nice going

 

[kazapp]

So I don't know if it's feasible or sensible to just march my current stack up there. I would like to know Mehmed's power rating before taking any such action. Besides, one war just ended, I should do a little economic shoring up before getting involved in more foreign adventurism.

My honest opinion? Whatever you do, do it fast... You've won, let's get this game over and done with - looking forward to Boudicca already!

<turns rudely away>

In fact, guys, isn't Sis winning a bit to easily even on Immortal? What options could we suggest for the Celtic game to ameliorate this?

</>

 

[patagonia]

Maybe we should discuss war preparations--what would be required, do you think, before launching the next war? Destroyers protecting all seafood? Assembly Line and several units upgraded to Infantry? Industrialism or Flight? And should Ragnar (who has several friends) or Darius (who doesn't) be the next target?

Artillery is almost always superior to assembly line if you're attacking, especially as you've got corps to boost production which makes factories an unnecessary diversion. The only reason to go for assembly line is if you want to leverage the AGG trait to build a lot of amphibious infantry (only takes 5XP and you're already in theocracy).

TBH space is the quickest way to wrap this up in terms of playing time.

 

[Killroyan]

If you are going domination then saving the GE for the pentagon is not a bad idea. Otherwise I would rush Wall street with it. After that you can start spreading corps.

The game is almost in the bag. You could go even go for a diplomatic victory right now.

 

[DanF5771]

Just a little analysis concerning your worries that Ragnar would vassal to another AI while you are fighting him. There are two ways:

1. The Diplo-Dow: You are the only one warring Ragnar and he seeks protection from you by voluntarily becoming the vassal of a strong AI, which entails that this AI will declare war on you. If I understand the mechanics correctly then this works like a trade deal where Ragnar bribes someone (say Hannibal) into a war with you and offers himself as a vassal, so if you were Ragnar the hypothetical trade screen would look like this:[pre]Hannibal Ragnar
War with Sisiutil Vassal State[/pre]This means that the Leader's respective attitude thresholds will prevent such deals, as long as they like you enough. So Hannibal would say to Ragnar: "We couldn't betray our close friends" since he is pleased with you and his threshold is cautious. They must of course also meet their attitude requirement towards Ragnar, otherwise they will deny with "We just don't like you enough".
There is also a check for power ratios, and this one is a bit strange: It is depending on whether you have a city on their capital's landmass which means that you are a valid land target for them. If you do (only valid for Justinian), they will deny Ragnar's offer with "We are afraid of their military might" if your power is more than twice as big as their power. If you do not have a city on their home islands (all other leaders) then they will respond with "We would have nothing to gain" as long as your power is higher than theirs. (It appears that they are more afraid of you, if you sit on a far away island, than if you are right next door to them, but they probably just don't feel like sending all their army to the other side of the globe, unless you are a weakling.)

2. The strategic DoW: This DoW is not on you but on Ragnar which might cause him to capitulate to another AI, instantly ending your war with him. One thing to keep in mind here is that Ragnar would prefer to capitulate to the player with the biggest war success (so maybe Justinian needs some attention). There are 3 different kinds of wars in Civ: Total War, Limited War and Dogpile War. A bit of research about the mechanics revealed some very interesting things lately. The one most important aspect for your current situation is, that -just as described above for you- Ragnar is only a valid land target for Justinian. AIs will only start Dogpile Wars if the victim is a land target and Limited Wars if it is a land target or both the AI and the victim are alone on their landmasses (Lonely Hearts). In fact except for Justinian Ragnar is only a candidate for a Pass 3 Total War (which seems to be the least likely war in civ, if the AIs don't have too high costs for units). And as to Justinian--he is currently pleased with Ragnar and will therefor not declare on him due to his NoWarProb=100. Last thing, Ragnar's current power doesn't help him at all to prevent any hypothetical DoWs from the other AIs (Pacal and Izzy are Vassals), so reducing his power further will not change this situation in any way.

Go for Ragnar.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Why not Diplomatic, I agree with Kiilroyan, you've got the best rating with other civ's , even over Pacal. You're No 1 in Population. Get Pacal to build the U.N. and you're up against him.

Only Hannibal will abstain, as he's friendly with you both, 3 other will vote for you.

Diplomatic seems to be an easy way, out, spam Sid's to self, further boost population, Mining corp to boost troops production. Build defensive troops, Beeline Mass media, obsolete the Apoc palace and a back door diplomatic victory. Gift Mass media to Pacal if you have to.

Civics, Adjust to meet your friends, stay in theo, free market, Here rule, caste and adopt Beau or Nationhood or Vassalage.

Seems like an easy diplomatic victory...

 

[kazapp]

Excellent post, DanF5771. (Assuming you know what you're talking about, that is! )

In fact, it is precisely this kind of information - on the AI decision process - that I feel is the current biggest hole in the discussions here at S & T!

 

[CivCorpse]

Ragner must die

 

[GinandTonic]

Ragner must die

Indeed. A nice warmup war while you power up. Then just vassalise the others asap and snowball.

 

[CivCorpse]

Indeed. A nice warmup war while you power up. Then just vassalise the others asap and snowball.

Vassal Shmassal. The we have annoying vassal spies being jerks. Take a city, drop a sid and mining exec in there, build a barracks then more troops.
Ragnar, justinian and paccy get absorbed, Only then are vassals an option.

Tech artillery then bombers...game over. A side trip to facism if he wants police state. But I think representation and sid's are the best shot right now.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

@DanF5771

ragnar is +6 with justinian, so dogpile war won't happen as it doesn't happen at pleased.

 

[CivCorpse]

@DanF5771

ragnar is +6 with justinian, so dogpile war won't happen as it doesn't happen at pleased.

Dogpile shmogpile, if Justinian wants some of this, he is more than welcome to it. As a matter of fact, little Miss Cataphract better start saying good bye to friends and loved ones soon.

 

[DanF5771]

@DanF5771

ragnar is +6 with justinian, so dogpile war won't happen as it doesn't happen at pleased.

Yes, it's true that Justinian will never attack someone he is pleased with (due to his pleased-NoWarProb of 100), but there are circumstances that allow other AIs with a pleased-NoWarProb of 80 or even 90 to start a Dogpile War. During the attitude tests for potential victims, a random number between NWR = [0 ... 99] is rolled. For Dogpile Wars NWR is lowered by 20 --> [-20 ... 79] so that it is always below the lowest threshold which is 80. But if Aggressive AI is on and when the AI is in financial trouble (can't break even @ 40% slider) and likes Dogpile Raids (DogpileWarRand must be < 100, this is true for most of the leaders) the NWR will be increased by +10 each again, so that it is possible to surpass the threshold.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

didn't know about the aggressive ai part(not playing with it on, so... )

 

[popejubal]

Any chance of trying the new revalation on the 5% culture mini-bomb that spies can plant?

With Sid's Sushi, it would be easy to do after a couple of turns and it would be nice to see how the mechanic works even if it doesn't actively advance your win by any serious margin.

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 11: 1706 AD to 1796 AD (45 turns)

I started the round with a massive civics change, following CivCorpse's suggestions:

Representation for the research boost, Free Religion for the same plus extra happiness too, Bureaucracy since I don't have too many commerce cities, Emancipation to help the few that I do and to avoid that unhappiness you get when you don't run it.

After the 4 turns of anarchy ended, my next tech didn't take too long.

I started building factories pretty much everywhere, even putting them ahead of the queue for existing builds so they would go faster. Someone above mentioned that the factories would be redundant since I have Mining Inc., but remember that Organized leaders build factories at double-speed. Can't go neglecting the traits, this is an ALC game, after all.

My next Great Person was a Great Spy. Since I already had Scotland Yard in Mecca, I thought it made sense to settle him there.

Early in the game, Great Spies can be used for espionage bombs followed by tech stealing, but I find in the late game that the techs are just too expensive. You'll notice I was running the espionage slider at 10% to be able to see all my rivals' demographics; settling the GSpy in a city with several espionage boosters definitely helped. The extra research points thanks to Representation don't hurt either.

I used the Ironworks and a Great Engineer to build the Pentagon in short order in Akkad.

So, it looks like I'm committing myself to winning by domination.

Next tech:

Next up: Flight.

Shortly after this, Mehmed declared war on Ragnar.

This was just the break I'd been looking for. I'd earn some mutual military struggle diplomatic points, and there was less risk that Ragnar would drag me into a war with a bigger, badder civ by capitulating to them.

Mehmed quickly captured a Viking city, so I had to move fast.

I moved my stack north past Jelling (you can just see one of the Infantry units at upper right in the above screenshot), then I declared war:

Like I said, I moved quickly, capturing the Viking capital first, even though I had to attack across a river. Normally a no-no, but Ragnar had Cannon and I figured this was better than exposing the stack to collateral damage for the two more turns it would have taken to move around the river.

I landed another, smaller stack off of my Transports onto that hill NE of Hithabu and captured it while the main stack was still healing in Nidaros.

About this time, Ragnar had had enough and was willing to capitulate.

Which was nice and all, but I wanted him dead, again as per CivCorpse's suggestions. By now he was at war with both Darius and Mehmed, so I had to bribe them both to keep Ragnar from becoming their vassal.

Oh well, because of the civics changes no one is Pleased with me anymore and everyone but Isabella has WFYABTA with me, so it's not like I'll be able to trade those techs anytime soon. The ultra-early WFYABTA with everyone, by the way, is partially a consequence of a few unwise tech trades on my part (such as when I nabbed Theology), but also a consequence of the map. Everyone had pretty early contact with me, so that meant everyone saw all my early tech trades. On a map with more separation between the continents (like, say, a continents map), I'll usually encounter half of the other civs on the map around mid-game and none of them have "seen" my previous tech trades. Note to self: be very cautious about all tech trades on a map where everyone has contact early on.

I had one stack attacking Ragnar's island cities...

... while another finished him off on the mainland.

I thought Raggy would be dead after I took this city:

But no, he had one more left--he'd founded a city on one of those 1-tile islands to my northwest; one of the same ones where Saladin had founded a city. As before, I razed it.

And that's it for Ragnar.

I played a couple more turns and finished another military tech (along with Flight and Fascism, which I'd finished earlier):

I was able to trade this one with Pacal.

I was mainly thinking of Communism's Intelligence Agencies here. Besides, Electricity was too expensive.

And that was the round! A state-of-the-world post will follow.

 

[Sisiutil]

The State of the World, 1796 AD

First off, as usual, a look at the map:

I think, as CivCorpse has been urging, that I have to attack Justinian next. He captured Uppsala from Ragnar in a previous war and now it's proving annoying, swamping both Nidaros and Haithabu with icky grey Byzantine culture. Yuck! Justinian, however, will prove a tougher nut to crack than Ragnar, as he has Artillery already. However, I have Flight and Fascism on him, so I have a good, strong, very mobile defensive/offensive unit: Paratroopers.

While I've been going on about Uppsala, Amorium is a prime target for me. It's weakly defended and capturing it will pretty much cut off Justinian's land routes to my core cities, thanks to the peculiarities of the tectonics map. So I'm thinking of building a second stack and hitting him with a one-two punch in Uppsala and Amorium. Then I'll probably have to settle in and absorb a counter-attack.

Domestic advisor:

Foreign advisor, relations and glance:

With the absence of a religion, my diplomatic status definitely ebbed and flowed during this round. As I mentioned, the civics changes did in my Friendly status with anybody, and my Pleased status was constantly in flux. The only consistent relationship has been with Pacal, who has gone from Friendly to Pleased but has stayed there.

Resources:

Lots of changes here, too, as I try to max out the benefits to my corporations while also obtaining all the other resources needed to keep my citizens happy and healthy--and to max out gold per turn, too. You'll notice my slider had to fall throughout the round as the corporations spread. Even with Wall Street in Mecca, they're still expensive.

Civics and trade route income:

Techs:

This is a little deceptive at first glance; Hannibal and Pacal are far out in front of me--notice they're both researching Plastics, so besides Electricity, they also both have Industrialism for Tanks!

Corporations:

I've got the corps in most of my major cities and then some. I'm not starting to spread it to some of my minor cities. I'm thinking it may be time to spread Sid's Sushi to Hannibal to reap some corporate payments from him and maybe impact his economy too.

Victory conditions:

Hmm, a domination win is still a long ways off.

Power:

So I have a slight advantage over Justinian. I think now is the time to strike, while I have Infantry and he doesn't. I'm not sure what happened to Hannibal--maybe he deleted a bunch of obsolete units a few turns back? I don't think he was at war with anyone. I've just never seen the AI do that, not that I've noticed, anyway.

Demographics:

And, finally, espionage:

I can see everyone's demographics now, so I'm trying to get visibility into Mehmed's, Darius', and Justinian's research. Or should I just not bother, especially since almost no one is trading techs with me, and put those points into research instead?

So is it getting too late for a domination win? Is Hannibal likely to beat me to space? Or do I need to calm down and stay the course? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[Gliese 581]

Why did you trade for Divine Right if you're concerned with WFYABTA?