ALC Game 30: Germany/Bismarck

This is a good idea. It's kind of like The Great Lighthouse lite. I'm not sure where it would fit in best. Are you saying very first? This makes sense as it could then speed up every other tech.

Yes, since you need the boost to your research now. The "Great Lighthouse lite" effect is really what I was thinking about. Plus you could beg gold off Charlemagne if needed.
 
Currency isn't a bad idea either, it always helps.

I'm also thinking about Optics and Astronomy, it would make sense to get those as soon as possible given our limited social network. While they aren't immediate goals, working quickly in that direction strikes me as a smart move. So how could we do that?

I just read through Sisiutil's Early Astronomy strategy to see if that was applicable and it seems worth considering based on the state of the empire at present. The key would be to generate a lot of scientists to bulb techs (and maybe an academy) and to avoid researching a few techs to ensure that the GS will bulb what you want. You have to avoid Meditation, Civil Service and Theology. Running a lot of scientists, which you already are doing, meshes well with Representation and the Pyramids are already built, so that's good. And, if it is possible to get a GE from that wonder, it can bulb Machinery saving many turns of research right there.

So far this strategy meshes very well with the current situation. However, there it is, however, it would require putting off CS for a long time and that prevents chain irrigation which you wanted to get done soon. Having sufficient food is also needed to be able to produce the GScientists this strategy demands. Hmmm, that's the difficulty I think, do you want to put off CS? Is it worth it? I think it might be. As an added bonus you aren't completely isolated and can do some tech trading along the way speeding things up.

If you wanted to go down this path you need to get Alphabet, Optics, Mathematics, and Calendar before you can bulb Astronomy. Alphabet is a given, Optics is clearly very desirable, Mathematics is right there and always nice, only Calendar doesn't give you that much in this game. Because you have the Pyramids discovering Monarchy loses its appeal which is a great thing enabling you to ignore the whole religious line of techs.

What does everyone think?
 
Round 4: 175 BC to 600 AD (32 turns)

Spoiler :
In this round we started to slowly dig ourselves out of the whole that my rash over expansion put us in. It was rather uneventful, so I apologize if the write-up is insipid. But cut me some slack. There was a lot of potential for interest, though. I verified that PaulusIII was correct and apparently there was now a slight discrepancy between the espionage I had towards Charlemagne and the amount he had towards me. So I went to investigate.



Yup. Those are borders over there. Maybe Shaka? I can't really tell, but it's one of those pale colors. So I quickly built a work boat with the hope that he'd be able to see something better.



Turns out he couldn't. Shame on me for not knowing this. I was pretty sure we wouldn't be able to tell, but I thought it was worth it to check.

I continued to research Alphabet for a couple of reasons. The first is that it would give us the ability to trade some techs with Charlemagne. Since he would no longer have that monopoly problem since he had another neighbors he would trade with us like normal. Second, and more importantly, I was running out of stuff to build and with Alphabet researched I could build research. But building research isn't ideal.



So the next tech up was currency. This would give us an extra trade route in every city, the ability to build cash, and the ability to trade for cash with Charlemagne.

Here's us getting our first trade with the Holy Roman Emperor.



I was really hoping that there'd be some iron up in our northern city so it could have at least one good tile to work. There wasn't. It's alright though, we're going to need Iron Working anyway for Optics. I thought for a while about taking Meditation or not. The reason not to would be if I wanted to follow Mec's plan and bulb heavily up to Optics. In the end I decided that we weren't going to be able to get enough great people to have it be worth it to avoid important techs like Civil Service. Also, this way we could build some monasteries and help our tech rate out a little bit.

I continued to try and be friends with Charlemagne.



I was giving him the deer for free. And he was giving me a clam for some of my horses. I was hoping that this would get us some useful positive modifiers.

After Currency came in all sorts of good things happened. Look at how much better our tech rate is then it used to be. I was still hoping for the Colossus so I went ahead and picked Metal Casting first and Code of Laws second. Metal Casting would let us build the Colossus and if not, at least forges were cheap for us and we could build them in a few of our bigger cities.

You might remember we had a Great Scientist at the end of last round. He got settled in the capital for the 9 beakers a turn that he would give our empire. I got this guy not too long after.



This time, an academy was worth 19 beakers. That's significant enough that having him build an academy was going to be a good decision so that's what I did.

Well it turns out that the Colossus was built right when I was finishing Metal Casting. So I never really had a chance of getting it myself. Ah well. I made this trade with Charlemagne.



It would let me build forges with just two chops! That's pretty cool right there. The Hanging Gardens had already been built. But Maths is also a pre-requisite for all sorts of stuff. So it was good to get. Why I gave him currency instead of Metal Casting I don't remember, oops.

And there it is! Code of Laws is in. Let the semi-legitimate tech rate begin.





The next tech goal was Civil Service. I wanted to be able to farm up my land using chain irrigation. We can grow to some nicely sized quick growing cities and run specialists and then whip a lot when we get to a military tech and take over some more land. It turns out I might not ever have to declare war on Charlemagne.





Alright. I did a few more turns of this game. Researching Civil Service with representation powered specialists. I've stopped the round with 1 turn left to go on Civil Service. This is because I've passed the 30 turns limit and also because I just got a Great Scientist. He can be settled for a pretty solid ~17 beakers I think or he can bulb Philosophy which would let us run Pacifism (I have 7 warriors in a 6 city empire, :p). What do you think?

State of the Empire

Here's our cities. Notice how Representation + Caste System allows even the little guys to be helpful.













I have a lot of my cities running specialists even though they're not at their happy caps. But I decided that it's better for them to be running specialists rather than slowly growing. I'm almost about to be able to chain farm and at that point I'll be able to grow these cities at a reasonable clip.



I'm one turn away from Civil Service and will soon be able to trade for some of these things with Charlemagne. What do you guys think I should trade for if anything?





And the eternal question: what should I tech next? I'm thinking I'll bulb Philosophy with the current scientist and then bulb Paper and Education as scientists allow while researching along the bottom of the tech tree up to Optics. How does this sound?



Here's the world as I know it. It's still pretty small, :(.



Let's hear your comments!
 
I like bulbing philosophy if no one has it yet if only to discourage AI from bulbing it and breathing down your neck in the liberalism race.
 
True, but the HRE has it already.

One small note, before I forget, work the silk farm in Hamburg for one extra coin.

Now, back to the big picture. The plan to run Pacifism and tech to Optics seems solid, especially with the Representation powered SE. Too bad you won't be able to trade Philosophy to the HRE, but that's the breaks. Get some ships built and see the world.

Are there any wonders to aim for, being Industrious and all? It's tough to get them while behind in tech, it would require a lot of focus, so they would have to be important to make racing for them worth it. I don't see one myself. GL is great, but off the track at the moment. I don't know if it is possible to get there fast enough. There are some wonders on the way though. Hmm, guess I still like Optics.

I'm interested in the decision to run more scientists and stop growth. I wouldn't have done that but the logical argument makes sense, you can grow faster after you irrigate.
 
Hi guys, seeing this great series start up again finally got me to quit lurking. My thoughts: (I play at Monarch btw so I hope (especially as a forum noob) not too much of what I have to say will seem misguided or presumptuous)

Benginal, your current position seems to me quite difficult, but hardly dire. Those infamous RNG gods have disdained to grant you any metals, leaving you with only very limited options for military builds. While there's not going to be any danger from other civs for some centuries to come, you can guarantee that once they do get Astronomy both you and your good buddy Charlie will be certain targets for AI aggression...

Which brings me to that civ out west whose borders are just visible. Like you I am uncertain of its identity. I looked at this thread today on two different monitors: on the older one it looks indeed like Shaka's pale yellow, but on a bright new monitor it actually looked more like Byzantine grey, (or is that darker?) or even Spanish peach. The blending with the blue sea below makes it quite hard to tell. Regardless, assuming that leader has their own religion rather than Buddhism, we can be pretty certain that they and Charlemagne are on bad terms if its Justinian or Isabella, or that if its the notorious Shaka, he'll be planning something already. Is it possible to determine from closer inspection of the tiles on the western side of that border whether they are ocean or coastal? If they are coastal then its possible that Charlie is planning war himself. For that matter do we have any indications, subtle or less so, that he is actually at war already? While this may not necessarily be strictly relevant to your own strategy, I do think that trying to mine as much info as possible from the game is always a valuable skill to practice. Of course, until you meet another civ, you can't make WHEOOHRN inquiries.

In any case, I think that with CS coming next turn, you are now at an important crossroads. You need to start thinking about your military buildup, whose composition will be determined by your tech choices in the coming round. Remember that if you want to lightbulb Education you will need to delay Machinery or you will be offered Printing Press instead. The latter, however, is actually something very much worth bulbing, leading as it does along the path to my favourite unit (Go figure...)

MilSci is closer but its benefits are correspondingly smaller. (You can't build frigates w/o iron although privateers are still possible.) I always find at monarch that the AI doesn't get rifles early enough to make Grenadiers particularly worthwhile, but is this still true at emperor?

Ironically, your lack of iron in turn makes your horses pretty useless until you also have rifling.

The key question then that seems to me to emerge from all this, is whether you might be heretical enough to consider forgoing the vaunted Liberalism race. Obviously FreeRel is likely to be invaluable diplomatically. However, if you now pursue Paper with the intention of bulbing Edu, you will delay Optics for what may possibly be an unacceptably long time. OTOH, if you go straight for Mach-Optics, you face an uncomfortably long research time for Edu. With the Economics race quite possibly arlready unlikely, I think I would actually be inclined to strongly consider abandoning Lib. You wouldn't need to use a GS on Philosophy then either. (When is your next GP coming?) Does Charlie have Feudalism yet? You should be able to trade for it soon enough and then go for guilds after Mach-Opt-Paper (to bulb PP) which gives you access to all the techs you need to get to Rifling.

One more thing before I sum up this inordinately lengthy and polysyllabic post (Sorry!) (its at this point that I probably should use one of those thoroughly tacky but admittedly expressive emoticons... :blush:).

Um... what was I going to say... Oh yes... I see from the city screenshots that the one unit that you are able to build w/o metals which can be given City Raider promotions is the mighty warrior.
I suppose it would be prohibitively expensive, but I wonder if you'll be able to consider building some with the intention of upgrading them later? Combat or Drill Rifles are still
very good against Medieval weaponry, but CR Rifles would make it all so much easier.

OK that's finally all. Riflin'Joe says: GET RIFLING!!!

PS: Then go clean up.
 
I like bulbing philosophy if no one has it yet if only to discourage AI from bulbing it and breathing down your neck in the liberalism race.

Yeah. I think I might be skipping Liberalism, we'll see. But being able to run Pacifism is definitely going to be fairly helpful.

True, but the HRE has it already.

I think you're looking at the "can research" column. He doesn't have Philosophy yet.

One small note, before I forget, work the silk farm in Hamburg for one extra coin.

Good point. Sorry for the poor microing, :(

Are there any wonders to aim for, being Industrious and all? It's tough to get them while behind in tech, it would require a lot of focus, so they would have to be important to make racing for them worth it. I don't see one myself. GL is great, but off the track at the moment. I don't know if it is possible to get there fast enough. There are some wonders on the way though. Hmm, guess I still like Optics.

Yeah. There aren't really any wonders in our future since we're going to be shooting along the bottom of the tech tree as opposed to the top. But we built them all last ALC, so it's okay.

I'm interested in the decision to run more scientists and stop growth. I wouldn't have done that but the logical argument makes sense, you can grow faster after you irrigate.

Yeah, growing on unimproved two food tiles is really lame when I can run two 6 :science: scientists instead.

Regardless, assuming that leader has their own religion rather than Buddhism, we can be pretty certain that they and Charlemagne are on bad terms if its Justinian or Isabella, or that if its the notorious Shaka, he'll be planning something already. Is it possible to determine from closer inspection of the tiles on the western side of that border whether they are ocean or coastal? If they are coastal then its possible that Charlie is planning war himself. For that matter do we have any indications, subtle or less so, that he is actually at war already? While this may not necessarily be strictly relevant to your own strategy, I do think that trying to mine as much info as possible from the game is always a valuable skill to practice. Of course, until you meet another civ, you can't make WHEOOHRN inquiries.

I have some units in his borders and while I haven't been keeping a terribly close eye on his stuff it doesn't seem like his stack has every left his territory. So I don't think he's at war. But this isn't to say that he's not, just that I don't think so. But I definitely do hope that he has bad relations with the other AIs because then I will be able to bribe him to war against them and have some help, even if it's not much, taking them on.

The key question then that seems to me to emerge from all this, is whether you might be heretical enough to consider forgoing the vaunted Liberalism race. Obviously FreeRel is likely to be invaluable diplomatically. However, if you now pursue Paper with the intention of bulbing Edu, you will delay Optics for what may possibly be an unacceptably long time. OTOH, if you go straight for Mach-Optics, you face an uncomfortably long research time for Edu. With the Economics race quite possibly arlready unlikely, I think I would actually be inclined to strongly consider abandoning Lib. You wouldn't need to use a GS on Philosophy then either. (When is your next GP coming?) Does Charlie have Feudalism yet? You should be able to trade for it soon enough and then go for guilds after Mach-Opt-Paper (to bulb PP) which gives you access to all the techs you need to get to Rifling.

I think I'm going to stick with my plan of researching the bottom half of the tech tree while bulbing the top half. I would like to be able to take Astronomy from Liberalism and this seems the best way to accomplish that goal. I'm really going to have problems getting everything fast enough for an efficient war in the near future, but we'll see.

Um... what was I going to say... Oh yes... I see from the city screenshots that the one unit that you are able to build w/o metals which can be given City Raider promotions is the mighty warrior. I suppose it would be prohibitively expensive, but I wonder if you'll be able to consider building some with the intention of upgrading them later? Combat or Drill Rifles are still very good against Medieval weaponry, but CR Rifles would make it all so much easier.

This is actually a really interesting idea. I think it would be expensive. I have no idea how much it costs to upgrade a warrior to a rifleman. Anybody care to go check? Also, to give them meaningful CR promotions I'd have to switch into Vassalage or Theocracy neither of which I have the techs for. So it doesn't seem worth it to me. But it's certainly an interesting idea.
 
It looked like Brennus to me. Will the real AI please stand up?!

I had forgotten about Brennus; you could well be right. He's easy enough to get on with if you're running OR, but I assume Pacifism will continue to be the best choice at least until the military buildup starts. In that case he'll be just another religious fruitcake out for the heathen Buddhist's blood...

Of course, all this is just pointless speculation, as we'll know soon enough, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?
 
Of course, all this is just pointless speculation, as we'll know soon enough, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?

Yes, it is.



I think you're looking at the "can research" column. He doesn't have Philosophy yet.

Good point. Sorry for the poor microing, :(

Yeah. There aren't really any wonders in our future since we're going to be shooting along the bottom of the tech tree as opposed to the top. But we built them all last ALC, so it's okay.

Yeah, growing on unimproved two food tiles is really lame when I can run two 6 :science: scientists instead.

-Sorry, I'm not used to that version of the tech screen. My mistake.

-No apology necessary, I just wanted to bring it to your attention. It's real easy to spot these things from the peanut gallery.

-Oh right, and I was pushing the bottom branch from the beginning.

-Go, go gadget scientists!
 
Round 5: 600 AD to 1090 AD (29 turns)

Spoiler :
I started this round by using by great scientist to bulb Philosophy.





I did this for several of reasons. The first is that it's on the way to Liberalism so I need it anyway. The second is that it's the tech my great scientists will bulb for a while. And since I was planning on bulbing some other technologies in the future it would be nice to have it out of the way. The third good reason to bulb it was that it deters other AIs from researching it which gives me more time to get Liberalism. The final reason is that my tech rate is terrible and I'm relying on great people. Philosophy would let me run Pacifism which would help me get them out a little quicker.

I waited one more turn for Civil Service to come in and then make this civic switch.



The reasons for Pacifism have already been discussed. Bureaucracy is a pretty easy move to make since it's better than Barbarism and didn't add any turns to the revolution.

I could see that Charlemagne was researching Civil Service himself so I went ahead and traded it to him.



Now here's an image showing a problem.



I'd already decided it was vital that I go out and meet the other civilizations. As such, I was researching towards Optics. But so was Charlemagne. I didn't want to be researching the same thing as he was. But I also didn't want to find out that he was unwilling to trade it the way he was unwilling to trade Calender. It would probably be a good idea for me to go back and check if I could have researched other things and had him trade it. But for the purposes of this game, I didn't want to find myself up sh!t creek (or in this case stuck at the bottom of it since I wouldn't be able to build caravels).

Here's another trade.



I was hesitant to trade away my good techs like this. But not that hesitant since my research rate was so bad and Charlemagne had some really good techs to share.

We get some news:



I was able to see him when he had a border pop into the view of my northwestern city. You can see it a couple of screenshots down.

Another great scientist



He comes just in time to bulb Paper.

As discussed earlier, Charlemagne only had one turn left on this. So I traded it for his map.



Gee thanks a lot.



Here's a screenshot of me updgrading my trireme to a caravel.



This was a tough call to make. On the one hand, 50 gold is a lot when your tech rate is as bad as mine is. On the other hand, my coastal cities are not capable of producing caravels in a decent amount of time. So I decided it was slightly better to get the seas explored faster by building a trireme early and then right when optics comes in spend some gold to upgrade it to a caravel.

Oh yeah. Shaka is ages behind techwise. So I made this trade since hopefully his map will be helpful.



Well this explains his tech rate.



Man. Zara is getting trounced...

It's worse than I thought.



He only has two cities! This is crazy. He is also way behind.

Back home I popped a Great Prophet at low odds instead of the scientist I wanted.
Humbug.



I could have settled him and thought about doing so. But decided on a Golden Age instead. I'm still not sure if this was the right move. It probably wasn't.

I used the golden age great person multiplier to get out another great person in Berlin.



He bulbed the rest of Education.



My caravels have filled in the bottom of the map.



Shaka is going to be a problem.

Here's some more AIs.



Looking back. This was probably really dumb.



But when I saw that he and Wang were getting along, I just got trigger happy and traded away a great technology to an idiot trade-happy AI. I should definitely have given paper to Wang instead. Ah well. At least Mansa's map was useful.



And this is where I stopped the round.

Here's a view of the home continent



I'm slowly working on some universities for the ability to build Oxford. And even if that takes forever, the extra 25% beaker multiplier couldn't hurt.

Here's the tech situation





I can get to Liberalism in 4 turns at full slider and take Astronomy. I'm inclined to do that. But I decided I'd stop short and see if anyone had anything interesting to say.

Diplo situation



There's no friends anywhere except for me and Charlemagne, so I guess that's a good thing.

And if you're worried about how slowly I'm researching. This might make you feel a little better



So that's the situation. I'm not quite sure yet how to proceed. In the meantime I'll think about it and listen to your comments and suggestions. The save is attached.
 
Looks like you have two options:
A. Domination with superior units
B. Space.
I prefer option A.
My guess is that shaka will finish off zara pretty quickly and head for astronomy. You'll have time to figure out what to do with him since he doesn't even have metal casting yet, but with all that land and no one to war upon, his tech rate will pick up steam pretty quickly.
I think I'd tech within one turn of liberalism and then see if you can tech gunpowder and chemistry before mansa or wang set their sights on lib so you can steal steel. If that works out, build a sh!tload of cannons while you tech/trade for astro, then chain vassal wang/mansa/russia. Then, before you conquer the third civ on that continent, shaka will probably have astro and hopefully you can sucker him into attacking the remaining civ and backstab his a$$ FTW
 
So it was Shaka all along, and he's a bit of a monster. He doesn't have a religion yet though so there are some possibilities there. You could look to bring him into the Buddhist fold or convert him to Taoism and do the same yourself ( although I would have been inclined to build the Dai Miao if I were wanting to pursue that course.) Selling him old techs for cash (Aesthetics being the most harmless) will immediately get him to pleased. You can also safely trade for all of ZY's techs as you don't get a penalty with Shaka having already met him.
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One great thing that happened this round was the popping of Munich's borders, allowing you to build maces. I would be inclined to switch to a theatre there to reinforce that before the uni (you'll need 2 more besides the ones you're already building so it won't delay Oxford). When Berlin and Hamburg have finished their unis you can start spamming maces.

I would add a fourth scientist in Berlin and a second in Munich.

Edit: Some further thoughts:

Gwynnja: Without iron, cannons are unavailable, as are frigates, making the whole Chem-Steel line of little use until Charlemagne is taken care of. As I posted a few days ago, I think Rifling is the place to be. Trading for Guilds and hopefully banking afterward will push towards this goal, while a further GScientist can part bulb PP. This is one reason I advocate an extra scientist in Berlin. (If a GSpy happens to turn up, infiltrate Charlie to knock down city defences. Not so sure about what to do with a GE.)

The more I think about it the more I think Shaka can be handled diplomatically. The real military threat looks like it may come from the as yet unknown Russian (it doesn't really matter which one it is; they're all completely unreliable), possibly depending on his or her relations with Wang and Musa.

Benginal, I assume you're planning to do away with ol' Cross-Eyes once you have the right weaponry. If Shaka is Buddhist by then, bribing him to dow on C before you do will earn you a further bonus for MMS rather than a penalty.
 
I'll often get stuck at this point in a game like this, trying to decide how to turn a solid but not spectacular position into a winning one. I don't think you have enough land to win a space race, which means fighting somebody. The danger for me is just coasting for too long (ooh, look at the new techs I'm researching) while not being proactive enough about creating a window of opportunity for a war.

That's especially true when the war would be an overseas invasion against a warmonger, which creates its own logistical challenges.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this one plays out.
 
I don't like the look of this situation. Your best friend in this game is your best target, as he's bordering you.

The way I see it you could try and beeline to military techs and defeat Charlemagne, which is what I would try to do.

On the other hand, the more interesting option is to ignore Charlemagne and go overseas, using your technological advantage to your benefit. Unfortunately, I don't think you have the Great Engineer to auto-build a Forbidden Palace, which means capturing a continent (Mali, Korea, Russia) would be quite costly at first.
 
Here's what I would do without any input from other people.

1) Try to convert Shaka and Mansa to Buddhism and get them on my side.
2) Take out Charlemagne at some point in the near future.
3) Convert some of my cities to cottage cities leaving just one as a GP farm (done after I take out Charlemagne).
4) Pay attention to specializing my cities so that I will be able to build one turn panzers in at least a couple of cities.
5) Quick chain vassal of the world with Panzers.

How does this sound to everybody?

I'm also hoping that there will be another continent nearby that I can use my monopoly on Astronomy to settle all for myself.

My main worry is that cottages will not be powerful enough to be worth it and I'd be better off just getting to Bio quickly and staying with many specialists.

In the meantime, I don't want to get greedy. So I'll take Astro from Liberalism and try to settle a hopefully fourth continent.
 
You should certainly take out Charlemagne: he has iron and Aachen is an obvious Wall St.
Besides... Aachen, Nuremberg, these are German cities and you"re playing the unifier of Germany!
 
You should certainly take out Charlemagne: he has iron and Aachen is an obvious Wall St.

Yes, I'm liking the idea of taking him out with rifles and spies. EDIT: Or maybe Rifles and Catapults. :lol:

And instead of building my own cottages and I can just take his. :devil:
 
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