ALC Game #7: Frederick/Germany

[UncleJJ]

Domination it has to be Spaceships and Cultural and Diplomatic is for those sissy cottage people. We are warriors and we want blood and Caesar's arrogant head on a pole

Just make about 8 Galleons and sail them over to Hatty (assumming open borders) full of your main army and land them, then sail back to fill up again or make a galleon bridge to their continent. When you have enough troops to spank that arrogant prat just and and the crowd will be happy...

That will be a fitting end to a great game. We need to go out with a bang not a whimper

 

[Betafor]

I have already stated that domination would probably be the easiest, but it does make me think about a main advatage of the SE-

You have more pop in an SE, meaning more votes--- Now, the question is, is that boost enough to have only 1 ally in the other continent? Is it enough without an ally-

Since this is the first real life SE applicatoin for some, i would ask that someone do a shadow game from the save he takes teh continent, and crusie population and diplo victory! - The reason i say wait until you conquer the entire continent is - taking the other continent isn't feasable(might as well dominate) - the AI under montezuma will NOT bring his pop up as much as you would going for a diplo, so even if he votes for you, if you take his cities, those cities population go up, and you can use the extra pop for extra votes

(my civ4 comp is at the shop so i'm going on Screenies here)

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 8: to 1700 AD

Finishing off Kublai took a little longer than I thought and was not without complications. And I finally started putting all that gold to good use.

First off, I continued as I said I would, taking Kublai's eastern cities.

Turfan first, followed by Ning-hsia. I had two Macemen running neck-and-neck for Level 5 status.

I also built one of those so-called "trash" cites, this one south of Tarsus to claim the free wheat and copper tiles:

Thanks to the irrigated wheat tile, the city grew quickly, and I was able to get two scientists running there in no time.

Meanwhile, Hatty showed up, asking for favours:

I decided to be nice and relent, since I was courting her favour. That alone raised me from "Cautious" to "Pleased". A few turns later she was back, asking for something that fit into my plans:

It seems like the game is conspiring to make me go up against Monty.

You might notice that the culture slider in those last couple of shots was on the rise, and my income, of course, was correspondingly on its way down. Yes, war weariness was rearing its ugly head. Unwilling to damage my tech lead, I decided to live with it and forgo changing civics to Police State. I may not have much choice against Monty, but we'll see.

As I kept fighting Kublai, another wonder finished, this one in Persepolis:

I had to go through all my cities and adjust for the new, additional free specialist. Mostly I'm running scientists, of course, but a few cities have an engineer or a merchant or two.

With the culture slider at 30%, my income in the red, and several cities still unhappy, I pressed ahead against Kublai, even using some injured units before they had a chance to heal. It got me my two Level 5 units, at least, and finished the war at long last:

I started building West Point in Cologne almost immediately. As you can see, I've converted almost all of my stack to gunpowder units: Cavalry, Grenadiers, and even Cannon, which have much better chances of surviving and do more damage than Catapults. My 4 Accuracy-promoted Cats will remain unpromoted, however, as they don't need a promotion to do their job.

Having run in Theocracy for several turns, I decided that the time was ripe for a civics change:

I decided to forgo converting Roosevelt to Buddhism, even though I had laid the groundwork by spreading that religion. It occurred to me that if Roosevelt converted, his opinion of Monty would improve, and I risked getting a "You declared war on our friend!" diplomatic demerit. Also, since I was trying to play nice with him and Hatty, and Hatty founded Judaism, it might sour their relations, leading to them both coming to me with requests to stop trading with the other. Forget that noise. So Franky D. remains Jewish, but spreading Buddhism to his cities will be very lucrative once I take Tenochtitlan.

At the moment, though, I have a bit of a problem in the northwest with the last two cities I took from Kublai:

That's the list of my units in New Serai, in case you're wondering. But look at that--poor New Serai is completely surrounded by Aztec borders! Monty's not Creative, but he has the Sistine Chapel and, of course, he's been in that area longer. This means I will not really be able to wait for several turns of building to pass before I attack him. These cities are at risk of starvation and flipping to Monty. I'm going to have to attack him soon, and take him down fast, to prevent that. But seeing as how I've got gunpowder units to his Medieval ones, that shouldn't be a problem.

In other news, Monty finally got a Great Prophet and built the Buddhist shrine, so I used the GP I'd been saving for that to build the Taoist shrine in Munich. Other cities are diversifying. I'm making Beshbalik into another wealth city, since it has so many dye plantations that are nearly as lucrative as towns. I've rethought Karakorum's role and have decided to make it my Ironworks city, so I'm laying down watermills and workshops on most of its tiles. I will probably build the Forbidden Palace there before too long.

Will it make sense to change to State Property when it's available, or should I stick with Mercantilism?

I'm also thinking I should start using some of my Great Scientists to build Academies in other cities. The GL has now expired and I have a minimum of 6 settled GS in Frankfurt, probably far more, in fact, as well as 7 scientists (including the 2 free ones). As you can see below, several cities--starting with Hamburg--are producing a pretty good number of beakers per turn. However, I will bow to the wisdom of the Civ math wizards.

In terms of relations, the switch to Free Religion has helped even more than I thought it would. Hatty is friendly, Roosevelt and even Caesar are pleased. Monty is annoyed, but so what? What's more important is everyone else's attitude towards my next target:

As usual, when it comes down to it, Monty has run out of friends. Heh heh heh...

Now in terms of victory conditions, I'm still well shy of what I need for a domination win:

Of course, the real indicator will come at the end of the next round, when Monty is gone and the continent is mine. I should have Biology by then--another boon to the SE--so population should not be an issue. Land, however, will be, and the plight of the Serais reminds me that I will need to capture several cities on the other continent to even come close to gaining enough land. I have only one Galleon--I'm going to have to get going on drydocks in my coastal cities, then a fleet, while I war on Monty.

The power ratings:

Caesar's high rating, as someone theorized, is probably based on population, since he's well behind tech-wise. You'll notice that in terms of score, Hatty and Roosevelt have now surpassed him. Not by much, mind you, and Rome is still #2 in terms of population.

The specialist economy, I'm pleased to report, is cruising along just fine. Most techs are clocking in at 5 turns or even far less. It was very encouraging to see the culture slider go up during wartime, as usual, without seeing research affected significantly. I'm becoming a big fan of this approach, even though its Achilles' heel is definitely needing the Pyramids for early Representation.

Here's the save, and I look forward to everyone's opinions.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Of course, the real indicator will come at the end of the next round, when Monty is gone and the continent is mine.

I'm guessing that you'll find yourself with 52.17% of the land area after you have dealt with Monty.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

A rough estimate of land area is that you'll have 33.17% + 19% = 52.17% after you conquer the Aztec lands. That means you'll need to take an additional 12%, or more than half the size of Montezuma's empire, from the other continent.

When you factor in cultural pressure from the neighbors, that means you'll probably need to completely wipe out one enemy. You might even need to raze a few cities from a second enemy in order to relieve cultural pressure, but that might not be necessary.

Hatshepsut appears at first glance to be the best choice, since so much of her border is coast (not subject to cultural pressure).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

OK for the GS
Settling in Frankfurt (+100 Ox, +75 Lib/Uni/Obs, +50 Ac, +10 FR)=3.35
=9 x 3.35=30.15 flasks

Building an Academy...+50% to base
Base (assuming Lib/Uni/FR= +60%=~2/3 of the current level)

So an Academy will only be worthwhile on cities that have about 90 flasks

Or ~60 raw flasks=10 Scientists... which I doubt you are/Will be running anywhere

So just Settle all the GSs




As for Civics, stick with Mercantilism... you will control half of all the cities which means that Foreign trade doesn't help you nearly as much as the specialists do. Once you have well placed FPs (Has Versailles been taken?) and decent courthouses State Property won't be quite as good.


Actually the UN might be a quick way to go, Rush to Mass Media (Bio on the way) (Get the 'Hit Wonders' to give away as bonuses to your small friends)

By feeding techs and resources to the Americans and Egyptians you can get them on your side and then After you get elected head of the UN prepare for the next vote by encouraging them to get into a war v. Caesar

 

[kniteowl]

State Property? Mercantilism? Personally when I've play the SE I'd go for Enviromentalism right after I pick up Medicine becuase of health issues allowing you to grow your core cities past 20

 

[Eqqman]

It's a shame Montezuma hasn't been wiped out already. You have more than enough cash on hand and GPT to attack him immediately. If you haven't then I assume you think you're too weak militarily.

The diplo win looks like it might be the fastest route to go since you have a good population score even without Montezuma's cities. You said you wanted to win quick so I would ignore the opinions tyring to discourage you from trying it based on 'cheapness'. Something you can try, is beeline to Mass Media and then gift it to Caesar to encourage him to build the UN. There's no rush to build it yourself since you have to spend time eliminating Montezuma and raising your pop anyway. If you can get Casear to build it then you remove the risk of Hatshepsut or Roosevelt being your rival. If Caesar keeps his pop up though this risk may be minimal anyway. If he hasn't built it by the time you're about ready to win, you can always do it yourself.

I don't recommend going to state property, especially if you decide to try and go the diplo route. The larger your empire gets the more of a science hit you'll take leaving mercantilism. You may be thinking of helping out an Ironworks city but with plenty of grass and a food bonus you shouldn't need it to make workshops worthwhile.

 

[Yavathol]

Hi all,
I've just discovered Sisiutil's wonderful series of articles! Thanks so much for writing them. Haven't had time to read all of them yet, just been studying this latest one, trying to grasp this concept of specialist economy via Oracle(MC) slingshot.

I am so bad at this game, you wouldn't believe it ...here's how much I suck - I downloaded the start save for this map and boxed the other civs on the continent in, with a ring of mountains. This allows a controlled setup without having to worry about being attacked or other cities. In spite of this, by 375 BC I was still 8 turns from completing the pyramids when another civ on the other continent beat me to it.

The first mistake I probably made was in locating Hamburg in a different location (Berlin was in the same spot). I put Hamburg north of Berlin, on the tile NE of the single gold and S of the cow. Even with a forge, I was only producing 10H/turn, and I had to spend several rounds with the workers cutting down jungles so that Hamburg wasn't unhealthy. So, with the benefit of hindsight, where is the best place to position Hamburg? Surely it can't still be on that square 3 E of Berlin, with all those overlapping tiles, even if one of them is a cow!?

I forgot to whip on the last turn of producing a forge in Hamburg. Wish there was a reminder facility, there is so much to think about and remember!

I produced a Great Prophet (from Oracle) instead of a Great Engineer. Is the Engineer essential to getting the Pyramids in time? Did this happen because I took too long constructing the forge in Hamburg after MC was discovered? How quickly does this have to be built?

Should Hamburg start on the Pyramids as soon as Masonry is discovered, then change to forge, and then change back?

The order of techs I selected: Agri, Husbandry, Wheel, Mysticism, Bronze, Meditation, Priesthood, Pottery, Masonry

Found Bronze and Iron Working from huts, but it still seemed to take a very long time before I could even start constructing the Oracle. The Oracle was completed in 1560BC, 'fraid I didn't note down when I started it. Was I doomed already, having taken too long to get to this point? Any guidelines when the Oracle should be completed by? How to speed up the research (was running at 100% science).

Apologies if this is too off-topic from the current state of play in this game, but I'd really appreciate any assistance. IF I can get Pyramids by 1000 BC in this version, then the next step will be to try and do it with the other civ's wandering around!

 

[UncleJJ]

Your latest session from 1500 to 1700 is very interesting to me. It shows the SE based on the caste system running into trouble with slow development of the captured Mongolian cities. I see you are building more and more cottages as a way of financing your expansion. That is one way to approach the money problem but it is rather slow responding and locks the science rate at 0% which I consider a serious failing of this approach to the SE.

Having taken the game in this direction for so long with the Caste System it is now too late to change but I feel you would have done better if you had taken my advice way back in 720 AD (3 sessions ago) and stuck with Slavery and built up a credible economic infrastruture of markets, grocers and banks in core cities and then run merchants on farms instead of scientists and cottages.

I have taken the liberty of replaying the period from 720 AD to 1200 AD following my own advice and trying to stick to what you did except where my advice differed. I'll post the alternative SE savegame and discussion of the differences in a while. You might find it interesting given the continual struggle you have had finding gold to finance rapid expansion.

Great thread and very interesting. I am learning a lot about other ways of doing things here and the strengths and weaknesses of my own approach to a SE.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I produced a Great Prophet (from Oracle) instead of a Great Engineer. Is the Engineer essential to getting the Pyramids in time? Did this happen because I took too long constructing the forge in Hamburg after MC was discovered? How quickly does this have to be built?

Should Hamburg start on the Pyramids as soon as Masonry is discovered, then change to forge, and then change back?

1) Yes
2) Yes
3) 7 turns at normal speed? Check the analysis in the pregame thread to verify this number
4) No

Working backwards with longer answers

4) There's no point in investing hammers in the pyramids if you have scheduled a Great Engineer to rush them. The pyramids are only 450 hammers to build, and a Great Engineer provides 520 hammers minimum - but never gives you overflow.

3) The first GP comes when you've accumulated 100 points in a single city. For a philosophical civ, the Oracle is generating 4 GPP/turn, so you will get a great prophet 25 turns after finishing the Oracle unless you finish another GP sooner. Running an engineer specialist gives 6 GPP/turn, which means you need 17 turns to get the great engineer first. If both cities reach 100 GP on the same turn... the SDK appears to say that the tie goes to the capital, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Production happens before the GP count, so at the moment you pick your free tech you are already 4 GP behind. Furthermore, you can't start running the Engineer until after you have produced the Forge. Now, you can start producing the forge as soon as you have the tech, and the overflow from the previous turn can be applied to the forge, but even so it's a very tight window in which to collect 120 hammers.

If you miss, then the pyramids are minimum 17 turns further away.

1) The alternative to using the Engineer is to build the pyramids by hand, which is 450 hammers. Good luck with that. You could try skipping the Oracle (which is what puts you on the clock for the forge), but researching Metal Casting is 2 to 2.5 times slower than using the Oracle.

What you can do is delay producing the oracle until you have finished setting up the forge city for fast production. By sacrificing a few turns, you save waiting 17. You'll miss the 1000BC deadline, but that's just an arbitrarily chosen date; it's not going to kill you to get it in the 900s instead.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

3) 7 turns at normal speed? Check the analysis in the pregame thread to verify this number

I believe it's 6. The math goes something like this.

The Oracle will produce 4 prophet points per turn, so it will generate a Great Prophet in 25 turns. The forge specialist will produce 6 engineer points per turn, so it will generate a Great Engineer in 17 turns. At first glance, that appears to give you an 8 turn window to build the forge.

You lose one turn to the issue of ties. If both cities reach 100 points on the same turn, which kind of Great Person will you get? We don't know, so we can't accept a tie. The specialist needs to beat The Oracle by at least one turn. That shortens the window to 7 turns.

You lose a second turn to the mechanics of the specialist. The Oracle will generate 4 points on the same turn that it is built. The forge will not. When the forge is completed, you need to go to that city and manually assign the engineer specialist. He won't generate points until the next turn. That shortens the window to 6 turns.

 

[Yavathol]

What you can do is delay producing the oracle until you have finished setting up the forge city for fast production. By sacrificing a few turns, you save waiting 17. You'll miss the 1000BC deadline, but that's just an arbitrarily chosen date; it's not going to kill you to get it in the 900s instead.

Thank you for clarifying these points
To construct a forge takes 120 Hammers. If we go with 6 turns maximum time to construct it, to be on the safe side, that means the city needs to produce 20 Hammers/turn. Probably not realistic for this stage of the game, hence the need for chopping and possibly whipping, though calculating the timing of this would require more maths.

So what are the implications of this for working out the location of the second city? If each forest chop produces 44 Hammers (yes, I'm aware this number depends on a variety of factors, but I don't really know how to proceed), then either we need 3 forests to be chopped. No, that won't work, at 4 turns per chop that would take 12 turns, when we only have 6.
If we start chopping 3 turns before the Oracle completes, then we can squeeze in 2 chops, giving 88 hammers. This leaves 120-88 = 32 Hammers, which we divide by 6 turns to give a minimum 6 Hammers/turn requirement for our second city, right?

I can never seem to get my head around pre-calculating tile production for city site locations If our city has grown to size 3, say, where would be the best place to found it, in order to get 6 hammers/turn? (And also being closer to 2 forests than any other city, and not become unhealthy from chopping those 2 forests, and any other factors that need to be taken into consideration!)

Y.

 

[aelf]

If you are going for diplomatic victory, consider converting to Judaism or sending enough missionaries over to try and get Hatty and FDR to switch to Free Religion. Converting yourself is easier, though, as Hatty might never adopt FR and you can't please both of them together with your civic choice so you might need the same-religion bonus.

Winning by diplomacy is not always 'cheap'. Frequently, on continents, you might not be able to hit the land percentage required for domination, and your population might not be high enough to let you win by backdoor diplomacy. To win, you can either compete in the space race or earn the votes of other leaders. The latter is often not easy, but it probably lets you win the game earlier (compared to launching a modern war for domination or building the spaceship). I feel that if you can manuever yourself to a position to win by diplomacy, you deserve the win.

That said, I would recommend that you not set yourself up to pursuing diplomatic victory at this point. You should aim for domination, keeping Hatty and FDR happy and going for Julius' cities. And for that you need to build up a good invasion force, which you can't really delay. Diplomatic is really risky since you can't have shared civics bonus with both Hatty and FDR. You probably have to scrape up an extra +1 or +2 bonus with the one whose civics you aren't using to be diplomatically ahead of Caesar (assuming you converted to Judaism or they adopted Free Religion), and that's dicey. Besides, the best civic for you is Representation, which none of them prefer.

 

[Phrederick]

You don't need to worry quite so much about bumping culture up in wartime, because as you noticed, it doesn't effect your research. Why would you want to switch to state property? Mercantilism is giving you +6 beakers per turn per city, +9 in cities with a library and university. In a game where most of your beakers come from the research slider, state property can cut costs enough for you to raise the slider 10 or 20%, but in this game, all it can do is give you more gold. You've already got 1000, with +79 per turn. Are the +food for workshops and watermills worth lost +9 beakers per city? Environmentalism may be worth it if most cities are unhealthy, because +6 health is equivalent to potentially +6 food, which would allow you to run three more specialists. I would estimate the break-even point to be roughly when your total unhealthiness is equal to twice the number of cities, meaning that it would essentially give you enough food to run a specialist in every city.

Also, why did you choose free speech? The +2 from gold won't help much, how many towns do you have? The +culture isn't going to matter too much, since the only place you are facing cultural pressure is from the Aztecs, and there's no way way you'll win that culture battle. Additionally, you should be invading them sooner, not later. The only reason I can see from choosing fre speech is that it's low upkeep. I think that vassalage or nationhood would be better choices, or even bureaucracy.

I agree with Eggman that you should attack the Aztecs now. You've got two stacks (I assume), your economy is running a gold surplus, and he has land that is rightfully yours. Liberate it!

 

[Killroyan]

Agree with Phrederick, taking down the Aztecs should be the next target and free speech is not the best civ then. I would go for vassalage to get more experienced troops out.

But what I don't understand is the talking about civics with a diplomatic win. If you want to make the diplomatic win, just change the civs when the voting starts. That should score you some extra points with FDR and Hatse. Interesting game so far and the SE really pays of apparantly.

 

[aelf]

But what I don't understand is the talking about civics with a diplomatic win. If you want to make the diplomatic win, just change the civs when the voting starts. That should score you some extra points with FDR and Hatse. Interesting game so far and the SE really pays of apparantly.

Same civics bonus takes time to accumulate, and 1 turn to lose when you switch away. And, anyway, you can never run the preferred civics of both FDR and Hatty at the same time.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Winning by diplomacy is not always 'cheap'.

Of course not. If you're legitimately using diplomacy to get there, then it's not a "backdoor" win. In general, there are two factors that influence whether you're winning by "backdoor" diplomacy or "real" diplomacy: the number of AI leaders who vote for you and the percentage of the necessary votes that you contribute yourself.

It's trivial to get one AI to vote for you. You can always just gift a bunch of technology and resources to the lowly pariah civilization that everyone hates and that's lowest on the score. They'll vote for you. That isn't diplomacy. I usually feel that unless you have two AI's voting for you, you probably didn't use real diplomacy. Three or more AI's voting for you is even better but often isn't possible.

In a perfectly balanced standard continents map, each civilization would have 14% of the world's population. That means that if your two allies are contributing an average number of votes (28% between them), you need 34% yourself. Obviously you need a little wiggle room, but I feel like if you're contributing more than 45% to 50% of the votes yourself, you might be going backdoor. With 50%, even if you do have two AI's voting with you, you could manage to win with just one average sized ally. That indicates to me that you likely went more for domination than for diplomacy.

If I'm going for a diplomatic win from the start, I try to eliminate only one AI civilization. Sometimes it might be necessary to get rid of a second depending on relations. If you eliminate three or more AI's, that starts to look like a pretty non-diplomatic strategy.

These are just rules of thumb. There are lots of other factors that contribute to the situation, such as whether you built farms all over the place to grow your population at the last minute, how the civilizations were distributed over the continents, etc.

As far as how these map to the current game, you're likely to have two AI allies (Hatshepsut and Roosevelt). You'll probably have nearly 55% of the population yourself, based on land area and the fact that the specialist economy lends itself to population growth. You will have eliminated three AI civilizations.

IMHO, there's almost no doubt you can win diplomatically. You can probably do it with just one ally. If you go nuts with farms, you might even be able to do it with no allies. However, I'm not convinced it will require much actual diplomacy to do it.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Looks like Diplomatic and Domination are the easiest and quickest wins. The choice is yours.

It seems like you want a diplomatic victory where second place is isolated from everyone else. That's doable. Taking out monty will get you closer to either of the two choices since you are taking no diplomatic hit from the declaration of war and cleaning up your continent at the same time.

I agree, take out Monty now. Resistance is futile. Thay have that shrine? You want it. They are pressuring your recent conquests with culture? You want to keep them. Assimilate them

 

[aelf]

It's trivial to get one AI to vote for you. You can always just gift a bunch of technology and resources to the lowly pariah civilization that everyone hates and that's lowest on the score. They'll vote for you. That isn't diplomacy. I usually feel that unless you have two AI's voting for you, you probably didn't use real diplomacy. Three or more AI's voting for you is even better but often isn't possible.

Fair trade bonus gives you +4 max and supplying resources bonus gives +2 max. +6 alone, on top of peace and open borders, is almost never enough. The AI will only vote for your victory if it has a quite a lot of pluses with you. You need to be having the same religion/civics or both, and sometimes it's difficult to do so. Sharing religion with the pariah, for one, might cause the rest of the world to hate you, not to mention your repeatedly turning down the others' requests not to trade with that civ.

Real diplomacy or not depends on how you make the best use of the current situation. What you said is comparable to saying one is not a warmonger unless one has destroyed at least two AI. That is using the wrong yardstick to measure something.

If I'm going for a diplomatic win from the start, I try to eliminate only one AI civilization.

How do you plan to go for diplomatic from the start? That is just absurd and rearely ever works. Planned diplomacy is a paradox and the concept fails to take into account the changing situation in international relations. What if your longtime AI founds a late religion and switches to it? What if a rift appears between your allies? What if your planned ally becomes friendly to someone who is constantly threatening you?

As Palmerston said, there is no such thing as permanent allies, only permanent interests.

As far as how these map to the current game, you're likely to have two AI allies (Hatshepsut and Roosevelt). You'll probably have nearly 55% of the population yourself, based on land area and the fact that the specialist economy lends itself to population growth. You will have eliminated three AI civilizations.

IMHO, there's almost no doubt you can win diplomatically. You can probably do it with just one ally. If you go nuts with farms, you might even be able to do it with no allies. However, I'm not convinced it will require much actual diplomacy to do it.

You are right in that maybe one AI voting for Sisiutil would be enough for him to win, but that might depend on how much population JC commands. Going nuts with farms would probably solve any minor shortfall, though, so perhaps diplomatic is viable after all.

The real skill here would be to see the possbility of that and working towards as early a victory date as possible. And this requires some quick diplomatic manuevers, so the victory would ultimately be the culmination of both war and diplomacy. Bismark would be proud.