Assyria SG

[vadalaz]

First thoughts looking at the current situation:

- Great Scientist in 9, can also start Oxford immediately if I sell workshop now and gift Te-Moak to Attila so he can finish razing it. So we can get Artillery in ~12 turns I think.

- Congress in 13 turns. World's Fair should probably pass regardless of our vote, so I think we can focus on trying to vote down Embargo: Assyria and send out diplomats. Eliminating Rome would also remove one hostile vote from the pool...

- WF should be fairly easy to win, but we have no guilds yet. I want at least one Writer and one Artist here. Would be nice to ally Kiev as well, both for the Fair and a distraction for Attila, and liberate Kabul for even more culture. I could sell Te-Moak to Attila and have him DoW everyone for it, maybe that'll move his units out of the path to Kabul.

- We're pretty close to a natural Golden Age, and we have Chichen Itza now. I think we can get a natural GA in 10-15 turns if we buy a lux and stop growing, and spawn an Artist to prolong it

- Ahmad still not doing anything so we can just stay at war and forget about him until we're done with Attila I guess

- Need to start building a fleet soon

 

[vadalaz]

Alright here's the execution...

T170:
- 250g to Zurich
- Sell workshop in Te-Moak, sell Te-Moak to Attila, he pays 10 gpt + DoW on Gandhi, Maria, Hia and August
- Make peace with Manila, pledge to protect
- Diplomat to Vienna
- Buy Furs from Austria, now up to +8 happiness
- Micro cities to work production and gold
- Nineveh starts Oxford, Kar-Tuk switches to Writers Guild

T171:
- Austria marries Manila
- Attila settles another trash city near Rome. Augustus might actually be able to take it
- Assur starts Artists Guild
- Maria enters Industrial via Sci Theory

T172:
- Haile and Ahmad make peace, Ahmad gets a city for it
- We enter Indu via Fertilizer, start Metallurgy
- New spy is a diplomat to Mongolia

T173:
- Haile denounces Ahmad
- Ahmad builds Red Fort
- Salt, 43 gpt <> Gems w/Attila. This will complete Zurich's quest, next turn we can DoW to break the deal

T174:
- DoF with Mongolia
- Found Mt Sinai, 2 wonders left to find
- 750 gold to Kiev, become allies
- Zurich happy about the Gems
- Bribe Attila to DoW literally everyone, then DoW him. He's very unhappy, -22% combat str
- A and W guilds done, start Mu Guild in Assur, Cannon in Kar-Tuk
- Cocoa to Genghis for 240g
- Rome finishes Forge, starts Cannon

T175:
- Attila plunders our TR to Graz
- Gandhi denounces us

T176:
- Pay Austria to vote Nay on embargo Assyria, move to Onondaga

T177:
- Shooting Leoben

T178:
- Finish Metallurgy, start Military Sci
- Capture Leoben, get Architecture for it
- Sell Leoben to Genghis for 550 gold and Nay on Embargo: Assyria
- Lvl 1 spy to Kiev
- Zurich would fall next turn so I make peace with Ahmad. He pays some gold for it which I spend on CSs that we knew he had good influence with - Genoa and Antan, plus another 250 to Kiev because I'm paranoid
- Dur-Sh starts Knight which will turn into Cavalry soon

T179:
- Morocco in Industrial (Military Science), Mongolia also (Industrialization)
- Enough civs in Industrial to advance world era, so we'll actually become host now
- Attila recaptures Leoben
- Bulb Military Science, start Indu
- We recapture Leoben

T180 interim:
- Ahmad offers DoF, decline
- Attila recaptures Leoben again, he had too many ships here. He's seemingly running out of them now though. I lost a couple of meatshields and our last ST unfortunately
- Natural Golden Age begins

Spoiler Screen :

Cities will need some microing - they're on avoid growth and working gold and production mostly. I forgot to move the work of writing around for free XP, apologies.

 

[rickyvaughn]

Well...maybe I should've thought a little harder before sending a TR to Austria past our next target. Sorry about that.

t180: Capture Leoben again. Raze. Sell the seaport. Rome: Cannon to Cav. Assur: Mus Guild to Cannon. Someone stole tech from us in Assur. Take Scholasticism. Science goes from 274 to 327. Put most cities back on slow growth.

t181: Attila wants 4 of our cities for peace. I respectfully decline. Leoben is finally razed. Get Nineveh back on Oxford since Leoben didn't have a uni. Next turn. Arretium: Cannon to Cannon. KTN: Cannon to Cav.

t182: Finish Oxford. Take Dynamite. Nineveh: Oxford to Cav. Got Spices back from Ahmad, so Colombo is happy. Will be allies next turn after highest culture. Upgraded all our Cannon.

t183: Hia and Attila enter Ind. Going to let Austria keep taking crappy Hunnic cities on their continent and then bribe her against India. Traded Hia Nay: Embargo for Dyes. Vote in 2 turns. Careless with another Musket. Running low on frontline troops until I get more Cav online. Attila has 5 Knights in Kiev. Good call getting Kiev as a distraction.

t184: OB w/ Gandhi ends. Should get 2 Hunnic cities next turn.

t185: Vote Nay: Embargo. Take Sidon. Liberate. Take Arpinum. Raze. No longer getting techs from Hunnic cities. D-S: Cav to Cav.

t186: WF passes. Embargo fails. Propose Embargo: Morocco. Industrialization to Sci Theory. 7 coal hooked up already. Start getting hammers into WF. Move Iroq spy to Panama City.

t187: Maria wants to be Friends. I oblige. Figure we got some time before we get to her. Pop GA for more Golden Age. Maria makes peace w/ Attila. Bribe her against India for 5 gpt.

t188: Capture garbage Hun city by Rome. Moving in on Kabul. Moving W army towards Morocco. Need Cavs over there.

t189: Earned another GG. Took happiness from Patronage. GW born in KTN.

t190: We're at 60% on WF. We have 677. Probably can start weening off prod to it to build factories in main cities. Still need more Cav too. And, I did absolutely nothing towards building a fleet. I'm a huge failure. GP still asleep in Assur. GW asleep in KTN waiting for WF culture. I may have jumped the gun on moving the army west. May need to kill Rome first or at least kill his units. Getting more aggressive on our borders. Although, some techs from Moroccan cities would be muy bueno at this point. I trust you'll fix this mess in a short 10 turns. No pressure.

 

[vadalaz]

Thoughts on ideology and next SP choices? We just won WF, making something like 400 culture per turn. Free tech could be Patronage finisher - it's a bit useless, but we've pretty much won the game already so we can do whatever. I made peace with Attila and sold two of his cities to Austria so we can take a loan for 3 factories as well.

I'm assuming the plan with Morocco is to wait to rig elections in Panama, ally them whatever the price is, then DoW? Ahmad doesn't have any techs for us but his cities should be really good.

 

[rickyvaughn]

Not sure. Most of them seem fairly negligible to the task at this point. Open up Exploration for extra move? Commerce. Blow through Honor? I’m assuming Auto would win faster, but I’m open to whatever.

Yes, that was my thought on Panama.

If you’re bored and want to scrap this one, I’m open to finding something more challenging. Whatever you want to do.

 

[vadalaz]

I think it's clear we've won this: tech lead, hammer lead, big World's Fair etc. Let's kill Ahmad and start a new one.

Three ideas I had were:

- Songhai on a barb-heavy map (e.g. Boreal or Tilted Axis) with an Honor/Piety mix. Both trees are pretty good for Songhai so I've been wondering how that would play out. Possibly on Epic speed to capitalize on barb hunting, if you don't mind a slower game

- A revisit of Mediterranean map from Extended Europe map pack. Previous game on it was a loss. It can be a pretty tough map for some civs I think, although the loss was due to the ruleset we had, not so much the map itself. Portugal could be interesting

- Maybe play a game with max turns: 200 and try to win by score, or set a score goal? That can actually be pretty difficult on some maps I think, even with all kinds of AI abuse

 

[rickyvaughn]

I can get on board with a Songhai Piety/Honor game even on Epic. This current Marathon gauntlet is killing me, though. I just started a 20 turn mine. We could do no worker stealing, which shouldn’t be much of a crutch with the barbs taking plenty back to their camps. Maybe no bribes? Cook the map or find a third party to find a game with a fun neighbor/(s)? Any of your options are fine. I’ll have to look and see if I have the Extended Europe Pack.

 

[vadalaz]

EE is this custom map pack: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/extended-europe-22-civs-tsl.500154/

I'll try to roll a Songhai map though, probably on standard speed. No bribes and no steals sounds good to me.

 

[rickyvaughn]

Remember to take out those map packs before starting, or I can roll one or several.

 

[vadalaz]

Does this look good to you? The settings are Askia, Epic, Deity, Tilted Axis, Std Size, random opponents

Spoiler Citrus :

I went for a stronger looking start since we're banning bribes and steals. If this is fine, I'll open up a new thread.

Edit: Now that I think about it, there isn't a strong faith pantheon here which would make Piety more enjoyable. I'll roll some more maps.

Edit 2: Here's another one. Salt means a strong start and a good pantheon. Tundra is better but I think it's highly contested on Deity TA. We could try to utilize the policy in Piety that gives you the pantheon of second most popular religion. Being in tundra also means we're closer to the polar region infested with barb camps.

Spoiler Salt :

 

[rickyvaughn]

Works for me. We can try for tundra faith, but salt could be a decent plan B. Does it have Raging Barbs or were you just relying on the map layout for that?

Open Honor for Barb culture and then finish Piety or what were you thinking?

 

[vadalaz]

Normal barbs. As far as I know, Raging increases the spawn rate of barbs in existing camps, but doesn't make new camps appear faster. We want camp gold here, and it'll be easier to clear lots of camps with normal barbs.

I suggest keeping track of how much gold and culture we make from barbs. I think that's a fun statistic, and we could maybe set some kind of side-goal when we're closer to the end of the game.

In my opinion Tradition opener is sort of a must-have in almost every game, the borders just grow too slowly without it. Maybe grab that first if we hit a culture ruin? But yeah, I was thinking Honor opener into Piety, probably with Archery as first or second tech.

I'll open the thread later today.

Edit: The Songhai thread is up! As for this one, I took Marrakech and Attila's Court and stopped there. I say that's a good enough ending to this game.