AZ-05: Dan Quayle Challenge

[shyuhe]

verbosity leads to unclear inarticulate things. Thus, I'm posting my turnset now.

There were lots of demands and trades made.

Demands:
Hammurabi demands engineering (given)
Frederick demands conversion to Judaism (refused)

trades:
Augustus - engineering + 25 for compass
Pericles - CS +115 for philosophy
Frederick - paper for drama + 245
Ramses - paper for 650

I built some castles in some cities to increase powers. The workers are working away. I also settled the south city to claim some iron.

I've spammed islam to most of our cities for the shrine bonus. Buddhism has also spread for the OR bonus. Maybe we should consider spamming Islam across the continent to make some relations sour. Otherwise, this is going to be a peacefest = very fast tech pace. Not that we can't backdoor an AP win regardless, but it'll be easier to control the tech pace if we can start some wars (which we can't do right now).

Everybody but Frederick (cautious) is pleased with us now.

We are ready for any unforeseen events that may or may not occur.

 

[azaris]

You can actually bribe Hammurabi to Buddhism, not that it does much good. I think the rest of the world is now following one religion or another, so we can spread Christianity to all our cities without risking it spreading out early. The hammer bonus from AP is much welcomed. Spamming Islam around is also good for our economy.

I would backfill some cities, one SE of the wine and another on the desert tile up north. No point letting Pericles or someone sneak a city there. I would also start planning where to put forts for defense. It's a bit annoying to have Pericles as a neighbor because you can't be sure where the border is going to be in 100 turns (just like Monty, but for different reasons).

If you have time take a turnset before you leave, NoChildren.

 

[NoChildren]

got it. I'll play sometime today I hope.

 

[NoChildren]

What are we going to do techwise. Are we going to beeline to a military tec. say rifling or whatever it's called that gives you grenadiers nowadays? And then stop completely there ow what's the plan?
Also I have a question is The AP rendered obsolete when any civilization discovers radio or when we do so?

 

[azaris]

Impossible to say now, who knows which way the diplomatic situation shifts after Free Religion becomes popular and Hereditary Rule goes away. The risk is that once we want to win we can't get OB or our opponents are in Theocracy. That could require some manipulation that needs techs we don't have and need to learn.

Let's head for Rifling now and see what happens in the meanwhile.

 

[shyuhe]

IO'm not certian about the rules of obsoleting the AP. I think as long as the UN isn't built and we don't know Mass Media, it won't obsolete. I may need to WB and check that one though.

 

[NoChildren]

Ok, I'm officially done with missionary duty. I lost count but i think I had 7-8 failures and only two success's. Am I totally wrong when I say that this can't be normal?
So if you think that nothing much happened during my set, that's where the hammers went.. down that damn old drain.

I built the two cities that were talked about (SE of wine and northern filler).

Education came in, I traded it to Frederick for HR, Guilds, World map and a small sum of gold. I didn't take literature or music since i figured those would only be unnecessary points (He originally included literature in the deal as well).
This made it possible for me to set out on the glorious quest to see to that we have the most overeducated American people in the world, thus i started to construct some Unis.
Oh, if anyone cares, Hammurabi won the liberalism race and Freddy completed the Sankore.

I set research to Printing press as no one else was going that route at the moment. I really love to be able to know what the others are researching.

Pericles came in and made a demand on my last turn:

I thought really long about this one. I was hoping to trade education to him as soon as he would pick up gunpowder, but since i caved in on his demands that is out. On the plus side he is friendly with us now.

And it seems that the global lovefest continues:

We really should try to stop this. sooner rather than later...

and this is what the stats look like:

We're on top in score again, yay! but wait.. that's a bad thing isn't it? or is it?
hmmpf, this really gets me all confused...

I lowered the espionage a bit to get some trades, I don't know if we should raise it again. Some of the AIs have an advantage in espionage towards us, but I'm not sure how much they are spying on each other. I spotted at least one -1 you spied on us when i was checking through their relations though.

Another question. he Forbidden Palace, shouldn't we build it?
or does it generate unwanted victory points?
Since I didn't know i didn't build it... but otherwise it seems like a no-brainer.

 

[NoChildren]

oh, the extra work boat is for the clams in the west. we have some unhealthiness issues to attend to...

 

[azaris]

I'll play a turnset today.

 

[azaris]

Turn 0: Some strange builds going on. Aquaduct in Phoenician, which is already gone past its happy cap. University in Scythian, which produces a total of 8.75 . Seattle and San Francisco are building granaries really slowly.

Configured some merchants and scientists in Washington. We could probably benefit from grabbing a corporation and using it to drain money from the AIs. For that we need Great People. Great Prophet joined in Washington.

Espionage set to Ramesses, Freddy, and Hammurabi.

Turn 2: Babylonian spy caught in Scythian.

Turn 3: Seattle converted to Christianity.

Turn 5: PP -> Gunpowder.

Turn 6: German spy caught in Washington. Gems found in mountain near Philadelphia.

Turn 9: Gunpowder -> Banking (prereq for RepParts).

Turn 10: Pericles completes Versailles. Ramesses is spooling up the espionage.

Turn 12: Banking -> Replaceable Parts.

Turn 14: Augustus completes Taj Mahal.

I built some musketmen in the end to keep us up in power. I also started fortifying the eastern border and running roads to the forts. The score ceiling is approaching rapidly, we might not be able to grab too many techs after Rifling.

At the moment we have 24% of iMaxScore (Dan Quayle). Score by winning this turn = 68522 (Augustus Caesar).

 

[azaris]

Since tycoonist is still missing, I guess it's shyuhe again. Not much happening, so they should be quick builder turns. Let's hope the AIs start adopting Free Religion soonish.

 

[tycoonist]

i am back and ready to rumble!!! i can play tonight if you want

 

[azaris]

Good going, tycoonist. Go ahead and play.

 

[tycoonist]

i will play and post by about 4pm GMT

 

[tycoonist]

i am getting sadly unreliable i will try and play tomorrow unless anyone wants to play first

 

[shyuhe]

I will give this a quick spin then and we can swap spots tycoonist. Got it and playing shortly.

 

[shyuhe]

Quiet turn set. This game is becoming a complete builder's fest. Maybe we can use the AP to force civs into war against each other? If we start spreading christianity, can we start a crusade against one of the other civs?

On the good news, we now have a DP with both Pericles and Hammurabi. This is the diplo situation:



So our backs should be safe. I've turned off research for now as we have rifling and the only two techs left that we want are democracy and communism (for spying). I think we should start spreading christianity to the other civs as SM will obsolete monasteries and limit their ability to spam the religion within their own borders. Maybe we can get liberalism and go free religion, then bribe everybody else into free religion so that they can't use OR to spread christianity?

I made a few tech trades after finishing replaceable parts. I picked up astronomy, SM, nationalism, and constitution. This brings our tech situation to this:



I had a number of offers for economics, and even one offer for literature + music I declined both as we don't need those techs. Our current score is about 66,000 but it's been slowly going down through my turn set.

I don't think we should have built those extra cities on the fringes as they're just going to add to our final score... But since we can't get rid of them now, we might as well put them to use. I've continued building a few more military units (in the form of rifles now) so we should be safe from any attacks as long as our DPs stay in place.

I also built some banks so that we can move our slider. Banks can apparently fail though. Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.

Speaking of mismanagement, I think I'm doing a wonderful job of mismanaging this empire Have fun tycoonist.

 

[azaris]

Cities you can always starve or gift away. Tech is the one thing you can't get rid of. I wouldn't spread Christianity yet. I'm not sure how well the AIs can play against the AP, but there's always the risk one of them decides to go for cultural.

We have 27% of iMaxScore (Dan Quayle).

 

[shyuhe]

if the AIs have scientific method and aren't in organized religion, they will not be able to spread christianity. It just means that we'll have to adopt free religion or some other religious civic and bribe the AIs to change. That being said, it may be a little early. Does anybody know how the crusade dow works? It sounds like it may be an option here but I haven't played around with the AP much myself yet...

 

[NoChildren]

well I guess this means that I'm up. is there anything I should know? or will it just be a builders set trying to maintain a status quo?
I might play in 4-5 hours or so, otherwise I guess i'll be playing sometime tomorrow.