BtS 3.13: Infinite City Sprawl 02 - Cities 'n Conscription

[Zherak_Khan]

Do we have a plan for Tao/Islam-shrine? It is obviously worth it if we can afford the hammers to spread Tao, but I remember last game we were rather lazy about spreading our off-religion (Confu, in that case), running at 5-15 gpt times multipliers for most of the game.

Current goals:
- UoS
- SM
- Settle as many useful cities as by any means possible
- Increase AI friction (check? )
- Get infrastructure, i.e. spread Confu, build Temple/Monastery/Barracks/Granary/Courthouse

Future goals:
- Get Rifling and Nationalism
- Kill, crush and destroy

Q1:
- War before Rifles and/or draft? We can raise a huge stack, either Sword/Cata or Mace/Cata, based on whip and hammers. Depends on how much land we are able to grab peacefully, I guess.

 

[mystyfly]

Why can't you open the log? Please don't say its because someone used someone used The BUG Mod? If it is, you should know that v2.20 (or later) of BUG has fixed the 'crash to desktop when opening the log' issue (I hope).

I don't know. I thought no one used BUG this time but the game crashed when clicked ctrl tab. I do know that in the more recent versions (don't know since when exactly) this issue is supposed to be fixed.
BTW I really like BUG mod, great work from you guys there!


@Khan: these aren't really current goals, rather future goals. We're nowhere near either paper and/or DR. Our science rate sucks so badly it'll take some time. When I said we were doing fine tech wise, I didn't mean our beaker output, much rather our position. We can use techs like CoL or Philo to backfill what we need. But we should consider heading straight for paper (and USak for science boost) and bulb DR. It'll take ages if we have to self-research it.
So building another shrine will be dependent on how fast we'll get our next GPs.
If we build another shrine, we certainly wont be spreading it as agressively as we did with confucianism (in this game).

War w/o draftles is out of question I think. Once our cities are established, we can have some cities on permanent missionary duty and others building maces, catas > trebs and some spies. These units should only serve self-defence purposes until rifling I think.

 

[ungy]

OK- got it. I'll post some thoughts later tonight.

 

[r_rolo1]

I used BUG but it was 2.21 version ( suposedely shouldn't crash... )

Our main concerns now are more cities and more units. Period.... The religious wonders are far away by now.

 

[ungy]

OK- plan to keep research toward CS-Paper-DR (lightbulb).

We really need U of S and SM for this variant.

Settle the wine to block Ramesses--we can use those resources.

If currency is available for trade when Ramesses gets it research it partway then trade COL.

We have enough military--I don't think we have a threat and it's really costly to build units we don't need when we have critical need for everything else.

 

[ungy]

OK--inherited turn. I switch to a couple of settlers--it'd be nice to get the grid up to Yayoi so we can keep it.

Monte comes with a request:




Then he makes peace with Washington.

175...

200 we found Lahore on the wine. Switch research to currency for trade.

225...

250 Freddie makes peace with Monte

275 Parthenon BIDL

Trade COL to Egypt for currency

We trade for monarchy:




300 we put a little into Aesthetics then make a trade with Freddie:



I decide to switch gears and go for lit. Only one who has it is Louis and he's at war on 2 fronts. We have marble so take a shot at the Glib is reasonable--we can sell lit later.

325...

350 Hagia Sofia BIDL

375 we get a prophet
Chicken Itza built by Freddie
I trade gold to Willem for 6GPT.

I sell Willem Aesthetics:



a little cheap but everyone else has it and we need the $

My worker usage was a little weedy--Pataliputra needs some cottages--I didn't notice that.

Not sure if we want to keep working the priests in Bombay--we need one for
DR and not sure if we want another for shrine.

We are in caste--I was assuming I'd switch out to slavery but didn't see anything to whip and didn't. We can also take HR--maybe sell our gold to Monte for 5GPT then?

In general we should cottage rather than work caste specs. I'm assuming our next civics are HR and slavery but I'll leave the timing for the next up.

 

[ungy]

save is here:

 

[shyuhe]

I guess I'm up? Got it. Will try to post later tonight.

 

[shyuhe]

I didn't build a single cottage in my set I didn't really see the benefits...

IT: I revolt to slavery + HR. Also, since we're spiritual we should build temple --> monastery, not vice versa.

Turn 132 - Monty declares on Willem. Yippee!

Turn 134 - GL is whipped to completion. Louis had lit and I wanted to make sure we got it - the GS source will help with education -- liberalism.

Turn 135 - CS is completed. I revolt to bureau + caste system immediately.

Turn 136 - Willem wants help (No):


Turn 137 - Fred wants lit for free and I agree (we already built the GL):


I sold literature later to Washington and Willem as Ramesses completed the MoM and a bunch of AI ended up with cash. I guess they all want that extended GA... But it gave us a good 400 gold - we should have more than enough now to finish paper + DR, unlocking our awesome combo (too bad we lack stone).

We have two interesting bribes to consider:



Sowing discord is always a good thing... but I'm not sure if a dogpile will be the best solution. However they all have Confucian cities so we can use the AP to stop a war if it looks like it's getting out of hand. I'll leave it for the team to decide though.

 

[mystyfly]

Where did you build the GL?

I think we should bribe Ramsses vs monty as he's still at peace.

 

[shyuhe]

the GL was built in Delhi.

 

[stuge]

R_rolo's up, isn't he?

Ramsesses vs. Monty freestyle is a good bribe, I think. We should then trade phil and CS to Freddy for some techs. Not sure if we really need any but feudalism might be nice.

 

[mystyfly]

Dug out a Roster:

Roster
Zherak_Khan - skip (still on skip dude?)
stuge - on deck
mystyfly
ungy
shyuhe - just played
r_rolo1 - up now

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, got it.....

I like the idea of throwing ramesses into a war with loony monty, but Fred .... too much of a dogpile....Will try to trade.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Unfortunately, I am still on skip. Come Wednesday, it'll be two weeks since I sent my computer to service, which means I should get it back anywhere inbetween that Wednesday and the Wednesday two weeks later. Unfortunate for the team captain to be without Civ-access, but these kinds of things happen.


I seem to remember that we are just about leading in score at this point in our last game, while things are looking to be going to be a bit tougher in this game. Nonetheless, we have achieved every single of our goals this far, even picking up GL as a bonus, and, barring a surprise dogpile, I think this is going to go our way.

Our only failure as far as I can see has been failing to get a religious ally, but friction seems to be going reasonably well anyway.

With our production/drafting being pure awesome and AI tactics being dismal, arriving at Rifling at technological parity/superiority should lead this our way. At that point, we should take care not to needlessly butcher our economy as we did in ICS01 by building countless Rifles/Cannons we did not need.

With any luck, I guess I'll be back in business just as post-rifling MM-hell breaks loose . Thanks for great reports guys, I think we are just where we want to be, even if we are a bit shorter on land than I would like. Remember though - ICS landusage is much more efficient than regular no-overlap style.

I kind of dislike how likely we are to wind up with a two-front war against Freddie/Ramesses, seeing as they are both Hindu and our only available targets, but we'll manage I guess. Neither of them are very impressive war-mongers.

I would like to give more useful and detailed input, but it's kind of hard to visualize exactly what is going on without getting to open the save.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, I was doing my normal WFYBTA checks in the beggining of the game ( don't have time to play it fully now... sunday afternoon = walking time ( to clear ideas ) )... I spotted this:

Spoiler :

That ,combined with the bribe to Ramesses , would put our game in three 2 on 1 wars ( on Monty, Willem and Louis ) and would mess a lot with the diplo without the danger of of massive dogpile....

OTOH he offers Drama, Feud and construction ( or Calendar ) + 60 gold for the techs.

I'm somewhat divided bewteen both. Ideas?

 

[mystyfly]

IMO we should take war. It slows every AI down and we don't end up with one that, once we go one way (ramsses/fred), to attack us. We don't really need feud (and calendar I think), drama and construction are rather cheap techs anyway we can backfill later.

Also the more DOWs there are the more messed up diplo between the AIs - easier going later (we can avoid dogpile more easily and they're stuck at lbows probabely (no muskets if we're lucky).

 

[shyuhe]

I would go forward with the bribe. It stunts AI growth without causing a dogpile, makes them stop trading with each other, and all that goodness

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Regarding the trade:

a) I am kind of unconvinced by no-common-borders AI-AI bribe-wars. They tend to sign peace in about ten turns anyway, so you want to get in eachother's faces from the get-go. As far as I can see from the map, Fred/Louis shares 0 kilometres of borders, but then again, I might be wrong.

b) Pure negative-modifiers, no-traderoutes, no tech-trade might be worth it by itself, even if don't lose units and pillage eachother.

c) HBR is not going to give us anything, ever, unless we want mounted units right now (why?) or Cavalry eventually (why?). It will, however, cost us WFYABTA-limit and perhaps even a bit of goodwill, for not making a lopsided trade. However, it does give us a better idea of how willing he is to make the trade.

 

[r_rolo1]

I would not take HBR of the trade of course.... we don't need it now. Freddy and Louis already have a previous history AFAIK ( whill have to check that when I got my sleep in order )... at least they have bad diplo due to the Louis-Willem war ( Freddy and willem are best buddies ), so I assume that the war would not be over in 10 turns....

HBR is highly priced by the AI..... maybe we could squeeze something more useful from this (maybe construction?... cats are always helpful... )