Buce01: The Slavemaster

[Aabraxan]

I'm not sure it will happen as you think; the first time Mono is traded, it will lose it's monopoly value - the trade is instantly 'known' even in the IBT.

lurker's comment: Perhaps I'm mistaken here, but I think a tech loses its monopoly value the instant you trade it. I seem to recall other games where I was shopping techs around. Checked out everyone's offers for a tech, sold it to the highest bidder, and then sold the tech back around. I seem to recall that values dropped as soon as I traded the first time.

 

[Phaedo]

If they have the contact, the information is immediately shared. After it was all said and done, we are only down Invention to Zulu, up Eng and Mono on Murray and Korea and even with the rest. Murray and Korea are out of gold. We have 803g in the bank and currently making 99gpt.

Off to start turn 1 now

 

[Bucephalus]

If they have the contact, the information is immediately shared. After it was all said and done, we are only down Invention to Zulu, up Eng and Mono on Murray and Korea and even with the rest. Murray and Korea are out of gold. We have 803g in the bank and currently making 99gpt.

Off to start turn 1 now

As a matter of interest, how did you achieve that?

 

[Phaedo]

Here's the preview:

Trade with Zulu Mono, 3gpt and 561g for Feud
Well, of our four trading partners: Murry and Punk boy can't even go 1gpt for Mono or Feud, so they're broke; Our best price for Feud is with the Babs for Mono and Eng + 4 gpt + 3g (Korea wants both techs, 35gpt and 6g); we have blown our bank; and Korea is our only real option for cash (Babs are the next best option who can only give 9gpt + 340g for Mono). Make the Bab trade.

Korea is still willing to give all her gold (40gpt + 217g) for Mono so she can't be in very good shape. Iros will give us Rep + 420g for Mono and Feud. Korea, on the other hand, will only give Rep + 10g for both.Murry will give us a straight up 1 fer 2. Go for the Iro trade.

Babs will give us 13gpt + 343g for Rep. Korea will still give us everything she has for Rep. Zulus are the only ones with Invention. The Bab deal is the only thing that really helps us so I'll stop there.

All said and done, we are up tech on Korea and the Hittites (Mono and Eng) with 803g and 99gpt.

 

[Bucephalus]

That's excellent trading, well done; I thought you said it is your weakness?

 

[Phaedo]

I took my time with this one, took notes on all the trades with each move and was incredibly lucky. We got a monopoly with Mono and could trade it for another monopoly tech. After that is was trying to get the most gold as well as the techs.

I made a mistake as well. We are only up Eng on the Koreans and Hittites, Mono got us the money

 

[Phaedo]

I thought you said it is your weakness?

I've picked up a thing or two from Rage, thanks to the team

 

[Phaedo]

Post, and come back to finish out the pre-turn. Morning comes early and I won't get this done tonight. This an relatively rare situation for me so I'm interested in the results.

So if tech is traded instantly between known civs, the price quoted by civs we didn't trade with will rise. So the question is wether to take the most expensive or the most lucrative trade first. It seems Zulu does have the monopoly on Engineering, so that makes the decision easy. I'm going to record all my reasonin g to get a benchmark on the change between price offered, and prices asked in case I want to replay it and do more analysis. Please bear with me.

Cont:

Trade with Zulu Mono, 3gpt and 561g for Feud
Well, of our four trding partners: Murry and Punk boy can't even go 1gpt for Mono or Feud, so they're broke; Our best price for Feud is with the Babs for Mono and Eng + 4 gpt + 3g (Korea wants both techs, 35gpt and 6g); we have blown our bank; and Korea is our only real option for cash (Babs are the next best option who can only give 9gpt + 340g for Mono). Make the Bab trade.

Korea is still willing to give all her gold (40gpt + 217g) for Mono so she can't be in very good shape. Iros will give us Rep + 420g for Mono and Feud. Korea, on the other hand, will only give Rep + 10g for both.Murry wil give us a straight up 1 fer 2. Go for the Iro trade.

Babs will give us 13gpt + 343g for Rep. Korea will still give us everything she has for Rep. Zulus are the only ones with Invention. The Bab deal is the only thing that relly helps us so I'll stop there.

All said and done, we are up tech on Korea and the Hittites (Mono and Eng) with 803g and 99gpt.

Save and break.

Have a little look around. Turn up research to 90% (Lit in 4)

IBT Iros and Babs demand our exit from their territory (we oblidge). The Babs start heading South through our territory. Hittie settler pair comes in sight. A number of builds come in and change them all to MIs as place holders

T1 260AD
Found Pocaea SE of Ephasus.
Get workers going on improvements
Shuffle troops to slow down the Hittites and start consolidating our forces.
Decide to wait a turn for the revolution to get another settler out.
Get Monarch from Murray for Eng and 258g (he wouldn't even think about adding 1gpt).

IBT Iros are building Sun Tzu's and Egypt finish Kinghts templar. The Republic of Babylon is born

T2 270AD
Forgot about the GA. I guess revolution will have to wait (1 turn left)
Anticipating peace for a while I am using our units to block the Iros from our land.
Get the settlers moving down as quickly as possible.

IBT Hittites plant their city as do Iros

T3 280AD

Found Scyon while the rest of the settlers move into position (nice work Miles Tag on those settler builds). It's a race for the land
Worker moves.
Spy some Hittite units moving through Zulu land.

IBT GA ends. Revolution!

T4 290AD
Lit next turn (of we weren't going into anarchy). Decide that speed is iportant with our Lit bid so wait until we get it before the revolution. Turn down the slider for 38gpt
Worker turns and settler movement

IBT Zulu land a settler pair on our E coast. Learn Lit and turn down the research

T5 300AD
Found Gorton and Mytilene.
Worker turns and movement.
Shop Lit around. Zulu will give us 450g but won't sell us Invention.
We don't really want Zulu to have Libs so I figure we should hold on to it for a bit.
Declare the Spartan Revolution! (7 turns)
Cycle the cities. Some will starve to prevent riots but the big ones won't shrink.

IBT Iros send a bunch of units up towards the Babs.

T6 310AD
Stop pending riots, check the diplo screen for trades. Zulu's price hasn't changed.
Workers keep improving.

IBT the Iro units keep moving and the Bab troops make a noticable Westerly turn. They must have lost a city to the Iros.

T7 320AD
Found Tegea
Do the tour of cities, workers and settlers
We'll have spent our settlers in a turn or two so time to start bringing the troops together. I'm not quite sure who our next target will be so I'll mass a group by the Iros and another one out West near the Babs and Hittites.

IBT Zzzz

T8 330AD
Do the tour.
Decide we need to improve more towards Rhodes so start working my way that way.
Zulu will give us their 100g for Lit but I think that's just a function of their economy.
Kick the Babs out as they don't want a new war and we are stong against them. I didn't think it was a great risk.

IBT Zzzzz

T9 340AD
Do the tour.

IBT Murray wants to continue our peace treaty. I gues we have to take it. I assume it doesn't tie us in for 20 turns. Iros want to talk, no.

T10 350AD
Found Syracuse
Do the final tour. In the East, there's a stck of swords are in Ephesus if we want to upgrade them. I think the best thing to do with Lit is wait for someone else to get Invention (or whatever) and use to cheapen the buy.
We could get in at least 1 more city in the West. SE of the Gold over by Artemisium could support a town.

Spoiler :

 

[CivActuary]

IBT Murray wants to continue our peace treaty. I gues we have to take it. I assume it doesn't tie us in for 20 turns. Iros want to talk, no.

IIRC it does tie us in to 20 turns, didn't we have this come up with the Babs earlier? I think you were right to take it though.

 

[Bucephalus]

I'm surprised that we were ready for a switch to Republic so soon; did you run it through Civassist first?

We will probably need to review some of those military builds, and lose some of those excess Cats, if unit support isn't to be a problem.

I got it.

We are tied to peace for another twenty; it's the same problem as before - always renegotiate deals should be off.

 

[Bucephalus]

I've had a look at the save, and it does seem that we have some adjustments to make once we emerge from Anarchy as a Republic.

To be honest Phaedo, I think we were a bit premature with it.

However, spilt milk etc.; I'm going to have to scale down the military somewhat, and switch builds to libraries then markets. Some lux deals will also have to come in to the equation.

Probably upgrading the Swords to MI's would be the best way to keep the military relatively competitive.

There is also the question of the FP left unanswered; has anybody had their mind changed since we last discussed it? If not, Miles T you hold the deciding vote on this - Marathon or Rhodes?

Comments?

 

[Miles Teg]

Ok I've looked it over and Rhodes looks like the optimum place. It will be a shield monster, and those forests can be cut down when we need more food.

 

[CivActuary]

Just looking at CAII it looks like once we emerge as a Republic we will have unit costs of over 100gpt - I definitely think the first priority will be paring this down somewhat.

We have 25 catapults - while I love artillery, we probably should upgrade some for better effectiveness and disband some others.

CAII says we have a regular Sword somewhere too, he can probably go.

My preferred way of cutting the unit costs down is to get more cities. I think there is still some room between us and the Babs we can fit some cities in. To expand further we need to wait 10 turns until the deals with the Babs and Iros run out.

The Iros have extra silks, and we have extra spices. If when the 10 turn peace runs out we focus our military on Babylon, that may be a safe deal to make.

Get Monarch from Murray for Eng and 258g (he wouldn't even think about adding 1gpt).

Did you put this deal through? CAII says we still do not know Monarchy.

 

[Bucephalus]

Did you put this deal through? CAII says we still do not know Monarchy.

I missed that; it is to be hoped that he didn't - we don't need it and can't trade it.

 

[Bucephalus]

My preferred way of cutting the unit costs down is to get more cities.

In the long term, I agree; however, until they get past size six they only give one unit support each.

Re. Cats: we cannot upgrade them until Invention IIRC, so I'd rather we built any necessary Trebs from scratch; we really are in a hole economically, until we get some Libraries and Markets up, and get a few towns past size six.

I think we are due a period of building rather than warring, anyway; there are no significant military advances for a while (knights, maybe), so I don't think we will fall dangerously behind in a military sense if we take time out.

We have a pretty decent Empire once it is sorted out, and we've plenty of Slaves with which to do that, so there is no imperitive to go to war.

This does bring a thought to mind, though; we need to be thinking about which VC we are going to pursue, because what we decide will affect our foreign policy and our tech path during this Age.

I have already stated my preference for Space, but - as always - I will go with the majority decision.

So if you could all give it some thought and express your' preferences, we can adjust our strategy accordingly.

I intend to play this evening, so any further thoughts on my set need to be expressed in the next 12 hrs.

 

[Phaedo]

Sorry about the rep switch. I somehow had it my head that we wanted to switch as quickly as possible. I think there are a number of units we can cut back on. I think we only need a very limited number of Hopilites and we probably don't need LBs so the archers could go as well. I also think there is soem room for a few more cities.

I didn't trade for Monarchy. I don't remember why I wrote that. Maybe I was just checking the price. I think it had to do with the 1gpt. I did think about it when I started yesterday and then realized that Monarchy doesn't give knights

Can't we upgrade to trebs after Eng? We can build them with Eng.

 

[Bucephalus]

Can't we upgrade to trebs after Eng? We can build them with Eng.

Maybe, I'm really not sure; but since we need a period of stability, it seems a waste of unit support to have them hanging around.

We can certainly rid ourselves of Archers, though.

Don't fret about the revolution; it rarely takes long to adjust things and make it worthwhile. I'm probably a bit over cautious in that respect - I like to hit the ground running, with a smooth transition.

What thoughts do you have on VC?

 

[Phaedo]

AS for VC, I'm easy and will go with whatever the majority wants. We are well-staffed with slaves for the moment. We are in no danger of disappearing and don't face any immediate threats. I've just finished a space race and Rage is almost done too. Domination or Conquest would be a nice change. But that's a very shallow desire so I'll be easily pleased. Easy to please and hard to satisfy .

It would be nice to see if we can't find the other continent shortly. I really do apologize about the revolution, I just wasn't thinking. I somehow was thinking that self research of Lit debate was about speed of acquiring Rep as we could have got it for peace on the IBT. So I obviously misunderstood the earlier discussion. A mental lapse on my part. I realize now that we lost quite a bit of gpt because of it as well. Those 7 turns still counted toward deals but we couldn't benefit from them. Still, I am curious to see how long it will take to get things on track. I think it can be done rather quickly.

So I opened the save and started peeking around. We can easily get rid of 22 units (7 Hops, 10 cats, 4 Archers and the warrior. ). That will give us 64gpt unit upkeep. If those units are disbanded to help commerce builds, we could cut that down. We could cull 10 swords to bring it down to a 44gpt cost.

Those cuts could be set in place in the last few turns of anarchy and effected once we had a government. The shields from those 32 units could come in handy for builds. We have 2 turns left of anarchy to set the builds we want in place. Fast markets in Athens, Thermopylae and Sparta will cover a good chunk of that unit cost or add to research. If we continue the 0% science until we get a few Libs down, after we build markets, we would easily be in the black and really be able to make a serious research bid. I'm not averse to putting a bit toward science like a lone scientist or 20-30% research to cheapen the price of a "must-have," but I think economy builds should come before science builds at the moment It's unfortunate we don't have another lux. At 3 luxes, the markets kick in for happiness. Maybe the next war

I think the workers basically should improve the core out. A few single slaves were at work and I captured 2 on the pre-turn so they aren't really set up for streamlined efficiency, but no moves are being wasted. The empire needs to be improved. I think we could send 2 groups of 5 slaves to improve the outskirts (2-turn roads and 4-turn irrigation); get roading and irrigating toward Marathon and Syracuse; and Make sure the areas around our towns with less corruption should be maximized.
2 groups of 5 (2-turn road irrigation)
5 groups of 6 (1-turn roads/2-turn mines)
4 groups of 4 (2-turn irrigation/ chops)
It basically leaves a group of 36 slaves divided into groups of 4 or 6 to do the work while 10 stay on the outskirts and work their way in. Working on 2-turn improvements works out better than 1-turn groups at this point with the area we have to cover. The added benefit of a groups of 5 is that improvements can proceed slightly faster than growth and if they stay on the outskirts for roading duty, the addition of more slaves can be broken up into useful units easily.

I think we could also irrigate some grass to promote growth. Not a lot, but maybe 1 or 2 shared squares around the empire. We have a number of pop 2 & 3 cities. The faster they get to pop 6, the easier everything is. I'd rather do that than build a bunch of Grans. Core river cities sure, but I'd rather spend worker turns than shields. Those 3rd ring will have available tiles that could be used after the desired growth. We could then go back and mine them after the rest of the land is improved. By the time we got back to the squares, they would have the desired growth. I also think we should save any chops until after we are in Rep. We can use them for basic buildings at a time when we need some quick builds (because I triggered the Revolution too quickly ). It's a resource that can be used effectively now and will lose its efficacy as time goes on. After rails, we will want to chop anyway but won't get much of a boost from the shields. If there is a city that needs the guaranteed 2s on a tile to maintain a desired shield count, of course we wouldn't chop it.

As for the FP, I would like Marathon (as I would prefer gold over shields) but I'd be quite satisfied with Rhodes. Just for the record, I'm 90% sure that a city with the FP won't have to worry too much about flips. It acts like a palace. However, Rhodes has great potential to be a powerhouse too, so it's a decision between two great locations. I'd be happy with either.

Wherever we build it, I think it should be timed to be built the same turn we come out of Anarchy with the leader. Can we use the leader to fill the box in anarchy and have it come out built at the same time that we come out of anarchy?

 

[Bucephalus]

AS for VC, I'm easy and will go with whatever the majority wants. We are well-staffed with slaves for the moment. We are in no danger of disappearing and don't face any immediate threats. I've just finished a space race and Rage is almost done too. Domination or Conquest would be a nice change. But that's a very shallow desire so I'll be easily pleased. Easy to please and hard to satisfy.

Let's see what the others think.

It would be nice to see if we can't find the other continent shortly.

I think it might be nice to see if we can find it.

I really do apologize about the revolution, I just wasn't thinking. I somehow was thinking that self research of Lit debate was about speed of acquiring Rep as we could have got it for peace on the IBT. So I obviously misunderstood the earlier discussion. A mental lapse on my part. I realize now that we lost quite a bit of gpt because of it as well. Those 7 turns still counted toward deals but we couldn't benefit from them. Still, I am curious to see how long it will take to get things on track. I think it can be done rather quickly.

Don't sweat it; I estimate we'll have a better than Despotic economy by the end of my set.

So I opened the save and started peeking around. We can easily get rid of 22 units (7 Hops, 10 cats, 4 Archers and the warrior. ). That will give us 64gpt unit upkeep. If those units are disbanded to help commerce builds, we could cut that down. We could cull 10 swords to bring it down to a 44gpt cost. Those cuts could be set in place in the last few turns of anarchy and effected once we had a government. The shields from those 32 units could come in handy for builds. We have 2 turns left of anarchy to set the builds we want in place. Fast markets in Athens, Thermopylae and Sparta will cover a good chunk of that unit cost or add to research. If we continue the 0% science until we get a few Libs down, after we build markets, we would easily be in the black and really be able to make a serious research bid. I'm not averse to putting a bit toward science like a lone scientist or 20-30% research to cheapen the price of a "must-have," but I think economy builds should come before science builds at the moment It's unfortunate we don't have another lux. At 3 luxes, the markets kick in for happiness. Maybe the next war

I think we will need to run zero Sciene for a while, but it's almost an optimum strategy at this level anyway; I would like to have Chivalry, though.

We can trade lux's for happiness.

I think we could also irrigate some grass to promote growth. Not a lot, but maybe 1 or 2 shared squares around the empire. We have a number of pop 2 & 3 cities. The faster they get to pop 6, the easier everything is. I'd rather do that than build a bunch of Grans. Core river cities sure, but I'd rather spend worker turns than shields. Those 3rd ring will have available tiles that could be used after the desired growth. We could then go back and mine them after the rest of the land is improved.

Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea.

As for the FP, I would like Marathon (as I would prefer gold over shields) but I'd be quite satisfied with Rhodes. Just for the record, I'm 90% sure that a city with the FP won't have to worry too much about flips. It acts like a palace. However, Rhodes has great potential to be a powerhouse too, so it's a decision between two great locations. I'd be happy with either.

MTeg came down in favour of Rhodes, so I'm going to run with a simple majority, since we can't reach a concensus.

Wherever we build it, I think it should be timed to be built the same turn we come out of Anarchy with the leader. Can we use the leader to fill the box in anarchy and have it come out built at the same time that we come out of anarchy?

Yes.

 

[CivActuary]

Kind of partial toward space on this one, I'm the opposite of Phaedo, the majority of my recent solo and SGs have ended up domination or conquest. But it's your game Buce, I'll go along with whatever the plan is.