Competing VC's

[shyuhe]

Do we want to think about backstabbing Willem? He has engineering so we'll need lots of siege to take him down but it would relieve a lot of our western border and SB should keep him pretty occupied. I think.

 

[Habitus]

Mainly forested tiles + unforested hills outside a cities BFC (inside the BFC it can get the event but i'd expect those to be chopped/mined)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Do we want to think about backstabbing Willem?

It's certainly an option. As I said, using our newfound production (from Apostolic Palace buildings and Forges) for either military units or Wealth (to get us to cheap Universities faster) would probably be our best options at this point.

We have no real mobile forces to speak of, though... the bulk of our "army" is trapped in a border City near Babylon, to prevent the City from flipping while we build up Cultural buildings there.


The rest of our "army" consists of a couple of Horse Archers that were sent to a Barb City in the far SW.


So, it will be a while before we have much of a military to speak of.

Mainly forested tiles + unforested hills outside a cities BFC

Do you know which Events they are? I have the list of Random Events, so I could look them up if you knew roughly which ones they were.

 

[Habitus]

One is for Deer, one is for later on i think helps spaceship parts, we have wine so can't get that event, and the hill one is for silver. I think if we have 5 or more happy resources the resource ones don't happen anyway. The desert one is active after education i think, but since the last desert tile got a road we have to wait on a border pop on our southern cities as i think an unroaded desert is down there. Can't remember the number of the events, i only know them from some of the silly messabout games i have at times

 

[mystyfly]

I don't really have much time, just a few comments, mostly to dhoomstriker:

- Your signs (you put plenty ) showed what you considered best. I rarely keep many forests as I don't see much benefit in them and that city so I decided to chop them. Unhealthiness is overrated. Also, atm one of the city's forests is in babylonian control anyway.

- That ex-charly city can have its borders popped with a brief spell into either caste system or NSR. Let's put one of the best traits in the game to use! It being undefended is due to thhe shortness of defenders of aachen (which was just held by one unit at one point).

- I was assuming we were in full military mode so I didn't bother switching to religious crap mid-set.

- I was also assuming that charly would cap much faster (and I don't think I am the only one thinking like this). The HAs can be built/whipped quickly and we do have sufficientt 1MP units, if only charly had capitulated more quickly, they would also be available.

- I don't see us in danger of DOW by either SB or Just so why not trade away the only real resources anyone wants. We're not doing enough trading anyway.


What to do now, I don't know as I couldn't check the save. Generally, stepping on the toes of #1 AI is what's best. I don't think willem would bring up much resistance but would slow us down even more. What about beelining draftles and take ham down then?

Correct me if I'm mistaken but we're neither allowed to trade for techs nor for gold (we can't sign 10t peace treaties if AI is in WHEOOH) so that capitulation deal actually is illegal, no? Not that I'm complaining that we got some "free" gold or something Just trying to stick to the rules...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Also, atm one of the city's forests is in babylonian control anyway.

It still counts for our health as long as it is within our fat cross, even if it is in the borders of an AI City

- I don't see us in danger of DOW by either SB or Just so why not trade away the only real resources anyone wants. We're not doing enough trading anyway.

Why not? Well, we don't need to do so. I've made trades for most of the Gold per Turn available using our Wines. Excess Happiness Resources are being offered but we have several extra Happiness in our Cities right now, so there is no NEED to divest ourselves of our Ivory.

Getting Whale from Chale for Ivory is one Ivory trade that we are doing (or maybe it was for Horse and Ivory was for his Fur), because Charle can then build War Elephants to fight on our side.

It would be nice if we had more Health Resources available to get in trade, but I don't remember seeing any, just Happiness Resources that I stopped getting once we were done our war and which we don't need now by quite a margin.

- That ex-charly city can have its borders popped with a brief spell into either caste system or NSR.

We have our State Religion in every City and none of our border Cities are a Holy City, so switching to No State Religion would be a very questionable move at this point. We should be sticking with Org Rel or Pacifism for the most part from now on. You could always slot in Theology if you wanted the flexibility to switch to Theocracy.

What to do now, I don't know as I couldn't check the save. Generally, stepping on the toes of #1 AI is what's best. I don't think willem would bring up much resistance but would slow us down even more. What about beelining draftles and take ham down then?

Hammurabi has Knights and is going to be at Muskets anytime now. He'll probably have Cuirassiers within no time, too.

Since Hammurabi is Pleased towards us, I'm not really worried about him. Let him beeline the techs that suit your Victory Condition of choice, to make researching them cheaper, while the remaining two big boys (Willem and Sitting Bull) duke it out which each other and while the remaining two wimps sit in their corner and rot (Hatty and Justinian).

For example: you want drafting? Well, Hammurabi already has Nationalism. You want Cuirassiers? Hammurabi will probably beat us there, making them cheaper for us to get to, as well. You want to build The United Nations? Well, Hammurabi is likely to get to Mass Media first and is likely to even build the Wonder for us; between now and then, we'd just want to beat up on at least 1 more AI, so that we'll have enough population to be the #1 player in population in the world.

- I was also assuming that charly would cap much faster (and I don't think I am the only one thinking like this).

I checked every turn and the option did not come up until after Prague fell.

The HAs can be built/whipped quickly and we do have sufficientt 1MP units, if only charly had capitulated more quickly, they would also be available.

I still don't understand what Horse Archers will do against Maces, Knights, Longbowmen, Pikes, and Castles.

Maybe there was a tiny window of opportunity if we had decided to take Peace with Charle, but honestly I didn't start the turnset with anywhere close to enough units to take on Babylon and I did not believe that it would be fair to whip 3 or 4 times per City, given our ruleset. No, there was no chance during this turnset to take down Babylon, given that consensus was to stay at war with Charle until we got the capitulation.

Seeing as how Hammurabi will not attack at Pleased and seeing as how he is Pleased with us, I'm nowhere near convinced that we should go after him anytime soon and particularly not before we get Cuirassiers. If we get those, then there will be a brief time window before he gets Riflemen.

I would say that any of the other AIs could be safely attacked with our current tech level but you'll have to build the military units first. Besides, someone called for us needing Courthouses desperately and it just made sense that if we were going to switch into infrastruture mode that we get some production-based buildings up, too. Like I said, these buildings can be equally used for building up a military now or for Wealth to pump us through some techs.

Correct me if I'm mistaken but we're neither allowed to trade for techs nor for gold (we can't sign 10t peace treaties if AI is in WHEOOH) so that capitulation deal actually is illegal, no? Not that I'm complaining that we got some "free" gold or something Just trying to stick to the rules...

Well, we can get Gold per Turn from Resource Trades, so getting 2 Gold per Turn in the context of Peace sounds legitimate to me (I would have gotten it the next turn anyway, from selling a Resource). I thought that getting Gold was fine, too, but now that I have re-read the rules, it appears that you are correct that we aren't supposed to take Gold in trade, which would mean not taking a lump sum of Gold as part of a peace or capitulation deal. I think that that rule was put in place more to avoid us doing things like selling around Philosophy to every AI and to avoid Demanding Gold from AIs when they are not Pleased or Friendly with us (that's an easy and cheap way to spoil a relationship by up to -10 negative Diplo points), but yeah, it seems like a strict interpretation of the rules says that I should not have taken the lump sum of Gold as part of the capitulation (but I think that the Gold per Turn was legitimate, since it's essentially just the same as getting a Resource in trade).

If need be, we can get some neutral party to World-Build-out the 70 Gold that we got as part of the capitulation deal. You could also just gift 70 Gold back to Charle, which, in the long term, shouldn't come anywhere close to giving us +1 Fair and Forthright Trading, so it shouldn't really matter in the big picture to do so.

 

[shyuhe]

Meh, it's only 70 gold. No biggie either way.

 

[Habitus]

It still counts for our health as long as it is within our fat cross, even if it is in the borders of an AI City



Why not? Well, we don't need to do so. I've made trades for most of the Gold per Turn available using our Wines. Excess Happiness Resources are being offered but we have several extra Happiness in our Cities right now, so there is no NEED to divest ourselves of our Ivory.

Getting Whale from Chale for Ivory is one Ivory trade that we are doing (or maybe it was for Horse and Ivory was for his Fur), because Charle can then build War Elephants to fight on our side.

It would be nice if we had more Health Resources available to get in trade, but I don't remember seeing any, just Happiness Resources that I stopped getting once we were done our war and which we don't need now by quite a margin.



We have our State Religion in every City and none of our border Cities are a Holy City, so switching to No State Religion would be a very questionable move at this point. We should be sticking with Org Rel or Pacifism for the most part from now on. You could always slot in Theology if you wanted the flexibility to switch to Theocracy.



Hammurabi has Knights and is going to be at Muskets anytime now. He'll probably have Cuirassiers within no time, too.

Since Hammurabi is Pleased towards us, I'm not really worried about him. Let him beeline the techs that suit your Victory Condition of choice, to make researching them cheaper, while the remaining two big boys (Willem and Sitting Bull) duke it out which each other and while the remaining two wimps sit in their corner and rot (Hatty and Justinian).

For example: you want drafting? Well, Hammurabi already has Nationalism. You want Cuirassiers? Hammurabi will probably beat us there, making them cheaper for us to get to, as well. You want to build The United Nations? Well, Hammurabi is likely to get to Mass Media first and is likely to even build the Wonder for us; between now and then, we'd just want to beat up on at least 1 more AI, so that we'll have enough population to be the #1 player in population in the world.



I checked every turn and the option did not come up until after Prague fell.



I still don't understand what Horse Archers will do against Maces, Knights, Longbowmen, Pikes, and Castles.

Maybe there was a tiny window of opportunity if we had decided to take Peace with Charle, but honestly I didn't start the turnset with anywhere close to enough units to take on Babylon and I did not believe that it would be fair to whip 3 or 4 times per City, given our ruleset. No, there was no chance during this turnset to take down Babylon, given that consensus was to stay at war with Charle until we got the capitulation.

Seeing as how Hammurabi will not attack at Pleased and seeing as how he is Pleased with us, I'm nowhere near convinced that we should go after him anytime soon and particularly not before we get Cuirassiers. If we get those, then there will be a brief time window before he gets Riflemen.

I would say that any of the other AIs could be safely attacked with our current tech level but you'll have to build the military units first. Besides, someone called for us needing Courthouses desperately and it just made sense that if we were going to switch into infrastruture mode that we get some production-based buildings up, too. Like I said, these buildings can be equally used for building up a military now or for Wealth to pump us through some techs.



Well, we can get Gold per Turn from Resource Trades, so getting 2 Gold per Turn in the context of Peace sounds legitimate to me (I would have gotten it the next turn anyway, from selling a Resource). I thought that getting Gold was fine, too, but now that I have re-read the rules, it appears that you are correct that we aren't supposed to take Gold in trade, which would mean not taking a lump sum of Gold as part of a peace or capitulation deal. I think that that rule was put in place more to avoid us doing things like selling around Philosophy to every AI and to avoid Demanding Gold from AIs when they are not Pleased or Friendly with us (that's an easy and cheap way to spoil a relationship by up to -10 negative Diplo points), but yeah, it seems like a strict interpretation of the rules says that I should not have taken the lump sum of Gold as part of the capitulation (but I think that the Gold per Turn was legitimate, since it's essentially just the same as getting a Resource in trade).

If need be, we can get some neutral party to World-Build-out the 70 Gold that we got as part of the capitulation deal. You could also just gift 70 Gold back to Charle, which, in the long term, shouldn't come anywhere close to giving us +1 Fair and Forthright Trading, so it shouldn't really matter in the big picture to do so.

Babylon was more a if everything goes well option, the 2 border cities were more the targets to ease culture pressure. Since Charl took longer than expected to cap the window closed as Hammy gained LBs in that time. The fake war was more to try and help charl get more than 2 average cities, as it is I doubt, even with us focusing the research, that he'll be too much help or get to any significant techs first as it is.

Atleast we have a small break now to chat as myst does his exams, and hopefully have an idea of what we want (with the current player slanting towards their VC of course)

 

[shyuhe]

We need to (1) fix our economy and (2) do something about Hammy in the long-term. Justinian and Hatty are non-factors on this map and I'd be stunned if SB showed an inclination to win. Willem is the only other AI capable of threatening a win and he'll probably get bogged down in a long war with SB. Unfortunately, I don't see us attacking Hammy without cuirassiers or cannons.

 

[shyuhe]

I know mysty said he's busy but is he out all week?

Let's move him to the end of the roster as penalty:

Dhoom (played)
rolo - UP
Habitus (on deck)
shyuhe
mysty

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm not sure that it's a penalty, since he wanted to be at the end, but that change is fine with me as long as you send a Private Message to rolo to let him know that he's up.

 

[r_rolo1]

Got it But will only play tomorrow or wednesday.

 

[mystyfly]

I know mysty said he's busy but is he out all week?

Let's move him to the end of the roster as penalty:

Try "mysty is completely busy this and next week". Thanks for moving me down the roster. @dhoomstriker I said I preferred that due to my availability not regarding any potential advantages in the game (well at least I don't see them right now ).

Though someone posted that the delay is nice to have some serious discussion..?

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, sorry for the delay, but, due to unexpected visitors yesterday, I had to move my whole SG routine for this week one day ...

I'll play and post tomorrow .

 

[r_rolo1]

First thing I did in this set was to click the red button and get the AP result...

Spoiler :

Not very exciting , I agree. We also got the circumnavigation bonus and Babylon finished Sankore in this IBT.

The set was quite uneventful... we are in a rebuild phase, so I guessed that the best thing to do was to go Paper->Edu. I was not expecting to get Lib at this point, but Edu is always a good tech to have.

I also tried to put some more religions in our cities... mainly the jewish one ( given that all of our cities at this point are with our state religion ), but also some tao . We are getting a lot of cultural pressure from Babylon :/

Speaking of babylon...

Spoiler :

By that time Islam was already founded by Hatty ( she would make SM later ). I also demanded Calendar from Charlie ( that one was a fluke ... I wanted to ask what he wanted for it and misclicked ... ).

Babylon won the Lib race ... well technically there was not a race :/

Spoiler :

Babylon also adopted Rep+Merc somewhere during the set.

Traded with hatty ... she was the only one without Philo, so I tried to get the best out of it:

Spoiler :

To be honest I would had prefered Machinery, but this is not so bad ... we actually need some extra culture against babylon :/ ( notice a recurring theme in my rantings ? :/ ) and some cathedrals would help.

Another AP vote ...

Spoiler :

So much variety of choices...

Charlie decided to end our 2gpt for nothing deal ... I seized the chance for get his furs since we are skimming the hap cap in some of the ex-charlie cities:

Spoiler :

Now onto the barb city issue ... The barbs played me a nasty surprise by going LB on their archers the turn before i was going to attack and 3 HA vs 3 LB is not a good idea. Thankfully our vassal decided to sacrifice a phant and a lb vs it the turn before his SoD got there and we captured the city:

Spoiler :

We obviously need to send some missionaries downstairs, but the city came with 2 workers, a lighthouse and a fully developed neighbourhood.

I ended the set with Edu ( BTW, sorry, I only noticed now that I played 16 turns instead of 15 :/ )

Spoiler :

I dropped some Univs in the queues, preparing for Oxford if we want to. I putted machinery in the queue, but I fully expect to trade for it in 1 turn

End of set F1 and tech trade screen pics:

Spoiler :

The tech picture is a little less bad, but I still cringe looking at Babylon. I do not want to look warbent, but IMHO we will need to fight them before they go warp speed. Anyway we can trade some stuff with Edu and and with Music ...

On other issues, we have some missionaries floating by ( 2 tao , one jewish ). i really think we should put some religions in our border cities, especially in the borders with Babylon ... that or get Sistine out of them . But again we are still in the recovery period after war and I would prefer something more advanced military wise before going to war again.

Speaking on war, I wonder if we could capture some land from our less than liked eastern friends... I'm particularly eyeing Hatty if she does Versailles soon.

Techwise ... I really dunno, but my gut feeing is to tech towards rifles

>>Save here<<​

 

[shyuhe]

You forgot that we're not allowed to trade techs rolo We wouldn't be in such a tech hole if tech trading was on.

I'd much rather go after Willem and/or SB since Hatty is far.

 

[r_rolo1]

Oh, I can replay from the tech trade if needed :/

About Hatty ... My idea was to capitalize a eventual Versailles made by hatty and take both her and something of Justinian. Nobody likes them anyway

 

[shyuhe]

Meh, I'm fine either way.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Charlie decided to end our 2gpt for nothing deal

You just took his second source of Fur. We already have one source. Perhaps it does not make sense to:
a) trade away our Corn that could be traded to another AI
AND
b) receive a second Fur Resource (which is meaningless to us)
ANd
c) deprive our vassal of the Fur's Happiness

So, I would aim to cancel that Corn <-> Fur trade.

Babylon... IMHO we will need to fight them before they go warp speed.

Honestly, I think that doing so is a lost cause. We'll be better off attacking and capitulating other easier targets (such as the two western AIs that appaer to still be at war with each other in your 1260 AD screenshot).

Once we have the combined might of a few Vassals, then we can consider taking on Babylon. In the meantime, they only need to be Pleased with us and yet they are Friendly toward us, so we do not need to fear them at all (other than their Cultural pressure).


By the way, is Egypt in a war or simply plotting one? If they are in a war, with whom are they fighting? It must be one of the western two or else us, since no one else has a fist icon, but they could also just be plotting a war and have that icon.

Anyway we can trade some stuff with Edu and and with Music ...

Uhhhhh, what? I would like to kindly ask someone to World-Build-out Music from us.

I mean, a big part of the challenge is not being able to trade with any of the AIs. Taking Music in a trade is also game breaking relative to non-Cultural Victory Conditions, in that the only trade we took just happens to be the key tech for one Victory Condition while other Victory Conditions will not get the same benefit. For example, if someone "accidentally" trades for Mass Media, will we allow it to stand? I doubt it. So, why would we make an exception for Music?

Maybe we can get Cam_H to remove Music from us in the World Builder.

Techwise ... I really dunno, but my gut feeing is to tech towards rifles

We can still fight one of the western AIs with our current tech level, but if we want to continue to go to war beyond with an AI that is already actively fighting another AI, we'll soon actually want Cuirassiers, no?

I don't see how fighting Egypt will help, unless they are in a war with Justinian. Being in a war with any other AI just means that Egypt will be stockpiling troops that cannot leave their homelands, due to not having Open Borders with Justinian (at least they didn't have them the last time that I remember looking).

Fighting one of the western AIs, however, gives us the chance to avoid fighting an AI's main stack, meaning that we would only have to face City defenders and the odd roaming Catapult, as said AI's stack will have already been sent against the other western AI.


Either way, I'd say that we should:
1. Wait until someone removes Music from us using the World Builder before playing more
AND

2. a) Use our production advantage to pump out current-tech units (War Elephants, Cats, Horse Archers, and Longbowmen) and then plan to fight one of the western AIs
OR
2. b) Use our production advantage to pump out some cheap Universities at a 0% Science Rate, pump out Oxford, and then spend our accumulated Gold to tech up to Cuirassiers and then go to war using them as our primary attacking units

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Maybe we can get Cam_H to remove Music from us in the World Builder.

Hi folks, I took the liberty to remove it... I can remove philo from Hatty if u like too

Cheers,
Ras