Competing VC's

[mystyfly]

Culture is pretty screwed, agreed. Without trades, traditional diplo is screwed as well but backdoor diplo(mination) isn't

Cam_H is up; up to rolling another round

 

[r_rolo1]

When Thebes is captured, the diplo player can try to play the AP card, though. 2 vassals should be enough for that ... IIRC every civ has the AP religion now, so you don't even need to OB for that

 

[shyuhe]

Nice report!

Again, courtesy of www.random.org, I present the following roster order:

rolo - UP
shyuhe
Habitus
mysty
Dhoom

It's nice to see that at least we won't lose the game to Hammurabi now Still a bit up in the air as to who from our team will win though Also, I imagine Hammy has infantry now so I don't think we'll be able to touch him for a while. While his annoying culture pushes up against us more

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, once we have Rifling, if we don't already, it would be good to pick up Democracy (Emancipation to deal with Unhappiness, Mausoleums to deal with War Weariness and because they are our unique building thus we should build some of them, Representation, possibly a run at The Status of Liberty--it would be an awesome Wonder to get for any Victory Condition, faster Cottages so that wherever we have invested in working Cottages, the payoff time will be quicker, and the potential to use Rush-buying + extra Hammers from Towns).

As if those things weren't enough, we could then build a bunch of Espionage-related buildings and use our larger-sized empire to horde Espionage Points, to help us steal our way up to Infantry of our own. Now that we have Stone on a map that is very poor for Corporations, we should build Castles and avoid the Economics tech--getting Communism later while we steal our way up the Military Tech line.

We should also consider building some Monasteries before they expire, since Monasteries will still still allow one to build Missionaries after Scientific Method is learned... they will still produce Culture after Scientific Method is learned, too, which can help in our border Cities.

Oh and yes, please, capture the City with the Apostolic Palace in it. I'd love an instant, unstoppable AP Victory. You'd make my day. Of course, if you Vassalize Hatty without capturing the City with the Apostolic Palace in it, you will rue the day that you got control of the saved game.

 

[Habitus]

I think Just has the AP now as it was in Thebes which he captured Hatty has a double holy city, hopefully it's like Just's ex one with Market, Grocer, Bank, and shrine as it be handy to capture it. I'd probably just kill Just off as he isn't in the main religion and would be just a 2 city vassal like Charl

 

[r_rolo1]

I guess I'm up then ( thanks RNG :/ )

And Habitus is right , it is justinian that holds the AP since the capture of Thebes by him. To be honest, I do not see any reason to let him live besides screwing the diplo win player ( hi Dhoom ), and most likely will try to erase him of the face of the earth anyway ( him alive means a bunch of issues with unhappiness and whatever ). Same for hatty.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm pretty sure Hammy already built the SoL ages ago.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Meh, all of the other reasons are more than enough to justify going after Democracy.

Besides, stealing our Military techs will be far more efficient than trying to self-tech them without picking up Representation and just trying to beeline the Military techs ourselves.


Also, we could consider putting our Military units to use by switching to pillaging mode; if there are Cities that would be questionable to capture, we could pillage said Cities heavily instead.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, let us be frank on the AP city issue:

First the rules are very strict about the AP city capture: no raze. After that you can't give it away ... so the player that is in condition of capturing it ( me or the next player ) will basically decide if the game is won via diplo.

My thoughts on that ? I prefer a win to a lose, and a win of someone than a global win where no one wins ( aka Domination ) ... and I find myself in a situation where my win is unatainable I will give the win to other player if possible ( in fact the rules state that quite clearly )...

 

[vranasm]

lurker

should be no surprise that I am most eager to see the big reveal ;-).

 

[shyuhe]

It'll be interesting to see if people are going to start trying to sabotage other VC's now that it's clear that victory is almost within our grasp (notwithstanding our horrible tech rate).

 

[mystyfly]

@Dhoomstriker: I disagree with most of your post Regarding democracy; "build UB since its our UB" is no reason, neither is WW or emancipation anger atm as we're far in the green on that topic (happiness). Regarding thieving, I don't think we could put that to proper use in time, we have nearly zero EPs on ham and we risk losig his friendliness with us (he is also friendly with all our current vassals). Our techrate is pretty good actually if we have our cities on building wealth not useless infra like monasteries. All they keep after their (soon) obsoletion is the lousy 2 cpt which is a non-factor at this state of the game.

@Rolo: I doubt winning AP and domination are the only alternatives in this game so I wouldn't go ahead and "gift" diplo victory just yet but that is entirely up to you.

 

[Habitus]

Conquest is possible with getting Sitting Bull capped/killed along with Hatty (Just will already cap once he'll talk) and then have a everyone vs Hammy war to cap him. How easy and quick that would be is another thing all together

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Hammurabi only needs to be Pleased, not Friendly toward us to not declare war on us.

Also, if we build most of the EP buildings, then our chances of a Spy being caught go down to a negligible level. So, I wouldn't worry about screwing up our relations--we won't send in the Spies until we have a large EP advantage, which means that the chances of Spies being caught are almost none.

The fact that we have few to no EPs invested in Hammurabi is EXACTLY why building a ton of Espionage Buildings is a grand idea. For now, we will NOT target Hammurabi with our Espionage. The BEST usage of Espionage is to keep it "turned off" of an AI for a long time and then, when you have a high EP output, POUR IT ON HEAVILY on said AI.

The worst possible strategy is pour it on slowly throughout the game, which is the game's default setting (equal Weighting to all AIs). Since we were smart enough to target our EPs earlier, we have a crucial advantage against Hammurabi with being about to keep EPs off of him for now and then be able to pour on a massive amount of them before he can counter the "EP attack" with his own Espionage program's points.

It's an EXTREMELY efficient way for us to get to Infantry/Machine Guns/both so that war against Hammurabi is not only possible but feasible. REMEMBER: the rules state that we cannot lose a City AT ALL COSTS. So, we can't declare war when we are underprepared, because we would be forced to send EVERY SINGLE UNIT to defend a City, even if it meant losing other Cities.

That is why we must be careful about not declaring war with weak units--because we cannot afford to lose Cities--and because we can't just raze everything that he owns, as we can't raze some of the Cities that control certain Wonders which he owns, so some Cities of his would be vulnerable to a counter-attack. With him having RAILROADS, all of our border Cities are at risk--even Riflemen will not be sufficient to effectively defend ALL of our border Cities, which we need to do according to the rules.

According to the rules, we will all lose the game if a City of ours gets captured, so we can't attack Hammurabi until we get SOMETHING to fend him off, be that Infantry, Machine Guns, both, or whatever else we can steal from him (such as Tanks if he gets that far in the tech tree).

It sure beats "spamming Cavalry" and then being unable to defend one our Cities and instantly losing the game as a result.


I will willingly accept a tougher challenge to win and will allow you to capitulate Justinian while he still controls the AP City. After he is our Vassal, we can get automatic Open Borders with him to send him Hinduism, in order to bring him to "our side of the flock" anyway.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, sorry for the delay in the report, but I'm seriously sleep deprived today due to a %$#$$% toothache

Anyway, I started the set by making moves vs Justinian and Hatty ... then I got a event that really got me thinking:

Spoiler :

The third option was by far more interesting ... some more money spent, +1 diplo with all hindu players .... and war with SB :/ I did not felt like doing war with SB now and anyway SB is not a priority target so I picked the second one

Like I said, most of the set was warfare ...

Spoiler :

As we were adancing for the next target city, the AP leader election was called....

Spoiler :

Peanuts ...

Anyway, like I said, we have some serious issues with Babylonian culture:

Spoiler :

This is not the only case ... that other city north of babylon that we captured is also with 9ishs% of revolt prob. This can be solved by 2-3 rifles in each city and IMHO does not require to push down our attacking troops.

The final capture of the set.

Spoiler :

And no, it is not the AP city That will be next if the next player wants to...

BTW we already started bombing the Egyptian cap:

Spoiler :

Currently with 20ishs culture defense.

Now on end of set pics:

First the victories screen:

Spoiler :

Dhoom is saying below that it does not make sense what i said about the culture vic player. Ok, let me rephrase it: Babylon started to gun to culture this set. The fact that them made a hit wonder ( +50% culture , remember ) and adopted FS does not help either , especially added to the Sistine culture. We are alredy seeing the effects of it as revolts in captured cities ...

So we have to deal with this in one way or another and IMHO there are not much of options. or we win before babylon goes culture ... or we have to slow it down.

Tech screen:

Spoiler :

War makes wonders for our comparative tech rate BTW I finished RP, teched Rifles and chemistry and got to 1 turn from Steel ( cannons, obviously ) and stockpilled some cash for upgrades.

Wonders page:

Spoiler :

Thr last two were made during my set.

The war front as it is in the end of the set:

Spoiler :

Justinian is reduced to the AP city and it is in reach from a mounted attack ( mounted stack currently healing in city ), Hatty has 2, but as you can see in the pic above she has more missionaries there than actual units

>>Save here<<​

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Babybol is clearly our #1 threat to the win ... in fact I think even the culture VC player will want to take them out, since he made a hit wonder and adopted FS.

That doesn't make a lot of sense... capturing a Hit Wonder won't help a Cultural Victory player. Culture only matters in 3 Cities; it's not a cumulative thing across the empire. Now, capturing The Eiffel Tower, THAT would make sense.

In fact one of our ex-bizantine cities laready revolted to them and has a 9% of chances of revolting again :/

That situation is a top-priority issue. That situation means sending the majority or all of our mobile troops to said Cities, possibly without being able to performing any further warring for now: we can't lose said Cities to an AI. Recall our rules on the subject:

(2c) you can NEVER give up a city

shyuhe even used all-caps and he rarely does that, so it has to be treated as one of our most important rules.

Or we AP the guy out or we will have to take him down IMHO ...

What does that mean? Have we captured the AP? If not, since we can't raze the AP City, about the worst thing that you could do to me is Vassal the owner of said City.

 

[shyuhe]

Looks like I'm up? I guess it's up to me to make sure Dhoom doesn't win

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, like I said, winning will still be possible, it will just require some effort, instead of being trivially easy. Just be sure to garrison our Cities to avoid them flipping (and thus us losing) and I'll accept whatever you decide to do on the AP subject.

I don't really see Cannons being enough to stop an AI with Machine Guns/Infantry when we aren't allowed to lose any Cities and can't raze some of their Cities, either, so I still suggest going toward Democracy, building Castles, and building other Espionage Buildings (Jails and Security Bureaus), so that we can steal our Military Techs.

EDIT: Even if you don't like the Espionage idea, Cultural Buildings and Castles in our border Cities are what I would consider the minimum for us to be able to eventually stop garrisoning our border Cities with most of our mobile military units.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, updated the report and awnsered to some of the questions of Dhoom.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, there is no doubt that the Cultural Victory player will benefit from the capture of Sistine Chapel and/or the Eiffel Tower if it gets built. My point was more that capturing a Hits Wonder is unlikely to help a Cultural player since the boost to Culture will be in the wrong City.

And while it might be nice to eventually get Riflemen to beat down the chance of revolting, in the meantime we really need to prioritise garrisoning our border Cities as our first action of the next turnset. Losing a City is as good as losing the game... think of it like "single City elimination" that only applies to the human player.

Alexandria looks like a real junker of a City. Oh well, it has been kept instead of being razed, so now we have to keep it.

What's the "CHECK THIS OUT " sign over Constantinople all about?

I would not be against revolting into Free Speech ourselves--we do have a good number of Towns, meaning that whatever we spend our Commerce Sliders on, we'll get a good benefit, while our border Cities will benefit from a boost to Culture.

Liberalism would be a cheap tech to research, since every AI already knows it (giving us maximal bonus Flasks) but would be an even cheaper tech to steal if we go the Democracy-theft route.


Basically, we just need to get "enough" Culture in our border Cities to get them out of the revolt range, but before that happens, we need to stuff said Cities with units until the Cultural Buildings can be built and start to have their intended effect.


I would also not be against letting Hammurabi tech to Mass Media and build The United Nations for us. That way, we can still get the UN Diplo Victory player having a chance at winning without obsoleting the Apostolic Palace Diplo Victory option. In fact, with Hammurabi's awesome Cities, that approach is probably the fastest way for a UN Diplo Victory player to win.