Deity of Random - Try 1

[Snaaty]

@ Rusten:

Oh... ...now that you mention the vassall + relation thing, I also remember it... ...that´s bad..

@ Team:

Due to the vassall + relation thing Rusten mentioned, I think we need to consider another plan:

vassalizing charly ASAP (after taking his remaining two good cities)
He is friendly with Zara, so we would have friendly, friendly + Hanni with Zara. By forcing Hanni into the right civic and religion, we should be able to bring him to pleased with Zara and end up friendly again... ...is this right?

And we can get a tech from charly by going down this path...

 

[Flo7]

Oh , I heard of that mechanincs but was not aware of it at all.

Zara is Charles big brother. I guess, as soon as we will sign peace Charles will vasallize to Zara. But what is much worse is, that Zara might vasallize Charles while we still at war with him. That would mean we are at war with Zara dont know the chances for that... but Charles has already been the vasall of Zara once

How exactly does this work? Are the two modifiers (the numbers) added and divided by two, to get Zaras modifier towards us. Or is it that the status such as pleased or friendly is added up. In the former case we could consider switching to budhism and bring Han in the right civis too. To bring Zara to friendly again!

EDIT: Cross post with Snaaty

 

[Rusten]

He is friendly with Zara, so we would have friendly, friendly + Hanni with Zara. By forcing Hanni into the right civic and religion, we should be able to bring him to pleased with Zara and end up friendly again... ...is this right?

I've never been in a situation like that, but I would think so yes. I know that friendly+pleased = pleased -- but if it's rounded down like the rumour has it then friendly+friendly+pleased should mean friendly.

 

[CellKu]

Interesting! So, now we need Charles to capitulate to us...
Concerning how many more cities we could/should take: Since he is not willing to capitulate now, we should - if I am not mistaken - be able to take at least one more city before we have to fear his capitulation to Zara.

If he capitulates to Zara for whatever reason and we should be "forced" to destroy him completely, does anybody know how long it usually takes to sign peace with Zara after a DOW has been "forced" by a new vassal?


On another plane, Flo7, forget my comment on the Moai, I checked the save and saw that it is already half-built in Carthage. When I read your statement the first time I thought you were still planning it. Building it in Carthage is fine with me.

 

[obsolete]

Good, work. I was happy we didn't lose a single city in all that, so catching the whole right wing was actually a very good result. The capital was yet another bonus.

Not to mention, the capital came with

Military Instructor
Scotland Yard
Academy

That's three GGs worth alone right there.

I'm not sure about Han's capital que though. Shouldn't we be running four merchants there right now so we can pop a great merchant and build the Sushi?


Anyhow, I think I'm up next to take over, but unfortunately my parents want me to leave with them tomorrow to help them fix up the cottage. ARgggh! This COTTAGE is in no-mans land with no internet, not even a working telephone, so I will be gone for a week, possibly two! So someone will have to take over for me for a bit.

 

[obsolete]

@ Team:

Due to the vassall + relation thing Rusten mentioned, I think we need to consider another plan:

vassalizing charly ASAP (after taking his remaining two good cities)
He is friendly with Zara, so we would have friendly, friendly + Hanni with Zara. By forcing Hanni into the right civic and religion, we should be able to bring him to pleased with Zara and end up friendly again... ...is this right?

And we can get a tech from charly by going down this path...

I don’t like vassaling Charle here at all!

If we do we’ll have to share his continent with him. Our SoL is on that continent so the more cities we own there, the better. Also, we’ll end up owning 100% of the culture in his cities if we eliminate him outright.

I think if we continue to press on, it’s safe to say it will take longer than 10 turns to finish him off. And the whole time we’d be worrying about him vassaling to Zara, however I have a better plan (I think!).

We can make peace with Charle right now! This buys us 10 turns to get our forces into position for a quick and decisive final blow (with us at the advantage).

This should be safer because…

We can get Charle to convert to Hinduism as part of the deal (we can even get corporation + gold with the deal too).

He will lose a +8 bonus with Zara for that and his friendly status. But also, it will remove penalties on him that he has with us, and he’ll be pleased to us and our vassal. As time goes on, he will get more favorable to us and more upset at Zara. We can also, ask Han to switch to theocracy, that will just be enough to move us from pleased to friendly with Zara (and improve through time too). We are getting the best of both worlds through this.

As soon as 10 turns go by, we can re-declare and hit him hard. Hopefully he stocks his modern navy in one city and we an crush it in 1 turn.

We also, may be able to trade medicine in order to unlock infantry and upgrade our units just before hitting Charle for the final blow.

I suggest, put the spy in one of his cities, and we can use it to force him back into Hinduism if he converts away. We can also use it to drop his walls when we attack, so it may be a good decision to make a few more spies over there and get them fortified ASAP. Don’t forge to re-target spy points on Charle.

 

[Snaaty]

I will be able to have a look at the save only within the next 2-3 days (hopfully)...

I think we have to agree on/discuss some points now, so playing slow is best anyways now I think...

...

With Obsolete gone, CellKu is UP now (I think...)

 

[Flo7]

We can get Charle to convert to Hinduism as part of the deal (we can even get corporation + gold with the deal too).

He will lose a +8 bonus with Zara for that and his friendly status. But also, it will remove penalties on him that he has with us, and he’ll be pleased to us and our vassal. As time goes on, he will get more favorable to us and more upset at Zara. We can also, ask Han to switch to theocracy, that will just be enough to move us from pleased to friendly with Zara (and improve through time too). We are getting the best of both worlds through this.

As soon as 10 turns go by, we can re-declare and hit him hard. Hopefully he stocks his modern navy in one city and we an crush it in 1 turn.

We also, may be able to trade medicine in order to unlock infantry and upgrade our units just before hitting Charle for the final blow.

I suggest, put the spy in one of his cities, and we can use it to force him back into Hinduism if he converts away. We can also use it to drop his walls when we attack, so it may be a good decision to make a few more spies over there and get them fortified ASAP. Don’t forge to re-target spy points on Charle.

I like that idea.

Just some comments. in the end we can consider leaving Charles with one city. That would bring us quickly back to friendly with Zara.
The way to friendly via han is more time consuming. Making Had adopt Theocracy will finally end in a +5 bonus in his relationship with Zara. In the beginning it will have no net improvement (probably even a worsening) since that +1 will come along with a -1 to -3 modifier, for him having Hinduism. We would first have to ship a missionary to his last city.

We can use the peace time for two things
- conquering the barb cities in the south. There are 4 or so left and we need them for domination victory
- mid term we should also think about settling all the horsehockey places left. We need the land they cover too
- switching to pacifism and getting sushi

I put all spy point on Ramses. I thought we will never have enough in time to use them in the war against Charles.

 

[CellKu]

obsolete's plans are highly interesting. We have to make sure though that we don't postpone our advance for too long. Especially with regard to Ramses. Instead of taking the barb cities, couldn't we try to attack Ramses in the meantime (before he gets rifling)?

Well, if we take it slow (with discussion etc.), as Snaaty suggested, I can take over from obsolete. As I will be a little busy this week due to some deadlines, I had hoped to be "up" not before next week... But I will see how fast we are and how I can fit in some playing.

 

[Snaaty]

just checked the save... ...I dont see the point in making peace with charly. we have enough units in his ex-capital + the next city (the last one on the right side) and ships that can hopp from town to town and bring our troops within 2 turns near charlies nearest city and take it within 1 turn backed by our airships.

3-4 turns more and we also habe the remaining last good city from charly. this is even on the way to ramses... ...better take these two cities and then vassalize charly. with his superiour ships we will have naval superiourity for free against ramses.

generally, leaving charly with 3 cities isnt a good plan now while he is on friendly terms with zara superpower. so i would either kill him completely or vassalze him... ...I think it is very likely that he will vassalize to zara

...

so my vote goes for vassalizing

 

[Rusten]

I agree with keeping up the war--we have an awful lot of units nearby.

We can try to ask for a small gift from Zara. I don't know when we did this last, but if he accepts we'll get a 10-turn peace treaty making it impossible for Charles to vassalize I believe.

 

[Flo7]

Situation:
I think top prority is to prevent Zara entering the war by vasallizing Charles.
I think also we need about 7-10 turns more to finish/vasallize Charles.

IIRC we would not get the option to vasallize Charles first, if Zara (as a leader not involved in that war) wants to take charles as a vasall.
Charles lost quite some cities (including his capital) which will increase the chances him vasallizing to Zara.

I like Obsolete's plan because by this we would exclude the possibility of Charles vasallizing to Zara, since Charles must be friendly to that leader. We can then finish Charles later without the risk of Zara interfering.

If we can achieve the same by asking for some money I favor Rusten's solution!

I played my turns very relaxed knowing that nobody will interfere. After Rustens post I got a bit nervous (and I still am)

 

[Rusten]

I played my turns very relaxed knowing that nobody will interfere. After Rustens post I got a bit nervous (and I still am)

You're not the only one!

 

[CellKu]

Since I am up now, I will try to sort out what we agreed on.

1.) Try to ask Zara for a small gift to prevent him from entering the war on Charles' side. (If not, Snaaty and Rusten vote for gambling (=continuing the war anyway), obsolete and Flo7 favor an interim peace-period.)
2.) Continue war with Charles until we get two more cities, then try to vassalize him.

Emergency plan if Zara enters the war as Charles' master: try to finish off Charles completely asap and to get peace with Zara at all cost.

Some open points:
a.) What about obsolete's idea of running merchants in Carthage? Probably a safer way to get a GM next.
b.) If we continue the war now, I won't retarget our spy points towards Charles, because we won't accumulate enough spy points during the next few turns to use them effectively against Charles.
c.) I am not sure if we can (don't remember the exact situation right now), but if we can and I have time for it, I could try to spread Zara's religion (Buddhism?) to us and Han (to make Han lateron switch to theocracy).

 

[Snaaty]

I´m pretty sure that charly has to ask us first if he wants to vassalize. We are at war with him, Zara not. So IF I´m not mistaken, the one that declares first always gets asked first for vassalizing... ...so we should be asked first

Better check every turn the diplo screen with charly...

...

We will get Medicine within the next 10-15 turns. Switching to caste + pacifism is a must or it will take us about 40 turns to get the GM, no matter where we try... ...and we would very likely miss Sushi

Try to generate 2 of them, one in capital, one somewhere else, just to make sure. The spare one we still can burn for a trade mission or something.

Like your religious plan. We need to switch to Theo anyways for a while after our GM is through, to spread our religions (we have a double holy city with 2 shrines. we need the cash from the relis to fund spreading sush)

 

[Flo7]

I´m pretty sure that charly has to ask us first if he wants to vassalize. We are at war with him, Zara not. So IF I´m not mistaken, the one that declares first always gets asked first for vassalizing... ...so we should be asked first

I think it works differently.

Situation A: War vasallizing
You and another AI are at war with a third AI.
This AI is loosing the war and you did the main damage to that AI.
The loosing AI wants to capitulate. Then you (as most dangerous enemy) are given the first chance to accept capitulation. If you do not take that opportunity your "ally-AI" can step in.

Situation B. Peace vasallizing
You are at war with another AI. The AI decides to vassalize to a third party AI. Here you are not given the first opportunity, since that is a different mechanism.
The same mechanism which applies when the AIs vasallize to stronger AIs in peace time. This process of vasallizing runs separate to the war-vasallizing, I think.
Relationship and power is most important here instead of who inflicted the most damage...

I am pretty sure about that (not a 100% tho).

 

[Rusten]

I too think Charlemagne will attempt vassalizing to Zara before capitulating to us. I'm not sure what's safer, but hopefully he'll accept that small request giving us 10 turns to finish the war with Charles. Did someone check the reference sheet for what conditions Charles has to meet in order to peacefully vassalize (i.e whether he has to be friendly or if pleased is enough)?

 

[Flo7]

I too think Charlemagne will attempt vassalizing to Zara before capitulating to us. I'm not sure what's safer, but hopefully he'll accept that small request giving us 10 turns to finish the war with Charles. Did someone check the reference sheet for what conditions Charles has to meet in order to peacefully vassalize (i.e whether he has to be friendly or if pleased is enough)?

I checked. It is friendly.

 

[CellKu]

Finally, I came around to playing a bit (actually only 2 turns, took ages as usual). Here is a brief update:

In Carthage and Kyoto I switched production to a grocer/market to enable us to run more merchants in these cities.

Demanded from Han to switch out of Emancipation, but didn't work. I thought a vassal would be good for something... (now, we got another -1 with him, sorry guys).

Zara didn't want to give us anything (asked for 10 gold).

I checked every turn whether Charles would capitulate and this option was always redded out.

Then I saved it (1590AD) to continue tomorrow and out of pure fun I hit enter...

I learned that even though we are the only ones in a war with Charles he won't care to ask us first, but will vassalize to Zara... (and we get DOWed)

So, having learned something new what do you think? In the save that I have now, we could still make peace with Charles and avoid getting DOWed by Zara. I doubt we will be able to endure his attack.

Moreover, some minor things we probably have discussed already, but I couldn't remember: We still have an idling GS in Kyoto. Do we save him for bulbing? And we have a GG. That one is intended for a HeroMedic, isn't he?

 

[Snaaty]

@ CellKu:

No replays... ...so we will be at war soon

I´m on holiday this week without any big plans, so I can take over to play the next turns if you want (they might be pretty timeconsuming and bah...)

Simply post the actual save and I take over... ...IF we should survive, you can take over after again (but I´m not too optimistic about the surviving part)