Deity of Random - Try 1

[Flo7]

I sold marble for 4 gold... ...IF the globe needs marble, cancle the deal ASAP

Isn't there a minimum length of 10 rounds for resource trades?

I also settled two of the marked cities, the third got settled by barbs and the one near the copper I didn´t settle, because team was against it.

Did not look at the save but maybe we have the time and can use the barb city to generate a level 3 unit. A CR2 Samurai already has 5 XP go there with a healer and attack the city until the CR2 has 9 XP that would unlock the HE

EDIT:

I jsut see, that we already have a samurai on our main island with 5xp and a barb archer (+1xp). We could kill the barb archer and ship the two samurai two the barb city, with a bit of luck we can unlock the HE quickly!

 

[CellKu]

Go for cannons, total war against Charly, then Hanni. Don´t vassalize them, kill them totally. Move capital to their island... ...no colonial upkeep

Also take the nice island(s) Hanni settled...

Not sure about settling more islands... ...will leave it to next player / team to decide, because I dont know if we have the production to gear up for war AND get more settlers out + shipped

How about this plan for the next set:
Get to cannons, move units near front & prepare war for following player???

That sounds good! Since we have to choose between expansion (more settlers) and war preparation, I prefer war preparation. We should not wait too long to take advantage of our little tech lead.
Btw, Han's far away cities are becoming really nice. We should definitely go for them, but first for Charles.

 

[Rusten]

Got it, but I won't play tonight--tomorrow evening earliest. I'm very tired today and will give more input tomorrow.

I'm in favour of not settling more cities, we can never catch up with this kind of land, war is the only way. Hopefully the map script will add to AI stupidity in war.

 

[Flo7]

I agree here: founding cities wont help us.

I checked the diplo status. The option war with Pericles is not longer redded for Zara and SB (it was the last time I checken "we would never betray close friends...").
But we have no techs to bribe them, maybe we could beeline steel and bribe Zara and SB into war against SB

 

[Rusten]

Plans for my turnset, up for discussion the coming 24 hours.

- trigger a second golden age with the great artist.
- lightbulb chemistry and set research to military science (followed by steel).
- assign 2 scientists in our capital for an academy.
- make courthouses, seriously, almost all of our cities are at about 10 gold in upkeep per turn (some even more). Don't understand why this hasn't been dealt with or started.
- continue making units
- revolt to free religion? We've done a lousy job spreading our religion so the civics hardly make any sense, I'd rather take the extra 10% science and diplomacy.
- are we saving all the cash or running deficit research for the military techs (we'll do a trade mission later)?
- run a trade mission to [athens?]
- whip into the GT.

Kinda disappointed with the city builds, many new cities are making Samurai instead of courthouses with ~10 city maintenance, ridiculous imo.

How are we going to pick up Astronomy? One way is to trade Printing Press to Hannibal for Optics+Banking and afterwards Printing Press+gold to Charlemagne for Astronomy.

Can't see any of our cities with unhappiness from whipping--I find that a little strange. The whip is incredibly important on a map like this and we have no production otherwise, it should be used as much as possible, even in a golden age.

I think there has been too much emphasis on founding mediocre cities and too less on vital infrastructure.

Don't think we've played this out well--maybe it's from inexperience with the map type. Yes, we were given a very hard start here, but we could do better than this.

 

[Snaaty]

@ Rusten:

Why not research Steel right away? Cannons and samurais should also do a decent job and Steel has way more trading value (and is usefull for later)

Concerning research:
I would go 100% and run the trade mission

Whip:
Couldn´t whip except for turn 1 & 2 (whipped theatres in the cities where it was possible)... ...my job was to switch to caste and get the two GS. Besides, whipping in a GA is kind of counterproductive

Courthouses:
Don´t agree here. We only have 9 (Mil.Science) or 14 (Steel) turns to get a more or less decent army up... ...don´t think we have time for courthouses in all cities.
Besides, I only started samurais in 4 cities (I think) where we have a decent chance to get the samurais shipped in a decent timescale, the other cities I have run down this path (WB´s where needed, theatre, gran, harbour, courthous, in that order... ...but we haven´t come to far hear)
Better whip the courthouses (harbours first, see below) in the army cities once we have finished the GA and our army on the way

Cities:
Agree to some extend. But with some AI having already Astro I understand CellKu´s desicion to found some cities in OK locations (but most cities we have are I think). For the 3 cities I founded one settler already existed, a second was already finished and the remaining spot (green island north from capital) was def. worth settling and agreed by the team

Upkeep:
-10 isn´t that bad with the trade we generate... ...I think it´s more then 10... ...but courthouses def. would help (check the trade revenue, harbours would be a better first build, I alrady reached the point were I could start them in one or two cities)... ...when all our cities have grown into their seafood (some are still lacking it), have a monument/theatre + gran, we should be able to start a decent whip economy (hope it isn´t to late then, we expanded pretty late due to wonderbuilding)

...

Some remark about city build:
I was really struggling to get some infra up in some of our cities... ...We should always build a monument/theatre first to get the first borderpop when there are resources (mainly seafood) there. When I picked up the save, some cities were working on granaries, even samurais without having the first borderpop, some even were not having a WB to work their seafood and not building one. Buildorder always should be: WB when seafood, monument, gran, then rest

 

[Rusten]

Okay, I didn't mean to criticise anyone in particular as things done are team decisions, I just feel we've made some bad ones, and I'm as much to blaim for that as anyone else.

Agree that it's bad for new cities with seafood to not be able to work it. A mature city (Kyoto or Osaka) with much more production should make them before-hand rather than the small fishing cillage spending 30 turns on it.

Disagree about monuments here. As we've been in a GA (and still will be some more) monuments are worthless. We can just adopt Caste System and run an artist for 3 turns to pop our borders instead of putting 30 hammers into it. This way we'll save both hammers and time.

If you think we can afford to skip courthouses I can put them on hold, but can we afford a war without them? I'm afraid our economy will crash completely.

- steel before military science.

I need a consensus on Astronomy before I start, do we make the deals I put as possible or use Steel.

 

[Rusten]

Maybe we could use Steel to trade for scientific method and communism somehow, I'll have to look at the tech screen. That would solve both the courthouse/upkeep problem and the colonial maintenance after taking out the HRE.

 

[Flo7]

What do you think of researching steal and bribe AIs into war against Pericles? Zara would do it if the price is right.

 

[Snaaty]

no offence taken, just some explanations

monuments:
my bad, have forgotten completely about the artist thing... ...now we are out of Caste and have two cities I think without borderpops

Harbours/Courthouses ASAP in all cities that wont produce troops would be fine I tink. Delaying them only in the troop-cities sounds best. We now only need three WB´s if I remember right, the rest got already build. One we can whip in Tokio (we need it south of Tokio), the hammeroverflow will help anyways, the other we need east of our starting conti so we should build it there then (or west, whatever) and we are lacking one between starting conti and fantasy island (or two), but the city there has a mined hill, so no big deal, just build it there...

Trades:
Well, we need every tech we can put hand on, so I would vote for yes, trade...

 

[Rusten]

What do you think of researching steal and bribe AIs into war against Pericles? Zara would do it if the price is right.

Doubt it'll be enough to start a war, but we can hope.

 

[Rusten]

Seems we have a consensus so I'll play my set now.

 

[CellKu]

Sorry, I couldn't come in earlier. I do agree on trading as much as possible to keep us up in techs. However, I do like Flo7's idea of using steel to bribe the AI's into a war.

 

[CellKu]

Some remark about city build:
I was really struggling to get some infra up in some of our cities... ...We should always build a monument/theatre first to get the first borderpop when there are resources (mainly seafood) there. When I picked up the save, some cities were working on granaries, even samurais without having the first borderpop, some even were not having a WB to work their seafood and not building one. Buildorder always should be: WB when seafood, monument, gran, then rest

@Snaaty:
I take your advice, just some clarifications from my side:
As long as we were in Slavery we couldn't work artists in our new cities. Thus I built culture for 3 or so turns (until the border pop) in some of the new cities that I founded which had no seafood in the inner tiles (for example in the city southeast of Tokyo, IIRC that was Nagasaki, and in the horse city in the southeast of our empire). We also had some WB's working in the cities south of Tokyo that I had sent down from Tokyo. Usually, I try to build WB's in a bigger city where I can get them faster and then send them over to the new city that is already building infrastructure. Since I had popped borders already, I didn't go for theaters but for granaries first. (I do admit, however, that I should have cared a bit more about some of our older cities, sorry.)

Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I mentioned that I had set every city on building Samurais which had finished production in the turn before I handed over the save. I meant that more as a kind of marker that we should discuss our builds there, especially since we had to start thinking about building our army.

@Rusten:
With regard to the city locations: yes, there are one or two that are not that great. However, since they should have been able to pay for themselves (because of the traderoutes) and Pericles expanded like crazy, I thought it was better to have one or two not so great locations that were affordable than losing all the spots close to our capital island.

 

[Rusten]

Played about 12 turns. Things are looking okay.

- Trade PP to Charles for Optics, Banking and 70 gold.
- Renegotiate incense with Pericles for 5 extra gold.
- Chemistry and ~200 gold to Hannibal for Astronomy.
- Chemistry to Charles for economics.

Turn 168 - slave revolt in Kyoto -_-;; (yes, we're in a golden age as well )

- As soon as the civics can get swapped around I adopt Free Religion and Free Market. After Kyoto and Osaka gets a harbor we break 400 b/pt.

Turn 172 - as we agreed I take out this barbarian city with some samurai (no casualties) and 2 of them gets 10 experience which unlocks CR3 and the HE (started in Kyoto).



Turn 174 - greeted by Ramesses. I was about to send some boats to his lands but he got to us first. Some great news is that he's not advanced at all (lacking guilds), so we should be able to benefit from trade to his cities for quite some time (no mercantilism).

Turn 176 - SB demands paper, I obviously comply.

It's currently turn 178 and we've finished Steel and are headed into MS (1 turn).

The city north of our capital is currently borrowing seafood, we might want to swap that as soon as it whips out some more infrastructure.

Our GT city is set to a 0/70 Samurai, it will grow the coming turn so do a whip the next turn and then follow up with the GT.

Osaka and the city with iron have been pumping samurai (and to some extent fantasy island, GT and Kyoto)--the others have been busy getting harbors and such up but most of them are good to go now.

Spawned a GS as planned and constructed an academy in Kyoto.

Our GM is currently in Aachen and may perform his trade mission there (1500 gold) or we can move on--up for discussion.

I think we're friendly with Zara atm but we don't have anything to bribe him with.

Here's the current technology screen, we aren't horribly backwards. We're currently getting > 400 b/pt outside of the GA (with 100% slider though). Our economy is better now but we still need to make some successful wars in order to keep up.



There's another barbarian city to the easy of the previous one (just became visible due to border pop).

Spoiler :

I think we should send some Samurai to wipe it out. There should be plenty of time as I made 1 galleon in Osaka. There are many idle samurai on our main island.

Some of our cities are lacking a unit for garrison. We're still able to build cheap chariots, so I suggest we get a couple of those.

 

[Snaaty]

@ Rusten:

I have a question:

We have a GM ready for a trade mission to upgrade troops and have researched steel... ...but we only have build samurais, no trebs... ...so what exactly does the trade-mission help us in?

No offence, just wondering... ...maybe I got something wrong... ...what I was thinking is that our plan was to build and upgrade mainly samurais when going for mil.science but when going for steel to build and upgrade mainly trebs

...

Oh, and some pretty bad news:
Carlo and Zara are having a def pact

...

@ CellKu:

Wasn´t ment to critisize... ...just was wondering about the build order, but after I failed completely with the culture thingy (I not only forgot that we could get culture via artists but also that we could build culture) I think now it was mainly my mistake

 

[Rusten]

Hmm, I see, I guess that's what happens when you play friday night, forget about the pre-plan and make my plot. My plan which must've occurred while playing the set was to upgrade the Samurai into grenadiers for CR promotions and on the other hand whip the cannons starting as soon as possible. I usually have a lot of success with this (teching both that is) on water maps, so I might've been thrown off by previous games.

We could go for SB or Ramesses instead, or simply Hannibal.

 

[Snaaty]

doesn´t matter, our standing is still pretty strong I think.

Concerning war:
Hanni I would spare for the second war, because he is easy prey
Going for Bull instead seems a better idea to me. He has many islands and some pretty good land.

Charly and Ramses have their hands full, with a little luck we might even be able to switch back to plan a and attack Charly first (Bull ist backwards, so he would be the perfect victim 3, after Hanni and Charly)

What about the idea of trading steel for repparts with Perikles for exemple, and then go for rifles instead of grens??? We would then have an almost unstoppable army of cannons and upgraded/drafted rifles. Might be worth to think about...

 

[Rusten]

doesn´t matter, our standing is still pretty strong I think.

Agree. I think this is mainly due to what we saw as a problem earlier--the map type. The good thing about this map is that the AIs won't skyrocket in the early industrial times as they won't have many cottages. They mainly work non-improvable coastal tiles here rather than cottages so that means we have more time than usual.

Rifles work too, I'm fine with either.

 

[CellKu]

@Snaaty: no problem, really. I am actually grateful for your remark since I am always striving to improve my gameplay. I just wanted to present my view on the situation.

@all
I think we should not wait much longer before we attack the first AI. If we switch to another AI (now that Charles has that def. pact with Zara), I would also go for SB first. In that case, however, we have to launch our attack towards the east (since SB is closer to our eastern border). Unfortuately, Tokyo isn't that well located for that.
It would be nice if Charles attacked someone and then we could go after him. But in any case we should take advantage of our (right now) superior techs. If we get to rifling before we have built enough cannons then we should go for rifles and upgrade our Samurai after we got it. Thus, I support the idea to trade RP for steel with Pericles. In that case we should move the GM a bit more to get more money.