DMI VII - Team Vanilla

[Ozbenno]

Well spotted Ralph! Looks like we've got to get through Hatty to get horsies.

Trading plan as above seems good. I would say Construction seems a good tech after Alphabet (assuming a trade for Mathematics is available) as we'll need Catapults to take Hatty. Just remember (again) don't trade for Masonry until after we have Civil Service from the prophet. Seems like we'll get the prophet before Alphabet, so we'll have to wait and see if we can get a trade for Mediatation or have to research it (sometimes the AI can be narky about trading Meditation for some reason).

And, of course, a big festive cheer for all the team. I hope your Xmas is filled with presents, food and drink. A relaxed pace over the next couple of weeks is perfectly acceptable.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Looks like we've got to get through Hatty to get horsies.

Well when we trade for AH we could find we have horses on our doorstep in one of those "How did I never notice those five foot high hairy four legged creatures just outside my capital" moments.

Ozbenno's plan seems spot on.

Enjoy

Ralph

 

[Ozbenno]

Well when we trade for AH we could find we have horses on our doorstep in one of those "How did I never notice those five foot high hairy four legged creatures just outside my capital" moments.

For a moment I completely forgot that, I thought "well she has horsies and we don't" not realising that we may have those invisible horsies. I actually loaded the save yesterday to look around and wondered if Immy had taken the horsies off the map, not noticing the empty pasture or even the fact we don't have AH


If we do have horses, I'd say nix on Construction (trade for it later).

 

[Conroe]

A) is the one where we hit Hatty as hard as possible, hoping to cripple her and steal some choice sites.

In b), we continue to build up peacefully, with the intent to wield cossacks as soon as possible.

What do the lot of you think?

My preference would be peace. Those cities down south won't be much good to us until all of the jungle is cleared. We can let Hattie pay the maintenance while clearing the land for us. Plus those War Chariots are a pretty tough early UU.

In the meantime, we can lay some Settlers down out west. Grab those cows and that stone to the SW. Looks like we can get a fish & copper city up north. We're not exactly boxed in at this point.

I would say Construction seems a good tech after Alphabet (assuming a trade for Mathematics is available) as we'll need Catapults to take Hatty.

I'd rather go after Literature next and get started on the Great Library. We are going to need a couple of Great Scientists ...

Just remember (again) don't trade for Masonry until after we have Civil Service from the prophet.

Excellent point! Do we want to use the artist from Music to 'bulb Nationalism? If so, we'll also need to hold off on Masonry until then, as well ...

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Umm its 05:15 Xmas morning ....

Must be time for the kids to get up.

everyone. !!!

Ralph

 

[stuge]

First the dull part of the round: Build libraries, temples, granaries, farms, mines etc. The whole shebang of empire management.

It gets interesting when alphabet is discovered.

/tech whoring enabled



First a trade with Louis. 5 for 1-deal. Archery isn't strictly necessary, but usually when I skip it, I end up wishing that I could whip longbows right now.

That took care of the essentials. With meditation out of the way, our prophet went pop, leaving 12 turns to go on CS.

As for horses, there aren't any exactly on our front lawn.




More on this later.

Goodness followed, when I managed to mooch IW from Hatty.
Woooooooooo!
Oh thank you thank you thank you! Perhaps we'll let you live now...
Iron was discovered right next to Moscow.

Then, a trade with Hatty.



A weird note on diplomacy: Hatty and Louis hate each other. Hatty even asked me to cancel our deals with France and got upset, when I didn't comply. Yet neither of them got their nickers in a twist when I traded with both of them. Consistency is not their forte.

I played until CS was done and the anarchy from switching to bureaucracy was gone. We now have our options open.

We could continue expanding peacefully and go for literature and music, ensuring that we nab at least one pony resource. The southern one looks better than the meh site out west.

Or then we could tech construction and wipe Hatty off the face of the planet before Egypt becomes a pain in the behind. I don't particularly fancy sharing borders with creative civs. I already had Novgorod build some swords, but they could also be used to capture that barb city down south.

The peaceful route is probably ultimately the better choice. Deep tech beelines and warfare don't mix well. Construction requires masonry, which would seriously slow us down by disabling the nationalism bulb.

And Hatty gave us help. Even if it doesn't count for anything.

SAVE, for anybody who has time to play.

 

[Ozbenno]

Nicely done. If we need boats, talk to Ralph. If we need a 5 for 1 trade, talk to stuge.

I'd prefer the peaceful route to Military Tradition as well. All depends on whether we can grab some horsies. I think we start employing the scientists as well.

I'll be able to play some time tonight (12 hours or so) so if anyone has any comments, post them before then.

Also, we've passed 500BC, so we need to do a summary post of our game up to this point. Any volunteers (I'll do it otherwise). We'll agree on the final contents here and then post.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Well some excellent tech brokering from Stuge. Nice to still have our alphabet monopoly at this stage.

Re Peace or War with Hattie? I think it is finely balanced but feel its more "festive" to take the peaceful route so lets do that.

I think that means alongside our specialist fulled research we need to Rex towards the horses W of our Capital as we cant rely on trading for them from anyone.

I guess stage one can be taking stone iron and cows to the W which we Can afford fairly quickly


and then there must be a nice site up by Pink Spot



MM

Not sure what the development plan is for Moscow and St Petersburg so here's a proposal

Moscow. Not sure it needs another mine. I think the two cottages marked should be priority (pre chop now so hammers go to GL)

St Petersburg. Not sure what the farm idea on the grass to the W is here, Once the corn is irrigated it can stabilize nicely as a hybrid city working its mines, corn , riverside plains cottages.

Ralph

 

[Ozbenno]

I agree we can afford another couple of cities westwards to grab the horsies. I'llplay tommorow and work on getting a settler or two. I'll send a spare axe to sit on pink dot.

I think we should look at farming St Petes, rather than cottaging but definately cottage Moscow.

 

[stuge]

Why don't we grab the southern horses if Hatty hasn't gotten there yet? We could run a couple scientists there, or merchants, if we switch to caste system at some point.

 

[Conroe]

Hard to tell from the screenshots, but I'm inclined to agree with Stuge. I don't see much food at pink dot, compared to 2 seafood resources at the southern spot. Plus it would give us a port at the equator. (I was also going to suggest it as a good spot for Maui D'oh!) Little production capability, though ...

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

On Balance I am warming to Southern Horses as well.

Ralph

 

[Ozbenno]

Well there seems to be two sources of horsies for us to chase. Western horsies are closer but southern horsies is a better spot. In either case we need a settler, so let's get that going in thiese turns at least.

Novgorod is put on double scientist duties, to get that Great Scientist out quickest.



Actually, once Literature is in, this is probably the best spot for Great Library.

Unfortunately, I can't get quite the same number of techs for Code of Laws as stuge.



Hatty bulbs Philosophy from a Great Scientist. I was going to suggest this .

Literature comes in and I start us on Music (we don't want to miss the free GA).

150AD seems a decent time to stop. Moscow has completed a settler and I queued up another (obviously can change). We need to get some horsies of some sort settled, from the look of this the south is taken so may need to head west as originally flagged.



Novgorod has started the Great Library (24 turns), scientists sacked.

Barb city down south seems pretty tough.



Most important thing is to get the horsies, so we could head straight there or use two cities to get there.

Ralph is UP.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Ok got it, will have a report up before the new year is in, Will post thoughts / plans tomorrow.

Ralph

 

[Mighty Dwaarf]

Im back from festive jollies, will slot back in to roster. We seem to be progressing nicely.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

So I will aim to play and report tomorrow so here is an outline plan for detection.

1. Settler that is built goes with escort to secure the W horse resource as agree that with what we can see of Hattie's culture the S horses have been claimed.

2. Our Alphabet monopoly is broken so will now see what trade value I can get out of it (at the least may as well take Horseback Riding).

3. Not sure if that Barb city is worth taking. Views?

4. With the next settler I would aim to found the coastal city to the North of our capital

5. Stick with GL in Novgorod, (although the capital with 50% Bureac bonus could build it slightly quicker)

Ralph

 

[stuge]

Take the barb city if the opportunity arises. IIRC, it has clams, so it won't be completely useless. Also, dyes are nice with theaters, considering that we're fooling around in the upper part of the tech tree anyway.

 

[·Imhotep·]

@stuge:

Speaking of irrelevant things (I know you're not the SG captain) and the : Where is the 500 BC report from Team Vanilla ?

 

[stuge]

Ozzy<--- me.

I don't know! Don't look at me! Me no make english an m kant typ

 

[Ozbenno]

500BC report is on my list of things to do, honest!

On more important matters...

Tech bulbing.

Essentially we only need 5 more techs for Cossacks. Music, Philosophy, Nationalism, Military Tradition and Horeseback Riding. We can bulb Philosophy from a Great Scientist, we can bulb Nationalism from a Great Artist (from Music) and we can trade for HBR now. Do we even want to go for the Liberalism shot? We could do the above and employ heaps of scientists and just self research Military Tradition?