Expansive Dreams

[narri]

Turnset done, took 16 turns to 950 AD. Full report under construction.
Quick summary:
Not the greatest econ set in the world because I did a little too much . Asoka is dead. I made the mistake of listening to JC and DoW on Sury (which lost the 9gpt deal). Traded for Machinery. Gave enough cash through techs to get Education slightly earlier. Still will need Engineering eventually for steel. NE in Seoul, currently on 6-turn-left Hanging Gardens build. Bombay is still total crap. Jungle removed from Nobamba.

 

[narri]

Inherited Turn 760 AD

Rejiggle Ulundi for max production, Market in 7

courthouse in uMgungundlovu for 58 overflow
Market in Seoul, firing a Spy in the process
change lake tile in Nobamba to a cottage
change Delhi to Buddha missionary in 43
move troops according to plan, upgraded a CR3+Str2 Sword to a Mace for ~130 gold as insurance.

Trading:
Gave Lit to Mao and crossed fingers
...
Yay, he's friendly now.
Now I trade Philo for Machinery
I sell Lit to Sury for cash (and a hopeful distraction for him to research Music)

Change slider to 100% @-131, Edu @ 9.
So, now we begin the real turnset

Turn 1: 775 AD
uMgung Courthouse>Worker(1) !!
Seoul Market>Forge(14)
I'm mass whipping that Forge in a few turns so that NE won't take so long and for more effective chops when the workers get in place. My reasoning is that the city will grow back so fast at +15 surplus, I can spend the pop to get the +25% .

Nobamba Courthouse, firing a Scientist for 1 turn.
Bulawayo Christian Missionary for Iron Fish.
Delhi 2-pop Buddhist Missionary (city was only producing 2 /turn).
Rejiggle kwaDukuza to reduce Courthouse to 12 turns (to be whipped soon).
Sell Phil to JC for (almost) all his Gold
This gets him to Friendly too, but he doesn't want to give Engineering yet (no red message, we just don't have enough stuff to trade him).

One more turn until I can DOW Asoka. Everyone except the upgraded Mace is in place.
Here it comes...
Turn 2:

Delhi BuddhaMiss>Courthouse (173)
Nombamba Courthouse>Forge(12)
uMgung Worker>ChristMiss (3)
Bulwayo ChristMiss>Wealth (10/turn)
kwaDukuza Courthouse 2-pop , converting to max growth configuration

I get Ivory through resource trades.
So c2* is not as big a priority anymore, but I will still look at settling it

A cheapo last-second trade with Asoka:

And then we DoW Asoka...
Commence with the laughing:

Because of that weak defense, Blue Team heads for the Barb city (8 turns of travel).

Vera is a bit more challenging:

Turn 3 805 AD:
Dial slider back down to 50% (-18/turn). Note that we are now +3 at 40%, so the econ is getting back into shape.

Christ has spread to Iron Fish.
kwa Court>Market(22)

Nombamba 2-pop the Forge with 43 overflow.

Now for a little combat:
Since I don't have enough to take Vara this turn, I get 3 victories with Swordsmen after bombarding and wait for the Mace to catch up. Also, I just knock down Vijay's defense a little while confirming that the potentially pesky Crossbow is still sitting in the fort. Patience wins games.

The two stolen workers are on way to Seoul's forested hill to chop.

Turn 4 820 AD:
Mao exchanges maps with us, nothing much.

Seoul 3-pop the Forge with 52 overflow.
Ulundi the Market

Death and Burn ensues:

No losses for Vara

I manage to lose a sword at 93% at Vijay
I sacrifice a Horse Archer in anger.

And my anger leads to Asoka's death:

The victorious armies head for Delhi and Nobamba except for 1 non-medic Impi to serve as fogbust at the new city site 1N of horses.

Turn 5 835 AD:
Ulundi Market>Christ Monastary (2) <-- so worth the beakers
Having grown, Bulawayo now works on a Settler in 7.
uMung -> Settler(5)
Seoul -> NE (36)

Turn 6 850 AD:
Sury has built Shedwagon Paya
Christ failed to spread in the city with Islam.

Sell Currency to Sury for Cash

Mao will give me Engineering for Monarchy + CS, but I won't bite yet until JC gives me a better deal for Fued.

Slider to 0% (+81) in anticipation of growth.

Turn 7 860 AD:
Slider to 100% (-141)
Jiggle some tiles in Seoul to get NE down to 13 turns.
Jungle grows near Nobamba (sigh...)

Ikhanda in Bombay (which really should have been razed....)

Turn 8 870 AD:
Crossbow event happens for Sury. I haven't seen any, so I don't care
Sury wants us to war on JC, we of course decline.

Turn 9 880 AD:
JC wants us to war on Sury...
We aren't ready for it quite yet, but the border cities have our army, WvO is between us and him, and I want him Friendly. War with Sury it is.

I steal a worker in a jungle with an Impi. I have another Impi that was exploring Sury's lands about to wreak raiding havoc. Edu in 3.

Turn 10 890 AD:
Impi that stole worker kills HA on way back to our territory.
Worker himself runs to safety.

Other impi burns a village for 30 . Yay!

Trade Philo to WvO for Drama + 50 Gold.
Settler finishes in uMg(->Market(10), heads for NW replacement city.

Turn 11 900 AD:
We lose the raiding Impi.
I take care of a stray Spearman in our territory, results in a GG in Nobamba. I settle in uMg (which has Heroic Epic).

Sell Drama to JC for 140 gold.

Turn 12 910 AD:
Education is in!
Dial silder back down to 30% (-11), Lib in 19. Just realized that war with Sury had cancelled 9gpt deal. D'oh!

courthouse in Wonsan.
3-pop courthouse in Delhi.
Start moving two stacks towards Banteay Kdei.

Turn 13 920 AD:
NE finishes in Seoul, change to Hanging Gardens in 9 (either we get a ton of money or a ton of pop). No specialists yet.

Turn 14 930 AD:
zzz

Turn 15 940 AD:
Settlers arrive at the intended spots, but our econ can't take it yet, so I have left them there.
Banteay Kdei is under bombardment.

Turn 16 950 AD:
I take one extra turn to make the ending year a nice number.
Other stack joins in to become the new SoD. Intention is to take out those two cities then take peace.
------------
Ok, so the econ is still bad because I was a little way too overzealous on the and the new cities take away all the gains in maintainance. My bad.
Two settlers are waiting to be settled at the 1N of horses replacement for Vera and at c2*. Settle them turn before Gardens finishes for maximum effect.
JC now has CS, so give CS to Mao for DoW on Sury is a possibility.
I didn't pull the trigger on that Mao trade and now I can't get Engineering through trades. Oh well. This turn set should see the tech skyrocket. Consider using the first GP from Seoul for a Golden Age.

GS will pop in 1 turn. Then take the scientists off Ulundi in favor of growth/production (since all other GP's should come from Seoul when HG is done).

 

[sturick]

Not too shabby for your first ever SG set and report!
I know my first attempt at both were much rougher than this...well done.

There were a lot of things that were well done.
You aren't afraid to use the whip...thats a heck of alot better than being afraid to use the whip.
So don't fret over that its all good.

Good result getting both Mao and JC to friendly.
It would be nice to know how much gold you got for selling Philo to JC though.

All of your war related goals went well and we are in a good position to strike a blow to Sury.
I say take his nearby city and check to see how much we can squeeze out of him for peace.
Currently, we can get 50 gold which is not bad but we can do better.

Here are my first thoughts on a plan.

After taking out Surys city...we head for Amsterdam and try to grab it from Sury.
Take peace with Sury and defend the crap out of it.
Thats step one.

Step two involves Ironfish building Angkor Wat for the increased priest spec production.
Seoul will build two temples so it can run priest specs and pump out a Great Prophet.
Umung (which shouldn't be building a market btw) can start in on a Parthenon attempt for the faster GP production. Then with a little luck we will score a Great Prophet that can build the Christian Shrine.
That should provide our economy all the boost that we will need to grab Steel with Lib.

We could continue with the plan and pull another Prophet after that to make the Hindu shrine there as well.
I would call that our Wall Street city but we will win the game before that could happen.
A market, grocer, and bank should do the trick though.

 

[narri]

Thanks. Now that I think about it, it was really the new captured cities that stalled the econ progress, not so much the . I totally forgot that a new city makes maintainance go up for ALL cities, not just the new one (which means maintainance is approximately quadratic as a function of cities). I feel a lot better about that turnset now.

I will also say consider building AP if Theo gets picked up in a trade. Our empire is large and Christian (minus Delhi, et al.). With both Mao and JC friendly, it is even possible we could pick up a diplo victory with one of them voting for us before the world gets drowned in our cannons. That's why I would not want to war on WvO before Sury.

The Prophet plan might not work because of the GP pollution in Seoul (from wonders and that stupid spy that was there for a few turns), but it doesn't hurt to try (at least Angkor is not too expensive). I prefer GM mission if we can escort it through Sury's land (maybe on a ship?).

I think getting the Steel slingshot is a lot more likely now because it seems Mao and JC are very far from it (remember that JC _just_ got CS and now needs Paper and Education) Once some beakers start rolling in, the game will be over quickly.

 

[grandad1982]

A nice first SG set narri.

Got it. I'll take a peak at the save this evening.

Seems like the next set or two will be a fairly important one's with a fair amount of micro so I'll post a bit of a plan and wait for input from all of you guy's before I go for it.

Just one thought. Instead of relying on popping a GProth could we not build an acadamy in Seoul, switch to cast and rum max Sci specs and just muscle through on raw beaker production?

 

[cripp7]

Good 1st time set narri, played it like a vet!

Right now I say take out Sury's 2 southern cities, sue for peace. Don't know if we can get Eng off him, but get what we can. Civic switch to Caste and run max while MMing cities. Drop slider to )% to build so we can run @100% for a bit, mixed with scientists should help.

Other than that, we're on our way to the big V

 

[grandad1982]

Finally got to look at the save.

Our cities have alot of food at the moment so I'm thinking that if we did fire off a GA then we could make the switch to Caste without losing turns to anarchy and run loads of sci and maybe some merchants to.

Not sure about building the AW as we probably won't be running many priest specs any time sone.

I might have a last flurry with the whip just to say good bye but I'll try to avoid whipping pop off of cottages.

One thing I've decided about this game is that so far its shown the power of Shaka rather than EXP as I still feel we don't have enough workers (a common complaint in my off line games too)!

So do you agree with using the GSci for a golden age?

As for Sury I don't know if we have the troops on the front to hit the Dam (will have high culture so we'll be sitting outside the city a while). Guess I'll play it by ear. ATM Willem doesn't have OB with Sury so we have a reall advantage.

Mao will DoW Sury for CS. Should I take it?

 

[Sirloin]

Suggestions:

There are a lot of things we can do to increase our research significantly.
Seoul:
1. Grow to health cap (should take 4-5 turns).
2. Revolt to Caste / run max scientists. At current pop we can run 7 scientists, so it should be 8 scientists after we grow.
3. Finish up HG, but we don't need to optimize for production. Max scientists all the way.
4. Build a university

Ulundi:
1. Needs a university immediately. Cancel the cat builds in queue.

Delhi:
This is a great city. I wouldn't whip too hard here; I want it to grow.
I would do a Forge before the FP, and maybe even a market too.
We need more production here. Once we finish the mine, put up a workshop somewhere. Also, I want to grab that Iron mine thats in Dutch cultural control. Check how much its culture % changes when when you press enter to figure out when we'll gain it, or if we need more culture. Consider a library build or running an artist if it will make an appreciable difference.

Whipping in general: Be wary of whipping cities with 8+ pop that have good tiles to work. At this stage of the game, I want our big cities to grow; save the whipping for new smaller cities that need basic infrastructure.

GScientist(s): We need Academies. I would wait on a GAge, and use our next two scientists for Academies in Ulundi and Seoul. By my calc they will both produce about the same research once Seoul starts running scientists. We'll be getting GPs every 10 turns once Seoul runs specialists. Don't waste scientists on GAges when we still need Academies.

Oxford: We need six universities:
Ulundi
Seoul
Nobamba
Dehli
Wonson
Bula
Since Dehli has a lot to build, we may want to do a uni in a production city just to get a 6th. Once its ready do we want it in Seoul or Ulundi? Normally I would save Seoul's 2nd wonder slot for NP but I don't think we'll get that far, so we can really build it in either place. On one hand Ulundi is our capital and gets the Bureau bonus, but we may want to use it for heavy production later where Seoul can be optimized for reserach forever.

War stuff: Agree with taking two Sury cities and stopping. I would not push for Amsterdam, but its up to you. We should really be 100% focused on research now if we want to pull off free Steel

For the CS trade for war ... up to you; I would pass. Granted CS is already out there, but if we want to pull off a big Lib sling, we really need to be stingy about trading away anything on the Lib path.

 

[grandad1982]

Nice observations Sirlion.

I'll probably not get to play till wed now but I'm appreciating this input.

 

[grandad1982]

Just taken another look at the save.

A lot of the initial changes I'll make, i.e. working hammers to get Uni's etc finished fast will infact slow Lib and decrease our gold income even more. Hopefully this will only be a tempory stae of affairs that will improve when the new infrastucture comes on line.

One possible way round this is to run a mix of specs in Seoul (sci's and merc's). Obviously this will ceate a mixed GP pool (with wonders there already as well) which means thatwe can't garentee a specific GP for our next one. I don't mind to much as they all have their uses but what do you guys think?

Also I think I'll build the acadamey in Ulundi as it won't waste turns of boosted research walking over to Seoul.

Won't switch to caste till we have peace incase we need the whip for unexpected guests.

 

[pigswill]

I played on from by 800bc 3.17 save. 1590 Domination. Hopefully you'll beat that.

 

[narri]

I say put the Academy in Seoul. A few turns of walking can't really beat the scientist potential once Caste system is up. I would also say replace the mines on Seoul's Grassland hills with windmills to increase the food output even more even while still getting decent hammers.

Keep the two forced scientists at Ulundi anyway, as its a crapshoot as to what we'll get in Seoul.

Don't forget about the two settlers at c2* and near the location of the late Vera. I leave it up to you as to when you settle them (as the econ will be taking a hit with the settling).

And spread Buddha and Christ a lot more. Buddha for the money, Christ for the hammers (and the AP votes if and when it is built). Buddha is a higher priority if a choice needs to be made except for Christ in Delhi.

Take the two cities (think about razing the southern one), and move towards Amsterdam. You can always call peace if the situation looks bad. Take a turn and upgrade some of those CR3 swords to maces if money allows.

Remember that since we have Education now only three techs are left before the slingshot: Gunpowder, Engineering->Chemistry. Try to pick up Engineering in a trade (even giving Paper is fine).

If the first GP is not a scientist in Seoul, start a Golden Age. Otherwise Academy.

 

[cripp7]

You can always drop the slider to 0% to build , we have enough of a tech lead to build up about 5-8 turn worth of moola to do upgrades

 

[Sirloin]

Upon looking at the save again, I've reversed my position about using the upcoming GS for an academy instead of a golden age: I think GAge is a better choice because of the civic switch.

I was mistakenly thinking the caste change would be one turn of anarchy instead of two, plus I crunched the numbers on pacifism and I think even with our large military it actually won't be much more expensive (if at all) because of the difference in base maintenance with our sprawling empire. If we start a GAge and go caste+pacifism, we can get our next GScientist in Seoul 6 turns (!).

 

[grandad1982]

The long anachy was part of my inital liking for the GAge. Hadn't considered Pacifism.

I think I might run a load of merchants on our "Commerce" cities as we have a few immature cottages and I suspect that the game won't run long enough to make it worth while working the less advanced ones. Having said that during the GA its probably best work commerce for the boost it gets! I'll just have to swap tiles at the time and see what works out best.

Ok since I like the GAge idea to begin with then I might just go with it unless some one can give a conceret reason not to in the next hour or so.

 

[grandad1982]

I started my set. I've fired off the GAge and I've switched to Caste and Pacifism. Taken Sury's copper/hill city. Running specs were I can and building up some gold.

Sadly I've just been on the phone for over an hour so I doubt I'll be able to finish my set and post the report tonight.

Sorry for the delay! Jusat thought I should keep you informed.

 

[cripp7]

no worries here, get it when you can

 

[sturick]

Forum down earlier and I lost a nice post I had written up.

Here's the jist.

My plan was harebrained.
I never thought of running Pacifism either...seems like it would work.
Agree with the GA plan as it is the safer bet.
Pigswill has given us the mark to beat...domination by 1590!

Did you get free Steel?

 

[grandad1982]

So I'll try to write a proper report later.

At peace with Sury (wouldn't give Eng).

1 turn from Lib and starting Eng (no beakers in).

1 turn of GAge left.

We popped a GProth from Seoul. Haven't used him.

Been working towards getting Unis up.

Running more specs (Caste go figure).

When I took Sury's second city we got 6 workers!

The save

 

[cripp7]

Forum down earlier and I lost a nice post I had written up.

Here's the jist.

My plan was harebrained.
I never thought of running Pacifism either...seems like it would work.
Agree with the GA plan as it is the safer bet.
Pigswill has given us the mark to beat...domination by 1590!

Did you get free Steel?

A little about your post. did you play too?