Fix the 5th trash game

[cabert]

congrats, pigswill
having philo as monopoly tech still should make it possible to get a late liberalism bonus tech

 

[Roland Johansen]

Congratulation Pigswill.

I have finally finished this section, far too late. But I wanted to share anyway so that I can look at your saves and compare strategies.

Spoiler :

I think I did ok. I'm about equal on the tech race as Brennus and a somewhat behind Cyrus. Bismarck is a goner, it's just a matter of time. He's behind in tech and now that I have macemen, he's as good as finished.

I have 8 cities and research at around 115-120bpt (at break even). Next turn more as a captured commerce city comes out of rebellion. Brennus thinks that 'you're too advanced', but I can still trade with Cyrus. Both like me a bit, Cyrus likes me more. I'm at war with Bismarck.

Here's my turnlog. Not as detailed as normal, but I actually don't think you want all those details.

125AD: Use taoist missionary. No need to pay upkeep for this guy.
I'm going for a limited war vs Bismarck. I'll grab 2 cities and then try to get peace. A more extensive war will start with catapults. Switch research to construction. Bismarck is weaker than Brennus and not liked as much.
Stopped great scientist generation in Madras and limited it in Delhi. I want to improve my cities and that won't work if they're creating great persons. I don't like small cities with lots of specialists. They're not that productive in the long run.
150AD: Start cottage building and forest chopping around Delhi and Madras.
250AD: Stack reached the German city of Frankfurt. Thanks to forest chopping, I now have 8 axeman and 1 spearman. Start of limited war against Bismarck. Some of them still have to walk a bit and 2 new axemen will be finished soon. More than enough troops for a limited war.
It's a shame of the good relations with Bismarck, but we will not get worse relations with the other leaders because they don't like him.
Before I declare war, as a good friend, I ask Bismarck for Monotheism (with 7 Indian axemen doing military exercises outside of Frankfurt). He refuses. So, he isn't a good friend after all. That's a casus belli. So I declare war.
I lose 1 axemen to the 2 archers. But I also get 2 new workers. 6 workers for 4 cities, hmm nice.
375AD: Killed 2 German archers in my territory.
400AD: Captured Bombay, losing one axeman. This city has iron and ivory. Now Bismarck doesn't have any ivory in his empire.
425AD: Hmm, Bismarck still doesn't want peace. I guess I'll have to hurt him some more. 9 axemen, 1 spearman. I was building a settler in Delhi but switch to a catapult.
Traded Meditation and Construction for Alphabet and Monotheism and 90 gold with Cyrus. I could have gotten fishing, but you can only get a limited number of technologies in trades and thus I would research it myself in 1 turn. I want foreign trade routes over the water.
I switched to organized religion to appease Brennus, it's his favourite civic.
450AD: Invented fishing. Got peace with Bismarck (finally). Now to build my stack of catapults (hehheh). He gave me fishing for peace. Now I can trade over the coastal tiles, giving me foreign trade routes with Cyrus.
Research continues towards Currency for more trade routes.
Traded construction for horseback riding with Bismarck.
475AD: Cyrus asks for philosophy for free. Hmm, no.
540AD: Traded Philosophy for Metal casting, Literature and 130 gold with Cyrus.
Traded copper for fish and 5 gold per turn with Cyrus. That's 5 gpt that can be pushed into research.
560AD: Founded the gold city Lahore, spread Hinduism there with a missionary to expand the borders.
620AD: Researched Currency, continued with calendar.
640AD: Traded Literature to Brennus for 140 gold.
680AD: Brennus finally likes me enough for open borders. That will be good for our trade routes.
700AD: I got a great prophet from Delhi. I had hoped for a great scientist and had a better chance at a great scientist. You can't have it all.
720AD: Calendar finished, bureaucracy next. Build the Dai Miao, the taoist holy shrine. I do a gold-wine trade with Brennus for additional happiness.
740AD: Brennus is moving a settler through my territory. I don't like it.
Traded Philosophy and Metal casting for Feudalism and 170gold.
Switched to vassalage, Cyrus' favourite civic.
760AD: Sold Calendar to Bismarck for 280gold.
820AD: Second war against Bismarck
880AD: Civil service developed, continue with machinery. I want macemen because Bismarck has longbowmen.
Captured Munich, lost 2 catapults and 1 axeman.
Bribed Brennus in the war with Bismarck with Civil Service. I don't think he will have a lot of succes in this war and we'll get better relations due to the mutual war bonus.
900AD: Switch to bureaucracy.
1000AD: Finished machinery, upgraded three axemen to macemen. 100% gold to upgrade the rest.

Trashy gandhi, Roland Johansen AD-1000.CivWarlordsSave

 

[shyuhe]

congrats pigswill

A word of caution to those playing the next set (I started playing a bit). Be very wary of diplomatic relations. I will probably not be submitting my game for the good of the team since this is going to be the trash round coming up. I'm going to need some luck to right my ship

 

[Öjevind Lång]

no problem missing one round, but letting others know would allow us to go on...

My friend, this was busy as in BUSY. I kept hoping I could spare a few hours to play, but that just didn't happen.

 

[cabert]

So next round is to be played up to 1400AD. Are we back to normal schedule?
Noone submitted on saturday anyway, so I think it doesn't give us any advantage to drag it further.
SO, saves are due firday evening (before midnight east coast time).
It's a trash round.
And shyhue, if your game's weak, it's no reason not to submit it. We're still undefeated in this serie .

Too bad we were a bit short on discussions for the previous round.
I think we have 2 schools playing here :
1) - let's tech fast, trading whatever the price
2) - let's keep some monopoly techs, to have a chance on liberalism first.

I'm usually in the 1) group, but not in this game.
We were not in a perfect "researching faster than others" position, and having philo as monopoly tech made me feel safer. Of course, I traded theology, making the trade of philo less necessary .

There are also 2 schools of war :
- barbarians, attacking with numbers and inferior troops
- shy guys (kmad didn't submit ), waiting for the uber unit to move

Most of the players chose a middle way, with a first wave vs small, low culture cities with axes and spears, waiting for the catapults before hitting the bigger cities.
Then there is the happiness issue.
Our winner has a big happiness issue and no solution underway to solve it.
Of course, sueing for peace is the easy way to solve it, stopping WW issues and freeing units to be used as military police. But killing brennus or at least making him a non issue should be high priority IMHO. celtia is full of wonders which we could use .

So I'm planning on a large use of spiritual costless switches to solve this
...
Any ideas?

 

[pigswill]

The solution to happiness is peace. There are two options. Peace straightaway or continue the war against Celtia until annihilation.

Genociding Celtia gives us the pyramids and removes yearning for homeland , stuff like 'Life Aint Fun Without A Dun' etc. However it prolongs war weariness and the weaker Brennus gets the more likely he is to capitulate. The worst case scenario is that Brennus capitulates to Cyrus involving us in another major war for a minimum of ten turns (a war that we could lose). On the other hand the weaker Brennus gets the more likely that other AI will dogpile on him (especially if we bribe them). He could still capitulate to an AI but it wouldn't necessarily lead to another war.

 

[cabert]

so guys, I made a quick summary of the rounds in the initial post.
My english isn't as good as I would want it, and if you have any suggestion, please PM me, and I'll edit the rounds' brief descriptions.

 

[Cam_H]

Your English is better than most posts in CivFanatics - thanks for updating the initial post!

I certainly fell in the 'tech'-er category, and held onto Philosophy like grim death. Certainly I had some trouble with Brennus - my invasion force was bunkered in a forest being smacked by a seemingly endless stream of Horse Archers and Cat's, and while I was content with my tech' position, the invasion was somewhat of a flop. Some really good rounds though from others on the roster.

I tend to agree with other comments - Brennus does have some nice wonders and is quickly competing with Alexander as becoming my least favourite AI rival, so reducing him to not much would be great. Prospective capitulation to Persia however is quite an interesting issue that Piggy raises.

It will be interesting to see how these next few rounds pan out.

 

[cabert]

capitulation to persia is excluded. Persia would need to attack celtia, and that's rather unlikely.

not a real spoiler, more a strategic discussion. Don't know if you want to know my way of thinking or not before playing.

Spoiler :

OTOH, brennus could become a paceful vassal of Persia, bragging cyrus into the war against us. That's a lot more likely. To avoid this, we need to either be nice to cyrus or be powerful enough to scare him. One way to do this is to drag bismarck into the war vs brennus. This way, cyrus would check our power added to bismarck's before agreeing on being brennus' master.

 

[pigswill]

Cabert: reply to your hidden strategic observations:

Spoiler :

I explained myself badly (and english is my first (only ) language so I have no excuse). I actually meant that Brennus would vassalise peacefully to Cyrus rather than capitulate. Bribing others into war v Brennus is best way to prevent this but have to see if its practical or affordable.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Is noone going to look at my save, just for fun. I know I posted far too late.

I looked at your savegames and it was interesting to see the differences. It seemed very important in the last round how succesful people were during the war. I think that was the main difference between games.

By the way, there was no discussion at all during the last round. Pigswill's save was chosen, but Shyuhe's savegame had a better tech position, faster research and an equal number of cities. There are thus other reasons for people chosing Pigswills save. So I would like to see some discussion in the future. Of course, all opinions are 100% personal and everyone values different elements of the game. But without any discussion at all, we could as well play single player. Without exchange of ideas, I think everyone just tries to finish the turnset and quickly looks at the games, rushing to move on to the next turnset.

And Pigswill, the comparison between your savegame and Shyuhe's wasn't a personal attack, just a way to illustrate the lack of discussion.

Maybe it is better to leave a few days for the discussion and looking at games. It was rushed in the last turnset. That was probably due to waiting for some savegames (such as mine), but that should not happen. If you're not in time, then the others should just move on because otherwise the discussion of strategy and the valueing of savegames is in jeopardy. And without a serious look at the other people savegames, we're just playing single player games with weird starting positions.

Ok, I guess this criticism isn't going to make me popular, but I just had to say it.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Too bad we were a bit short on discussions for the previous round.
I think we have 2 schools playing here :
1) - let's tech fast, trading whatever the price
2) - let's keep some monopoly techs, to have a chance on liberalism first.

I'm usually in the 1) group, but not in this game.
We were not in a perfect "researching faster than others" position, and having philo as monopoly tech made me feel safer. Of course, I traded theology, making the trade of philo less necessary .

I disagree. I think having philosophy as a monopoly technology is quite useless. You aren't stopping a certain advantage for the AI. If you weren't going to give the AI feudalism (which allows longbowmen) because you were going to conquer them, then I understand. But there seems to be no advantage for the player to not trade philosophy. I for instance traded the technology twice and got more technology out of it than what it's worth.
{540AD: Traded Philosophy for Metal casting, Literature and 130 gold with Cyrus.
760AD: Traded Philosophy and Metal casting for Feudalism and 170gold with Brennus.}

Now, if you mean, you shouldn't trade it for 100 gold, then I agree. But I actually think you should never sell a technology that far below its price (100 gold would be less than 10% of the research cost). You're helping the AI far far more than yourself. I guess whether to trade or not depends on whether I have a comparable advantage to what the AI has. I sometimes sell a technology for half its research cost because I get a decent amount of money and one of my opponents gets a technology. As long as he doesn't trade it too much, you're at an advantage compared to most of your opponents.

 

[cabert]

Cabert: reply to your hidden strategic observations:

Spoiler :

I actually meant that Brennus would vassalise peacefully to Cyrus rather than capitulate. Bribing others into war v Brennus is best way to prevent this but have to see if its practical or affordable.

Not sure why I used the spoiler tag in the first place , so I stopped it.
This is not a plan you guys HAVE TO follow. But having a diplomatic plan is IMHO necessary in the next turnset. We don't want to get dogpiled on!


I believe we have essentially 2 ways to work on the diplomatic front. Both include religions. Sticking with no state religion was good until you attacked brennus. Now it's not good enough anymore.
If we try to become jews, it should keep cyrus happy.
If we follow bismarck's religion, he'll probably agree to dogpile brennus for free.

Other options include losing the philosophy monopoly .
We could for instance try to get cyrus on bismarck .

I know that I will try to be bismarck's buddy, because the penalty for attacking a friend will make it too difficult to maintain good relations to cyrus.

 

[pigswill]

It is certainly very difficult to compare games at a given point in time. Roland made the pertinent observation that Shyuhe's game was more advanced than mine at 1000ad. However had I gone for peace in 980, put my unhappy citizens to work and traded philosophy for eg MC and feudalism then I'd have a different game to the one I posted without changing anything substantial (edit: and these are changes anyone can make on turn 0 if they wish).

 

[cabert]

It is certainly very difficult to compare games at a given point in time. Roland made the pertinent observation that Shyuhe's game was more advanced than mine at 1000ad. However had I gone for peace in 980, put my unhappy citizens to work and traded philosophy for eg MC and feudalism then I'd have a different game to the one I posted without changing anything substantial (edit: and these are changes anyone can make on turn 0 if they wish).

very true.
philo still is a powerful trade toy
(and for the record, my game was also more advanced than yours . I had half of education already)

And about unhappies, I went to peace a few turns earlier for this issue .
Could have declared again, but didn't want to trap everyone in a war if my game was selected.
more a SG reflex than a competitive aspect.
And I'm glad Pigswill didn't go for peace, leaving us all more options to play with.

 

[FeedBack]

OH man, I'm back. Sorry for not voting, but weekends are my worst time for playing, believe it or not.
Congratulations, pigswill! From worst to best!
I haven't even looked at the saves. I got home very late yesterday with some fever. That's why your momma always tell you: "don't stay under the sun, son!"...

I'll try to get a look at the save tonight. But, generally speaking, I think the worst case scenario is Brennus vassalising himself peacefully to Cyrus. And I like cabert's idea of bringing someone into the battle. In my previous round, I brought Bismarck into the war with Brennus. The only thing he did was pillage all the vicinity of Vienne, turning it into an almost undeveloped city.
Brennus capitulation is almost useless IMHO. We won't be able to trade with him and I don't trust an AI to do the hard work in a war. So, either we forget about him or we just turn him into dust.

 

[Giaur]

Lurker's comment:

I've just been fired. Is the job of trash collector available?

btw. Does anyone know how to make a proper lurker's comment?

 

[cabert]

Lurker's comment:

I've just been fired. Is the job of trash collector available?

btw. Does anyone know how to make a proper lurker's comment?

Hi giaur,
I'd be quite happy to have you in but we have a full roster for a while (in fact, we're already 1 above optimal size, due to unpredictable previous captain, who claimed he'd be only half time here ).
If someone drops out, I'll PM you, ok? You can of course play shadow rounds, without submitting them, if you want to compare strats. just keep the results for yourself (you don't want to give us regrets, do you?).

and about lurker comments, type [ "delurk" ], then after your comment [ "/ delurk" ] (without spaces and without "")

 

[Giaur]

edit: lurker's comment: Lurker's comment
edit2: ... now it's ok edit4: (it's not)
edit3: lurker's comment: Sounds ok for me . I rarely criticize others because I do not like it. Shadow games ... i'll do that, when I have some time.

lurker's comment: Sorry for the lurker's mess

 

[Roland Johansen]

It is certainly very difficult to compare games at a given point in time. Roland made the pertinent observation that Shyuhe's game was more advanced than mine at 1000ad. However had I gone for peace in 980, put my unhappy citizens to work and traded philosophy for eg MC and feudalism then I'd have a different game to the one I posted without changing anything substantial (edit: and these are changes anyone can make on turn 0 if they wish).

Sorry, my post was a bit provoking to get a reply. I hope I didn't really annoy you. You are completely right that your economy looks a lot better when you sign peace and trade some technologies. But that were actually the points that should have been discussed before or during the voting.

I just don't believe that everyone took the time to sign a peace treaty, do some tech trades and then compare the economical and scientific situation in your game.

By the way, a good job beating Cyrus. It must have been difficult to capture many cities from him. I went for Bismarck in my game.

If you sign a peace treaty now and do the right tech trades, you can get:
horseback riding, metal casting, feudalism, currency, fishing and 400gold. You then have so much gold that you can have a 100% research rate with 122 bpt (after rearranging tiles) for 20 turns and 75bpt at break even point. With a quick race to calendar (4-5 turns), you get lots of extra happiness. Such options are present in the game, but not obvious and they are what makes your game a good one to be voted for (next to the obvious gain in cities). You can then switch to judaism for better relations and start kicking Bismarck's ass without war weariness.