Independence Day

[pigswill]

Expanding nicely. Still weak militarily. Riceport could do with building an axe or two, maybe finish library, mine plains hill then axes all the way (tho can build crossbows once we get machinery or may be able to trade for construction later). Desertfish could probably do with a library both for research and culture. River gems maybe build settler or work on library until hits size 3.

Remconius is UP
Stuge is on deck.

 

[remconius]

Got it!

Here's the plan:
-Build library in D-fish to avoid flip.
-build more military to protect ourselves.
-Grow and get commerce!

 

[Craziivan]

i think our capital should finish Library because it is a nice science boost

for the new world some swords might be handy

 

[stuge]

Should we aim for CS? Bureaucracy would be a nice boost and maces would assure rapid conquest of the new world. Tech path would be Monarchy - Feudalism - CS. We could also go by CoL if it won't offset our asrtonomy plans.

 

[remconius]

PreTurn:
Fishboat moved to unfog forest of Fishy1
We are dead last in military power, this will be my main focus!

535BC-Turn131
RG builds lighthouse, Axemen Started
DF builds lighthouse, Axe started (defense before culture I reckon)
Isabelle converts to Hinduism and declares on the Budist Monty. That's one way to angry, change your own beliefs

520BC-Turn132
Worker starts mine on grass hill.

505BC-Turn133
Library whipped in RP.

490BC-Turn134
RP build library, Axemen started.
Obilisk whipped in CC.

475BC-Turn135
Isabelle and Monty want OB, I agree. Seems like an easy way to stay friends. We can always cancel if they try to abuse.
Worker starts cottage for DF.
CC builds obilisk, starts lighthouse.

460BC-Turn136
zzz

445BC-Turn137
Metal Casting completed, Alphabet started.

430BC-Turn138
RP builds Axemen, Swordsmen started.
Axe is moved to DF.
Worker moves to other banana.

415BC-Turn139
Warrior from DF moves to forest as fogbuster.

400BC-Turn140
Other Banana cottage started.

385BC-Turn141
Cottage for DF is ready, next one is started.

370BC-Turn142
Alexander converts to Hinduism.

355BC-Turn143
Lighthouse complete in CC, Library started. It has a lot of food with cow and fish, and will be good to have 2 scientists.

340BC-Turn144
Signed a few more OB pacts. Hoping to get some luxurt trades going later on.

325BC-Turn145
Axe completed in RG, New one started.

Notes for next player
-When RP has size 6, it should assign 2 scientists.
-All cities are focusing on commerce, which should help to our goals.
-Production orders come in slowly, but can be whipped.
-We need to continue to build units for the new world and to keep the aggressors off our back.
-If we want another city, Hering city looks better than other Ricecity.
-We can easily trade fish or rice for a luxury. We have enough health...

The save:
View attachment 139510

 

[stuge]

Got it.

Nothing to do right now so, what with there being no major decisions, I will play & post this evening.

 

[pigswill]

Riceport needs to wait a few turns to overcome whip-misery; maybe work hillmine instead of rice until it does.
Desertfish still needs library; before or after current axe?
Herring is better for whipping then running specialists; rice 2 is better for cottages (obviously!).

Overall another nice set of turns.

Good to see AI falling out with each other.

As I understand GS preferences CS lines up paper instead of astronomy. I think that CoL will line up philosophy instead of astronomybut that's worth checking.

We're almost at the point of being able to tech-trade.

Stuge is UP. (Edit: and beat me to the post!)
Pigswill is on deck.
We're keeping up a good momentum. If anyone feels we're running ahead of ourselves and wants to pause the game for reflection feel free to say so.

 

[remconius]

Yeah we shouldnt get CS or CoL, we just need calendar and optics for astronomy.

Riceport can grow to 6 before the whipmisery goes, we have enough food to feed the unhappy man, and he can go straight to work as we come out of unhappiness.

Advantage of herring is that is has two high food tiles and doesnt need any tile development, just a lighthouse.

 

[stuge]

Technology:

Finished alphabet, researched polytheism and started literature, with two turns to go. Traded Izzy sailing for priesthood 'cause it's on the path to monarchy. Seriously, people. We NEED HR. The only luxury we can trade for is ivory and Cyrus wants our Iron for it. I strongly suggest that we research monarchy next.

Domestic:

Built a cottage at D-Fish, a riverside-mine at RG and a quarry at CbT. (These names ) Wipped an axe in DF and fortified it in an effort to show Cyrus that we'd stick in his throat. Started a library there which should be whipped at the earliest opportunity.
CbT is building a library. After it's done start the GL. Speed it along with chops. 4 scientists will ensure that their big brothers will appear quickly.
RP built library, lighthouse and an axe. Second axe is in the process.
RG is building an axe. Work the riverside mine when it grows next turn for some production capability.

Foreign:

At the start of my turns, Monty declared on Izzy. A few turns later she showed up.

And who could resist those eyelashes? The war with Monty has been bloodless. He should be willing to sing peace on equal terms soon. It never hurts to suck up to the only woman in the bar. Curys tries hard but somehow it's just not the same...

Regarding Mongolia: Genghis demanded MC (piss off), founded confucianism, built th Kong Miao and declared on Curys.

Regarding Japan: Toku demanded that we cancel deals with Curys. He narrowed his eyes meaningfully when I told him where to stick it. Just keep stacking those axes in RG... He also founded Nara on an one-tile island so that we can't settle on rice 2.

Regarding Greece: Alex demanded MC, pissed off and declared on US. Sigh. Dear, the neighbourghs are giving us increasingly nasty looks. Perhaps it's time for us to move away.

Okay, Alex sent two stacks, 3 and 4 archers. They got whacked, although I had to run 0% science for a couple of turns to upgrade our warriors in RG.
It's up to governor Pigwill to decide whether we should teach him a lesson by
pillaging a bit. He obviously (thank god) lacks metals.

Results:

The south:

The warzone:

Our finances:

Ratings:

The roster:

stuge - just hit on Izzy
piggy - up now
crazie - on deck
remcon - jealous that Izzy came to me and not to him.

EDIT: Is this really a monarch game? Except for Stonehenge, ALL the early wonders (even the Oracle) are still available in 100 BC! I've never seen anything like this before. Okay, now we can start debating about going for the Oracle now and about whose fault it is that we didn't go for it in 1000 BC. I blame myself.

Aaand the save:

 

[remconius]

I dont agree. We would be better off researching the way to astronomy, we can trade for other techs along the way. Our cities dont need to be big. They will do fine staying small and focusing on science.

HR will help, but cost us valuable research beakers. It's nice to have bigger cities but not needed.

I feel we should have made a team decision on this.

 

[stuge]

Did you see the edit, Rem? We could still go for the Oracle. We'll have Marble online soon so RP could build it in about 10 turns.
What does the team say? About researching monarchy and about Oracle?

I'm pro-monarchy, because more people means more 3C tiles, especially at RG. It has lots of surplus food and we'll stack most of our forces inside it. It could grow fast and bring in LOTS of commerce. Also, the bigger our cities are, the more units we can whip out of them before the Migration.

I'm pro-Oracle, too. No guts, no glory...

 

[pigswill]

Stuge: Monarchy for HR is certainly an arguable point and one I ain't decided on either way. I'm slightly perplexed as to why you went for poly and literature; they open up Glib, HE and NE but I'm not sure how high priority these are; may also be useful for trading counters but won't directly help us fulfil our Glorious Destiny in the new world.

The neighbours are predictably fractious. I'd be reluctant to be fighting wars of aggression at this point because we're still weak, all we'd need to do is lose a couple of units and have our forces out of place and Tok will pile on us.

Oracle is tempting because with marble we get double production for it; even if we don't get it we get a full (doubled) refund. Arguably its an exploit even if the AI probably do it as well.

I think that it is important that we keep to the astronomy beeline as much as possible and debate any deviations beforehand. We're all fairly experienced players so we know what we're doing and we can all give good reasons for our actions. The problem is that if we all follow our natural games we'll lose focus and 5 turns here and 10 turns there will mount up.

Something else I'm thinking is that our neighbours are quite unreasonable; any techs trades will be extortionate and resource trades are liable to be cancelled without notice so that's an argument for HR to be more self-sufficient. Its also an argument for moving house as soon as possible.

I think I'll wait 24 to give you all a chancefor your thoughts and opinions. Overall we're doing ok so we're certainly nowhere near a crisis.

 

[stuge]

The reason I went poly-literature is the GLib. We're planning on running two scientists in CbT. They will give us eventually our GS but the GLib will double their rate of arrival. We've got marble and we can hurry it by chopping around the Fishy 1-tag. CbT has nothing better to build anyway. Riceport can crank out all the units we need.

Without GLib we'd be getting 6 GPP. With it we'll be getting 14 GPP. That'll give us two, maybe even three GS before we migrate.

Hope that justifies the 12-turn deviation.

As for the Oracle, I think we could get it in RP if you start it immediately at the beginning of your turns. Machinery would be best for the free tech, I reckon.

But the ball is ultimately in your hands, governor pigswill.

 

[remconius]

I understand all the arguments, and they are all good were this a regular game.

From the test games I learnt, with proper focus we could be out of this continent in as little as 50 turns. This is not a normal game where we try to optimize our settlement, etc.

our goals are:
-Max science to get astronomy.
-Get great scientists to get astronomy faster.
-Building an attack force to take over the new world.

I dont mind taking a slow approach and getting some other techs to generate more GP. It's not a bad idea, but post your plan first and give us a chance to react.

You said:

Got it.

Nothing to do right now so, what with there being no major decisions, I will play & post this evening.

Then you went to play a few hours later on a different strategy.

 

[Craziivan]

475BC-Turn135
Isabelle and Monty want OB, I agree. Seems like an easy way to stay friends. We can always cancel if they try to abuse.

maybe not, they are enemies and will sooner or later ask for canceling our deals with their opponent or that we will join their war

I think with all this war we should try to get our citizens out there into the "safety" of the new world, as fast as possible.
but maybe we can take some GP with us to speed up development in the new world, but i think we can get monarchy from someone else some time, maybe from izzy when she finally has founded her christianity

in my own games i decide most things spontaneously, which results in 120hour games including some pauses while watching TV

 

[remconius]

Hmm, good point. Havent figured out the impact of OB apart from the fact you can keep them out...

 

[pigswill]

Open borders allow you to have trade routes with that particular civilisation (and them have trade routes with you) as well as free movement of units.

 

[remconius]

Right, but what are the other implications of OB?

The one you are signing it with is friends with you, but his enemies are angry with you... If he has more enemies that means signing makes more enemies than friends... Complicated it seems...

 

[pigswill]

You get a bonus for open borders, you don't get a bonus for 'trading with our friends', you get a penalty for 'trading with our enemies', you also get a penalty for breaking agreements. Complicated indeed. In this situation the odd +1 or -1 ain't going to make much difference; if you're noticably weaker they'll attack regardless of diplomatic relations.

An issue I didn't consider when talking about old world and new world is islands. I'd probably say that Herring is part of the old world coz its on the continental shelf; if an island is seperated from old world by ocean tiles then I'd reckon its part of the new world and can be retained. Conclusion: don't settle herring island because its old world but not easily conquered like the mainland cities.
Fair point re trading for monarchy. If we have serious overcrowding and we can't trade for monarchy at that point then it may be worth researching.

Edit: a concern about Glib is that while it would certainly speed up GS production it doesn't become obselete until SciMeth and we'd be leaving it behind for someone else; otoh if we don't build it someone else will. We could also build NE quick with marble which would also speed up GP production at the cost of generating the occasional GA (potentially useful fogbuster in new worldof course). We could also partbuild Glib and rake in the cash when someone beats us to it. I think overall I'd go for oracle first, we might get it which speeds us to machinery.

 

[stuge]

Re tech path:

Literature smoke: or not) in 2 turns. After that math -> calendar. Calendar will essentially let us see which way it is to the New World. Then compass -> machinery(Oracle?) -> optics -> astronomy(GS).

Re Wonders & weed:

The Oracle could save us 20 turns of research if we pick machinery for free. Hook up the marble and don't let RP even finish that axe. It's a gamble but the risks are small and the payoff big.

Let's stick with the GLib, okay? Chasing it may have been weedy, unconsiderate and suboptimal by me but those extra 8 GS points certainly won't hurt us. With marble and three math-enchanced chops it will take ~ 20 turns in Cowboytown.
And we can always gift or allow CbT to be captured and then raze it to prevent the GLib from
benefitting the AI.