Innovation challenge

[ifinnem]

Quite possibly this is old news but saw examples of using Sushi to power to domination victory, e.g. BOTM 16 Shannon CT - BOTM 16 Final Spolier

Basic plan is for seafood heavy map
1) Establish solid opening
2) Beeline Medicine and found sushi
3) Spam cities to claim seafood
4) Spread sushi to most cities since it adds 0.5 & 2 per resource
5) Sit back and wait for pop growth explosion + rapid border expansion to claim domination...

Or something like that

 

[Shurdus]

Quite possibly this is old news but saw examples of using Sushi to power to domination victory, e.g. BOTM 16 Shannon CT - BOTM 16 Final Spolier

Basic plan is for seafood heavy map
1) Establish solid opening
2) Beeline Medicine and found sushi
3) Spam cities to claim seafood
4) Spread sushi to most cities since it adds 0.5 & 2 per resource
5) Sit back and wait for pop growth explosion + rapid border expansion to claim domination...

Or something like that

Just popping your borders one time more often that it would in your normal game does not suddenly pop you torward a domination win as it only increases your land marginally.

Would it be even possible to culture your way towards domination? My guess is that it is not. Even if you can culture flip this city and that, the cities behind the city you just flipped will prevent the borders of the newly flipped city to extend too far. Not only that, but getting that newly flipped borders so intense that it would even flip the generally more powerful and more ancient city behind it is slim to none.

 

[6K Man]

SushiCo is great and I try to get that in all my games. That said, spreading it to ALL cities of a large empire means that it won't pay for itself directly - inflation and corp maintenance will far outweigh the direct corporation income. You'll be rushing courthouses everywhere just to stay afloat. If you have cities on another landmass and no Forbidden Palace/Versailles, it will get ugly.

Of course, indirectly, you can still come out ahead cashwise - switch to Caste and run Merchants. But that's kind of a waste, IMO.

 

[Shurdus]

SushiCo is great and I try to get that in all my games. That said, spreading it to ALL cities of a large empire means that it won't pay for itself directly - inflation and corp maintenance will far outweigh the direct corporation income. You'll be rushing courthouses everywhere just to stay afloat. If you have cities on another landmass and no Forbidden Palace/Versailles, it will get ugly.

Of course, indirectly, you can still come out ahead cashwise - switch to Caste and run Merchants. But that's kind of a waste, IMO.

Or found the HQ in the wall street city so that mainenance if earned back with interest. It solves your problem and you will want the corp to be spread around the globe.

 

[6K Man]

Or found the HQ in the wall street city so that mainenance if earned back with interest. It solves your problem and you will want the corp to be spread around the globe.

With a big enough empire, even a corporation founded in a Wall Street city will lose money - the 12 is outweighed by maintenance in the high 'teens, even with Courthouses.

 

[ifinnem]

Just popping your borders one time more often that it would in your normal game does not suddenly pop you torward a domination win as it only increases your land marginally.

A couple thoughts in response
1) You may be underestimating the scale of things, e.g. 50 seafood resources gives 100 per turn so its more pops for existing cities and fast pops for all the new ones you are spamming
2) It's not only about land but the fast population growth take you towards the domination threshold w/o as much war
3) Agreed - you do basically run your economy into the ground with corp maintenance

 

[cabert]

A couple thoughts in response
1) You may be underestimating the scale of things, e.g. 50 seafood resources gives 100 per turn so its more pops for existing cities and fast pops for all the new ones you are spamming
2) It's not only about land but the fast population growth take you towards the domination threshold w/o as much war
3) Agreed - you do basically run your economy into the ground with corp maintenance

that's the good thing about rathauses or ikhandas

 

[TheMeInTeam]

With a big enough empire, even a corporation founded in a Wall Street city will lose money - the 12 is outweighed by maintenance in the high 'teens, even with Courthouses.

It's not empire size, it's resource dependent. If you have enough resources such that sushi is costing you > 12GPT AFTER free market/courthouse reductions, use your > 10 food/city to compensate for it. Run some merchants somewhere or something, since your corp is worth 5 of them at least (per city!!!) at that point. That's instantly 15 gpt, but with multipliers more.

 

[cabert]

here is something innovative (I think) :
you all know that your vassals do research what what you tell them to
but most of you also know that they tend NOT to trade with you (because you're the bad guy who declared war on them, razed half their cities ...)
So I often put all my EP point into my fastest researching vassal (not mansa, he trades) and steal tech from them.
OK what's new here ?
your spies are never caught waiting in your vassal's cities ! , that's cool for the 50% bonus
+ you don't care if you get a negative diplo for spying
+ (not sure about this one) they don't retaliate (never caught a vassal's spy in my land)

so no risk AND you can choose what you're going to steal

 

[Ghpstage]

here is something innovative (I think) :
you all know that your vassals do research what what you tell them to
but most of you also know that they tend NOT to trade with you (because you're the bad guy who declared war on them, razed half their cities ...)
So I often put all my EP point into my fastest researching vassal (not mansa, he trades) and steal tech from them.
OK what's new here ?
your spies are never caught waiting in your vassal's cities ! , that's cool for the 50% bonus
+ you don't care if you get a negative diplo for spying
+ (not sure about this one) they don't retaliate (never caught a vassal's spy in my land)

so no risk AND you can choose what you're going to steal

I like this idea . Forced Open Borders and state religion swaps will make this very cheap too!
Does Theocracy stop a Masters' missionaries from working? I've never tried....
If not then this combined with religion swaps will make Mansa a very abuseable vassal

 

[cabert]

I like this idea . Forced Open Borders and state religion swaps will make this very cheap too!
Does Theocracy stop a Masters' missionaries from working? I've never tried....
If not then this combined with religion swaps will make Mansa a very abuseable vassal

theocracy works, but you can gift the missionaries
and as I said before, unless you're his worst enemy, mansa will trade even if angry

 

[PieceOfMind]

The question is, how far did you have to cripple the civ before you were able to force it to capitulate? In my limited experience with taking vassals, by the time I've won them they're almost useless in terms of research.

 

[Ghpstage]

theocracy works, but you can gift the missionaries
and as I said before, unless you're his worst enemy, mansa will trade even if angry

I find quite often that I don't have enough techs to trade with him to catch up . Plus I don't really want to be giving hiim more tech if I can help it and then theres WFYABTA limits.

The question is, how far did you have to cripple the civ before you were able to force it to capitulate? In my limited experience with taking vassals, by the time I've won them they're almost useless in terms of research.

Depens on how you go about vassalizing them I guess. If your capturing cities and land and they take a while to capitulate they may indeed be entirely crippled (unless you give them back), but if your razing cities instead and allow them to ressetle then they can become useful later on.
(Don't know how likely they are to break free in this case, its never happened to me when I haven't demanded things)

I suppose the usefulness of this depends on wther the AI research bonuses on the level you are playing are able to outproduce what you can do if you had all that AI's cities.

 

[6K Man]

Not sure if this counts as an innovation, but if you upgrade all your Airships to Fighters, you lose the ability to spot submarines with aircraft. Naturally, you can spot them with Destroyers, but you run the risk of losing the Destroyer that way

Consequently I keep a handful of Airships for patrolling with every turn.

 

[TabascoBob]

Seeing all of the posts on promotions, gaining experience points etc., I thought I'd throw this out there (currently playing Prince/Epic/Standard/Planet Generator or Tectonic Maps)

I've been fooling around with Privateers for a while, usually just for kicks and giggles and picking up some cheap GG points. I usually pursue the lower tree tech line anyway (sometimes the Lib/Steel slingshot, sometimes racing out to be one of the first to tech Steel. Love cannons).

In my last game, even though the landmass turned out to be a pangea, I was able to get more than 10-12 Privateers to 37+ xp (and a few over 50 before GG attachment) C1/M1/D4 or C4/Blitz Privateers chew up galleons, caravels, triremes and galleys, and I generated so many GGs (9 GGs just from privateer combat, after already scoring a few earlier in the game) that I was able to create three fantastic military unit cities.

My Privateers strangled one rival after another, as once I got the lead I targeted whoever was #2 on the scoreboard until they tanked: combined with some espionage (such as sabotaging universities and libraries) and counterespionage (to protect my naval secrets), "Jack Sparrow" and the gang had a nice long run.

I just had to attach a couple of the GGs to highly promoted privateers, so that even once Gilgamesh was able to tech astronomy and chemistry, it took him 30+Caravels, 8+ Frigates and 8+SoL to break down my blockade.

By then, I took my surviving superpromoted privateers back to friendly waters, upgraded to destroyers, and once I declared war I only needed two destroyers to wipe out his entire wooden navy. After that, one destroyer per AI (all had blitz and could attack once per movement point) was sufficient to maintain total naval superiority.

The side benefit was that all of the AIs had significant population shrinkage in their coastal cities; by settling 3 GGs in my HE/WP city, 3 more in my IW city, and 3 in my MS naval warship pump, I had three cities capable of putting out 17+ xp units right out of the gate.

Using these tactics allowed me to get my second highest score ever, an early 1800 conquest.

AAARGH, matey!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The question is, how far did you have to cripple the civ before you were able to force it to capitulate? In my limited experience with taking vassals, by the time I've won them they're almost useless in terms of research.

Abuse the land target rule to get stronger/better vassals.

 

[TabascoBob]

Abuse the land target rule to get stronger/better vassals.

What's that?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What's that?

Another civ @ war with target than yourself, that has IIRC at least 8 tiles bordering it. It drastically reduces the power variation/average power requirements to get the target to capitulate.

Using other vassals of yours for this counts too. Which is good, because otherwise your vassals count for jack and having their extra power hurts cap odds, because the mechanics are ridiculously stupid.

A while back I posted a screen shot of a war target that was still "doing fine on its own". Just to prove this garbage, I DELETED MY OWN VASSAL using WB. After doing so, the target would capitulate, since average power was now higher than target power. So ******ed. Maybe the game should ignore vassals when doing the avg power calculation? Just maybe?

But w/e. That's how it is so use the broken mechanics however possible.

 

[TabascoBob]

Ahhh. That's why I've been having so much more success by taking quick capitulations, liberating the cities I don't REALLY want, and moving on to the next target. I'm leaving the average power of the AI higher, even though they are my vassals.

And I thought the only benefit was letting Monty, Shaka and Ragnar keep their SoD's for me to direct.

BTW (not to get too far off track, apologies to futurehermit) How hard does the AI vassal try to follow your military instructions? I've yet to see the 25 Cav/15 Treb/20 Impi SoD that was headed my way when I took three of Shaka's core cities show up at the city I later asked Shaka to attack.

 

[Krill]

Hmm.

What about a no civics game?