KoS4 - Something more casual (?)

[timmy827]

Agree with broad outlines of kossin plan. One point though - once we take Zara as vassal I think Pacal and Hammy will drop out of Friendly (for tech trading purposes based on average with our vassals); so at that point make sure to swing whatever tech trades are possible. Of course once we peace vassal them we will be able to trade freely again.

 

[Stochastic]

No, I do not want peace with Mansa/zara. We will loose all accumulated war successes. With out groping Mansa Power zara will not break free. It would not help as in log run.

Fair enough, I just thought I'd try to float another option. Personally I think it would be worth it if it guaranteed lib as the war success would come back once we start smiting again, but I don't think we have much of a chance for it even with popping a GA and putting every city on research this turn. So keeping the war going makes sense.

I agree with Mutineer.

Pacal is willing to trade Nationalism, means he isn't building it.
.

Unless I'm missing a mechanic (quite possible) since he's friendly he is willing to trade all techs regardless of monopolies/wonders.

Losing Liberalism isn't so bad, it's just too bad that we might not be able to cash in on the free tech, don't worry about it though
Joao is 2nd in GNP, next to Pacal... he's got fewer cities so I can hardly see how he'd be ahead.

With Hammy and Pacal @ Friendly, what we really need now is:
-Zara breaks free (reduce MM power)
-vassal Zara
-mass power so Pacal and Hammy want to be our vassals. This probably will mean taking a ceasefire with MM for Hammy as he's Pleased with him (can't force war).

Once all the above happens, we'll be within spitting distance of victory.

Anyway, the big picture of my plan:

Techs
Trigger GA right away and try for Liberalism this turn. Next turn we should see Joao's research which will tell if we have a chance to grab it before him. Build wealth/science as needed to get there first.

Otherwise trade for Nationalism with Pacal to attempt Taj (or at least failure gold).
Other techs I'd like: Printing Press (probably with GS coming from Carthage), Engineering, Guilds?, Banking?, Economics?, Gunpowder?

[snip]

Plan looks solid as always, good points about Pascal being higher up than Joao, I was just looking at the graph and forgot that there were more than 3 civs on the map

The one thing I disagree with is investing beakers into Lib, maybe we should part tech Nat for trade of Edu and then go straight to PP? I just don't see us gaining anything from Lib right now if we get it second. We want religion for happy with Hanny and Pascal and don't have enough towns yet for Free Speech to trump buro. So why put beakers into it at all?

Other than that the tech path of PP next sounds good for the coins and progress towards rifles, hopefully someone will get guilds/banks/gunpowder that we can trade for. Were you going to ask Nappy to tech Compass for us?

Another option for vassaling Hammy is to use a spy to take Mansa out of Buro. We'd have to be in Vassalage and get ~300 more eps points on Mansa, but in the GA we could swap into Vassal for 5 turns and run the eps slider at 100% for roughly a turn to pull that off. This is probably much more effort than taking a cease fire (the opportunity cost to research of the eps points is most concerning to me), and I probably wouldn't do it myself, but in SGs I like to throw out all my ideas regardless.

 

[kossin]

Very good point about not investing any beakers into Lib righ now, we'll need it later for Communism however.

 

[Stochastic]

Thanks!

As a really long term thought, I was also thinking that this variant makes corporations+Free Market more powerful compared to SP.
1)As we have less cities than normal for an outright conquest/domination our maintenance is lower than it might otherwise be.
2) All those vassals make the extra trade route more interesting as well as providing plenty of cities to take in our cops at no cost to us.
Probably this will be over before that becomes a serious consideration, but just a thought.

 

[Tatran]

As a really long term thought, I was also thinking that this variant makes corporations+Free Market more powerful compared to SP.

I think this game will soon be over with the diplomatic victory (AP) on.

 

[kossin]

Too bad about this though:

Rules:
1. Must win Conquest or Domination Victory.

In the same line of thought however, the game is going to be over before corporations are available

Probably going to play tomorrow, let's see what can be done.

 

[kossin]

Okay, here goes.

Didn't accomplish as much as I'd have liked to but overall it's going well.

Mansa War Elephants are a pain. Maybe we should detour to Engineering next as I couldn't trade for it.
Went Nationalism>PP>Drama>Liberalism>Guilds>Gunpowder with the slider mainly at 0%.

22 images that I couldn't be bothered to crop

Spoiler :

Did several trades like this in the round. Not much money for us but it helps Nappy which helps us...


Trigger Golden Age and switch civics



Joao is sent packing... idiot. You can see he's 2 away from Liberalism =\ He took Astronomy (bigger idiot)



After moving units in Zara's territory I find this:




After 2 turns of research Pacal trades us Nationalism (yay)


A GS is born in Carthage (I took out the specialists in favor of tiles as it really wasn't helping to get it earlier. He bulbs PP and it is finished in 2 turns.


Finally pillage the copper mine. I disconnected it first by pillaging the road to Aksum since it is not riverside.


Pacal keeps trying to win... sorry pal.


Just as I am getting ready to enter MM land, he shows up with this:


Ugh, I move the stack away and he enters our land the next turn I lost 1 unit to an Elephant but his stack his gone.

Trade Nationalism <-> Liberalism+gold with Joao. Don't worry, Taj has 1 turn left!



So we get an extra 15 turns worth of Golden Age after my set.

The reason for getting Liberalism in a trade:


Remember the techs I gave Napoleon?


It's double-edged sadly, Zara won't break away as easily (even if it's voluntary), but Napoleon is a very competent military leader so it might be a good idea to help him capture more Zara cities with siege.

MM's stack that entered and pillaged a cottage. Wiped it off this turn in exchange for 1 Numidian.


Final turn:

Blow off beggar.

First GM born. Of all the cities I checked we can get 2250 gold and the closest is Uxmal. Second GM due in ~6 turns depending on micro.


I also sent part of the stack into MM land and they got their first pillage. Keep adding units to it since it's fairly close.


Techs:


Also noteworthy:
I settled a GG in Leptis, our military pump.
We should get 4 more universities up for Oxford.
Similarly a few more Theaters for Globe Theater.
Napoleon is 1 turn from Compass.
We're second in power, by 1000 strength only. Once Rifles are available, things will start falling in place very quickly.

 

[timmy827]

Cool.

I'm not sure 6 more unis for Oxford really needs to happen. Yes it's great, but it seems like we will already be close to Rifling by the time those are all done and further research won't be too important. However, if we do want that up, perhaps we should turn off research after Gunpowder and wait for it to go? On yet another hand, if we did build four more my preference would be to 4-pop whip them in Zhou, Chinook, Ainu, Kerkouane but that interferes with the Great Merchant plans.

Could trade PP to Joao now for Banking + Engineering. Also watch Hammy's Great Merchant, see if we can him Guilds or Lib for a ton of cash once he uses it (presumably in Carthage?)

 

[kossin]

^^Good point about universities. While I still think it will be useful, odds are we can win sooner without it and more gold multipliers+units only.

It's probably better to focus on Theaters atm for GT and mass draft afterwards.

Check Hammy for gold every turn and sell Guilds/Lib for all his gold, agreed.

 

[Mutineer]

After we get Gun Powder I would Jump into Nationalism for a few turn and get round of drafting. When we still in GA it is 0 turn revolt and fast addition to our pillage stack. We have excess of happiness in many cities.

After few turns of drafting we can jump back to bureaucracy.
Really, OUR GG mace better roam forest then go pillage

 

[Stochastic]

Looking good, we can certainly get 2 more GPs out before the GA ends, we might even be able to get 3, but I don't have the time to set up a test game with a Carthage, Chinook and Aniu (next largest city for the 3rd GP) equivalents to test it.

Re Oxford, I think that it will be worth it, we will still want to keep up with Joao and I expect that we will start getting some war weariness soon so Jails will be appreciated despite our high happy cap. However I think the 4pop whips can be held off for a bit.

I'm not sure it is a good idea to give PP to Joao, I would rather avoid helping the AI along the path to Rifling if at all possible.

@ Mutineer: I don't think Muskets are good for pillaging because of their 1 movement. And I think the GG mace is useful as a medic for now, when we get a few more mounted units then I'd agree about using him in the still forested Zara lands.

 

[Mutineer]

Muskets are universal pillaging stack protectors. Pillaging stack will still one more /turn anyway. Under cover of muskets you can have chariots which actually do pillage. So, Muskets is best and cheapest stack protector we can have and they are available now. I do not see why you resist.

 

[Stochastic]

You are right about the defense, I just don't like reducing the flexibility of moving 2 squares if necessary and was thinking that a few shock Knights would be sufficient. But I'm not that dead set against it.

 

[kossin]

2 move units pillage and the 1 movement are stack protection... Quite simple really. Also Muskets are a good fix against War Elephants.

Since we have a high happy cap, lots of cities, drafting will be very powerful and for a long time.

 

[Tatran]

Also Muskets are a good fix against War Elephants.

I'm not so sure about that, war elephants can be promoted with Pinch.

Btw, great job getting the Taj Mahal, knowing Hammi has (or had) a GE somewhere.

 

[kossin]

He probably settled him I guess.
Muskets are a quick fix... Of course a few pikes will do much better. It's a fast way to increase our power and maybe convince Pacal/Hammy to bend the knee earlier than Rifling...

 

[Stochastic]

Ok, I'm fine with drafting if that is the consensus. I don't think we need a full draft every turn for 15 muskets though.

Some tech options:
A) Earlier the option for trading fro Banking+Engeneering from Joao for PP was brought up by timmy. At the time I didn't like the idea, now I'm warming up to it as an option because of:
B) If we trade for Banking from Joao we can get Econ in 5 turns. Mansa is getting it in 6. One problem is we'd run out of money before teching it so we'd have to get more somewhere. Fine if Hammy gives us his GM cash for a tech, but is the extra GM worth the risk/detour from gunpowder and the Rifle line? I'd vote for doing it, as FM will be useful for us anyways with our large city count and we could revolt to it at the same time as we revolt into Nat.
So what is the consensus on the tech path?

Some city placement qs:
We still haven't settled the dye, have I missed why or have we just not had a chance so far?
What about the whale site? I don't think it is worth it as it lacks food and we are a while from optics.

Finally my thoughts about GPs:
I think we can get two more GPs out of this GA. 1st in Chinook in 3-6 turns depending on starvation. 2nd in Carthage, I calculated a total of 1680 GPPs by 1turn left in GA if it goes max out from 13 turns left in GA and I think we would need 1200 total. Based on the 1200 number I'm inclined to let Chinook finish its GP in 6 and then go nuts over in Carthage (this has the added benefit of finishing a market in Carthage before cranking out gold from merchants) I looked into production in Aniu but we'd only get 1125 GPPs there by the end if we started now. Is there anything I've missed?
Edit: Yes there is!
I just realised that I forgot to include the current GPPs of Carthage They mean that if I get Chinook to finish its GPP in 3 turns, Carthage should be able to produce 2 more GPs.

Spoiler :

Turns left in GA/ # merchants worked/ Accumulated GPPs in Carthage (=merchants*12+60base rate/turn)
16 3 770
15 3 866
14 3 962
13 15 1202*
12 15 1442
11 15 1682
10 14 1910
9 13 2126
8 12 2330
7 11 2522
6 10 2702*
5 9 2870
4 8 3026
3 7 3170
2 6 3302
1 5 3422

The * indicates break points to the next GP at 800*1.5 and 900*1.5

Oh, and I forgot to say "got it" so this is it. A more coherent plan will come out when more consensus is developed, but generally it probably will be:

• settle dye
• pillage stuff
• draft a bit and build knights+pikes if engineering comes in from Joao.
• slow build unis and banks/grocers depending on health cap
• crank out 3 more GPs
• finish RP and start on Rifles.

 

[kossin]

Don't trade PP until someone has it, that will delay Rifling for them and give us an edge on power, that is if we can manage to get there first. Too bad fir Economics.

The extra cities are good for land and power, I just didn't manage to work on a settler.

We can draft muskets for as long as we have happy cap to spare, but I'd leave some room for muskets. Probably two rounds of draft per city will be fine.

 

[Stochastic]

I can see that as a good point too, it was my original complaint. I was just thinking that right now a GM is worth ~9 turns of research, minus the 5 from econ and we come out 6 turns in the black, probably enough to finish RP. I guess I'll wait to see what others have to say.

So here is the plan:

Tech path: Self tech Banking-RP-Rifles. (unless consensus is for trading banking)
Trade non monopoly techs for gold from Hammy when he uses the GM

GPP:
Get one in Chinook in 3 turns (will stave 3 pop). Then crank merchants in Carthage to get out 2 more as I outlined earlier. Get the first one out asap, then time the other to come out with the end of the GA to minimise starvation, will probably end up loosing 5-6 pop, but I haven't actually calculated that.

Civics:
Swap to Nat as soon as Gunpowder is in, draft ~15 muskets in all eligible cities except Carthage (need GPPs) then swap back to buro in 5 turns.

Builds:
Other than muskets build knights in HE.
All buildings will have to slow build because of lack of slavery.
I'll prioritise theaters until we've got the 6 for the Globe (one will be in Hippo), then unis/banks.
Settler for Dye will be in Utica.

Units:
Will pillage Mansa/Zara. First few Muskets will go to Mansa stack, then a few to Zara land. After that some to Hammy border just in case Joao gets ideas and finally some more to Mansa land for a second stack that will probably be getting ready by that time (assuming no grievous losses)

Will play (still 15 turns right?) in ~24hrs to give time for responses/commentary/exasperated hair pulling

 

[Mutineer]

Just last comment, do not forget to revolt back to slavery/org religion on last turn of GA.