Let's Play: Deity BC Space: Strategies from a 10 year veteran

[WastinTime]

The difference is that US (and also Sistine and the gold one) are on your state religion (not fixed), and AP remains the same. In fact, for monestaries you still get the hammers from AP and the inherent culture after they are obsolete, but not the other benefits.

That makes perfect sense. I was thinking my 2h were going away on monestaries. I thought the culture was obsolete too. It's very rare the a culture game researches SciMeth, but I thought someone tested it once. jesusin maybe. I'm probably confused.
(edit: hammers are gone after it's obsolete)

Now I wonder if monasteries aren't so bad. 10% research early/mid game, then 2hpt midgame, 4hpt late game (w/power).
I probably should have put one in my GLib city (115bpt) or Capital (91 bpt)
Maybe it's not too late. Let's do some math:

I chop 180h for it. Those hammers could have been ~500 thru the WonderBread Economy--which translates to roughly 600

So if I instead invest those 180h into a monastery in Lisbon. I get 11bpt for the next 40 turns (when I bulb SM + Bio).
I get 440 beakers
Plus 2hpt three hpt(forge) 120h. so we're up to 560 (maybe 580 with library effect)

And then (if you're right) there's the ongoing late-game hammers.
edit: I realized I won't be running 100% research for much longer. However, Lisbon still does 100bpt at 40% research because it's all scientists, not commerce beakers. Cuzco, however, drops to 41bpt

Important note: The 600 from WBE comes when I complete Taj (about 40 turns from now). At that point I'll have a ton of other money.
So maybe I'm better off with the 580 I get from chopping the monastery ASAP?
Another small disadvantage to putting the hammers in Taj is that I need another turn delay to my failgold if I want to pass Taj around to a 23rd city.

I think yes! Thanks for the advice. You (and elitetroops) opened my eyes just in time, contributing to my game and probably how I view monasteries in general.
I should have had it built at least 10 turns ago! I guess there was no guarantee I'd get the AP in my religion. I certainly wasn't going to build it.

I might build one in Cuzco soon too. Once I feel comfortable with my army size.
I am comfortable. Now is probably a good time for 5 turns on a monastery because new units have to travel all the way east to Roosevelt. Might as well just let the current army handle that and add new units faster once the Dutch war begins. With the heroicEpic here, I get +5hpt building military.
It's 5 (not 4) in my case since Cuzco is 22 base-h. each new workshop makes it 26, 30, etc. The extra 2h will jump from 4 to 5 because of the forge.
edit: with my research slider dropping to 50% (that's about what I can sustain after the money is gone) Cuzco is only 50bpt instead of 90. So the monastery is 5bpt + 5hpt. I think still worth it, but I'm done with monasteries after these 2.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

2nd GG is a super-galley (6 moves) I've gotten good use out of him. Never idle.

Oh, yet another clever idea from this thread.

 

[fjordan]

Now I am getting scared . I am pretty sure the hammers remain but not THAT sure. You (or someone) should probably test it before I have to admit I screwed up one of the greatest attempts played on this forum. I do know the culure from the building remains and not the culture from Sistine which struck people as weird, but does make sense.
I did not play Civ4 for quite a while (although I still love to follow great players playing it, and am playing Wildmana modmodmod now) but I remember I used to queue up some monestaries for this reason just before SciMeth. But I am sloppy so I might have been wrong back then...

 

[elitetroops]

I checked an old save. You do not get any AP hammers from monastery after they obsolete at SciMeth.

 

[WastinTime]

Oh, yet another clever idea from this thread.

thx Actually what I normally do (and I can't remember why I chose to go with one 6-mover) is give the 20xp to two galleys.
Then you get two 5-movers. You don't even use the GG's special 'morale' promo. It's just flanking + Nav1 and Nav2.
This is all assuming you have circumnav bonus.

 

[WastinTime]

I checked an old save. You do not get any AP hammers from monastery after they obsolete at SciMeth.

That's what I thought.
dodged a bullet there. Thanks!

@fjordan Thx anyway for the effort, and thanks for warning me that your assumption needed to be tested before I proceed.

 

[fjordan]

Whoa, so I built a lot of monasteries for nothing... Sry and thx elite for preventing my gaffle to have an effect on this game.

Edit: googled and found this post on some forum: "
I have checked an old save and it appears that you lose the 10% science and the hammers from the Apostolic Palace. The mouse over incorrectly continues to show these. (Which means I've been wasting hammers building all those monasteries just before discovering Scientific Method.) "
At least I am not the only one...

 

[WastinTime]

I still think that maybe 1 or 2 monasteries will pay off in 35-40 turns.
I have to hold off and not bulb SM until I'm also ready to bulb Bio, because I don't want to lose the Parthenon.

Doh! that reminds me. My spreadsheet is wrong! and has to change after that.

I wish I could do SM earlier so I can prepare the NationalPark, but I'll just have to rush the preserves.

 

[Pangaea]

Already answered now, but to add my experience too, the AP hammers on monasteries definitely disappear once the buildings obsolete. In one game I wondered why suddenly the economy went down the drain (lots of Wealth). Then it dawned on me that monasteries obsoleted and the economy was hit hard. Same with AP actually, once UN is unlocked. Sucks to lose those hammers too.

 

[elitetroops]

googled and found this post on some forum: "
I have checked an old save and it appears that you lose the 10% science and the hammers from the Apostolic Palace. The mouse over incorrectly continues to show these.

Yes, this is very confusing. When I checked my old save earlier today, I saw the hammers in the mouse over and almost posted to confirm what you said about hammers remaining. At that stage of the game cities are such production monsters that it ain't easy to count where all the base hammers come from...Then I picked a city and turned all citizens to scientists, which made it clear that there was no base hammers added from the monastery.

 

[Imploding]

I was also under the impression that the 10 % science and hammers carried over somehow..! Another great topic this thread has managed to clarify!

About the audience part I as probably many others read every post with great interest! I Just don't have to much to contribute.. the magnitude of this game is just pushing everything far beyond what i thought was possible in civ 4. I have picked up a lot of cool stuff.. stuff like the hot tip.. "how much hammers have a AI city invested into a wonder tip" Really useful.. and it makes me value scouting ever more So I'm really glad you picked the game up again!

 

[WastinTime]

hot tip.. "how much hammers have a AI city invested into a wonder tip"

thx for this. I'm glad I remember to point out stuff like this. Sometimes it seems like 2nd nature. Then I wanted to make sure I made it easy for people to come back and find tips like this so I looked in my table of contents in post #2
and found :
"T24-T35-T39 Still pre-war worker hunting and exploring. Spying on AI builds. Planning first war(s)"
Talks about spying on worker builds. Let me know if there's a different post you're referring to where I also talked about spying on wonders? Probably Oracle.

----------------------
I'll try to make some more progress on the game today, but then I'm out for the long weekend.

 

[WastinTime]

Turnset Report 226 - 232

T226

We voted last turn for AP resident, but no results.

T227

The re-count is finally over and results are in. I am Resident . I can't explain the 1turn delay. bug?
I should probably try to think of evil things I can do as resident

Hot Tip: Saving a city from excessive starvation



Pasargadae (above)
Will starve over and over again when it comes out of revolt. Normally, I'd whip it, but I'm not in slavery. My army took out a lot of Darius (blue) but couldn't waste time on his any more. They moved on east to Roos, so I left that garabe size 1 city. But then borders expanded and I lost too may food tiles.
My goal is to keep the city at least size 6 (so I can whip a colosseum for SportsLeague)
I'm not going to DoW the Dutch (orange) yet.
What do I do to prevent severe pop loss if I don't want to DoW Darius again for like 10 turns? (Slavery is also about 10 turns away)

Spoiler :

answer will be posted here after some discussion in the thread

T228
Philosophy self researched

Lincoln creates Kublai
3 vassals so far

Steal 184 from Lincoln. (last time I stole 100, I also stole from Justin)

Hot Tip: Stealing from an AI on their deathbed.
I'm actually being very lazy about doing this properly. I have a city "GiftWestCuzco" shown below. It's where I steal the AI's money.



- I always own this city at the beginning/end of the turn. The city just exists to connect and work that gold (which is in my culture when I own the city).
- Your spy can sit there 5 turns for -50% EP cost. Or it can sit there as long as you want, the point being: it cannot be caught because it's in my land IBT.
- You get another -50% cost for having all the culture there.
- You can get other huge religion discounts, but this is where I'm being lazy.
- I should put my state religion there
- I should own the Buddhist Holy City
- Lincoln needs to be in a non-buddhist religion (he used to be)
- right before you DoW the AI, Lincoln in this case, gift the city and do the spy mission, DoW and recapture. No loss of pop, no loss of buildings

So I've been trickling my passive EPs into Lincoln and Justin. Not losing any real money with the slider to get EPs.

You do this when an AI is down to very little population/cities. Why?
because you can only steal a percentage of his treasury. In this case (see image) his capital is size 1 and my gift city is size 2. Therefore I can steal 2/3 of his treasury. If his capital was size 9 then I would steal 2/9 of his money.
-----------------------------------

still T228...

I purposely gave Vicky a gift (it was a calendar) She must have liked it because I got a date with Vicky. She gives me some sugar, I give her a case of crabs.
Happy ending for me

T229
3 cities to Darius
IBT: Darius frees Saladin

T230
Gift size 1 island to Sal.
DoW Saladin

T231
Capture that Darius city that would have starved mine

T232
Roosevelt has been removed from the mainland. Moving on to the Dutch in 5 turns.

Nationalism is due T234.
end turnset.

 

[WastinTime]

Turnset Report

I have to keep Mansa busy. I put him at war with Roos a while back and somehow he got in a tiff with Vicky too. He ended the war with Roos.
Vicky: gives me 90 + peace w/ Mansa for Lit
Mansa: War with the Dutch for Philo. I'm attacking the Dutch soon too, so let's try and expose/destroy his stack.

T233

Mansa: Bribes Vicky to DoW Dutch. How perfect! Now she's busy and won't backstab me. She shares a border with Willy, so hopefully they'll do some damage to each other.
I think he gave her Machinery tho. I guess that's better than Feudal.

I am at peace with all! Won't last long.

T234

Nationalism

GS born (could have been for Chem, but I'll use it for the next GAge since I don't even have GunPowder yet.)

Now that I'm running my GAges continuously, there's really no reason to choose T238 as the start of the slavery window.

If I do it now then I'll get my whipped units sooner for the Dutch war.
And I can start dumping into Taj already which means I can get the failgold out of it sooner.

That spreadsheet for the GP plan is so valuable. I'm not sure I'd have the energy to move the slavery window if I didn't have that tool for re-planning.

breaking to re-plan....
update: moving the window didn't have any effect on the GP plan other than delaying the one GS I would have gotten in 4t. That's for bulbing Chem, the only thing Chem gets me is +1 on workshops; I have just a few workshops. And it needs GunP

Looks like it would be wise to also go Pacifisim -> FreeReligion for the 5t of slavery. I need to let that sink in a bit first and make sure there are no other side effects. Like all the budda-love I'm getting will be gone for 5t. Could affect my ability to change someone's civics. Oh, that reminds me, I won't be able to put the Dutch into Caste until T239 when I'm back in caste. Well, that's convenient since the Dutch just went caste->slavery because of the war I started on them
so 239 DoW Willy is on.

update: some more re-evaluation.
Now that I'm whipping earlier, there's more time for a new city to make up the economy loss from -pop. The city has to pay for itself which it does instantly at size 1 and even makes up some of the loss from the whip. So the way I look at it is whether it has a negative impact on my Mining Inc date. If it has a net zero effect on my tech rate til then, it's surely able to contribute to the push for sushi, etc. Even if it costs a bit and stresses my push to Mining Inc, it's still probably worth it since I'll be planting cities that get me resources. Some of these cities need to be down early so they can mine/road and ice tile for example. Fortunately, I've been trying to de-fog the map for the last 50 turns or so.
Time to re-visit the whip plan.

T234-239
Pretty boring slavery window.
I end up making 6 settlers, but even the best 6 sites are not that great. Mostly seafood.

T239
I take Caste/Pacifism again
I bribe Willy into Caste.
DoW Willy

T240

Capture 3 big cities.
Willy capture's one of Vicky's cities. Nice.

T241
partial Bulb Chem

T242
Chemistry (workshops +1)

There's only one one good, strong city left for Willy. I may grab a couple smaller ones before Cease Fire. I'm currently planning to leave the hills/walls city for Mansa to try to take. I'd like to thin out his troops. If he manages to take the city, that's fine. I'm going to hit Mansa soon anyway.

Vicky only has 4 mainland cities left. She's about to try to take a Dutch city. I'll let her. One city is building Chichen!
I need to make sure she finishes that, but it'd be nice to have already captured her other big cities. I think I'll do that and then the only 2 left are Mansa and Liz (other side of the planet).

Mansa I think I can keep him away from Pikes, Knights, and War elephants (he has a ton of longbows). He's doing Guilds(15) and has been working on that for around 15 turns already. (i.e. he's got bad land and is slow researching so he won't be able to get me Constitution, etc.)
Even with Guilds, he doesn't have HBR. I should be able to attack him before he can get both of those. Also, his only iron is very easy to pillage on DoW+0. Elephants too.

 

[WastinTime]

Hot Tip:
With 5t the slavery, and newly planned FreeReligion coming, I have an opportunity do something fancy.
I could change to Judaism first to share religion with Liz. Trade tech with her at Friendly (she has drama)
Then, same turn, take FreeReligion. Whether I'm budda or a Jew at this point doesn't matter.

... 5t later, I take Pacifism, caste. There's a 2nd opportunity to trade with Friendly Jews.
Then take Budda again.

In my case, I can't get Liz to friendly even with Judaism, so I'll skip this tip this game.

 

[WastinTime]

Hot tip:
When you play a large empire you have to watch out for how expensive it is to run Bureaucracy.
Now that I just got Nationalism, Nationhood is available. Let's check... 66 cheaper upkeep. And this number just grows as my empire grows.

My capital gets about 13 and 24 from Bureau. Not good enough.
Looks like Bureaucracy is dead.
I almost forgot to check. I didn't think it would be dead so fast, but I've got a bigger empire than normal.

So T234: Nationhood, slavery, FreeReligion

Added benefits:
+25% EPs ...which is +2 for me rt now (total +10 EPpt). Similar to gold since I steal with these EPs
+2 happy : barracks. Not useful now. Maybe if war-weariness builds up. Maybe never.
I can draft. I sometimes love drafting, but not on marathon speed, so not this game. It's a nice thing to have in your back pocket later if a sudden war breaks out and you're in caste.

 

[WastinTime]

Hot Tip

Playing around with the AI-vassal idea I've learned a few more things:

1) When you finally kill the master, slave-civs are independent, but they're still at war with you.

1b) To get peace, you have to wait til each will talk (war success helps here). So if you had an urgent need to make peace with them, you'd want to gift them a city or at least a worker and recapture either or both.

In my game I finally killed Lincoln since I stole most of his money and I used all the EPs I put on him. He had 3 vassals and only one would Cease Fire immediately.

2) These recently freed, single-city AI will capitulate. So you could leave them on an island with Iron, copper, silver, etc. (mining inc) and turn them into your vassal, then demand they give you the resource. Now your vassals are only 1 city instead of 2 city minimum. That's 16 cities instead of 32.
16 vassals = +16 happy! It's been my plan all along to take advantage of this to some degree, but I was thinking maybe half of those--the rest AI.

2b) IIRC there's some sort of rule that you can only demand one resource from a vassal. Not sure if they'll refuse or DoW or what, but keep in mind, you don't have to 'demand' resources. If they have 2 seafood and 2 mining, you can just offer them one of your 14 Pigs, etc for each one.

3) This also means you can put your vassals on your own mainland instead of just islands. And of course tiny little islands that could not support 2 cities. That has a huge effect on what parts of the map I planned to keep.

update: The vassals also get a copy of all the tech the AI had who created them.
Once you make them your vassal, they'll trade that tech! Hello, Compass.

Update:
Small complication. I've been using these newly freed vassals to also make vassals. Unlike in the case above where I kill an original opponent, here I want the master to survive. For the most part I have been able to successfully get the master to capitulate which frees the vassals.
Warning: Sometimes the master refuses to capitulate ("We're doing fine on our own."), and I'm not exactly sure why. My leading theory is that the master-slave relationship has a minimum term commitment. Like 10 or 20 turns. If that contract can't be broken, then you can't get capitulation.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Pasargadae (above)
Will starve over and over again when it comes out of revolt. Normally, I'd whip it, but I'm not in slavery. My army took out a lot of Darius (blue) but couldn't waste time on his any more. They moved on east to Roos, so I left that garabe size 1 city. But then borders expanded and I lost too may food tiles.
My goal is to keep the city at least size 6 (so I can whip a colosseum for SportsLeague)
I'm not going to DoW the Dutch (orange) yet.
What do I do to prevent severe pop loss if I don't want to DoW Darius again for like 10 turns? (Slavery is also about 10 turns away)

Keep it in revolt somehow?
Maybe with gifting it away to another player (on the turn it would come out of revolt) and reconquering it right away?

 

[El Bogus]

Easiest way I could think of is farm the Grasland, put windmills on hills. That would yield 13 food. Enough for 6 pop. It would require a super fast border pop.

 

[elitetroops]

2b) IIRC there's some sort of rule that you can only demand one resource from a vassal. Not sure if they'll refuse or DoW or what, but keep in mind, you don't have to 'demand' resources. If they have 2 seafood and 2 mining, you can just offer them one of your 14 Pigs, etc for each one.

They will always give you the first resource you demand. After that, I've read that in theory they can decide to decline and declare war, but I've never seen that happen. You might want to test this, I'm not 100% sure it works, but I remember people trying to get rid of their own vassals by demanding everything they've got, which has not worked. The vassals have just reluctantly given everything. I'm sure there's an answer to this somewhere in the code...