Matrix1 - Ziggurat Addiction

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Hindu sounds sensible. Iron and units in the kingdom are nice. Construction and wines will be nice too - unless we need the happies though I suspect we are better off building catapults first, especially since it's Qin's construction and we'll want him rolled over.

 

[Mikehendi]

Looks like a good turnset, creating an army of spies and stealing big techs already! I'll look into the save later.

BTW I think you were right on the own holy city for religion discount thingy

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Need a skip. My youngest managed to crash my civ computer. Only internet I have for the moment is my ipod.

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Very well.

MtK - just played
HT - up
MH - on deck
B
IO
kol (hiatus)
AK (skip)

So, you're up, happyturtle.

 

[happyturtle]

Meep!

I'll take a look at it for play tomorrow. Any recommendations?

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

From the end of my report on the last page and my post after it:

So, we now have IW and Math. Qin also has Construction, I suggest we steal that from him, then we can throw cats at him along with swords and vultures.

From Freddy the next thing would be Monarchy because that's all he has on us. We also have wines that need working, so yeah.

Oh and remember to get Kish a spy spec when it grows next turn.

Oh, right, we have Hindu in a fair amount of cities and three other AIs are Hindu. I didn't convert in my turnset because I wanted to make sure everyone is okay with it but yeah we should probably convert.

 

[happyturtle]

We need to decide if our first war is going to be to take Agra, then quickly make peace, or a much longer war to conquer Qin. If we're converting to Hinduism, that suggests Agra, as Buddhist Frederick is hated by everybody.

Castles give us +25% espionage, so we want them in the capital and any high commerce cities. So getting a few walls up now will save us time when we get engineering.

Shaka/Aztec is in WHEEOHRN. Frederick of India is his worst enemy and a larger land target, but we're weaker, so we need to be careful to keep our northern cities protected.

Uruk needs to be heavily cottages to leverage Scotland Yard.

Pre-Play-Plan:
Uruk: Spy, Worker,
Amazing: Worker, Spy*, Settler*
Pink Dot: Nothing but Vultures
Drunk: Granary, Walls
Happy Camp: Granary, Workboat
MetalBoats: Monument, Lighthouse, Granary

Convert to Hinduism
Cancel trade with Qin for fur, get rice from Washington instead
Adjust espionage spending to focus most heavily on India (for tech stealing) and Qin (for stealing and future war). Nations that are farther away cost more to steal from, and greater chance of our spies being caught before they get there.
Start staging army in Drunk in prep for war to take Agra.
Improvements!
Freddy will have Mono in 4 turns. Suggest we switch research and steal it for Organized Religion. Though I'm not sure what we research in its place. As long as we're on 3 beakers per turn, our research is fairly irrelevant.

I'll pause here for comments, then play tomorrow.

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Since we have IW now we should finish that settler in Eridu first thing and go grab the jungle area here:

Nice cottaging land, good food, and a couple hills to allow for production once the jungle is cleared.

We should also capture Ainu. It could borrow the rice from the main Jungle city and the cow from Kish to grow to 6 pop and then stagnate on three cottages, two farms, and a spy spec. Perhaps further growth and more cottages later.

In fact, I would even say capture Ainu instead of Agra. While Agra is kind of right in our side, that's a good thing here. It's pretty close to Uruk, making it the perfect destination for stealing techs from Freddy on the cheap. For now, anyways. That situation obviously can't last forever, seeing as we're going Conquest.

But yeah, I think the Jungle is a priority now that we have IW. Probably our last peaceful expansion.

Everything else you have planned is fine.

 

[happyturtle]

Hmm... we could capture Ainu and then send the promoted troops down to Agra. But I think Agra does us more good as a power city for us than a tech stealing destination. It isn't that much cheaper than the rest, and it has food and production - a beautiful city, and will consolidate our territory. I don't think we should leave it.

Once we swap to Hinduism, Vijay will probably become the cheapest steal city, and if we send a missionary to Patal after taking Ainu, then Patal will be cheaper and more convenient.

Espionage mission cost formulas can be found here.

Spoiler :

Cow, Iron, a floodplain, 2 hills, a river... we can't afford to let Freddy keep this!

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Hmm, alright.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Cottage-friendly indeed. It is a fine spot but nice land notwithstanding, isn't it counter-productive to commit to a (currently) jungle hell-hole with maintenance, inflation, worker turns whereas we need the economy to go to 2 wars back to back?

Sorry if I might sound glum but I can hardly get anything done these days without collapsing under troop costs, maintenance cost or barb invasions. The balance between the three still kills my emperor games early, so I'd like to hear counter-arguments and/or solutions.

 

[happyturtle]

I rather like the idea of letting Shaka settle and clear most of the jungle and use our settler somewhere within our current cultural borders. Maintenance we shouldn't have much of a problem with, thanks to ziggs, but worker turns are really at a premium when we have fewer workers than cities.

Speaking of wars, the archer in Ainu has Guerilla 2. How bad do we want it when we can let Shaka or Frederick suicide their own troops against it and have it likely culture flip to us later in the game?

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Yeesh, guerilla 2? Yeah, I guess it can wait, then.

 

[Mikehendi]

Those are some good points in your PPP, Happy!

Also, if we capture a holy city, it will pay to spread that religion to foreign cities where we plan to steal techs

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Also, when we capture a holy city,

FIFY

 

[happyturtle]

T174: Cancel Ivory for Fur trade with Qin. Trade Fur for Rice with Washington. Pink is about to grow. Convert to Hinduism.

T175: Shaka has gems. And he doesn't need ivory. Will he accept cow?

Yay! I guess the religion modifier helped. Not that we really need more happiness at the moment, but better we have it than someone else.

T176: Pink Dot grows, and can't grow any further without civil service farms. I cancel the mine the workers are working on so they can go south.

T177: Washington asks us to war on the Celts. I tell him no. Frederick has Monotheism. I decide to trade for it, giving him alphabet, and use our espionage points to steal Monarchy instead.

Score! Monarchy stoled!

Darn... it doesn't save us any time in anarchy to swap to both. Since it doesn't, I only switch to OR, as our Happiness is really high. And whip the settler in Amazing to avoid losing more hammers to degredation.

T178: Start a hindu missionary in Uruk.

Looks like Frederick is making a play for Ainu.

T179: Ha! Ainu captured by Egypt. Good for us. Expensive for him to hold, maintenance wise and culturally.

Settler is up. Three possibilities, if we don't want the jungle land. I'd like white dot or red dot, as once we take Agra, that will deny Frederick iron. Or we can stash the settler for later use.

Pause here for input.

Spoiler :

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

White looks best from all the choices, though Freddy has more culture in the area than we do. It'd only be a matter of time until he steals that iron from us unless we capture/raze Varanasi and Bombay.

 

[happyturtle]

Or we could settle red, on the iron.

Hmm... Indian Sea is a freshwater sea, with 2 food per tile before lighthouse is added. Not that we're likely to get any water tiles soon.

I still think our medium term plans should be to take Agra, make peace, then build up for war with Ethiopia, but we could always change up for a war of conquest against Frederick, which has the potential to become a dogpile.

 

[Mikehendi]

If we settle on the white dot, ir can borrow 4h tile from amizing eridu to build the zig+monument.

We might lose the Iron for a few turns if his borders pop soon, but as soon as we pop our own borders we'll have it back in no time (and maybe fred improved it for us in the mean time )

He's not gonna win the culture battle, it's in our first ring, while in his third ring.

So I'm for white dot.

The SuperCoastal HorseRice location also isn't bad, it only has 3 jungle tiles . With horse + grass hill and 20000 coastal tiles, it would be a good moai city.

Good job on the tech.. ehmm... "aqcuiring" front!

 

[happyturtle]

I have a migraine, so whoever's next up on the roster, could you finish my turnset? Imma go take heavy painkillers and crash for a few days.