mm14: Honorable Peaceniks Emp.

[Mark1031]

Well I have been playing a lot of AW as I find diplomacy frustrating compared to civ3 (which is good by the way). I think it is a much better system but my main complaint is transparency. Who is your worst enemy, what is your favorite civic, how much do you weight different things like religion who makes lots of demands or is likely to backstab etc.;how do I figure this out to make rational choices. I have some idea from experience but if this is laid out quantitatively somewhere I’d love to know. In any case, this will be a game where we play honorably, that is we may not declare war. If war is declared on us we can do as we please to the offending civ. We will need to manipulate civs to declare on us for expansion purposes but they will always get first strike. Will also need to cultivate friends to watch our back and avoid the dogpile.

Settings:
Civ: Open for discussion. Someone not played much.
Emperor
Map: Open but I was thinking Pangaea
Epic speed.


Mark
uberfish
Bezhukov
Woobi
Mutineer
Blid

 

[uberfish]

I'd be interested in taking part. I haven't played any SGs before but have a good number of solo wins at Emp and Immortal.

If the intention is to deliberately provoke AIs into declaring war I'd suggest a Spiritual civ - Isabella maybe, she usually gets bad press. Or Asoka to grab territory early with Organized.

What exactly does honourable mean? Is bribing AIs to attack each other and so on allowed?

 

[Mark1031]

What exactly does honourable mean? Is bribing AIs to attack each other and so on allowed?

We will have to discuss that if we can get any players. ATM it only means we cannot declare outright. Haven't thought about being asked in but I lean against it.

Come on I know plenty of you can handle Emp.

 

[Bezhukov]

I'd like to play. I'd suggest that we can accept invitations to war, we just can't declare ourselves.

 

[Woobi]

I would be interested...

 

[Mutineer]

Epic speed is a bit slow, but I could live with it.
What about Continent map? More fun more variety in my book.
Any civ will do.

About me, I am playing on Empiror level, normal speed solo.
So I only unexpirience about slow speed games.

 

[blid]

Would join if you take me as I'll be learning a lot from you guys
I won some monarch games on 1.52 but haven't won any emp game yet.

Panagea would be easier to provoke AI I think. Agree with uberfish on spiritual trait. I haven't seen much Monty games around, maybe we can have a tropical map to give jaguars more sense

 

[Mark1031]

Welcome:

uberfish
Bezhukov
Woobi
Mutineer
Blid

We have a team. I can't start this till Monday and we have a few things to discuss. So far the only rule is that we can;t declare war outright another issue is:

Can we accept war invitations?

I was leaning no but it can hurt/help relations so I could go either way.

Civ: I like creative for this kind of game. We must do an early land grab esp if we choose Pangaea and creative really helps with this and getting cities in optimal places. Also helps with fast expansions in early wars. I could see pairing this with industrious to try for the Pyramids and a specialist based economy or spiritual for quick civics/religion changes or aggressive for the free upgrade. So my votes would be for Louis or Hatty or Kublai Kahn.

Let me know your opinions and we can start Monday.

Also since it is 1.61 patch now I was thinking of normal speed since you don't get as much from Epic.

 

[blid]

Amongst the three civs u mentioned, my preference go for Hatty and its spiritual trait. If we are playing honorable, accepting war invitations is Okay for me. Not sure though about bribing AI to declare war if we are not involved.

 

[uberfish]

Hatshepsut would be my strong preference from those three as well. She gets spiritual for diplomacy and quick Pottery to finance early expansion. I think Aggressive is wasted if we can't declare war at will, and really dislike Louis since he has the two weakest late game traits and Industrious leaders can build Stonehenge quickly making creative unnecessary.

for war invitations I'd suggest (in keeping with the honourable theme):

We can only join in to help allies (civs that are Pleased or higher.)
We can only ask civs to declare war against our enemies (civs that are Annoyed or lower.)

Or we could choose to forego asking the AI to declare war altogether if it seems it would be too easy to go to war that way. Up to Mark1031 though as the variant was his idea.

 

[Mark1031]

We have a typical start with rice and not much else. Found in place. I see Egypt does not start with mysticism?? I thought spiritual did. Oh well. We start with Ag so start a worker and research to pottery. Went Pottery->AH and then popped it from a hut 2 turns in. Nice but our only nearby horses are on an island it appears. Researched mining and BW and luckily we have copper in our radius. Lots of Lux nearby. Spit out an early settler and grabbed a spot with spices and cows. Meet Cyrus,Ashok and Caesar who all appear to be in the west. Khan, Gengis that is is to the N. I am working on sailing to grab some of the nearby Islands particularly the one with horses. Tentative dotmap attached. I would say the yellow dot is top priority but we will need a couple of axes first as there are barb archers around.

Sorry for the brief write up but I have to get to work.

Oh and I like Uberfish’s rules for honorable with 1 modification.

We must join in to help allies if they ask(civs that are Pleased or higher.)
We can only ask civs to declare war against our enemies (civs that are Annoyed or lower.)

That seems quite honorable to me basically we are peaceful but don't cross us or our friends.

20 turns ea first round.

 

[uberfish]

I think it would be best to grab the yellow dot and the banana/ivory site 4N 5W of Thebes (looks like an amazing commerce city) to the NW ASAP before the AIs take them. Since this is Pangaea the islands should stay unclaimed for a while and we can take them next.

I think given the abundance of calendar resources and since we will have sailing soon, it makes most sense to shoot for iron working and calendar next, then Literature. We will want a lot of workers, settlers, and axes and tempting as the Great Lighthouse is I don't think I will go for it on my turns.

I'm going to play it along those lines later tonight (GMT) unless anyone convinces me otherwise soon.


On honour - I would change 'must help allies' to Friendly civs only because I think it would be wrong to have to declare on a Friendly civ because a Pleased civ asked us to.

 

[blid]

I think it would be best to grab the yellow dot and the banana/ivory site 4N 5W of Thebes (looks like an amazing commerce city) to the NW ASAP before the AIs take them. Since this is Pangaea the islands should stay unclaimed for a while and we can take them next.

The banana/ivory tile is already taken so yellow dot seems the best spot.
After yellow, should come violet SW of copper. Concur on islands being last priorities.

I think given the abundance of calendar resources and since we will have sailing soon, it makes most sense to shoot for iron working and calendar next, then Literature. We will want a lot of workers, settlers, and axes and tempting as the Great Lighthouse is I don't think I will go for it on my turns.

IW to get the gems and Calendar next to spam plantations around. Way to go

 

[uberfish]

1920 - I was sending one of the warriors from Memphis over to watch yellow dot, but Barbarians spawned a city 1 west of yellow dot before it got there. Thebes will build axemen to deal with this.

1880 - Memphis reaches size 2, insert a worker into queue before the granary.

1840 - Sailing finishes and I proceed to Iron Working.

1760 - Cyrus founded Arbela stealing the cows by purple dot. Being honourable Egyptians we don't declare war. I am keeping the two warriors in Memphis because barbarian archers are wandering around nearby.

1400 - Memphis finishes its worker. I will let it complete the Granary so it can whip the next build.

1320 - Chopping one of the river forests near Thebes so we can build a cottage there.

1280 - Iron working done revealing some iron near Arbela. On to writing.

1240 - Barbarian city spawned a 3rd archer against our 4 axes. I estimate an 85% chance of taking the city so I am going to attack anyway. I go 2 for 2 against archers.

I apologise if this is against SG etiquette, but I am going to hand over a fraction of a turn early with the last two axes unmoved (one isn't promoted yet either) so the team can decide whether we want to keep Cuman to save a settler or raze it to found 1 square east on the original yellow dot which is better.

Either way we will have gems soon, and 3 good city sites which can do both hammers and commerce even though Cyrus has been stealing our territory. If we can diplomatically arrange a successful Medieval war against Cyrus, we should be in very good shape. The barbarian archers that were loitering around have suicided against Cyrus, so it should be safe to send one of the two warriors in Memphis out scouting now.

 

[uberfish]

current screenshot and save:

 

[Mutineer]

Darn, half game gone when I was sleeping.

My opinion will be raise it. It is really in bad location, need to be shifted.
Can I suggest Farms on Grass in Thiebes?
Calendar will give as additional happiness boust.
Thiebes by the look of it do not have that mach excess food.
Farming river grassland + cottaging plains are more efficient is city managment and production and will let thiebes to grow full size.
In addition I would sugest keep 2 forests at thiebes.
Couple farms would not hurt Memphist to.

Looking good.

 

[uberfish]

I don't think we need farms at Thebes right now. The city is happiness capped already, and we can both micro it to run +5 food surplus when it is time to grow, and use a combination of 1-2 mines and 1-2 specialists to halt growth at the cap.

Memphis will have a granary shortly and be able to cap its population quickly too. I see it as our strongest production city in the long term. However, we might decide that we need some short term commerce to get up the Alpha/Drama/Lit tech branch, in which case we should drop a couple of cottages there quickly.

The AI tends to get to calendar fairly quickly, we should probably research down the Alphabet line now and aim to trade for mathematics and calendar later.

 

[Mutineer]

Gems will give as enogth commerce to get by.
Thiebes may be do not need Farms right that moment, but we should not Cottage Triebess Grassland, as we would need to farm them anyway and Plain cottagess right now even better for city managment.

I had impression that with research of Iron working we commited ourself to Alphavit beelining, and I do not see why not. WE have a huge variety of alphavit resources and they are higth commerce one's.

Yes, IA tend to get them fast, but slower then if we beeline to them ourself.

 

[uberfish]

I thought we could get to calendar off writing + sailing, but actually Maths is a prereq. Researching Iron was necessary to clear the jungles and get the gems hooked up, and writing (which we badly need for libraries too) is prereq for both Alpha and Maths so we are not committed to either path right now.

 

[Mutineer]

Well, we sort of are, because it is easy to trade Iron working then Calendar.

From my point of view we are commited, because otherwize we wasted time reseaching Iron Working and sailing.
Because of how rich on calendar resources we are we would really benefit form Calendar.
Math is cheaper tech then Alphavit.