mm14: Honorable Peaceniks Emp.

[uberfish]

I think we built a lot of bronze age military without being able to use it to take land from Cyrus while neglecting our economy too much, and are paying the price for that now.

Our best bet is probably to settle red dot and get some GP production going there, put up some cottages at Memphis, beeline to Music and try to trade that. Even if one of the AIs gets there first, it's unlikely that two of them will so we should be able to trade that.

Diplo win could be rather tricky as the current AI leaders are in the same religious bloc.

Culture is still an option, and we have two religions now. MM + Cyrus + Asoka as an allied bloc scare me in that they might be able to beat us with a space launch.

Space may be ok if we can get ourselves out of this tech hole.

Either way we need to sort our commerce out quickly.

Oh, our 2nd silk and spices just got connected and we can trade the silk for wine from Cyrus if we choose. There's also the possibility of trading our extra spices and cows for a little gpt from MM and Caesar.

 

[Mark1031]

Well Bezukov and Woobi have disappeared so I am taking them out of the roster. If you guys wnat back in just let us know.

We are down to 4 and need 1-2 more players. In any case let's keep it moving:

Mark
uberfish
Mutineer-UP
Blid-On Deck

I guess I might have built too much military but on Emp and our neighbor Cy the #1 in score I was nervous. I think we are OK for now expanding to Islands.

 

[Mutineer]

Yes, to mach time wasted in critical time.

The only hope for the game I see is to build all this finisng willagess and use them for GP farm and jump up the tech tree using gp.

I am building Garden, hire second scientist there when it finished. Use GS to discover philosofy and lets hope we can trade something good for it.
Research wize,
researched dramma prieshood and set on currency.

Traded drama for Masta for literature and gold, to help as with research.
Advice to not trade anything untill we get currency, as then we can finally ger something from Chengis.
Katherina want Dramma for peace. I refused.
She drop stack of 6 and did some pillage, forcing me to whipe an axe.
Our road system lucking, I am making more direct road.

Galey with worker and axe going to next city site, with setler near by.
Currency will give as a commerce bost.

Hopefully we can make some trades for philosofy.
Lots of confusion spread to our land, but only Cesar is confused, I would not switch. WE migth want to do it in future, to make use of Pacifism, but that a bit far away and we definatly want to make some trades first.

 

[uberfish]

I think Cyrus' lands are too large, and too good, for us to win a space race against him unless he is cut down to size somehow. But we don't have any decent means to do that.

Diplo is maybe possible if we can somehow get Asoka and MM to like us more than they do Cyrus.

If we want cultural, this is about the last chance to make that decision before we start trying to spawn GS, as we'll need a good number of artists to make it in time.

 

[blid]

Got it. I don't have experience with cultural wins, but I guess it starts with setting temples and theatres. Fishing villages stand for GP farms and Thebes, Heliopolis stand for candidate lengendary cities. Third one can be Memphis or Pi-Ramsess. I like the idea of targeting a cultural victory. If you're ok, I will get some reading before I play my turns

About the new city, I like the fishing village on Hills/Plains with crab and fish. I am confused though with the worker in galley with axe. I would send the settler first, the only thing worker can get is a mine on hill/grassland. Do we need to burn the forest already ?

 

[Mutineer]

Do you need worker or not depends on which cite you will choise.
Actially food ritch gp farm type of cities are best for culture win, because specialists produce more culture then towns.

But I am not sure we can pull cultural win, as we are in dificult to defend location.

 

[uberfish]

About cultural plan:

If we convert to Buddhism when it spreads to us, and sign defensive pacts with Asoka/Mansa/Cyrus, we should be relatively safe.

I think the 3 cathedral cities would really have to be Thebes, Memphis, Heliopolis with the 2 fishing villages as great artist farms under Pacifism/Caste. As Mutineer says it's ideal if one of the 3 culture cities doubles as GP farm, but we seem too food poor to do that, so we are probably stuck with towns. A town actually produces more raw culture than an artist, so long as we have somewhere we can generate GPP (our fishing villages) it's ok to set up with Towns.


It's a risky plan, so if anyone has a better victory plan we can go with that instead.

 

[Mutineer]

Specialists produce 6 culture stright of, with representation add 3 research and + GP points, no town could beat that. Towns have a big disadvantage that they demand we set culture slider to 100%, why specilalists let as to have 3 cultural cities and still have normal income from other cities spending it on research or anythign else we like.

 

[Mark1031]

I am happy to try culture but I really don't know much about it so I will need to be taught. We do need multiple religions and cathedrals. Then if I understand correctly commerce can go to culture with the slider late in the game or just focus on specialists. So we need high food cities for our culture hubs?

 

[Mutineer]

The best are higth food cities. Multiply religions are nice, but not compalsory.

To be true, I am not sure how not to lose this game.

PS: even if we go cultural a first few GP need to go in direction of getting as out of research hole.

 

[uberfish]

Artists normally produce 4 culture. You only get 6 culture if you own Sistine Chapel which gives +2 per specialist, and we are unfortunately too far behind on religion to have any chance of getting that. We would also need biology to do the pure artist approach and I think without Sistine or any floodplains to work with it can't keep up with towns anyway. (Because we have other cities that can spawn great artists.)

For the specific culture strat I had in mind, we would basically cottage up Thebes/Memphis/Helio, rush to liberalism for free speech, stop research either there or at Democracy and go all-in setting culture slider to maximum, and hope Cyrus plays honourable too. Build 2-3 cathedrals in each city for the +50% multiplier. I think it's our best chance.

 

[blid]

Should I sign OB with Cyrus to start befriending him already or is it too early ?

Being completely covered by Cyrus on west side is nice if we can sign a defensive pact with him. OTOH, playing cultural would mean some border clash, especially at Memphis. Would a flipping city or two annoy him enough to attack ?

 

[blid]

Mainly built culture buildings in the three (future) legendary cities. Put temples where possible. Started some courthouses too

Catherine shows with a 6 units stack. She has phants. I pay 70 gold for peace




Later on, she made again 2 or 3 (unreasonable) demands that I refuse. I really start to hate her. I fear she might attack again. We need to restart caring about military





I settled the fishing village with crab and fish

Traded techs like mad. JC is alreday afraid of us being too advanced, but the situation is better. Mainly due to philo like you pointed out.





I started to befriend Cyrus. Traded silk for Cyrus Wine. Stopped trading with Gengis when he asked to. T'was only open borders

I switched to bureaucracy and HR when available

We need to have a buddhist city tp push relations with Cyrus. Suggest to open border bith him.

Researching paper. Only Asoka has it for the moment. We need to have music soon

 

[blid]

Shrinked Roster

Mark -- UP
uberfish -- On Deck
Mutineer
Blid

 

[Mark1031]

820; OK I see we are not using org religion. I guess we don't want to offend anyone but if bud doesn't spread soon we waste a lot of time. Also Sistine is available and we are not building it. I guess we probably won;t get it but is is worth a try. I see no revolt for 3 turns OK. Anyway put Thebes on forge then Sistine.

860: Islam founded by Mansu. Paper in and it gets us nothing. Turn research to 0 to see if we can get enough $$ to get it from Mansu.

900: Sistine is Built Far away, so much for that idea (no shields invested). Get Muzak for 180 gp+paper+WM. I also opened boarders with Cyrus. Research to Edu.

900-1000: Building stuff and hoping for Buddhism to spread so we can be friendly with Cyrus. It is a bit of a risk to be running Confucian as it upsets our big neighbor who now has maces. We could really use machinery for crossbow protection or we could just build some elephants.

I am really out of my element in this type of game. If I understand correctly if we get 3 temples for each religion we have then we can build 1 cathedral to go 50% culture increase. So we want as many as possible but mostly Buddhism for the friendly effect with Cyrus.

 

[uberfish]

We are 3 turns from education at the end of my set but Asoka got liberalism first in 1050...

Trying hopefully for Notre Dame in Thebes instead. We don't need the happiness but we have stone and it's a 10 culture wonder, so can at least get some cash out of the deal if we don't get it. No Buddhism spread still.

Built cottages at Memphis. Left the current farms up so it can run on high growth for a bit. These should probably be converted into cottages eventually. Our health cap is too low to run a decent GP farm there and unusually no one has health resources to trade for our superfluous lux. Best bet is to use the islands for GA production. Any infrastructure at the 2 fishing villages can and should be whipped every 10 turns btw.

I didn't build any military. Still hoping for that elusive buddhism spread. I agree that Org Rel on Confucianism was a good call and worth the risk. We did get hinduism, we should spread the 3 religions we have around everywhere to all cities that already have a religion so we can build temples and so on leaving the last two open for now. We have a possible mediocre site for a ninth city or maybe we can flip Arbela later in the game. There is no hurry to found it, as all it would need to do is build temples and the 2 fishing villages don't have religion yet.

I'm not sure whether we should go up to Democracy or even further, it would take a while to get there with our research rate and I don't think there's much we can do to help with GPs... or stop at printing press and just go all in.

 

[Mutineer]

well, continue with culture build up, but I susect we are in serious trouble.
Cesar show up with stack some time ago, he did not declare yet.

Traded a few tech, Catherina was first to get oround the world.
Researhing Liberalism, but military we are in very risky situation.

There is barbarian galey, we really need to lift dark places.

AI setling islands.. I produced setler to settle 9th city. we need 9 cities for 3 cathedrals.

 

[uberfish]

We're actually beginning to catch up in GNP now because Cyrus has no clue how to build terrain improvements properly, and have even passed MM in points because his lands are crap, but Asoka's tech rate is crazy right now probably due to GL and three shrines including the 2 leading world religions.

Cyrus is most likely the population leader, and he's only +8 and +9 with MM and Asoka, maybe we can try diplo if the team feels that culture will cause us a military loss in the long run. It seems we have not actually done anything that commits us to cultural path at this point, just built cheap cultural buildings that we needed anyway due to the border conflicts with Cyrus.

In any case I think we have little choice but to continue to build buildings and skimp on military in order to stand a chance of winning by any condition, its a risk we just have to accept in order to put our economy ahead. we need aqueducts and grocers too much.

 

[blid]

Alexandria can work Village fogged by capital and not used instead of sea tile. It will mature to get worked by capital as town eventually

The barbarian galley kills our galley . Thebes finished lighthouse and starts a caravel

Heliopolis pops a source of gems. Must be RB epic 2 that got my machine RNG mad. City has now access to three gems

We got libearalism but I don't switch to free speech as we don't have enough towns and the infrastructure at capital should be more beneficial than +100% culture. Should switch about the time the essential infra is in
I give Cyrus Paper for 650 gold and world map :




I couldn't find Gengis lands so I check diplo screen and see he has only capital and he was involved in no war that I know of. Check again and find his capital :




Poor guy got hemmed in by Cathy, it seems.

We don't have enough gold to trade printing press from Mansa. Set Science to 0.
1 turn of treasury funding and now we can get printing press from MM for liberalism and a lump sum of gold.
Research path : banking->economics

The wounded barbarian galley suicides against a galley


On 1280 AD, Mansa musa runs a golden age and gets ahead in points. That is nice for us as we are no more "too advanced" and AI are willing to trade. Liberalism gives us :
engineering + 660 gold from JC
DR - 90 gold from Cathy. I take this one cuz it helps with researching nationlism faster

Next turn, new techs pull us ahead of Mansa and we become fearful again. On research, I think we need constitution (representation) before stopping.
This is Cyrus favourite civic and can help getting a defensive pact with him

Still no buddhism spread. Still no invasions. Started the first cathedral in Thebes (taoist pagoda)
The now mandatory tech situation

 

[Mark1031]

Well we already have WFYABTA with Asoka and Caesar. We are +8 with Jules so if we could get to friendly we would be in business. He favors representation and that is where we want to be anyway so we should get to friendly with him if he survives (He is 3 cities surrounded on all sides). Cyrus is scary and we are his second worst enemy. Khan is worst but he would have nothing to gain from Khan so I fear he will be coming for us soon and we are not prepared. Not sure why we are full tilt on econ as it Mansa who is the only tech whore who will trade with us has it. I realize we need it for free market so continue.

1320: Cathy wants OB fine. I am going to try to convert Cyrus. Since we are going the peace route it would be so nice to have him Confucian.

1340: Econ in and revolt to free market. Scientist born in Heliopolis and use him to build an academy there. Research to astronomy.

1350-1400: Building things and missionaries. I am quite worried about Cyrus. He will probably attack us soon. I hope we can convert him to Confucian. Keep an eye on his power and civic. If his power starts to shoot up you know something is coming somewhere. He has a stack of knight’s in Gordium and we need iron for pikes.