Monarchists' Cookbook I

Diamondeye · May 12, 2008

I only read up to OTAKUs at the moment, I have one small note to his report: Roosevelt has 90% peace modifier, but is a vassal and is unable to DoW, thereby rending his peacemodifier uninteressant at the moment. Sorry for not attaching my save, I'll put it here then.

3 PROs for my save:
I have a significant tech lead
Several AIs have made bad moves / has bad relations (Sal vs João, Roosevelts independance),
We were first to Music, got Constr, and Lit (with Aesth as prereq) is still open for GL.
3 CONs for my save:
We have not yet adopted Bureaucracy
Saladin has managed to settle lots of cities on the new continent
We have not yet circumnavigated and is not in an easy position to do so.

Winston Hughes · May 12, 2008

Having taken a look at the saves posted thus far, I'm wondering whether anyone else has started thinking about victory conditions. I didn't notice anything in the saves which suggested so, but those details aren't always obvious at this point in the game.

Obviously, we don't need to decide on a condition before choosing the best ball, but it could help us judge the saves if we had an idea of the options open to us.

I made a case for Diplomatic in my report, but what about the others?

Is Cultural possible here? We seem safe enough in our little corner, and the combination of a good tech lead and a wonderspamming capital could certainly be moved in that direction. Plus at least one or two of the saves have Music already, and the marble means we can get the Sistine Chapel at half price. But where are the second and third culture cities? And have we already biased our GPP too heavily against Artists?

What about Domination? A couple of players (rolo and Bleys iirc) are set up to go to war in the next round if so desired. And, given the tech lead in all saves, showing up with a superior army shouldn't be too hard. Even if we pick one of the less war-ready saves, there's so much land to expand into that we could save the fighting for later in the game. But is this really a smart use of our position? And if we were going to go that way, shouldn't we have dealt with Sal already?

Or is Space Race the right choice? With a tech lead and loads of space to expand into, it looks like only some kind of AP/UN-related horribleness could thwart us. But would it not be a bit cheap to hang around waiting to win by default, when we could've gone for an earlier and more interesting victory?

r_rolo1 · May 12, 2008

Like I said yesterday, my personal plan is to go conquest.... after my experience with Fox OCC-AW SGs I think it is a very valid way to deal with this kind of maps:
- Make a good naval SoD
- War
- Raze cities until capitulation or destruction
- Rinse and repeat

It works very well with Combustion based navies, infantry or marines and some air cover ( optional )

OTAKUjbski · May 12, 2008

My plan is also Domination/Conquest.

I have a particular hatred of Galleys and to a lesser extent Galleons, so I don't support pre-Astronomy war at all -- especially not considering what (who) we have to work with.

I didn't get out as many Settlers as I'd really wanted to last round, but my immediate goal is to continue expanding to grab unique resources and key locations around the globe until none remain.

Target #1 is Kublai Khan, because I want Karakorum -- which controls the world's supply of Sugar and has the right amount of food to support immense Drafting with the Globe Theatre (which I don't particularly care if comes online until Rifling).

Target #2 is Tokugawa, because I want the Japanese Island -- which controls the world's supply of Silver! Kyoto will be moved 2W, and a 2nd city will be founded in the far NE corner.

NOTE: By this point, I should control at least one of every resource except Saladin's Incense -- barring unforeseen difficulties with my peaceful land grab.

After that will likely be [in order]: João, Saladin (and vassal?), Suleiman (and vassal) and Louis (and vassal).

Somewhere in the midst of that, I'd also like to build a fleet of Privateers to wreak havoc in the world's shipping lanes.

----

I think Diplomatic and Space Race are valid victory paths, but I have a particular love for Industrial Era warfare.

futurehermit · May 12, 2008

I find warfare on these kinds of maps fairly tedious. And if I go domination I tend to like to attack sooner than later. If we can grab enough good land without needing to go to war I think we would be better off going space. It might be a bit more boring to watch, but really if our strategic goal is to settle land peacefully (i.e., aggressive settling) then really the way to leverage that advantage imo is to keep the world at war with itself while we use our superior land to tech to space. Of course we could use our tech advantage to squash the backwards races, but if the tech advantage becomes sufficiently great I usually consider the game won and space is the fastest way to win at that point imho (why drag it out if victory is a foregone conclusion really?).

OTAKUjbski · May 12, 2008

@ futurehermit:

Where be your Report, bro (are you going to be able to play it after all)?

I have a new comparison chart thing I want to fine tune, but I'm waiting for your Report (or Tuesday) before I post it for criticism.

futurehermit · May 12, 2008

Yeah, I'm going to play tonight. I had a lot to catch up on after gutting my comp. (i.e., I was playing GuildWars for a couple days) :lol:

Winston Hughes · May 12, 2008

So, two of you are suggesting a late military surge to win by domination or conquest. That certainly sounds feasible.

I guess we'd want to build as big a tech lead as possible over our victims, allowing us to fight a succession of quick wars with a big tech advantage. We'd also want to have the capacity to pump out ships, troops and aircraft very quickly when the time comes.

Looking at rolo's save, though, it seems as if he's preparing for a possible war much sooner than that. As I mentioned earlier, Saladin's home island could make a very nice shipyard. And if we vassalised Sal in the next round or two, we could well get a 'domino effect' conquest going.

As seen in the Shaka ALC, weaker civs will capitulate very quickly if you already have vassals boosting your power rating. And if colonies start breaking away from their masters (which, in some of the saves, seems very likely), then there could be a lot of very weak civs on this map.

However, futurehermit does have a point that domination or conquest would mean a lot of effort through the later part of the game. Maneuvering all those troops and ships around a map like this would be very time consuming.

But, at the same time, I'm not so keen on the space race. When you're as far ahead as it looks like we're going to be, I find space victories to involve little in the way of interesting strategic choices. It's pretty much just a case of plotting the quickest route to the necessary techs - more of a chore than a challenge imo.

r_rolo1 said:
Like I said yesterday, my personal plan is to go conquest....

Oh, sorry I missed it.

futurehermit · May 12, 2008

Once you are far ahead winning in general becomes more of a chore than a challenge. And space is the fastest route from A to B (unless you have cultural plans in place).

r_rolo1 · May 12, 2008

Looking at rolo's save, though, it seems as if he's preparing for a possible war much sooner than that. As I mentioned earlier, Saladin's home island could make a very nice shipyard. And if we vassalised Sal in the next round or two, we could well get a 'domino effect' conquest going.

That is exactly my plan

: conquer Mecca and Medina ( raze Baghdad and the other city in the desert incense ) and stop the war by there..... let Sal to clean some more jungle, rinse and repeat, go to KK or João later ( HG would be extremely handy for this map ) and starting to roll all over the rest of the world.

Winston Hughes · May 12, 2008

futurehermit said:
Once you are far ahead winning in general becomes more of a chore than a challenge.

I disagree. Kind of.

War can get boring when you've just got to trudge through seemingly endless hordes of weak enemies. And both space and culture are usually quite dull if you're way ahead in tech and safe from any meaningful attack.

But there's still a lot of strategic thinking that goes into a blitz-style military win. Taking a few gambles (ie. attacking without overwhelming numbers) along the way can make things more fun while speeding up the win (if the gambles pay off).

futurehermit said:
And space is the fastest route from A to B (unless you have cultural plans in place).

I definitely disagree here.

A well planned and executed diplomatic win will wrap things up much earlier. Plus, unless it's a backdoor military victory, it always provides some challenge. And if it doesn't work then you can still turn to Space or Domination.

futurehermit · May 12, 2008

Sure, if you can get diplo then it will be faster. I think "blitzing" on this map will be difficult to say the least. If we can get diplo maybe that is the way to go. If.

futurehermit · May 12, 2008

Pretty uneventful round for me. My goal was to block in Saladin so he couldn't expand (easily) to the East of our newly settled area and I succeeded in this by the end of the round. A few other tidbits.

Spoiler :

futurehermit · May 12, 2008

Pros for my game:

-Eastern territory secure
-Liz instead of Roosey (less threat to wonders); AIs in no shape to compete with us
-Tech/civics/diplomacy all in order (imo)

(main pro is I feel the game is already won; this could be said probably for other submissions as well)

Cons:

-Main bad move was not doing anything with the one GP
-Perhaps with more MM I could've got out another city or two in addition to what I have
-Didn't get phil for pac

I think a bad move we have collectively is no academy in our capital. AFAIK no one has this in their games (???)

Solon70 · May 12, 2008

I'm not sure why, but every time I try to open the event log while playing the best ball, my game crashes.

OTAKUjbski · May 13, 2008

Okay ...

Inspired by Winston Hughes and armed with the desire to simplify and strengthen accurate side-by-side comparisons, I've created a couple charts to give a general feel of the games submitted.

I hope to improve them over the next couple rounds to be complete without being overly complex in order to use them as a template for future comparisons.

(I welcome constructive criticism for missing information, alternate colors, fonts & alignment, etcetera.)

Before you look at these charts, keep in mind there's only so much I can legibly include in a spreadsheet barely a million pixels large. For specific information, please reference each players' Report and Save.

These charts are meant to help point us in the right direction -- not to make the decision outright!

Spoiler Report links :

Spoiler Charts :

These charts are by themselves, because I especially want to know how helpful they are. It took a fair amount of time to piece it all together, so if it's not helpful, then I'd like to not do it again.

Spoiler :

vale · May 13, 2008

Pros for my game:
1. Claimed some more new world territory including some new health resources and a happy resource and strategic resource.

2. Cologne is well established with almost all the infrastructure it will need to be a settler pump while still producing other economic/military infrastructure/units. It also has hinduism which is very nice for making sure our religion is spread to our new world cities.

3. We did claim the Hanging Gardens health boost and the huge production boost that it also garnished via 1 more population to whip in all cities. I did not have to forgo the Colossus or Great Library to do so. Berlin is a very nice production city at this point with 2 settled prophets and another great person on the way in a few turns.

Cons for my game:

1. Economically not quite as strong as it could be. I focused more on expansion and resolving the overly weak military position than economy boosting infrastructure. I don't think there is a single courthouse built yet, or a library outside of Berlin and Munich. We also definitely need workers to go along with the settling of the new land.

2. My power, while significantly increased from the start, is being increased by a bevy of archers. I was more interested in the cheapest garrisons for HR purposes than necessarily ones that would lend themselves to war later. So there can be no war early in the next round (i.e. inflexible to different approaches).

3. I'm behind the curve on exploration (no KK yet) and techs (didn't bulb anything and expanded a bit more aggressively than others so more upkeep).

vale · May 13, 2008

Otaku, I'm still on the 600 level of GPP with another one due in a few turns. The GA down in that tundra city was from an event where I paid about 100 gold to get him instead of just a culture boost. Since my goals in the future include representation, the outlay seemed worth it. Did you really think I would have settled a popped GA there?

Things that would be nice to see in these side by side reports:
unmodified health/happy caps
cities that contain state religion

OTAKUjbski · May 13, 2008

@ Solon70:

Then stop trying to open the log, lol.

@ vale:

Whoops ... I'm hoping that's my only mistake. :blush:

No ... I just got in a little hurry, I guess.

Done. (see above)

Solon70 · May 13, 2008

I didn't want to get left behind so I made the time to play this round tonight. Since my event log wasn't working for some reason, my report is a little sketchy, but I'll try to note the major events in the spoiler below. Maybe it has to do with people playing with slightly different assets or something, but it seemed like I noticed quite a bit of funny behavior in my game, not just the busted event log but also city governor making some weird choices etc.

Spoiler :

It became clear to me early on that our biggest asset in this position is our overwhelming tech lead (I wish I was smart enough to know where we got it from). Indeed, as of the end of my round, there's not a single AI who has a tech we are looking for, aside from Toku who has Machinery (we have a whole 2 turns left to research it). So the game plan seems clear: grab more territory if we can, build the forbidden palace in Cologne, and start wreaking havoc with an appropriately advanced military unit (rifles?).

I'm sure others did better than me, but thanks to the nice position we were in from the previous save, I felt like this round almost played itself. Save attached.

Monarchists' Cookbook I

So Happy I Could Die

Wrathful Warlock

King of myself

TK421

Deity

TK421

Deity

Wrathful Warlock

Deity

King of myself

Wrathful Warlock

Deity

Deity

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Deity

Warlord

TK421

Mathematician

Mathematician

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Warlord

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