MrB4...Beyond the PC Problems

[batteryacid]

Sorry, seemed to have forgotten to check the last conquered cities for automatization, but I swear I never switch it on myself (seems to be no default that automatization is switched off when you conquer a city)

@ rice: was this in a city with automatization? or does the computer always prevent city growth when happyness requirement is not fulfilled? I didn´t know this, so I will watch better for such things next time

 

[Belisar]

We get contact with Ramses. He is already -2 (due to different religion and "declared on our friend").
He has Feudalism and Calendar, we are ahead machinery (and therefore optics) and Phil, no trades possible.
We really have to go Free Religion in this game for happy and diplo reasons.
We already have 3! angry people in Delhi who want back to India, enough is enough, I get Calendar and declare on Gandhi,
this problem will only last 2 turns. After we have razed the city, we have only 1 on the other landmass.
Your first isn't affected by oversea-maintenance so we can keep it or release later when we are beyond OCN (need a 2nd on that continent for this)
I set to settler as food is really the only production in the city and we have enough worker.

On turn 280 we raze Gandhi's last city, gain a worker and another Great General, losing only the catapult I used to soften up the 4 defenders.
All the unhappiness is gone in Delhi and the city is set to grow at +7 food which should be improved when we get Civil Service.
Hagia Sophia built somewhere.

On turn 283 we get a bit lucky and find gold in a desert hill (Bursa) which means +2 happy with forges
We also found Beaver Creek (gets a fish) and raze the barbarian city north-east.

Great Prophet comes next turn and should help further with commerce.
The current temple in Edrine was needed for happy but now with the gold it is a bit abitrary, I already set Edrine to growth-mode again.
With the gold, the forges I set up will really be nice, with the silver as added bonus later.
Caravels are next, some troops are already on the way back home on galleys for added MP.
When we send our caravels out, don't forget to take a spy on board.

Save

 

[batteryacid]

Nice turns; Cities look good and the gold was REALLY needed. I guess silver city will be next (doesn´t look tooo bad with silver/fish and horse resource and a lot of sea tiles). The southern continent is not too good and not too bad either, so I guess will want to get the sheep resource at least. So for the next player; transfer the settler to teh other continent and found silver city 4 tiles north of KOnya to catch all three northern resources.

Tech strat is Liberalism I guess; with whom can we trade Theology ?

Positive side is, that when we settle the southern continent, we will own about 35% landmass - so northern continent can be specialiced for production/great people and southern can be a real cottage spam territory with 4 new cities when I am right.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

283: As expected, things look fine. I hit enter and…
284: The GP is here!
285: The Kong Mao is built. The difference is 10 GPT at the moment.
288: CS is here, I set Feudalism as discussed (we also need it to trade for the Guilds-Banking branch). A beeline to Liberalism should be next.
289: The first Caravel is here and set to explore…
292: The RNG gods reveal silver near Dheli Talk about luck… Beavers are also online which means 12 happy faces without religion, MP, colosseums. So no need for silver city…
294: We meet Gilgamesh in the West -> up Feudalism, down too many techs to count. He is Hindu without having founded it, so another civ must be there (the same is true with Ramses). I unload a spy and continue the travelling. He has like 14 cities . Overexpansion anyone? He has 20% pop/16% area; very close to us.
295: Feudalism is here and I stop playing as several decisions have to be made:

What to do with the southern island? Settle it or not; create a vassal of our kin (as discussed after we have traded with the other civs and Magellan in the pocket)?
Which will also decide question no.2: Where do we build the FP. Either Island or Bombay, imo.
Tech: Astronomy or paper--> liberalism? Maybe we should build the production/stone city and go for University of Sangakore? Ramses has Theology so we might lose if we went for Divine right, I say we leave Islam for good.
And finally: I waited with the GA until now: Has anyone made the numbercrunching concerning the cost of the vassalage/caste system/Pacifism combo?

For the next player: the second caravel passes the island city and should take up the spy there and continue towards Ramses and East. The new city will be converted with a Taoist missionary, a conf. one is being built, and we also need one for our Taoist holy city (Conf. temples/monasteries bring us $$now, so build them when possible). No tech trades are possible at the moment and fro the future: don´t feed the beast-to-come Gligamesh with anything.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/49010/MrB4_295.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Belisar]

292: The RNG gods reveal silver near Dheli

It was about time we got our luck back. Starting with a single ressource on a whole continent is not funny at all.
A good thing we don't have to build that awfull tundra town. *developers, please, I want my colonies back, please*

294: We meet Gilgamesh in the West He has like 14 cities . Overexpansion anyone?

The BTS AI seems to be better in early expansion. While this is very dangerous on the highest difficult levels where they get discounts in this case they are crippling their research.


On tech: Liberalism (Free Religion) and the free tech Astronomy are currently the big prize. We also need the guild-banking branch for eco.

We could settle the other landmass and cottage everything (all the floodplains and the grassland) If we were financial, this would be a no-brainer but even in our situation it will help our economy in the long run (you also have to account shrine income and oversea-trading routes after Astronomy)
This would mean FP on the other landmass, courthouses everywhere.
And we need to get our great scientists/great merchant farms to work ASAP.
I will do the civic-math, so batter should wait until tonight.

 

[batteryacid]

I could play tonight, if you want, but when rather late (23h or so)
So for developement: Exploring the globe tih caravel/spy - is one carvel ont the around the word trip? (Is this still a feature in Civ4 and does it bring some money or so?)
Settling and cottaging the southern continent will mean 4 -5 new cities there with only lighhouse-court-granary-market-harbor or so to build, with lateron forges for happyness. So each city will have ~1-2 food resources, 3-4 Floodplains and rest normal water/plain tiles.

Do we adopt slavery for settler/worker whips on the southern continent?

TEchstrat I would say is also settled for now; Astronomy and Liberalism is what we need now.

Have we got some open border agreement to distribute our religions on the other continent? Is something like this already planned or are we first settling and converting the southern continent?

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Hi, batt. One caravel hit a continent with Gilgamesh on it, this one should continue the journey. The other is close to the city on the island and should take a spy from there and head east. If they didn´t change Magellan to vanilla, you get it when you have uncovered one ring around the globe, no matter if you did with 1 or 2 caravels or via maptrading. The fastest way would be to send the caravels to opposing directons and let them meet on the other side of the globe.
We should think about city placement on the southern island. I will post my proposal soon...

 

[Belisar]

Settling and cottaging the southern continent will mean 4 -5 new cities there with only lighhouse-court-granary-market-harbor or so to build, with lateron forges for happyness. So each city will have ~1-2 food resources, 3-4 Floodplains and rest normal water/plain tiles.

On expansion: we need missionaries to convert the new settlements (for gold and most important for border expansion)
Then courthouses, granaries, libs.
Lighthouses, forges and markets later.
Libs are important buildings in cottage cities as we try to get the science slider as high as possible.

I will post on our GA-civic-switch later.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Here would be my dotmap of our islands:
Red spray: desert; blue : FP/oasis; lila: city overlap

I saw that the overlap is minimal (only 1 tile is not desert). I did not find 2 good places in the very south, so I went for a land-locked city. The city on the island in the middle could also be 2 tiles to the north without interfering with "Miami" (would mean more landtiles + lose copper).

What do you think? I guess single island cities should count as "normal" considering the upkeep, so I would also build those 2. Another thing: The FP would imo be best either in the city most north on the big island or in the one just below.

Edit: I agree on not creating the colonies 1.: maybe the islands count anyways to our landmass as we could reach them with galleys and 2.: We need besides our cap and Bombay maybe another couple of harbours for our Fleet of terror (TM)

 

[batteryacid]

dotmap looks fine; the corruption due to the 2 single island cities will have to be crunched down, the city place on the middle island is for discussion- is it better to grab the copper from there and loose some land tiles, or is it better to grab the whole middle island with this city and move some of the city places on the other island to catch the copper from there and build an inland city instead of a coastal city? I guess there is place for one moer city on this continent when we move the western coat city up and build an additional city in the south above the second sheep, but as I don´t have civ at the moment I cannot tell for sure what is better but the approach looks fine.

@FP: how are the mechanics? what is the penalty for crossing the ocean to the FP? If its not big when compared to tile distance, the city on the middle island looks at the center of the new founded cities and Dheli/Vijayanalara
Perehaps we will have to crunch it down, and it is better to build the FP when only taking the 5 cities on the new continent into account.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I would build the FP on the Eastcoast, the middle island is rather close to our capitial which would not gain us that much. I think the middle city should be 2 tiles N and we could make it into a shipyard with Moai. The city south of Vij... could also be productive with workshops, but that´s up for discussion. Unfortunately, the city placement on the westcoast of the big island is not that trivial. The problem is that if we take the city south of Vij.. as given, an additional city on the westcoast has way too much overlap with it. Also, except the sheep, the south is full of plains which means a city there will stay small and not benefit us at all, imo. I am not sure if your additional city would gain us too much. Imo it´s better to lose 1 sheep and a couple of plains and grassland then to have an additional city. Don´t forget that with Miami and the stone city we already have 8 more places to settle...

 

[Belisar]

I calculated the numbers for a civic switch to caste/vassalage/pacifism.

caste: +4
vassalage: +9
pacifism: -11

current unit costs: 4
new unit costs: 29 (mil) - 14 free - diff-level (4) = 11, -> +7


so total additional civics/units costs would be ~ +9 (based on the current size/population/army strength), manageable.

After we get to Liberalism and Eco we switch to Representation/Free Religion/Free Speech/Free Market in our second GA.
Astronomy gets us the oversea trading which is really powerful with Free Market and we can build a lot of ships when out of Pacifism.


Here is my dotmap:

We made a mistake in this game which we want to avoid in future games by not switching to slavery early, waiting for caste way too long.
We should probably forget about "Miami" now and found only cities with a good amount of land tiles for cottages.
The city south of Vi.. is straightforward, the middle-island city has much more green land if moved north like MrB already suggested.
The city in the far south gets the floodplain cottages and the fish for growth, later it provides the sheep.
I would also forget about all those desert in the center of the landmass, remember we are not financial and water tiles are only mediocre.

I agree with the FP in Bombay or Delhi.
So batter could start the GA, switch civics and get our specialist-cities going.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Thanks for your input, Belisar. So, the 2 single island cities + the one adjacent to the current island city are clear. We might decide later on if we go for more cities in the south of the island - some calculations needed, especially as each city is additionally +2 gold raw in the holy city which is with grocer, bank and the wall street + 6. In my version the 3 southern cities would have around 10-12 tiles to work; but probably need longer to be efficient. Another issue is that empty land invites unwelcome settlements from AIs.
So I guess the civic switch is clear now. For the next GA we need 2 great people, one of them probably an Artists from Dheli (Statue of Zeus). If we run Representation until we finish the game, the GP fams should also receive academies.

 

[batteryacid]

Here a short version of my turns:

Preturn: start golden age, switch civics as proposed, set to 4 sci in Bursa nd 2 Merch in Dheli
298: Great scientist appears; build academy in Bursa
300: meet Suryavarman from the Khmers, Lit Drama Theo up; he lacks Phil, Paper, Feud, Metal casting and has 15 cities
301: Brennus of the Celts is met, he´s down Phil and Paper and up Lit Drama, Theo, he only has 5 cities
303: Meet Isabella, has 12 cities up in theo and down with the same as other civs. I decide to switch to University of sangkore when next longbow is built, we should easily be able to get it.
305: Great merchant appears in Istanbul (would add +1300 to guilds); I store him there for the next GA (or a trade mission when proposed)
Both caravels and 2 spies discover foreing lands; so merchant has to wait for next shipping occasion should we want o send him to a trade mission.

I switch to Forbidden palace in Dheli and add an engineer as the city is already screwed up by GPP from Zeus; we need anyhow a second great person for next GA. 2 new cities are found and after irrigating our east coast transferred (for now) to our 2 islands

311: education is up; I switch our science cities to university immieddeately (will take ~ 10 turns in every city)
312: Rhamses gets Siniste Chapel!
315: FORBIDDEN PALACE IS BUILT! Brings up 20! coins; we run now 50% science with +/- 0, liberalism in 10

heres the save
Foreing advisor on tech
Foreign advisor und relatioships
Overwiev of resources and cities on the other 2 continents

Next Great peoples: Scientist and unknown Great person will come in 5 turns.

SO, Brief discussion: We will get the university of sangkore as all other civs are lacking paper. We are tech leaders, and spy missions on us will be hard for the AI as we are on a separate Continent. 2 new cities are in development and need a lot of time until they pay off . I built 4 longbows and 2 Horsearcher in between so that we don´t fall back too far on military strength. The AI is still nice to each other (ridiculous +10-+14 due to happy tech trading) but still seems to have overexpaned, and happyness with each other will drop soon as I think that Gilgamesh will make war soon with BRennus or another weak civ. All our cities are missionized, 1 missionary waiting in island citx to convert next city. Workers are mainly on the 2 islands now to develope new land.

So I think next step: University of Sangkore will be built in 18 turns, but only pays +2 per temple/monastery of our state religion, which means that we will have to postpone free religion or throw 1 turn free religion in our GA in to trade techs. Next 2 cities should wait untill new cities are abit more developed and have at least Lib/Courthouse/granary

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Hmm.. Engineering and Literature (for Heroic epic/ national epic) are the techs we might want to trade. We should definitely try to trade for Guilds if it is here. Techwise I suggest to aim for constitution next after liberalism for the representation civic to have at our next GA. This should boost our tech output considerably. Also, Monarchy is not needed for the MP with all the new lux resources.
Trading: Suryavarman is our competitor no.1 We could trade luxes with Gilgamesh (lots of dye/ wine). Imo we have to set a war against the Khmer guy. Fortunately he begins to outtech the other civs and they don´t have anything to trade with him. I suspect Ramses might take on Brenus or Suryavarman might take on Ramses if the military disparity becomes too high. Gilgamesh I would suspect of preparing an invasion against us or the other continent, concerning his personality. Isabella and Brennus are of no importance, imo. I say we prepare for maritime harassement of Suryavarman. After constitution naval technology is to come.

 

[batteryacid]

Checked the save again fr details and some notes: we should switch instantly after we get liberalism without GA for free speech to have a commerce / culture boost and get faster to banking/economics. If guilds are researched by Ai we can switch during GA to free religion for one turn and trade, but AI seems to be really slow (too high upkeep? ).

Medium term I guess it is best to concentrate militaristicly speaking on the eastern continent and for trading to the western continent as there are more happy resources for us. So we willl have somehow to make the 2 smaller civs (Rhamses and BRennuss) to our vassals and then go with their aid for the Khmer.

Note that on both continents AI only knows neighbours and us, so they can´t (yet?) trade techs between the continents which favors and and should give us (with Sangkore) a nice tech lead (and thus city developement lead) before our military campaigns.

For the next city I wills say we build the southern city on teh bigger island; with representation or continental borders should close soon enough before others (optics still not researched by the AIs) will have the idea to settle there

Note that we are still #1 in Pop and Commerce and #2 in food but only #5 in mility, which isn´t that bad as no enemy can even reach our borders at the moment.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

I say we start the GA as soon as possible to help finish University of Sangakore, Universities and following Observatories. Tech should really be the aim for costitution and then maybe we trade for (or research) the route to economics (free Great Merchant!), and then following the naval technologies. Our capital, Bombay, and either Vij... or the more southern city should crank out ships. I think Bombay could use the Moai statues.

 

[Belisar]

We are making progress.
Representation/Free Speech will turn out nicely.
Currently we need some health ressources to grow our top inland-cities even bigger (typical for continent) so mid-term strategy should be based on this (coast cities should be fine with harbour as we have all the sea-food, this game cries for Sids-Sushi in Bursa and Delhi ).
Corn is the big prize as it will already be doubled by granary.
Spices, banana, sugar and wine (grocer) are next best.
Now that we know the AIs we should evaluate and formulate a strategy based on religion/diplo/ressources.

 

[batteryacid]

Hi Folks

I checked the wonder situation:

Egypt: Siniste chapel, Colossus, Panthenon, Great Lighthouse, Stonehenge, Shwedagon Paya all in Thebes!
Celts: HAgya Sophia, Apostolic Palace, Mahgbodhi, both bold ones in Bibrace
Sumeria: Chichen Itza, ORacle, HAnging Gardens, Mausoleul of Mausolos

Spain: Holy City and Artemis Temple in Madrid

Khmer: Great Library, GReat Wall

So, strat is clear: War on BRennus and sacking Holy CIty and Apostolic Palace in one city! Egypt (Thebes) is also only few tiles away from Bibrace

So I would say good news!

Look at the screenie, Brennus Land is amde for an invasion; he is separated from the rest of the continent with a 1 tile narrow

 

[Belisar]

This is exactly the situation we don't want at all, MrB warned us, AP located in the Bud holy city.

.) If we attack Brennus he will try to stop the war/give city back with the AP, regardeless
whether he still has the AP. (He remains pope until next election) and we get massive unhappy faces if we don't accept

.) If we take him out completely and get the AP we are a Bud-minority against the other continent.
.) If we raze Brennus (and the AP) we gain nothing but a diplo-hit with the rest (you declared...)

My suggestion is: We go free religion and build our eco until the two continents get contact with each other.
Then we can evaluate an attack on the HIND-holy city, where no AP will hurt our efforts.
In the meantime our privateer-stacks go hunting