MRG's Random Game of Randomness

[Spoonwood]

So, Korea has 276 surplus gpt on this turn. Also gpt coming from Korea is about to expire.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

I always play with friend moves off. I can still see nearby battles with 'animate battles' on.

Had I kept the option off I would have not noticed the Spanish cavalry. It's super easy to miss a seemingly friendly AI building troops up near one of your cities with that option off. Then suddenly you have a war that you didn't prepare for.


Also I wouldn't have any way of knowing what Korean units went by if something like a cavalry for example emerges from where we can't see and ends the turn in a different area we can't see.

 

[choxorn]

My one quibble with that Spanish MA is it might have been better to pay them in gpt instead of straight cash if you thought they wanted to attack- that way if they do you get to not pay them for the alliance.

 

[Lanzelot]

Well, that went smoothly, didn't it. We are firmly in the driver's seat now...
Only bummer is that Spanish sneak attack and that they took our furs and our prospective coal But they will pay for that!

Nicaea revolts after the resistance ended. Nothing I could have done about that.

Actually, there is a trick to remember: if you click on the city governor after capturing the city and then activate the flag "Manage citizen moods", the computer will turn the citizens into entertainers right in the interturn when they come out of resistance. No riots and one can immediately cash-rush a worker or settler, if needed.

Both V cavalry fails to kill CR. Loss 1 Cavalry. I was hoping a redlined conscript would die. Nope. Promoted to regular.

LBM army kills RR with loss of 2hp. I honestly thought it would be much worse than that which is why I sent cavalry first.

A size-4 Longow Army has attack value 8, compared to the 6 of the Cavalry, plus three times as many hitpoints. That's why I wrote we should preserve our expensive Cavs, until we can fill them into our first Army. Size-4 Cav-Army has attack 12, which with all those hitpoints is an almost secure win even against fortified Rifles.

And I think the Americans raised one of the northern Bayzantine cities.

I'm not a native speaker, but I think "raze" and "raise" are two different things, aren't they?! (Not to be confused with "race"... --- I'll never understand the English language... words that are spelled differently, are pronounced the same, while other words that are spelled the same, are pronounced differently... for example tough, dough and through: three completely different pronunciations of the letter combination "ough"... And on the other end of the scale we got the words "there", "their" and "they're", which are written differently, but difficult to keep apart, even for natives... )

My one quibble with that Spanish MA is it might have been better to pay them in gpt instead of straight cash if you thought they wanted to attack- that way if they do you get to not pay them for the alliance.

No big deal: he got the lump sum (and even more) back right away in that furs deal. And Spain's reputation is screwed either way...

 

[Lanzelot]

PS: you forgot to reduce the luxury slider, when our GA started... It's still at 30%, but 10% would suffice at the moment. So we have been wasting 154 gold per turn...

And I wouldn't fortify any units in Constantinople: a former AI capital usually has accumulated tons of culture, and Constantinople additionally has built the Oracle, the Hanging Gardens and Leonardo's Workshop. With that much culture accumulated over time, it can flip any moment, and we would lose 11 units for a total of 520 shields...

Also, three of our four Armies are currently in Byzantine towns, which may also flip any time. Starting at Demigod, you never leave Armies inside a town/city as the flip risk is just too high. (Especially when it's already 1000AD and the AI had had enough time to accumulate culture.)

 

[Lanzelot]

We can get Scientific Method in 4 turns. The three AI cities currently building the Universal Suffrage are quite powerful ( two capitals, one size-12 second ring, but with lots of flood plain so probably not that much production), but they started during MrRandomGuy's turn set, so less than 10 turns ago, and none of them is currently in a GA, I guess. So I think we can take the risk and switch KK to Suffrage now as pre-build for ToE.
KK is the only city, where we can reasonably build ToE. Ta-Tu needs to start building Armies and Kazan will be significantly slower than KK. (And I want to avoid another "too late"... If Scientific Method is discovered by the AI, before someone completes Universal Suffrage, we might lose ToE in the cascade...)

 

[choxorn]

I'm not a native speaker, but I think "raze" and "raise" are two different things, aren't they?! (Not to be confused with "race"... --- I'll never understand the English language... words that are spelled differently, are pronounced the same, while other words that are spelled the same, are pronounced differently... for example tough, dough and through: three completely different pronunciations of the letter combination "ough"... And on the other end of the scale we got the words "there", "their" and "they're", which are written differently, but difficult to keep apart, even for natives... )

Correct. They're nearly antonyms- razing something is to burn it to the ground, raising something is to uplift it. English is three languages in a trench coat trying to sneak into an R-rated movie theater and it when it gets in it grabs more words and grammar from other languages to add to its collection.

No big deal: he got the lump sum (and even more) back right away in that furs deal. And Spain's reputation is screwed either way...

Fair point, just more of a general process thing.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Math is my strong point. I am terrible at spelling. The words do have different meanings, I just wrote the wrong word when making notes and forgot to correct it.

Never realized that the attack value of the army was based on the combined units. I thought it would be the same as an attack value for LBM. That's why I tried with cavalry first.

Oh manage citizen moods, that's an excellent tip. I always thought of it as "never use the governor" but in a case like this using the governor is necessary.

 

[choxorn]

From https://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/introductory/the-basics-of-armies/:

Attack = A+(TA/N)
where
A is the attack of the unit currently doing the fighting.
TA is the attacks of all the units added together.
N is 4 if you own the military academy, else just 6.
This formula is rounding fractions down. To find the defense just use this and replace attack with defense (pretty obvious). Note that when right clicking an army it doesn’t show it’s attack and defense as it really is, only the unmodified attack and defense.

Assuming you have only one type of unit in the army, this means that the army strength will be:

3 units, no MA: 1.5*individual unit attack
4 units, no MA: 1.67*unit attack
3 units, with MA: 1.75*unit attack
4 units, with MA: 2*unit attack

 

[Lanzelot]

Who is next, btw?

 

[tjs282]

I'm still on 'oliday, so not me: actually wondering if there's going to be anything left for me to do when I get back!

 

[MrRandomGuy]

@choxorn is next I think if his neck is feeling better.

 

[Lanzelot]

If we complete ToE, here is the way to take the most advantage of it: it needs to complete in the same interturn, where the next tech completes. (Meaning: the turn before, the current tech and ToE need to show 1 turn to completion.) Then the tech finishes first, afterwards the build of ToE and you get to chose your two freebees, before starting to put beakers into the next tech.

If you see after finishing Scientific Method, that you cannot complete another tech before the completion of ToE, it's better to set research to 0% after Scientic Method and to rake in some cash until ToE is complete. Research can then be turned on again, after picking our two freebees. Otherwise a lot of beakers/gold may get unnecessarily wasted.

Speaking of the two freebees: in a normal science game, one naturally chooses the two most expensive ones, Atomic Theory and Electronics. However, we will not go for a science game. I think that tanks will be all we need to finish this game, and then these two techs don't give us any benefit. How about taking two on our way to Tanks, e.g Steel and Combustion? (Assuming we can buy/trade Replaceable Parts and Refining from Korea.)

 

[choxorn]

My neck has recovered, but I'm in the middle of a trip right now and probably won't have any reasonable time to play a set until I get back, so shouldn't be me next either.

 

[choxorn]

Speaking of the two freebees: in a normal science game, one naturally chooses the two most expensive ones, Atomic Theory and Electronics. However, we will not go for a science game. I think that tanks will be all we need to finish this game, and then these two techs don't give us any benefit. How about taking two on our way to Tanks, e.g Steel and Combustion? (Assuming we can buy/trade Replaceable Parts and Refining from Korea.)

That's certainly an option, but also the major benefit of getting AT and Electronics is that it allows for rapid Hoover Dam completion, which we would absolutely benefit from.

 

[MrRandomGuy]

Hmm, ok we'll have @Lanzelot go next.

Agree with going for Hoover after TOE. We'll certainly benefit from the effects.

 

[Lanzelot]

Ok, two in favor of Hoover Dam, so the traditional two techs it will be.
I need some more time, so will post my pre-flight tomorrow.

 

[Lanzelot]

Plan for the next couple turns:

• On the war front, I will try to take Caesarea, then concentrate everything on Smyrna, secure the gems, then take Chalcedon, leave the rest of Byzantium to America & Korea and start moving towards Spain.
• Spain needs to pay for its back stab, but they also have important resources we need: coal, saltpeter, ivory and (our) furs
• I can buy dyes and silks for Portugal and America
• Research Scientific Method in 4 turns, meanwhile set KK to the Sufferage as pre-build
• Hopefully be first to complete Theory of Evolution, take Atomic Theory and Electronics and trade for Korea's Refining and Replaceable Parts.
• Kazan finishes its Factory next turn and can then start a Palace as pre-build for Hoover's Dam
• Ta-Tu builds Armies (if I can get more gold, I will also rush one. I thought we had already done that long ago?!)

The workers and LBs around KK are gone, so I assume we will no longer use that trade-route exploit? (We could still get two techs and ~380g from Korea, but we'll get that by selling two of our next three techs anyway.)

Anything else?

 

[Spoonwood]

Hey folks,

I'm Spoonwood. Something strange happened to my account (it said it couldn't send anything to my email, which I didn't realize I still had active anywhere, and I couldn't reset my email to the one I use.. I had to use this account with that email instead), so I'm posting under this name now.

Also, I had left a note about purchasing an army or two before, but MRG decided to spend the gold otherwise.

 

[Elephantium]

@GrandPhilosopher / @Spoonwood: I saw something about email shenanigans in the xenforo 2.2 bug reports thread. https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-new-xenforo-version-2-2.677949/post-16307119

Might be worth posting in there for help?