NCSG IV Redux - The Mummy Strikes Back

[Jkaen]

Annoyingly its going to have to be a brief report as its my last week at work and have a leaving do tonight, so apologies for the lack of images etc on some of this.

Turn 220:
Reviewed the map and whipped the courthouse in Memphis, and moved the GS over in that direction.
Made peace with Joao for HBR.
Traded Civil Service and 50 gold for Machinery
Noted that Thebes, Giza and Pi were short Buddism and Heli, Memphis, Ainu, Alex and Giza short Islam.

Turn 221:
Thebes completes HE, starts courthouse
Memphis completes courthouse starts Buddist Monastry and founds Academy.

Turn 222:
Nothing

Turn 223:
Thebes completes courthouse, starts Islamic missionary

Turn 224:
Helio completes forge, starts Bud missionary

Turn 225:
We get the classic Lit quest, we currently have 5/7 libraries and the GL (see image at bottom)

Turn 226:
Thebes completes Islamic missionary, starts another
I trade fish and rice for spare silk and gems with Fred.

Turn 227:
Alex builds xbox, starts Library (almost went another bud misisonary here). I also spread Islam here

Turn 228:
Helio completes bud missionary and starts another
HINDUISM IS FOUNDED ! (How on earth was this already not founded?)
Worried about us teching slowly I up us from 20% to 40% at a bigger defecit (we have a good bankroll still).

Turn 229:
Thebes completes and islamic missionary and starts another. I also spread buddism here
Ainu completes a forge and starts a library
Gem city completes its library and starts a forge

Turn 230:
Alex completes a library and starts a bud missionary (that should be the last we need for now)
Lisbon completes a library and starts a courthouse
This completes the literature quests, and I take a free scientist in the GL (other option was +2sci in a single library)
I spread Islam to Memphis.


Sorry for the rubbish report I will try to upload some end screens now before the guests arrive

 

[Jkaen]

Here are some additional screenshots.

As you can see, even now we are still way behind on AP votes

 

[Bleys]

HINDUISM IS FOUNDED ! (How on earth was this already not founded?)

We have Choose Religions on. This is likely Philosophy's religion (normally Taoism).

 

[S.ilver]

Actually, Hinduism is paired with Divine Right in this game, as all 7 religions are now in play. It looks like Mansa founded it, which looks to be bad news for the tech rate. Mansa could easily run away with the game in that regards.

I was hoping Bleys would dole out some criticism, so I'm not constantly the bad guy , but here goes...

Feud is up for trade by backwards Fred. We should get it as it enables vassalage. It also enables serfdom, which I would not normally consider a good civic... except for the fact that we have only FIVE workers... I have never had 1 worker for every two cities before... Meanwhile, 2 of our workers are cutting jungle unnecessarily. What can we put on those two squares that couldn't go on some other unimproved square? And another worker is farming a plains tile. Granted, Pi-Ram lacks food, but here is actually a better place to cut jungle to lay down farms.

Due to this deficiency of workers, many cities are working sub-optimal unimproved tiles. But we are running slavery so we could be converting these less efficient tiles into better production that way. I know Bleys whips to efficiently push stuff out and take advantage of mass food and overflow. I normally do not like whipping if we whip away improved tiles, but in this case, we don't have many!

We are bleeding an insane 43gpt on maintenance, and that makes up almost half our total costs that eventually get multiplied by inflation. We have two courthouses under construction, but Giza and Helio both still lack courthouses. All our cities need courts bad.

On a somewhat related tangent, Giza is building a Confucian monastery, I realize this was under construction last turnset and I didn't catch it. Why do we need this building? Confucianism is not significant, as no one else is running it. Meanwhile, Giza is one city that needs a courthouse.

 

[Jkaen]

I didn't change any build orders, assuming those who placed them had their reasons for doing so.

I looked for Feud trades (mainly with asoka though) and what he was after for it was stupid, so I thought to hold off until another civ had it to get better value.

With Pi-Ram the only grassland tile I could see is a grass jungle that is currently at something like 54% against a capital city. There is no way we will win that fight so didn't want to improve somebody elses terrain for them.

Due to the quest libraries jumped up the queue past courthouses, but I did get some done and some started my turnset.

 

[GatlingGun]

got it, I'll post Friday night or Saturday in the US

 

[grandad1982]

I'm not sure I care about keeping the southern city for the NP. Its a long way off. We can chain some farms and cottage it and make it more usefull to us now.

Workers workers workers....

 

[GatlingGun]

T229 - Preflight: I want to tweak civics a bit... we aren't running Bureaucracy, which would give us a big boost in Thebes... also, as mentioned by others, we should trade for Feudalism and we need lots of workers (5 workers for 10 cities). I'm particularly concerned about getting Feudalism, so we can start cranking out Longbows. We are still #1 in power, but we are stagnating and need to keep pumping troops. The biggest city of concern to me is Memphis, which needs a lot of land development, and I want to get Natl Epic going there ASAP. Plan: Trade Machinery for Feudalism. Build workers. Develop land around Memphis and go nuts farming there. (270G, -29G/t @ 40%, 114B/t)

T230 - Fredrick completes Chichen Itza. Thebes: Islamic Missionary > Worker. Fredrick is asking for everything in order to get Feudalism... I'll research a few turns into it and see if he lightens up (switching to Feudalism now). Push a worker ahead of the missionary in Alexandria. Switch to Bureaucracy, which is an instant commerce boost as well. (241G, -21G/t @ 40%, 128B/t)

T231 - Thebes is cranking out so many hammers now, it's sick not to try to make a run on the Parthenon, which I'll do after finishing the worker. Freddie is pretty proud of his Feudalism, so I'll wait a while.

T232 - Heliopolis: Baldy > wealth. Helio is one turn from growth, so I'll build wealth and let it grow for another turn. Freddie is still trying to extort Feudalism out of us... I'll keep waiting. Power wise, Asoka is climbing and when I asked about trading for Feudalism, I also noticed that war with Sury is not redlined; however, he still doen't have a lot on his hands at the moment (220G, -7G/t @ 40%, 128B/t)

T233 - Asoka builds the Statue of Zeus. Islamic missionary fails to spread the heresy to Giza. I start working on National Epic in Memphis.

T234 - Heliopolis: Wealth > Worker. Thebes: Worker > Parthenon (which is due in about 6 turns). I think Freddie still wants a little to much for Feudalism (Currently due in 6 turns). Whip the market in Elephantine for 3pop.


T235 -
Elephantine: Market > Forge. Our baldy spreads the one true faith to Giza. Our deal with Freddie isn't getting any better... I go ahead and cave in. Feudalism > Engineering. (163G, -24G/t @ 40%, 131B/t)

T236 - Joao offers to voluntarily vassal... I decline for now, since I'd rather take the rest of his cities later.

Feudalism > Engineering (174G, -25G/t @ 40%, 131B/t)

T237 - Giza: Confucian Monestary > Worker. Two farms competed in Memphis. We can whip the Parthenon for 4 pop in Thebes, but I'll gamble for one more turn. (149G, -29G/t @ 40%, 127B/t)

T238 - Asoka builds the Kong Miao. I whip the Parthenon in Thebes for 3 pop. Heliopolis: Worker > Worker (120G, -25G/t @ 40%, 130B/t)
.

T239 - Thebes: Parthenon > Longbow (due in one turn from massive overflow + HE).

We pop a Great Spy in Thebes... I'm tempted to save him for a golden age.

Negotiated a bunch of trades that I should have done much earlier... sorry for the

I also whipped the forge in Elephantine. (95G, -9G/t @ 40%, 129B/t)


Closing Remarks
It won't be long before we can whip the National Epic in Memphis. At this point, I say we put the whip aside for a while, switch to Caste and grow our cities to happy-cap.

Workers and Military still look like high priorities to me; we have 7 workers now with 2 more due soon. I'm particularly concerned about beefing up our borders with Joao and Toku... Giza is still our only source of Iron, but is poorly defended. Yes, we are all Buddhist, but I'd rather not get complacent... changes happen quickly.

Academically, I think we should go Engineering > Paper > Guilds and trade for Theocracy along the way. Paper will open up UoS and is also on the Liberalism path.

 

[S.ilver]

I would've actually taken Vassalage from Joao. The rest of his cities are marginal coast cities by the looks of things, except for perhaps one west of Lisbon, which appears to have very marginal brown terrain yuck. We would face increased maintenance from having him as a vassal, but it would mean a free happy source, and the ability to direct his research to get us a trading partner for Phil or Theo so we don't have to waste time researching it ourselves.

It would also buffer us from Toku, who we seem to have an irrational fear of (unless we blunder badly in not keeping our military up, Toku is tied to attacking Fred first) and, the biggest factor, it would've given us Lisbon's entire BFC for free without having to culture war it from Joao first. This is major, as Lisbon is essentially useless unless we expend energy destroying Joao. When his cities are marginal, why would we? We would either be forced to destroy them, making a huge land gap for Toku to settle (bad), or be stuck governing cities with too much water, which, on a pangaea map, is bad.

Consider the hidden "average relations boost" as well. If you check diplo, everyone either likes Joao, or doesn't mind him much. So we would get a diplo boost from him as well.

Mind you, it's a personal choice. I would've made it, but I've only outlined positives here. It's very likely there are many negatives as well that I didn't consider. It's all a wash right now anyways, as Joao won't voluntarily vassal anymore.


I agree with GatlingGun that we should drop Slavery, but I disagree we should head into Caste. We do not have enough improved squares yet for us to be able to ditch Slavery and run Caste. I hate to say it, but due to our chronic worker shortage, this may be a rare time that we need to run Serfdom, to get our empire in shape. Since we don't lose turns to switching, we can be flexible with this too, and really, we currently lack the demand for specialist slots, which would be the only benefit from Caste, since our workforce has been too busy to put up workshops. We were ok before without any improvements, because we ran on whipping. But we can't continue to subsist like that. Luckily, it appears that Toku lacks Islam, and in his usual isolationist way, he probably won't be getting it anytime soon, so we can't lose to the AP yet.

Mind you, we may want to consider, very heavily, getting onside with the AP. This would've been easier with Joao as a vassal, since that would be one less front we would have to worry about. Islam buildings give us +2 hammers, and if we want UoS as well, it would make sense to not have to mass build a variety of religious buildings, especially since we need to keep our power rating up.


EDIT: BTW, we should probably send a chariot to scout out Asoka, Fred, and Mansa, since we have OB with them.


Oh, and since we haven't seen the roster in a while, I went and dug it up.

Roster

GatlingGun <-- Just Played --
Bleys >> Up Now <<
S.ilver <-- On Deck --
Groogaroo
grandad1982
Jkaen

 

[GatlingGun]

I would've actually taken Vassalage from Joao...
[snip]

I'd be interested in hearing some more opinions about this from the team... I really don't like taking early-game vassals most of the time... in the big picture, it's really not a winning proposal to me...

1. I would be voluntarily protecting a weak AI. Land is power in this game, and even his crappy cities can produce wealth / commerce and run specialists.

2. The AI very rarely proposes voluntary vassalage when it's in our favor. The AI frankly abuses the whole vassal arrangement any time it can. Let's suppose we take him as a vassal... now he can focus on teching completely independent of needing a military, and it frequently does this... case in point, what is Mansa doing while he is a vassal of Frederick? Running nuts in tech and building basically very little military. Once it is far enough ahead in tech, it breaks off and forgets 1000+ years of "partnership"

3. The AI will attempt to grab cities during our military conquests... this isn't such a big deal due to their small military, but it reinforces the point 2 above.

4. Increased maintenance.

Everything in this game is a judgment call, but I don't like the incremental happiness when I look at the flip-side of a vassal. However, I think they are great in the late-game when you are steam-rolling everything in sight and want a quick domination win.

 

[grandad1982]

I think not having Joao as a vassel is the best option at the moment.

If we want to get our army some cheap XP hes a natural target before a bigger war.

Also use the GSpy as a Super Spy untill we're ready to burn him in a GA.

I'm happy with Surfdom over CS.

Tech a medival army and start a fight....

Thebes is lovely!

 

[S.ilver]

Alright, I concede it may have been bad judgment by me suggesting we vassal Joao. He's not bound to give us techs, only per turn trades, and we wouldn't be able to dispose of him any time we wanted to. The increased maintenance would probably also be a bigger deal than it usually would be, thanks to our weaker than normal economy.

I think that needs to be our main priority. By now, our lands should be fully developed with very little for our workers to do. We'll need Serfdom to catch up in that regard, as we can't afford to expand without improving our economic output.

Also, we should finish Joao if we don't plan to vassalize him, as Lisbon is seriously gimped.

 

[Bleys]

I need a skip, sorry guys, I have too much going on for the first part of this week.

 

[S.ilver]

Ok, looks like I get to fix the place up for next war dec.

Got it.

 

[Jkaen]

I can't understand why we are trading away our only copy of certain resources, are they not worth more in our hands than the small amount of gold we get for them?

 

[S.ilver]

No screenshots, because nothing of note happened. Except for some depressing minor stuff.


940AD (239):

Preflight check. Pi-Ram grows next turn for the 2-pop whip of the courthouse. Very important, so it looks like the revolt is for next turn.

Thebes needs a single farm to hook the corn up to the irrigation. Also fairly important...

I see we built a cottage on the FP at Pi-Ram. Since we already spent worker turns on it, and we need to do other things, I won't contest it, but this city has almost no food, and needed a farm there!

Not much else I can do for the moment, so hit enter.

950AD (240):

A forest grows near Thebes, over the plains that I was planning on irrigating to feed the corn. Ok, cool, more chop fodder.

We get a handful of gold from the longbow overflow, and there is still max overflow, so I put it into an Islamic Temple.

Alexandria finished a worker and defaulted to a Bud Missionary. All cities have Bud, so not sure what this is for. I switch to an Islamic Temple and remove the missionary from the queue so we don't accidentally build it.

NE can be 4 pop whipped. Joy. I do that. Why did we not build and whip a forge before starting this (forge is 2 pop whip for us)?

Forge done in Elephantine, dial an Islamic temple. Hammers from the temple + production bonus for being spiritual = good.

I whip Pi-Ram's courthouse, Gem-city's forge AND Giza's worker for good measure. Then I punt us over to serfdom.

960AD (241):

Islam spreads in Helio. Thanks Mansa.

Temple is done in Thebes, follow up with an Islamic Monastery.

Whipped courts done at Pi-Ram. A temple is cheap and provides hammers, so go for it.

Worker done in Giza, I contemplate the courthouse, but a forge first will speed that up, as well as being cheaper.

Gem-city forge done, go courts, no brainer. Will detour for Islamic buildings later.

970AD (242):

Helio done a worker, and I notice someone turned back on Citizen Automation, the result being working too many coast tiles instead of the mines >.<. Fix that, and dial for courts. I also go around and make sure no more automation is on. Sorry, should've done that first.

980AD (243):

Engineering comes in. Joy. I dial up paper.

Thebes finished the monastery, and Notre Dame is up for grabs. I salivate at a 10 turn wonder that is +2 to the happy cap. I then return to reality. Dial up walls, to be followed by a castle.

990AD (244):

Walls done in Thebes, castle in 2 turns for the trade route. Let's try to hold off on econ.

Library finally finished at Ainu, dial up a temple.

1000AD (245):

A Toku spy got nailed near Giza. Fun. It looks like he was passing through though, as he somehow got nailed in the middle of a desert....

1010AD (246):

Castle finished in Thebes for an extra +4 commerce trade route, yay. Ok, enough nonsense here. Dial up a maceman.

Alexandria finished a temple and goes for a monastery.

1020AD (247):

Nothing this turn except issuing more worker orders... I note that Fred, ALREADY HAS PAPER. Ugh.

1030AD (248):

Mansa shows up and wants engineering for Compass. I laugh.

Thebes finished the Mace, and can do a crossbow in 1 turn, so go for it.

Joao got a friggen border pop, and now Lisbon has lost all the tiles to the west. Sigh...

1040AD (249):

Crossbow in Thebes done, another mace is up.

Temple in Elephantine -> Monastery.

1050AD (250):

Nothing....



Well... up till the very end of the turnset, I was almost convinced that not vassaling Joao earlier was a good thing. Then Lisbon got more of its tiles eaten.

Basically, this means we need to finish Joao off. First. Before we do anything else like deal with Asoka/Toku or the runaway Mansa. This brought me back to my previous points that I had made about vassaling Joao; if we did, we would not have to expend resources to take him out, and could concentrate on more lucrative ventures.

I am again convinced that the "costs" of him becoming our vassal wouldn't have been as severe as the costs of having to build up the army to attack him instead of someone else.

However, since there's no use crying over spilt milk, and the fact that no one else agrees that this is spilt milk to begin with, I'll just let it drop and get on with the synopsis.

We must upgrade our army and attack Joao. Otherwise, Lisbon is a liability, and we might as well have stopped at Gem-city. We need cash to run this upgrade fest, so we are likely going to fall behind in tech a few turns. The alternative is simply building a new army from scratch and deleting some old units. I would rather not do this because we have some fairly experienced units from earlier.

Fred already has paper, but won't trade it to us. I therefore have no idea about the Liberalism race.

Roster

GatlingGun
Bleys
S.ilver <-- Just Played --
Groogaroo >> Up Now <<
grandad1982 <-- On Deck --
Jkaen

 

[Groogaroo]

Hi there team! Sorry about my lack of involvement in this game so far, real life has been pretty full on since my laptop broke on me (huge back log of work to get finished). I'm not really able to play until friday and to be honest I'm not sure if I should play a set at all, (havn't been playing civ at all recently).

Sorry about that, you'll have to swap or skip me.

 

[grandad1982]

ok got it.

EDIT:

Actually I haven't got it. I'm experiencing difficulties so I need a swap as well. Probably can't pick up the game till sunday/monday!

Sorry.

 

[Jkaen]

Was away last night so have only just realised its ran through to me, will play tomorrow morning

 

[Jkaen]

Turn 250:
I get the SOD moving back towards Lisbon ready to launch the assault from there, and move the great spy into his territory to start scouting it out a bit until we decide what to use it for (I assume golden age)

IBT:

Turn 251:
Thebes completes Maceman, start Trebuchet
Helio completes Courthouse starts Castle
Alex completes Islamic Monastery starts Maceman
Pi-Ram completes Islamic Temple, starts Forge
Ainu completes Islamic Temple starts Barracks

(I decline obviously)

IBT:
Paper comes in, I start Education

Turn 252:
Thebes Completes Trebuchet, starts Uni of Sankore (due in 9 turns)
Memphis completes Buddist Monastry, starts Forge
I also take the opportunity to restart 2 sci specialists in Memphis

IBT:

Nowhere near fair, and compass sucks in this game so I decline

Turn 253:
Gem City completes Courthouse, starts Lighthouse

IBT:
We miss Uni of Snakore (goes to Germany), start a Trebuchet

Turn 254:
Nothing

Turn 255:
Thebes completes Trebuchet, starts Maceman
Helio completes Castle, starts Maceman
Giza completes Forge, starts Courthouse
Apostic Palace vote comes up I vote for Fred (rather than Mansu)

Turn 256:
Thebes completes Maceman starts Trebuchet (I keep switching btw as overflow allows each in 1 turn)
Gem City completes Lighthouse, starts Market

It seems whoever we voted for would have won (I chose fred because he was stronger and I thought he would win anyway)

Turn 257:

If this had happened at the start of my turn I may have accepted, but given we are well into a military pump against him now I decided to follow it through and declined.

Alex completes Maceman, starts Maceman
Ainu completes Barracks, starts Longbowman

Turn 258:
Thebes completes Trebuchet, starts Maceman
Lisbon completes Courthouse, starts Forge

Turn 259:
Thebes completes Maceman, starts Trebuchet

Turn 260:
Thebes completes Trebuchet, starts Maceman
Helio completes Maceman, starts Longbowman
Great Artist is born in Thebes


I have no idea who has skipped and who has swapped so won't post a roster