P666-01 Fix the Trash Game

[Calavente]

I like my city ...

for cav : I've seen it, that's why I wanted it to raze nappy, and not wait for grenadiers, using grenadiers for later invasion. but, maybe I should have done some tech exchange to gets engineering aand some more techs... and I'm a bit long from astro + gren + economics. (free trad)

do we send our vote to petrucci ?

 

[Calavente]

Ok, As I won't be here, I will PM petrucci with my votes, and cabert I will send it to you (attention au secret professionnel ) in case petrucci is not here and somebody else has to coordinate the votes.

 

[Petrucci]

Hehe working too much, no time to play unfortunatly. We are coordinating a new health system to go live next Monday so its crazy here! It is easy enough to participate by counting votes however. I have 2 submissions waiting for the rest!

I wont be able to vote this round. I'm at work right now and haven't had the chance to even look over these saves *grrr* hate being out of the loop like this! Next weekend will be able to get my self back up to speed.

I do whole heartably apologize for my lack of participation this round!

 

[armstrong]

too bad none of us have all the tech or all the military required!

What about my game...

thats fun, it seems I was the only one to go cavalry...
was it a bad move ? I know I have skipped astronomy yet but...

I considered going Cavalry too. I would have if this were a pangaea, but my reasons for choosing Grens:

1. The main advantage of cavalry (speed) is negated by the fact we'll be shipping them overseas.
2. We have lots of CR maces to upgrade.
3. Grens can handle Riflemen (while Cavalry can't) in case we're forced to fight them, which is more likely since we have to research Astronomy too.

So votes to Petrucci!

 

[armstrong]

Okay, I promised a longer writeup, so here it is, be wary though as it's a bit rambling.

The Plan and Research
First, I had very specific goals here - research Chemistry and Astronomy, take over the continent, send Grens overseas for domination. I tried to make sure all my decisions reflected that, but, given that I was rushed I played sloppily.

Techwise, I saw we had a Great Scientist that was going to be born in our capital, so I set him aside for researching (most) of Education, and switched research to Optics for circumnavigation and the ability to get Astronomy as a free tech from Liberalism. I traded JC for Calendar (prereq for Compass) and Currency (let's us run merchant specialists.)

Here was my tech path: Calendar (trade), Currency (trade), Compass, Optics, Education (Great Scientist), Liberalism, Astronomy (free), Engineering, Gunpowder, Chemistry.

After Chemistry I set research to 0% (though we'll get Steel in 20-30 turns due to Representation.) I'm using excess gold to upgrade CR2+ macemen into Grenadiers.

The Early Game
I cancelled the Colossus (Astronomy would obsolete it so quickly) but kept the Gardens & Notre Dame. In the other cities, I heavily used the to build more units as we didn't have enough.

I made a bunch of moves in the beginning, including forgetting to use the great people until about 8 turns into the game. I used the Great Prophet to research Theology and switched to Theocracy + Bureaucracy (stronger economy, still have 6 xp units.) The great artist I sent to live in a Spanish border city near Nappy's lands for the gold, beakers, and increased culture.

I forgot to build Caravels when I got optics, but whipped two a few turns later and met the other AI's & circumnavigated the earth. I then disbanded the pair after searching out the other continent's shoreline. I probably should have kept one around so I could keep an eye on the next target's cities (or sent a missionary over.)

War with Isabella was not difficult - she didn't have any longbows until she was down to her last two cities, by which point I had enough CR3 macemen that it didn't really matter.

The War with Napoleon
Because I was Confucian, I could see into some of Napoleon's cities and saw he had a couple of nasty stacks, including a 3 cat 7 horse archer 2 elephant stack! I knew that stack had to die before before he got Guilds, so I used slavery to build some pikemen and rushed all my elephants out to the western cities, and went to war prematurely.

If I hadn't had the luxury of seeing into his cities, I would have been caught off guard by his counterattack like cabert was. Even prepared, Napoleon put up quite a fight (his army seemed big by Monarch standards, let alone Prince) but his glory days are over - his reserves seem to be gone and I have three stacks closing in on him, all led by at least 2 CR3 grens (but each stack is down to only 1 catapult.)

One interesting thing is that I built lots of pikemen (9!) Normally I don't build pikemen at all unless I don't have elephants and am threatened by knights, but in this case I needed them to fight Napoleon's elephants and they can be upgrade them to Grenadiers.

The Future
The general strategy is to use Representation and merchant specialists to keep the economy afloat and research Steel, while moving on to attack Saladin and Julius. Excess gold is used to upgrade CR macemen into grenadiers. Settlers will be built to claim all the extra land on our continent (all that icky ice! )

I'm having a hard time deciding between two strategies in the near future:

1. Whip out a few more galleons and a couple of frigates, then revolt to Caste System to run specialists to keep the economy afloat.

2. Trade with Mansa for Guilds + Banking, whip Banks & Grocers, and then revolt to Caste System + Mercantilism.

I think the economy is strong enough (especially after building wealth, assigning more merchants, cottage growth, micromanaging, etc) to win domination using option 1, but option 2 is a bit more on the safe side, though risks escalating the military progress of the other continent.

I'm perfectly content with letting Mansa run away with all the technologies. I have no intention of fighting him and he won't get a space launch before we get a domination.

 

[Cam_H]

Cam_h, what's the next round? worst game or win (monarch level players excluded), up to 1900 AD?

I wouldn't mind roughly sticking to the format that we earlier agreed to some extent.

Next round we'll be taking the agreed strongest game at 1500AD (to be advised soon by Petrucci), and play to one of the following options;

20 turns = 1600AD
30 turns = 1650AD
40 turns = 1700AD
50 turns = 1750AD

My preference would be to go with the 40 turns to 1700AD looking for the least successful submission by America's next Saturday morning. VuDu, Mice, Petrucci, and Calavente (and William and Paul ) are all up, while the rest of us can toss in our games if we wish.

Your views on proposed number of turns?

One thing that I think that's gone a bit missing is the 'educational' element of this exercise. It's not really supposed to be primarily a competition. I want to acknowledge Mice's and VuDu's posts on Page 14 that I thought brought the focus back to the main point of this thread. I would also welcome further similar posts about what we're learning, and some of the relative strengths of the various games, as I'm always surprised how different they all seem to be each round.

 

[pigswill]

I'd go for fifty turns myself; maybe with a proviso that if someone's close to winning by1750 (60%+ land and actively expanding) then they carry on til victory.
I've added some notes to my spoiler (post #293 (or thereabouts)) for their 'educational' value LOL.

In terms of particular submissions this round we've also basically gone a similar route though Cam-H and cabert are the furthest ends of the spectrum. One of the debates is whether it pays to tech-trade as much as possible because it makes everyone stronger. Diplomacy has not been prominent in this game.

 

[mice]

Yes, the learning has been great and my game has improved, which is a bit embarrassing when I only just escape being the trash game.

Another thought I had was perhaps near the end of the thread the Monarch/Emp players might comment on how they see their game relative to the other Mon/Emp player's games. Eg. Cam_H, how does your game differ from pigswill's ? Pigswill, how does your game differ from Cam_H's,armstrong's... etc.

Then hopefully some key things that the M/E palyers saw that the N/P players need to do better.

But I guess these can wait until we have beaten this game officially. The trash round could slow things up.

Regarding turns, 40 sounds good to me but I'm OK with any.

 

[Cam_H]

Pigswill,

Thanks for the reflected thoughts - good reading.

Mice,

Yes, the learning has been great and my game has improved, which is a bit embarrassing when I only just escape being the trash game.

I think that it's great that you feel as though you have learnt a lot.

We've always said that while one should try to avoid submitting the 'trash game', that it shouldn't be embarassing. It's about learning from mistakes and looking at alternative opportunities that might be apparent from others' games.

Another thought I had was perhaps near the end of the thread the Monarch/Emp players might comment on how they see their game relative to the other Mon/Emp player's games. Eg. Cam_H, how does your game differ from pigswill's ? Pigswill, how does your game differ from Cam_H's,armstrong's... etc.

In just about every round I've adjusted my play-style (well, except for the 'big cities thing')! I took a rather one-dimensional approach in this round that has seen (I think) some compelling success on one hand and a glaring weakness on the other. I fell about six turns short of my objective, but at what cost? While voting is still going, I won't go on about it.

I'm certainly starting to see some interesting trends in everyone elses' games though - perhaps except for Pigswill's game last round, which was 'left field' in a really good way!

Then hopefully some key things that the M/E palyers saw that the N/P players need to do better.

Well I think that the Noble/Prince-level players have conducted themselves fantastically well. There have been a few decisions, and I shouldn't speak for the other Monarch guys, but I've had my fair share too ... like putting forward a plan on how to do a city food count and then mis-counting! (Thanks again Cabert for pointing that out ... twice ...)

There has been some good game-by-game analysis done, such as Cabert's assessment of Round 2. I'd be pleased to see more of that sort of thing.

 

[Petrucci]

Just wanted to give a great congratulation to Armstrong on a well played round and siezing the strongest played round, its was close but Armstrong walks away with the glory, at least for this round! Well played

 

[cabert]

armstrong!

Next round can start with this save, and is about "worst game" judged in 1750AD (ie 50 turns, just as much as this round). Deadline is on friday midnight east coast time.

reminder : we can win by domination, conquest or diplo by our own votes( aka back door domination).
A win normally ends the game, but since it's a "down" round, i suggest we don't accept a win from the monarch players as an end of game.

 

[cabert]

What about my game...

it's lacking frigates and catapults IMHO.

I considered going Cavalry too. I would have if this were a pangaea, but my reasons for choosing Grens:

1. The main advantage of cavalry (speed) is negated by the fact we'll be shipping them overseas.
2. We have lots of CR maces to upgrade.
3. Grens can handle Riflemen (while Cavalry can't) in case we're forced to fight them, which is more likely since we have to research Astronomy too.

right, the only advantages to cavalry at this point is to upgrade elephants or to act as "second wave", meaning reinforcements to crush the remainders of our target civ on the other continent.

edit : some afterthoughts of the previous round.

1) economic recovery at this point is through :
- specialization of commerce cities (markets+banks+grocers in shrine cities/libraries, universities,observatories in other commerce cities, courthouses in faraway cities). You could also say building priority rather than specialization.
- missionary spam (5 religions with shrines available in my game!)
- tech trade (or not, see second point)
- open borders with faraway civs+astronomy
- working those cottages
- razing useless enemy cities (IMHO) + pillaging those tiles
- pointy stick research = extortion

2) moving to the victory
We agreed to go for domination, so my goal was to:
- conquer our continent (GA are welcome for this! with one great artist in some well placed captured city, you can raze 1/2/3 cities around without worrying about the tiles)
- find a target on the other continent, which can provide the missing land % (weak is better, if land is large enough)
Though i missed the first point (nappy grew strong from his war with isabella), the second point must be clear : yu should not help the target with good trades!

 

[armstrong]

Just wanted to give a great congratulation to Armstrong on a well played round and siezing the strongest played round, its was close but Armstrong walks away with the glory, at least for this round! Well played

Wasn't voting open until midnight est on Sunday? I hadn't sent my vote yet (though I have enough notes I can do it at any time.) If it's close, since I can't vote for myself there's a good chance it could change swing the result.

I'll go PM Petrucci my votes right away. I'll also give everyone my thoughts on comparing the various games later this evening.

 

[armstrong]

1) economic recovery at this point is through :
- specialization of commerce cities (markets+banks+grocers in shrine cities/libraries, universities,observatories in other commerce cities, courthouses in faraway cities). You could also say building priority rather than specialization.
- missionary spam (5 religions with shrines available in my game!)
- tech trade (or not, see second point)
- open borders with faraway civs+astronomy
- working those cottages
- razing useless enemy cities (IMHO) + pillaging those tiles
- pointy stick research = extortion

I think I agree 100% with all of this except the razing cities part, but let me see I can clarify it a bit and add a few comments - please tell me if I misread you.

1. Missionaries will eventually reach a point where they're not worth building as opposed to wealth... it's a tricky calculation and not one I'd ever actually like to compute (as opposed to just play by ear.) Likewise, in many cities banks & markets can produce more gold per production than building a missionary, and after a point they become not worth building (as opposed to wealth) as well.

I think this is what you mean by "building priority."

2. I'm not sure what you mean by "pointy stick research" - normally I think of that as declaring war, taking some cities, and suing for peace and techs (hence the "research" ) I don't see that as being to useful since we want their land and don't want to stop for 10 turns. But I think you're talking more about "extortion" - making demands with Civs we're at peace with. I think that's a great idea. However, an important caveat is that it must be done carefully to avoid losing trade routes - some civs really hate this.

3. Speaking of trade routes, you only get 1 per foreign city. At some point, especially if you can't maintain open borders with all civs, it can be more efficient to run Mercantilism instead. Also, not running Mercantilism can greatly increase the research power of other civs - in some Space Races, I've seen situations where my civ's imports account for over 50% of the rest of the world's economy. In this case, however, we're not importing anything anyway since they don't have Astronomy to send product over the pondfloat.

2) moving to the victory
We agreed to go for domination, so my goal was to:
- conquer our continent (GA are welcome for this! with one great artist in some well placed captured city, you can raze 1/2/3 cities around without worrying about the tiles)
- find a target on the other continent, which can provide the missing land % (weak is better, if land is large enough)
Though i missed the first point (nappy grew strong from his war with isabella), the second point must be clear : yu should not help the target with good trades!

1. I generally don't raze many, if any, cities in dominations - at 100% gold, a size 4+ city with a courthouse and a market (or Caste System) can almost always pay for itself. The point about the GA is interesting, though - I've never really thought of using them for efficiency. I think in our case it would be more useful to use a GA to grab all that ice down south, and settle it as sparsely as possible. That's a case where cities definitely won't be able to pay for themselves for quite some time.

2. I agree with you about the techs. One thing looking at the trades is that it seems Mansa has completely outteched Saladin & JC. I'm not sure on that, but if so, they will have no tech to leverage to bring Mansa into a fight with us. That means we can trade away to our hearts content with him and not worrying about him joining a war against us. Another option is to switch to Free Religion or Christianity (once we capture a Christian city) and he should jump to "Pleased" - I'm pretty sure Mansa never declares on a civ he's pleased with, "[He] could never betray [his] close friends!"

One thing I'd like to add about domination: the culture slider, and Caste System / theatre-based artist specialists can expand borders very quickly. Even if you can only keep the culture slider at 20% because of the economy, it will still greatly speed up the rate cities get their second and third rings (along with hiring artists, too.)

Btw, I pm'd Petrucci my votes around noon EST on Saturday. Since I can't vote for myself, it might sway the votes. Of note is that I almost voted one of the Noble-Prince player's game as #1.

 

[Cam_H]

Of note is that I almost voted one of the Noble-Prince player's game as #1.

I also found a spot in the votes for one of the Noble-Prince players' games.

Remind me not to put Petrucci in charge of the voting again!

 

[armstrong]

I also found a spot in the votes for one of the Noble-Prince players' games.

I'm curious if we're thinking of the same one... This is one reason I think making the votes public after the decision could be a good idea. After taking votes for the last round, I was really curious as to why some folks voted the way they did. I think they're seeing things that I'm not, and I want to know what that is.

I had one question about your game Cam that I couldn't seem to find an answer to in the thread or the logs, but I might have missed it. Do you have Liberalism locked up, barring Mansa getting a GS? It seems you're one turn behind him, but I have no idea of your relative research rates.

I found uncertainty made it difficult to evaluate both your and cabert's games. Will you miss out on Lib and have your research delayed 17 turns? Will Napoleon strike cabert's highly promoted stack in Orleans before it has time to heal? In both cases, I guessed, "probably not," but the possibility of the worst case weighed more heavily in my mind than it probably should have.

 

[Cam_H]

I had one question about your game Cam that I couldn't seem to find an answer to in the thread or the logs, but I might have missed it. Do you have Liberalism locked up, barring Mansa getting a GS?

My understanding is 'yes'.

 

[pigswill]

I also voted a noble prince as #2. Armstrong seems to think the result could change but we don't want to wait too long to find out the result. Maybe if we don't hear from Petrucci in the next 12 hours we should carry on with Armstrong's game.
I agree with Amstrong that feedback on games is useful (see if anyone else spotted all my mistakes that I noticed and also find all the mistakes I made that I didn't notice); if there's a concern that voting could be affected then leave analysis until after election.

In terms of tech-trading. If we and MM have all the techs and we trade with MM as we go along then no AI has any techs to trade with MM. On the other hand MM could sell techs to AI. If we're maintaining tech parity with AI and have a production lead then we should still dominate so no straight forward answer to this.

In terms of shrine wealth it can be an idea to build monasteries in research city(ies); that way they could build missionaries while shrinegold city is building the money multipliers.

 

[cabert]

I found uncertainty made it difficult to evaluate both your and cabert's games. Will you miss out on Lib and have your research delayed 17 turns?

i'm afraid this is a strong possibility! that's why i didn't vote for cam, though i like his troops...

Will Napoleon strike cabert's highly promoted stack in Orleans before it has time to heal?

that's a sure thing! and they are badly wounded! The only way to stop it is to call for a cease fire, and if i remember well, nappy wouldn't talk to me

In both cases, I guessed, "probably not," but the possibility of the worst case weighed more heavily in my mind than it probably should have.

same questions for me, but different answer . For this reason, i evaluate my game as n°4. (and there is only one way to be sure, it's playing the game for a few turns!)

 

[cabert]

1. Missionaries will eventually reach a point where they're not worth building as opposed to wealth... it's a tricky calculation and not one I'd ever actually like to compute (as opposed to just play by ear.) Likewise, in many cities banks & markets can produce more gold per production than building a missionary, and after a point they become not worth building (as opposed to wealth) as well.I think this is what you mean by "building priority."

i don't calculate much, but can tell you missionaries have the good faculty to bring a new religion = 1 happiness from free religion into a given city that's quite important for our big cities before landing troops in foreign lands.

For me building priority is about building the wealth multipliers in shrine cities first thing, while building science multiplier first (or only) in other commerce cities : going for a bank while running 100% tech is only valuable in the shrine cities. And building missionaries can be done by those other commerce cities (you obviously need a monastery, which is a research modifier!).
Building gold is of no effect when you only have a few hammers...

2. I'm not sure what you mean by "pointy stick research" - normally I think of that as declaring war, taking some cities, and suing for peace and techs (hence the "research" ) I don't see that as being to useful since we want their land and don't want to stop for 10 turns. But I think you're talking more about "extortion" - making demands with Civs we're at peace with. I think that's a great idea. However, an important caveat is that it must be done carefully to avoid losing trade routes - some civs really hate this.

it's both!
- clavente had only a handful troops, so i had to sue for peace, to let reinforcements come in.
- nappy offered some tech for free, not only because we were friends...
After that, you can extort a bit of gold from those foreigners, but it works only once, in most cases...

3. Speaking of trade routes, you only get 1 per foreign city. At some point, especially if you can't maintain open borders with all civs, it can be more efficient to run Mercantilism instead. Also, not running Mercantilism can greatly increase the research power of other civs - in some Space Races, I've seen situations where my civ's imports account for over 50% of the rest of the world's economy. In this case, however, we're not importing anything anyway since they don't have Astronomy to send product over the pondfloat.

My rule of thumb is to keep open those trade routes as long as i'm <50% landmass.
Most cities will have domestic trade routes before that, but it's the biggest cities, with often the biggest modifiers (including academies, banks, ...) that will have those foreign trade routes. One more thing : those "enemy" cities benefitting from trade routes with our cities could benefit just the same from routes to nappy or isa (rest in peace), or even among themselves. It's not as if they needed you for this.

1. I generally don't raze many, if any, cities in dominations - at 100% gold, a size 4+ city with a courthouse and a market (or Caste System) can almost always pay for itself. The point about the GA is interesting, though - I've never really thought of using them for efficiency. I think in our case it would be more useful to use a GA to grab all that ice down south, and settle it as sparsely as possible. That's a case where cities definitely won't be able to pay for themselves for quite some time.

When running for domination, you don't have "time" (turns in fact) to build all it takes for a later city to pay for itself. It's only there to give you landmass%, which can be done faster with a GA in a somewhat central city than in 3 otherwise useless cities (tolede is useless in my opinion, for example). And we had a GA at the beginning of the round, as far as i can remember.

2. I agree with you about the techs. One thing looking at the trades is that it seems Mansa has completely outteched Saladin & JC. I'm not sure on that, but if so, they will have no tech to leverage to bring Mansa into a fight with us. That means we can trade away to our hearts content with him and not worrying about him joining a war against us. Another option is to switch to Free Religion or Christianity (once we capture a Christian city) and he should jump to "Pleased" - I'm pretty sure Mansa never declares on a civ he's pleased with, "[He] could never betray [his] close friends!"

you've very exactly described what i meant!
trading with mansa musa, isn't going to do us any harm and can speed us a big deal.
I did a very move by bribing the harmless JC against Mansa. Other than giving 4 techs to JC, it didn't do anything...
I'm glad i can go with another game, since i really messed up this round!

One thing I'd like to add about domination: the culture slider, and Caste System / theatre-based artist specialists can expand borders very quickly. Even if you can only keep the culture slider at 20% because of the economy, it will still greatly speed up the rate cities get their second and third rings (along with hiring artists, too.)

right. That's something i consider when i either hit the 50% landmass or start the wanabee final war. (more techs are not always necessary at this point, and trade routes benefit others more than you).

Btw, I pm'd Petrucci my votes around noon EST on Saturday. Since I can't vote for myself, it might sway the votes. Of note is that I almost voted one of the Noble-Prince player's game as #1.

dare i ask which game?