Passing the Torch

[Rex Tyrannus]

yea sorry i thought it was a world wonder so that is why i rushed it sorry sbout that!

Not to worry. That's why we're here. In general, etiquette dictates that one player in a succession game (SG) shouldn't make major decisions without consulting with the team. In practice, though, we all have a different definition of which decisions are major. I've seen some people not care when a player declares war and I've seen others yell about putting a cottage down on a flood plain. For me, the things that need to be discussed are:

• War declaration
• Peace settlements (ending a war)
• Great person usage
• Overall strategy (One person going for domination while the others want cultural sort of stinks)
• Diplomatic strategy (which civs to be nice to, which to burn)
• Civics changes
• Religion changes

There are others that are on the fringe:

• City placement
• Keeping or razing a captured city
• tech trades
• Wonder builds
• Vetoing someone's build or research
• Research path

The fringe elements should be discussed, but most wont argue if you can justify a decision after the fact.

I'll let others point out when to violate etiquette.


On another note, I played last night but won't have a report up until after standard issue bedtime.

 

[Arathorn]

I tend to agree with some of your list, Rex, and disagree with other points. But I'm quite a bit more flexible in my own actions and my expectations this game. It's a learning experience, after all.

War declarations, peace, and diplo considerations are a big deal, I agree. Winning condition is, too, and we've not even come to consensus on that! One of the reasons I went with Judaism is that there seemed to be interest in killing Saladin before MM, even though I'd've done it in the other order if I were playing solo.

Sometimes SGs are better than the sum of their parts and sometimes they're worse. But they can all be fun! I prefer communication to no communication. The "why"s of builds and recommendations is important, if only because writing why requires first thinking about why, and that's something I want to encourage in the next generation!

Arathorn

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

I've decided to write a more traditional report today, letting people know all of my builds, micromanagement, etc.



(Inherited) Turn 160 - 1000 CE

My first action was to take a look inside our cities, take notice of our builds, see what needs we're missing, etc.


First thing I notice is the forge in Bactrian.

A forge increases hammer output by 25%. 3 hammers times .25 won't even round up to one. Bit early for a forge. However, we've got 44 hammers already invested--and we will need a forge here in about 50 turns--so I whipped it to completion and sent a bunch of workers over.

Next city. Chicago is stagnant at size two.

Now, I like the monestary it's building, but I stopped working the hammer-only tile in favor of a little food. It moved the monestary back a couple of turns, but we can work the big hammer tile after it grows and still get some needed commerce too.

After the city changes, I look at the tech screen.

This surprised me. I hadn't realized that Sally was so backward. This now changes my impression of who to attack first. The only reason I didn't want to delay Sally's death was becasue of those stupid camel archers. Now I'm certain we can either kill him long before then or, if not, kill them with grenadiers and riflemen.




Turn 161 - 1010 CE

Bactrian finishes its whipped forge and I start a worker.

The Kashi Vishwanath is been built in a far away land (BIAFAL)





Turn 162 - 1020 CE

We're building Chichen Itza (Chicken Itch) in Boston. Which I decided to whip for five population.

This is a wonder I only build if I anticipate a lot of defending, which I don't here. Still, I whipped it anyway because I really wanted to get Boston building other things. It's one of our few good hammer cities and we need more workers right now.




Turn 163 - 1030

Chicken Itch comes in as expected

(sorry, missed the screenshot)

And Boston starts on a worker with overflow hammers helping a lot.

Atlanta finishes a ...something... and I start on a Jewish Monestary. Atlanta needs culture in a bad way.

Feudalism is due in five and were researching 58 beakers per turn with 7 gold per turn surpluss.

On this same turn, our spies finish scouting Sally's territory and learn he has no metal.

Well, none in his borders, yet. I planted a spy on that iron. If it ever gets hooked up, we'll know about it (and can pilliage as needed).




Turn 164 - 1040

Bactrian finishes a worker and starts on a Jewish Missionary.

Our spawnbusters alert us to what is likely a whole in our spawnbusting theory.

Not a bad city concidering there's no usable land. I left it alone. We can take it any time we want, though I think we should keep it. Let's let it grow for a bit so we'll at least have the choice.





Turn 165 1050

Washington finishes a settler and builds a Jewish Monastery

Boston: worker -> Jewish Missionary

I'm noticing taht many of our cities are unhealthy.



Turn 166 1060

Boston: Jewish missionary -> courthouse




Turn 167 1070

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, our empire sleeps tonight.




Turn 168 1080

Feudalism comes in

and I chose construction next. It's due in five and we're up to 73 beakers per turn. Still at 20% science. +8GPT. This is due somewhat to me hiring more scientists in our large cities.

Washington: Jewish Monastery -> Market. Market gives a 25% boost to commerce. Washington is giving us 22.4 commerce per turn, so an extra four GPT will be nice.

Taoism is founded in a distant land (FIADL)

Washington's settler and an Axe get together and found Seattle.

I start Seattle on a granary. (There's no I in granary? Why not?)

Missionary spreads Judaism in Philly





Turn 169 1090

Bactrain: Jewish Missionary -> ...?

Saladin adopts Hereditary Rule




Turn 170 - 1100 CE

There are five million of us these days.

Missionary spreads Judaism in Seattle

I realize that we A) have silk, B) have the plantation tech (Monarchy?), and C) have an active trade with Mansa for silk. So I cancelled the trade.

The silk won't actually be online for two turns, but I wanted to make sure this got cancelled.




* * *


north

south

demographics

 

[Whosit]

Our spawnbusters alert us to what is likely a whole in our spawnbusting theory.

Not a bad city concidering there's no usable land. I left it alone. We can take it any time we want, though I think we should keep it. Let's let it grow for a bit so we'll at least have the choice.

Not quite right. You may not recall, but Barbarian Cities can appear in fogged areas, just not stray units. The only thing that would make that city better, considering the terrain, would be if it was next to the river. Or, rather, if the river was next to it. But having the second fish is more important. Might let it grow to size 2?

I think you gave a good example of a nice, thorough report. A shame that Bactrian is hogging the river from Seattle (I like settling next to rivers, if you didn't know ). Oh, and I've meant to say, it would be nice if a New Kansas City appeared. A shame whatever happened to the original. It's like Roanoke.

Anyway, glad to see a nice infrastructure set. Gotta love the infrastructure. (To the kids: Markets and Courthouses and things like that may seem boring, but those are the buildings that let you afford big armies later. )

 

[Rowain deWolf]

@Bactrian: the forges +25% will add to the Org Rel benefit so after the forge the city will make +1 hammer on buildings. You can also change the worked tiles from the grassland-river to the copper tile to get immediatly benefit (the governor might have done this for the workerbuild anyway)

@Khoisan Thats a nice city 2 fishys which will allow you to work all 5 (to be) mined hills + silver. Alas it seems that only Submarines will be able to move out from that city. Wonder what that means for traderoutes.

 

[arkenstone]

there are still 2 peasky archers there in that barb city i would say lets keep that city down to 1 archer and have the swanburst horsearcher go and keep that barb city down to small power. so then we can do a lot of things with it the more expireience for are horsearcher the better the more we attack it the better it is and expireience is great to have so yay! about that subs once we learn them will be a huge advantage so if we keep it it will probably be a nice city and will be able to do a lot of things with it like rowin dewolf said it may give us a lot of power wich is a very good thing so if anything pops uo with anyone that it will be useful if we keep posting we can be a very good team! by that i mean that we should send the horsearcher and keep the city down to only 1 archer so we will have a easy take for it. and the more posts the better

 

[Whosit]

That's actually not a bad idea to pick off the extra archers; just be careful that you do not lose your attacking soldier. A Swordsman would actually be a better unit for the job than the Axeman, since the Swordsman is stronger (6 vs 5) and gets a bonus when attacking cities.

Remember to let the city grow to size 2, or it will be automatically destroyed.

With both Fish netted and with a Lighthouse, the city will have a +10 food surplus. As Rowain deWolf said, that's enough to work all of the hills (5), which brings in . . . ice hill mines are only worth 2 hammers, right? Or is that 3? Well, it brings in a few hammers. Definitely want to work the Silver.
On the other hand, you can work the Fish, plus some coastal tiles for more money, the Silver, and then hire a lot of specialists (4). So it's actually an OK town if you use it right.

 

[Rowain deWolf]

With both Fish netted and with a Lighthouse, the city will have a +10 food surplus. As Rowain deWolf said, that's enough to work all of the hills (5), which brings in . . . ice hill mines are only worth 2 hammers, right? Or is that 3? Well, it brings in a few hammers. Definitely want to work the Silver.
On the other hand, you can work the Fish, plus some coastal tiles for more money, the Silver, and then hire a lot of specialists (4). So it's actually an OK town if you use it right.

Icemine gives 3 hammers (4 with rails). And yes build/whip the basic buildings and then decide if you need specialists or produce some Units or whatever you need

 

[Arathorn]

The other reason for the forge is that all whipped hammers also get the +25% bonus. Bactrian may well be whipping its infrastructure (courthouse, potentially library/market) for some time. Those bonus hammers add up very quickly. The forge will more than pay for itself very soon, I am certain. If we chop any forests into a city, too, the forge gives its bonus. It allows us to hire an engineer, too, if we need/want. And his hammers would get the bonus, too. It's a very valuable building.

Khoisan is a nice-looking city. I will be happy to take it, once it's grown a bit. We're in no hurry. We really should do a dot-map, but I'm gonna be gone pretty much all day. I'll try to throw one together in my turn, after justinious has played.

Arathorn

 

[arkenstone]

well so we can build longbowman the way i defend cities is put 1 of each unit that is presant and i never lose a city (just some advice) i never use mounted units do defend though (war elephants are an exeption). about barbs can they build work boats? if they can then lets wait until they build work boats there sound good? anyway lets just improve an take up all the sea land and wok are way in so if they get to galleons before we have all this land taken up we can at least make sure that no gets accross the front line and we will have a nice big civ.? sound fun thought so! then we can go sico-crazy about killing people! if we run into correction when we run into memed II we will be ready for war and we will wipe him until he his dead i mean lets just get him off the planet sound good to you guys?

 

[Whosit]

well so we can build longbowman the way i defend cities is put 1 of each unit that is presant and i never lose a city (just some advice) i never use mounted units do defend though (war elephants are an exeption). about barbs can they build work boats? if they can then lets wait until they build work boats there sound good? anyway lets just improve an take up all the sea land and wok are way in so if they get to galleons before we have all this land taken up we can at least make sure that no gets accross the front line and we will have a nice big civ.? sound fun thought so! then we can go sico-crazy about killing people! if we run into correction when we run into memed II we will be ready for war and we will wipe him until he his dead i mean lets just get him off the planet sound good to you guys?

Longbowmen are indeed strong defenders for their age. However, keep in mind that this game is a bit more difficult than what you have played before (if I recall correctly). Using a mix of defender types is a very good idea! But just one of each type may not be enough on tougher games. You should also consider which cities need to be defended. Washington, for example, is far away from the enemy, so it can probably get by with just a single defender (or more if the Barbarians are on the prowl. )

The cities closer to your enemies should have several defenders. Think about which cities are most vulnerable to attack, and that will help you decide how you need to deploy your units. Just remember to build buildings in addition to units.

Barbarian cities can indeed build buildings and units, but they take a very long time to do so, and they probably will just build units if your troops are nearby, so you are better off capturing the city and building the Work Boats yourself.

 

[justinious]

Well, at the beginning I had a demand.

Us: convert to buhdi.
Sally: going mwahahahahaha
He must be loco.That is what he does at midnight!!!!!!!!!!!!
On to other business, we got metal.

And Mr.Greatdudewhowillgetusagoldenagelaterinmyturns!

And c.s.

With !

mm gets ww and gd!

dink-dink.

we won.
?????

our emp.

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

Great report and great turns. One thing I'd like to point out is that we're now able to run our science slider up to 50% sustainably. Infrastructure.

Anyhow, I took my best attempt at a dotmap. I am notoriously bad at these, though.

White are all of our current cities. Yellow is a garbage city. I don't think it can feed enough population to work both the deer and the iron. Still, I put it in so someone (I'm thinking whosit) can say, "move yellow dot X tiles in Y direction."


Roster:

Rex
Justinious >> Just played
Arathorn >> Up now
Arkenstone

 

[Whosit]

Move yellow dot 1 tile(s) in NW direction.

It gives up the Iron, but like you said, no real hope of working it anyway, and you already have Iron. In exchange, you use 3 nice grassland tiles that would otherwise go to waste.

Orange is by far the best spot in that butt-end of the continent.

Green has a lot of overlap, but it's probably the best place to place it.

Honestly, yellow is the only one that I would move. Not because the rest are great lol, but because there's really no better place to put most of them.

For those of you watching at home, take a look at the northern cities, which Rex has thoughtfully highlighted: There are a lot of gaps in city placements. In some cases, this is OK, especially down south where there are a lot of junk tiles like desert and ice. In other places, pretty decent tiles get wasted, like grasslands, and even a flood plain on the east coast. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but the reason it's a good idea to make a "dot map" like this early is you can see how everything fits together.

Ideally, there are no wasted spaces, so all of your cities will fit together like a jigsaw puzzle (kids still play with those, right?).

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

(kids still play with those, right?).

yeah. I think there's an app for that.

 

[Verarde]

Looks like Mansa Musa either rushed the Shwedagon Paya, or built it soon after.

No, GS can't rush. Can they?

Also, you guys have a nice-sized empire compared to Mansa. And Sal.

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

Yes, I believe Mansa rushed the Shwedagon Paya. It was a Great Engineer he spawned just prior. Works for me. He can burn his engineers on useless wonders all he wants. It just means we'll have to take him out before his culture does any more damage in our north.

Some notes:

1. Mansa may be wonder crazy, but he's also built a boatload of knights. He loves us, so I don't expect an attack (so long as we're Jewish). Still, those knights can do a lot of damage to our stacks. Let's make sure to put some pikemen in our stacks to avoid the collateral damage to our siege machinery.
   
2. Our line across the north is filled in solid blue. Good job. Justinious' last pic really shows how much we've throttled our in-continent (incontinent?) rivals. Looking at our south, we really needed it, too.
   
3. I put a sign up on an ice tile in our SW corner to build a fort. We can do the same in the SE with two forts. This will give us a canal that will allow boats from one side to travel around to the other. This will be good for the fishing boat that is stranded on the east coast with nothing to do.
   
4. Watch out. While Justinious was playing, I saw a barb galley in that southern strip of locked in water, but I saw it after the city had already spent a couple of turns on a work boat. We might want to rush a trireme before the work boat sinks.

 

[ruff_hi]

• I put a sign up on an ice tile in our SW corner to build a fort. We can do the same in the SE with two forts. This will give us a canal that will allow boats from one side to travel around to the other. This will be good for the fishing boat that is stranded on the east coast with nothing to do.

Nice idea ... but ... you can only build forts on land that is within your cultural control. That might take a while for those tiles in question.

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

Everything there is to know about forts in BtS!

This article is intended as a reference for anything concerning forts...

...Forts can only be built in your territory and in neutral (ie. outside all borders) territory - never in foreign territory...

...Forts can be used as canals. Any fort in your culture boders, or city, which touches a water tile (inland lake or coast) can have naval units pass through it. Forts in neutral territory can not be used as canals.

Okay, so I can build the fort, just not use it as a canal. Bummer.

 

[Arathorn]

I want to have some directional talks before I play my turns. As I see it, we have a fairly significant number of options at this point, in terms of strategy.

1. War with Saladin. Use the maces and trebuchets we can build now to get a large army. Sign Open borders with Mansa Musa to go north to Saladin's land and capture nearly all his cities. If we go this route, I'll probably focus on military builds on my turn, so we'll be ready for war before TOO long.

Pros: We don't like Saladin and have a tech advantage we can use to crush him.
Cons: With Open Borders, Mansa may well steal a lot of the south. Once we beat Saladin, we'd be on both sides of Mansa and very intermingled. Ugly borders leads to great difficulties if we ever get to war.

2. War with Mansa Musa. Build maces, trebs, and pikes, planning to backstab our Jewish ally and take his pretty good lands. Grow our empire to the north (better lands than the south) with the sword.

Pros: Mansa is a tech fiend, so eliminating him will stop the possibility of that particular AI getting a big tech lead and running away with the game. Taking his cities would eliminate the cultural push on our borders to the north. Mansa's land is pretty nice, so it would be good.
Cons: Saladin might join and fighting 1-on-2 is rarely fun. Mansa has tech parity (at least) and would be a difficult foe. Mansa has been nice to us and we have no real need to attack him anytime soon. If we wait, we can probably take him out more easily with more advanced units a bit later, when we tremendously outproduce him.

3. Settle the south. Build settlers, workers, defenders, missionaries, and the like. Work on a dotmap (great start, Rex, but I think we can do better on the east coast and probably squeeze another city or two into the core area) and use our recovered economy to gain land peacefully.

Pros: Don't need to fight a war. Takes advantage of our blocking strategy to build up for an even stronger future. With Great Lighthouse and Colossus, coastal cities pay for themselves very rapidly. The land in the south is reasonable and we can develop it fairly quickly with sufficient workers.
Cons: Lets our opponents go free for longer. We don't get already-developed lands and grown cities.

Of course, we can also combine some of these plans, but that's more complicated and only sometimes worth it. Focusing in one direction usually works best.

There are, of course, other plans that might well be successful. Build up our existing cities and ignore the south. Try to find other continents very quickly for trading and friendship purposes. I'm sure there are others. But the above three would be the ones I would most consider.

Simple votes aren't too helpful. I want to hear "why" each team member wants each plan, with an eye for not only the immediate future but how the rest of the game will play out.

With strategic discussions in place, I think I'll wait until midweek to play and arkenstone can play next weekend.

Arathorn