PCSG2: Lalibela's Eleven Churches

[vranasm]

looks good cam

I see army south is led by Guderian... well Manstein would be better next time ;-). Luckilly you didn't sent Paulus.

we are making progress which is great. from power it seems that Cyrus is broken and basically what will follow is mop-up.
I think lymond probably will have enough force to finish the Cyrus war.

Then I would start on hatty with saladin finish the job.

btw what people think about the MM cultural pressure there will be in the east? will we battle it with our culture or we will apply some army pressure?

 

[Norvin_Green]

Let's kill them all! Just kidding. If we are going culture and plan on using the slider my hunch is that will take care of Mansa's borders for us. On the other hand, according to Cam_H, he is Toku's personality which will surely mean a DOW at some point.

 

[Cam_H]

Well, as I understand it, Mansa is either Roosevelt or Tokugawa in disguise. He's been reluctant to trade or open borders, and sided with Hatshepsut and Cyrus in the early game indicating that he's on the warmonger end of the peaceweight scale.

I'm guessing (no certainty mind you!) that Cyrus is Alexander, Hatshepsut is Boudica (but she's about to get Constitution so a flip to Representation as her favourite civic could disprove that), and Shaka is possibly Mansa. Mehmed and Saladin - I'm not sure other than they're more peaceful than warmonger.

I've tweaked my #400 post, and will do a more thorough report soonish. Sorry for dragging this turnset out, my real life timing is bad at the moment.

 

[lymond]

Plans become a great deal harder to write up at this point, so I will likely summarize.

First a couple of thoughts:

As to Basra, I'm almost tempted to abandon it. Either we fortify it better or on the next revolt it will flip, but it really is a crap city. In hindsight I might have razed it, although it at least abates cultural pressure on the horse city until it can gather up enough culture to stabilize.

So to the war, Cyrus is offering us 500+ gold and Gordium for peace. OR do we want to vassal him. This is mighty tempting actually. Gordium is not a half bad city/location to stabilize the eastern front. The gold is nice to upgrade some of these Drill4 Oromos. But best of all, we can piggy-back on this imminent Hatty/Mehmed war to take down her Hattiness. That's really a very good opportunity. Of course, I need to keep an eye on her big stack in case she decides to head east with it.

What's up with EPs? I'm confused.

As for builds, with the exception of Wall immediately in Lali - there's several insta hammers to be had for WS there so it should come quick - and the cathedral in Aksum, I think the rest needs to focus on the war. (aside - I guess we want cathedrals in Lali and Addis as well). Don't like slow building IW, will look to get it up faster.

Gordium - Switch workers to windmills asap. I prioritize food here which will make the city overall more productive quicker. I'll put a turn into Levee, but return to units and let passive OF finish Levee.

Are we saving forests in Aksum or should we go ahead and finish improving the city?

I think we need more workers.

So the question is whether to make peace with Cyrus or press on? How far do we press on? Persopolis?

We might actually be able to muster some forces in the West to send a army her way if she attacks Mehmed. I might wait a few turns until her main stack is well into Ottoland before declaring. If Mehmed requests assistance I would agree though, but only if I felt we had sufficient forces to attack/defend.

I will try to manipulate things to get AL earlier than presently indicated. Question is what do we tech next. Medicine?

 

[Cam_H]

Basra ... well you can gift it and then raze it ten turns later.

Cyrus ... whipe, or wipe, or wype ... whatever ... kill! Kill! AND KILL! ... but I'm a lover not a fighter.

Really ... our objective now is to get 33 cities of our own. Not to agree to capitulation agreements with prospective vassals that 'smell like something you accidentally stepped in' as is the case with our Buddhist here.

As for Espionage Points (well EPs ... you use so many abbreviations I get confused) ... TGL for instance ... I was sick and tired of fighting an enemy that I had no idea what his relative was, so I rearranged so at least we had passive reads on all of our rivals. Crazy, no????

Knock yourself out with getting a quicker build on Ironworks.

My vote goes to killing Cyrus completely. Dead ... Dead ... DEAD!

I'd tech' Assembly Line, and then it's hard to avoid our targeted Corporations. As before, Qohaito hopefully will pop a Great Engineer sooner rather than later.

 

[vranasm]

kill cyrus...take whole his land. he still has some good cities in the east.

 

[nocho]

If you watch our backs in the west I'm also fine with killing off Cyrus. Without seeing the save I don't know about his border cities and cultural pressure from Mansa when we get them, but if those cities are not entirely awesome you might as well raze them.

... but I'm a lover not a fighter.

Are your moves as slick as the King of Pop's as well?

 

[lymond]

Consider Cyrus a dead man then. I won't even give him and his family the benefit of a decent burial. In fact, consider his family dead too. And his dog...

Actually, I hope I get get most of Persia in 15 turns. It's slow going the non-mounted way, but effective.

Notre Dame will be nice to have.

There are some good tech trades to be had, but do we bother. Seems like anyone we trade with will piss off someone else.

I guess I'll queue up Medicine next since we know we can get it. What are the corps again we want? Sushi, Mining, and Jewelers?

Oh man, I hear you about abbreviations and acronyms. I get nuts sometimes about it when folks use more obscure ones without first spelling it out in the beginning. However, I take it for granted using them when playing with experienced players. I definitely try not to do that if helping out newer players or really I will spell it out by saying Espionage Points (EPs) and then use EPs. Helps get the newbs acclimated to Civspeak (heck that's Orwellian sounding right there)

I will play shortly in the next few hours unless there is extreme opposition from the group or general dissension or animal lovers that don't want me executing any Persian pets.

 

[Cam_H]

Notre Dame, The Hanging Gardens, and The Mahabodhi would make fine additions to our empire.

The Corporations to be founded in Lalibela:

• Sid's Sushi (Great Merchant - got it)
• Creative Constructions (Great Engineer - Qohaito post-Ironworks to run Engineers)
• Civilized Jewelers (Great Artist - easy under Caste + Golden Age, or otherwise Aksum?)
• Aluminum Co (Great Scientist - got it)

Culture Victory

One aspect I've ignored for simplicity so far is the cultural output of corporations. Sushi, Creative constructions and Civ Jewelers all give huge amounts of culture if supplied with a reasonable number of the appropriate resources, and may all be founded in the same city as long as you don't have Mining Inc. If you're going for a cultural victory, the combination of Sushi, Creative Constructions, Civ Jewelers and Aluminum Inc in your 3 culture cities is well worth considering. While Aluminum Co. does not generate culture directly, it converts coal to aluminum, and this extra aluminum can be converted to culture and production by Creative Constructions if you have both branches in the same city. It's true that some of these corporations appear a little late for a planned culture victory, but at the very least Sushi for direct culture, and extra artists will help. The four corporations may also allow you to snatch a culture victory you weren't planning on if your other plans go wrong. Other advantages of the four instead of the Sushi/Mining Inc pair are that you have more corporations for foreign spread, and in turn they have fewer to spam to you. However will cost you 4 great people instead of 2, and will arrive later than Mining Inc.

To me; Lalibela, Aksum, and Addis Ababa look like the contenders, with Addis Ababa to get The Hermitage. While the bulk of our haul is to come from these Corporations, I think that we still need to work on 'traditional' approaches too - e.g. Hindu Mandirs, Taoist Pagodas, Broadway, Hollywood, Rock n Roll, etc.

[Edit]

Found the Article that I was looking for; The Fantastic Four: Corporate Culture Powerhouse by OTAKUjbski.

[/Edit]

 

[Norvin_Green]

Please let the pets go free. They didn't do anything wrong.

Good luck crushing the Persians lymond.

 

[vranasm]

I would start spreading sushi after medicine.
I don't know which techs we need for the rest lol ;-) I will have to look in my TS after lymond

we should talk after lymonds TS if I will start war with hatty

lymond i think you will kill cyrus in 10t ;-)

 

[lymond]

Quickie turnset report as I get to haul for a bit.

Land formerly known as the Eastern Republic of Persian Cat Lovers:

Spoiler :

War went quite well with very few losses except a cannon or two. I just kept the troops moving without healing - no need to really with all this drill. However, it's still a slow slog across the without 2 move units. Having the two stacks converge from north and south helped speed things along.

GE from Addis....yeah!!!

Few more notes:

Hatty made this demand on the second turn or so - of course, I declined it:

Spoiler :

Next turn I made this trade with her for a lot of gold - Lib was about gone now anyway:

Spoiler :

Other than the Hatty demand, there was little interaction with the AIs other than adjusting some resource trades for more gold. Shaka finally got a little gpt for a resource trade.

As I continue my push into Persia, Hatty remained in WHEOOHRN for the entire set but went out of that mode on the very last turn for some reason. After a few turns we lost visibility on her west city with the huge stack. I kept on eye on here borders and never saw the huge stack come East. She went into FR and our relations have improved slightly.

Wall Street is going slow. I started building Factories and then Coal Plants (until I realized we don't have coal ) It may be a good idea to get up some Plants though since we should have coal soon and it will kick in afterwards.

Had a city in the south pumping mishes so most of our captured cities have Christianity now. Cyrus had no spread of our religion previously. Many of these cities have temples now as well.

I started some of our large forces in the East on a trek back west to set up for Hatty. I was able to get a few maces to CRIII and I think we should upgrade these first as well as are more experienced units for the fight with Hatty. There are a lot of units already stationed in the Western cities.

I did not abuse the draft a lot. Mainly from the Globe city and really I don't think we need the draft anymore at this point. We have a ton of units - plenty to take on Hatty. We need one more GP for a golden age taking into account that the GE, GM and GS are saved for Corps. I guess the next switch should include Free Speech since we are going culture. We could use Caste as well, but I don't think we will ever need Emancipation.

Oops...sorry about the save

Headed to Comb so we can get Railroads for troop movement on the way to Creative Constructions. And if it don't beat all....wE hAvE nO COAL!!!!

Coal is just across the borders of Mansa and Hatty, who are cowering in fear over our immense army.

will update this later

 

[Cam_H]

Great work! Looking forward to the update!

 

[vranasm]

from the SS it looks good no save no fun...

Have a question for my TS.

What if we instead of attacking Hatty kill off Mansa? It will bring us 7 more cities up to 38 and from that point we can just lead defensive warfare, actually I would severely limit our military production.

General thoughts for my TS.

1) spread religion
2) work on corp techs (or railroad?)
3) build (whip?) factories around
4) our 3 legendary if they don't have, should get stele if it's still available

...
5) war against MM?

 

[lymond]

If we are going to get a great artist, we need to run caste soon. We want another GP for a golden age as well. Question is if we want Free Speech now. We are not heavily cottaged. We could go Bureau now for a while, and switch to the final civics in the next golden age.

Rep>Bureau>Caste>Free Market>OR or Theo with a temp switch to Pac in a Golden Age for more great artists.

 

[vranasm]

i got the save.

Before playing and making 'serious' PPP, which probably will not difer much from this thoughts due to the size of empire, I would like to hear input from team

1. Next war target? Should I war in TS?
army seems to be heading west, but I think adding MM to our empire could be probably better (except if we want to get really big with 50+cities) and then switch to defensive warfare

2.in terms of city builds
I would switch to infrastracture focus, where I would try to build granaries, theathers, christian buildings, forges, factories, coal plants, grocers, (banks?) in cca this order of priority

3. corps
From what I see we will have Creative Constructions in 3T, should i build the corp in lalibela? and activelly spread it around?

4. techs
I would after combustion start on SM->Bio->medicine for sushi.

5. civics
we have 26 towns already, 17 villages and some hamlets. I could switch into FS+OR for 2T of anarchy.
Looks like valuable switch

6.whips
I could see me doing a lot of whips in Persia cities. maybe speed up some buildings in our cities?

7. workers
significant part of workerforce should connect west and east with railroad.
I am thinking about building some more workers in cities which finish builds next turn.

8. tech trades
I don't see me doing any

well if i didn't talk about something please correct me and please put your input on the matter

 

[Cam_H]

1. Next war target? Should I war in TS?

I think that you've made a good suggestion here. Mansa still has Medieval units and has a number of resources that it'd be nice to get our hands on. We are terribly out of position, and it will currently take seven turns for our western stack to make its way over to an invasion-ready position. As noted before, we have a lot of high quality attack troops acting as city garrisons, and we should work on freeing these guys up.

With that said - would 'roughly' 20 of our Rifles and Cannons be sufficient to take Mali without the need of the Debre Berhan stack? My guess is 'yes'. Lymond might have a better feel on this, having just managed the Persian invasion.

Thebes would make a nice 'scalp', but I can live without taking on Hatshepsut-Saladin.

So, I think that it's your call if you need the Debre Berhan stack or not, but I'm supportive of your proposal to take on Mali.

Of course, we don't need to war any more, and can found two cities within our own empire, but I think killing off Mansa would give us more Corporation resources at relatively little risk.

2.in terms of city builds

Aksum, Lalibela, and Addis Ababa should be 'special cases' on the understanding that these will be our Legendary cities. Obviously Wall Street and initial Corporate Executives to come out of Lalibela, but I'd be pretty single minded on getting out cultural buildings in these three - especially; Stupas, Cathedrals, Mandirs, and Pagodas wherever possible.

We need a Taoist Monastery in Gordium and/or Darish Kabir before we obsolete Monasteries, otherwise Taoism will be lost to us as a fourth religion unless we live in Organised Religion (which is possibly our best move anyway). We have more than nine cities with Hinduism and Buddhism, so there's no real need to build Hindu or Buddhist Missionaries for the purposes of getting the three Stupas and Mandirs up, but we do need Buddhism spread to Lalibela, and Hinduism into Addis Ababa.

Otherwise, it's pretty much your call on other buildings. Courthouses aren't present in Bactra and Persepolis, but otherwise this major concern is covered. Christian Temple builds is the other, although there's no great urgency for these particularly, as we're still a long way from finishing the game - albeit these are pretty handy buildings anyway.

3. corps

'Yes' - start with spreading to Aksum and Addis Ababa. Then probably Qohaito and Gondar given their high productivity and therefore speed at pumping out Corporate Exec's.

4. techs

I'm happy to support your pathway.

5. civics

While we can draft Infantry, I would just leverage this rare 'window of opportunity' to do so for a handful of turns still. Personally I'd go into the Caste System too, but that might be one to hang on to for a Golden Age (to pop out that Civilized Jewelers Great Artist): Aksum's got quite a few passive points with a big lean toward Great Artist, so it could possibly come from there, with the Globe Theatre Hawulti can run five Artists, so that could be an option for this baby- farm, if not 'old faithful' Addis Ababa. I'm not sure if we'd be looking to seek out Great Artists for culture bombs or not.

6.whips

I can see you doing a lot of whips too!

As per above, I'd think about the Caste System, but I'm mindful of your penchant for Slavery.

7. workers

Railroads would be good - hopefully we'll pop some Oil seeing that we 'lucked out' with Coal. I guess it depends what happens with Mali's Coal deposits.

8. tech trades

You're welcome to trade Rifling for Scientific Method and Astronomy with Mehmed and Shaka if you want to as far as I'm concerned.

I hope this isn't all too contradictory with the rest of the roster!

 

[vranasm]

well I don't want to speed up our "friends" with rifling and I wanted to avoid Astronomy for long time, since it obsoletes Stonehenge and I am not sure if it does mean we will lose Steles (+25% culture!) in our legendary cities.

If I am off with this assession I can see us getting Astro, but I think in this map it has low value.

On all other points we seem to agree with self, which is good. The only thing unclear is the Civic switch, where if i would have to switch to caste with FS+OR it would be 3T which is a lot. (even those 2t are a lot btw).
In theory we could stay in Nat, but switch to OR is 2T anyway and i think this really is good time for switch since empire switches to infrabuilding.

Looking at the power graph I hope we could make Mali ours without reinforcements from west...but Lymond's input on this matter would be best since he finished the war.

 

[vranasm]

btw when I checked the military situation.
Hatty has cuirassiers and our northern cities guard only OW's.
So either I would hold some financial reserve for upgrades or we really should replace quantity with quality.

Didn't check financial advisor, but we could maybe reduce some military maintenance with deleting some really obsolete troops (axes spears) in west.

 

[lymond]

Our NW cities have a good bit of Rifles in them as well as Cannons and some Infrantry, but...yeah...we need some upgrade gold BIG time.

Corps definitely go in Lali. Lali can auto queue Execs and then I like to build 1 in each city that just received the corp, if it has reasonable production. Sort of a chain effect. However, since Lali needs to focus on Culture builds, we might want to put another non-L city on auto-queuing Execs...maybe Maoi city when IW completes.

I forget at the moment what deals we have out there, but we might try trading for SM at least so we can get BIO going faster. I'm fine trading Rifling to Mehmed and possible Shaka - unless he is friendly with Mansa.

I think we can get out of Nat soon. Maybe a few more drafts in Globe city and a scattered few. We have a ton of units now and besides upgrading Rifles/OWs, I would only build cannons for militarya and maybe a couple of Calvary for supports.

In fact, we probably can set some cities to wealth building. A lot of the new conquered cities have a lot of good infra and I whipped in whatever was missing - grans,theatres, temples.

Just do a sweep through the cities first turn. Building wealth in some or queuing up builds will save some of the tedious micro at this point.

I think we are primed to take on Hatty and might miss our opportunity to take her with ease. Mansa is pretty weak. But if the team wants Mansa so be it.