PH15-not. Birds of a Feather.

[nocho]

Nice build up set, especially:

Built and whipped unis and theatres to start on some national wonders

I was wondering about that when I looked at the last save, so good that you took that decision. Also the prospect of mass-drafting those faggy artists fills me with joy!

Moi is up I think so got it for the weekend.

Don't know if it's time yet to attack, I may just do some more build up. Not having seen the save yet, I don't know what the exact tech picture is. Head for rifles next after milsci? After that we can start beelining mass media...

 

[pigswill]

Bismark is powering ahead on research: he can research AL which means he's got steam-power, constitution, banking, economics and corporation already. He researched steel in about three rounds.

Time to declare on Pacal is now. He hasn't been rebuilding. Once we start razing cities his power will tumble very quickly (and Bod will no doubt fill the vacuum). Half a dozen cannon and lots of maces is plenty enough. We get milsci in 3 turns if we want to upgrade CR3 maces to grens.

 

[nocho]

Good news from the war front, Pacal is no more. From the diplo front however, not all news is that bright and shiny.

T231
As per pigswill's suggestion, we declare again on Pacal.

Wang comes with a proposal. Well, why not maybe it improves relations.


T232
Mehmed wants us to adopt Vassalage. Sigh. I just declared so don't want anarchy now. And since bureaucracy gives us diplo plus with Qin really like to stay in bureau. Grumbling I decline, so we suffer -1 penalty.

WW kicked in immediately so take a happiness resource from Qin.


T233
Mil Sci is in. Decide to go for banking. It's just two turns and only Biz will trade it, but for too high a price.

The AP vote comes up and we vote for Pacal, as only option. Our relation with him shoots up from -17 to -15.

To bolster this, we immediately raze the bloody AP.


T234
Pacal is pope again. Hmm. Without his vatican, that is.

Hamburg, a size 18 city, is captured by Boudica.

T235
Banking is in, go for Replaceable Parts. That's a known tech, but all other techs we can research are known too by Biz. Hope to make a deal for lib once we have researched it a bit.

Boudi wants us to join the war against the Germans. No, my dear.

T236
We build Oxford. Nice, science shoots up visibly.

Make that deal with Biz and go Rifling next.


Mayapan is burnt to the ground.


T238
Wang is willing to trade suddenly. Great! The best deal I could make was this one. Lib instead of PP didn't work.


T239
Wang and Mehmed make peace with Boudi. Lost when it happened exactly, but Qin does the same. Calakmul is history.


T240 Quirigua shares the same fate.


Now I did something that was maybe against the rules, I later realized. Pardon me, pardon me, but I built a military academy with a GG in Military City. I guess I should have merged him . I suggest we ignore this small blunder and get on with it . Not game changing anyway and not against the spirit of the game as far as I'm concerned, though others might disagree. Still, .

Ok, 10 turns played, but Pacal is nearly done with so decide to play a couple more to get him off of the planet.

T241 My o my, we're at war with Qin! That was not planned! Everyone's favourite backstabber as I've seen him called on these forums, stabs again. He took Pacal as vassal and thus automatically declared on us. Of course he won't talk, so now we've got to get rid of Pacal anyway asap.

T242 Rifling is in. Decide to start on steam power. Maybe sci meth would have been better. We may want to reconsider.

Biz asks to declare on Boudi. Hmm, I hate to say no, but I do, since didn't fancy facing both Boudi and Qin. If stupid Qin hadn't declared I probably had done it, just for the diplo.

T243 Pacal's last two cities fall and he's dead



I hand it off here. We're still at war with Qin, but haven't seen a unit from him yet. He'll probably take peace soon anyway, I suppose. WW should of course then go away as well and we can rehire specialists. Units going home may consider pillaging some lands. I did pillage a bit, but of course the advance of the troops had priority.

Boudi and Biz are still fighting it out. We have a scout nearby to follow the action. Boudi seems to have a sizeable knight stack heading for Berlin.

The tech situation looks like this:

 

[Meiz]

Now we just need to keep Boudica the biggest and head for UN. My only concern ath the moment is that AI's will abstain instead of voting us, so better get all the diplo bonuses we can from now on.

IMO we should switch to Caste System (more specialists + bonus points from Wang, allthough he is a vassal at the moment) and Merchantilism for extra specialists. Any ideas for our religious civic? I'd probably go for Pacifism now that we don't need to concentrate on military that much.

R-rolo1 is up!

 

[nocho]

I'm slightly worried that Biz is not holding against Boudi despite being technologically superior. If he'd vassal to Boudi or would be completely overrun, then we can forget about diplo. Unless we liberate him somehow of course. Anyhow, maybe we can and should try to broker peace between them.

 

[pigswill]

We're losing diplo points with the wars going on and us refusing to particpate. At least we don't get any diplo penalties coz Qin declared on us. If we can get peace with Qin cheaply enough then maybe we should pick on Bod ourselves.
Techwise scimeth>biology would get us more food to run more specialists or whip more often.

Edit: should we continue in 3.17?

 

[LKendter]

I have no games expect this one, so I would have no problem patching.

 

[nocho]

I've got other SGs running in 3.17 still, so prefer to stay at that version. I realize that as long as people have overlapping SG games that argument will have recurrence, but hey, what's wrong with 3.17. But if you all want to upgrade I'll try to do the double install, although no clue yet how that works. But surely somewhere on this forum help is available.

Going biology sounds sound... And head for mass media if we really think this UN thing will work out. I wouldn't neglect our military however, at some point Boudi will declare I think, we're at around -10 with her by now.

Civics wise, I don't know if we profit from caste much. In Sci city we can already hire more scientists than we have food available. Artists we don't really care about. So it would only be for the merchants. I already hired the 4 we can. However, emancipation unhappiness is starting to mount, so we may have to consider that. I like pacifism. Ok, the unit count may hurt, but the 100% GPP is so fitting with this game that I'd still like it. And also mercantilism? Fitting with the extra specialist, although the free specialist in Cottage Heaven and Military City are not what we want . Otherwise just free market. Rep and Bureau are fine still. If we'll have all out war coming up however, of course nationhood will be worth it, especially as we're about to finish the globe.

 

[r_rolo1]

Keep on 3.17 for a while more , pls

Oh, and I'm up again? To beat on Pacal again? Oh he is finally dead

GOT IT

 

[PaulisKhan]

If I can jump in with unsolicited suggestions ;P

Try and get peace between Boadi and Biz, or trade him rifling+mil sci for whatever you want from him. If Berlin falls he will capitulate and riflemen are probably his only shot of holding off her stack of knights.

The downside is that it lets the rifling genie out of the bag and he may try to bribe peace from boadi with it before she suicides her stack. Tough call, but Boadi with Bismark feeding her techs as a vassal could prove problematic.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, I decided to follow both the suggestions made by our lurker

First I traded rifling with biz, hoping that he could handle the hordes of knights with rifles:

Spoiler :

That is good for building levees ( and BTW why build a bank in the spy city when we can make jails? ) Later I made other trade with biz:

Spoiler :

In spite of Biz upgrading a good chunk of units to rifles and of killing a very apreciatable chunk of Boudi units, he was in no conditions of holding Berlin ( you can see the remainings of his Berlin garrison in the backround of the next pic ). So I bribed Boudi out of the war:

Spoiler :

Surprisingly cheap, I must add

Remember the chinese war? No? The chinese do

Spoiler :

The good thing was that I had finished healing the units from pacal war and , with the loss of 2 cannons, we cleaned out the stack neatly. This brought the chinese to the negotiation table:

Spoiler :

Well, not bad, but could had been better.....

I finished the set when I got physics. Biology queued. Some other intel:

Spoiler :

Well, it is becoming painfully clear that we need to raze boudi down to managable proportions. Boudi is adequately backwards , so we should think on doing it ASAP.

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Good turns rolo!! Especially how you fend off qins stack!! Really good gameplay!!

But nonetheless I need to you: Holy city is woking a town!! As far as I know only Cottage Heaven is allowed to do so.. So next player has to turn this one into a specialist I think..

And there's something else I won't understand: Holy city has about +7 and is building a levee instead of a temple to hire another scientist..

And still we lack a jewish templ in some cities.. Hey we control Sankaore so temples should have been a no brainer before! So next player should definitely go for this one.. And Mercant City should rather build a harbor instead of the forge..

So who's up?

 

[r_rolo1]

Cutting the part of the well deserved praise .....

But nonetheless I need to you: Holy city is woking a town!! As far as I know only Cottage Heaven is allowed to do so.. So next player has to turn this one into a specialist I think..

Yup, sorry. Don't say that loud and i promisse not to speak of the engineer that was in the sci city in the inherited save...

And there's something else I won't understand: Holy city has about +7 and is building a levee instead of a temple to hire another scientist..

Did we founded scientology?

 

[nocho]

i promisse not to speak of the engineer that was in the sci city in the inherited save...

Hey! Don't say that!

Can't we drill those stupid governors a bit better somehow? I actually fired a spy in sci city but he seemingly reemerged as engineer...

I think Meiz is up.

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

And there's something else I won't understand: Holy city has about +7 and is building a levee instead of a temple to hire another scientist..

Ok, ok I meant another specialist..

And I forgot something else: I'd purpose to go directly towards Mass Media and won't "waste" a couple of turns for bio.. Ok we could hire a few more specialists but in most of our cities we already hired max number of available specialists..
And what for do we need the money at the moment?? I'd rather raise science to ~50% than getting more than 200 for no use..

 

[pigswill]

Looks like

Meiz UP
LKEndter on deck.

The system generating random specialists is indeed a pain in the neck, guess we just have to keep an eye on cities a couple of times a set and not sweat it too much if we run the wrong specialist for a few turns.

Time to take on Bod?

 

[Meiz]

Preturn

Switch research to Electricity, but I'll keep the research down for little longer so we can upgrade our city raider macemen and cuirassiers.

Turn 5

The upgrades are finally done and we can dial the research back up.

Turn 7

Our forces are in place and it's time to declare war against Boudica. We immediately burn three of her border cities with ease.



Turn 8

Another city goes down.



Turn 10

Electricity in and we head for Radio. Artists city starts to build Broadway, slowly but steadily

Turn 11

The burning continues.





These attacks earn us another GG which is settled in military city.

Turn 12

Boudica's stack appears from nowhere and makes a clever sneak attack, killing a nice amount of our troops. Her units are so wounded that we can easily finish them with our wounded forces.



Turn 15

Here comes another SoD with some nice promotions.



You know, I can't leave this fun for the next player so I just have to play one extra turn, especially as we're at the gates of Bibracte

Turn 16

We sacrifice two barrage cannons and the stack is magically gone!



And so is her capital!



Ok, how much longer do we wan't to continue this war? We need to be careful and keep her the second largests after us.

We have the possibility to trade Democracy from Wang, but I didn't do it just yet. Emanicapation unhappiness is still bearable.

Currently we are about to get GE in 15 turns, GM in 16 turns, GS in 18 turns and GP in 32 turns. If we wan't to get the shrine, we need to fire specialists from other cities temporarily.

If we go for it, we should also revolt to OR (and Merchantilism with it) and spread buddhism around. We're still getting the +2 hammer bonus, even while AP is long gone

We could also build FP in spy city soon.

Lkendter is up, have fun!

 

[nocho]

Wow, you took rolo's advice that "we need to raze boudi down to managable proportions" at heart! If I counted correctly you razed 7 cities including her capital and she is still second largest? Haven't looked at the save but I suppose that we shouldn't raze her much further.

Anyhow, how's life on the diplo front? I guess Biz will vote for us, but we need to do something to improve diplo with Meh and Qin, at least that was the case last time I looked.

 

[Meiz]

Anyhow, how's life on the diplo front? I guess Biz will vote for us, but we need to do something to improve diplo with Meh and Qin, at least that was the case last time I looked.

We can simply gift / trade them techs and get +4 for fair trades which makes them friendly.

 

[r_rolo1]

Mercantilism isn't forbidden by the rules ( no spec in cottage city ) ?