Rat 10 - Revenge of the warmongers

[Greebley]

Yep, we were.

I still would turn them on once we grow some. We have to turn off growth at some point in the not distant future. That seems a better time for it.

We did get the around the world bonus

 

[Xarathas]

Regarding war - We should war from the top down as much as possible.

 

[ThERat]

goraemon, do you know you are up?

 

[goraemon]

lol, that was fast I'll take a look at it.

 

[goraemon]

Just turn 0 for now as that's what takes most of my time and it's very late...

Bunch of micromanaging. Courthouses are nice and all but for some cities priorities lie elsewhere imo. 7 workers are still woefully short for the no. of cities we have but I'll try and manage for now. City building settler can grow 1 more next turn then maybe resume settler (not sure if we should found another city immediately just to focus on cutting off Egypt on substandard land when they're not yet on our continent). I think Novgorod is better w/specialists atm, it's not far from generating another great scientist. 3 specialists back on there. Workers MM, override some tasks to help out in others. Although other civs have some techs we don't, we have a big GNP advantage right now so we should ride on it. Wow no one wants to trade anything.

Well, screw them , because we're:
View attachment 111094
FRIGGING GLORIOUS B*ATCH

Will play rest of the turns later..

 

[goraemon]

Turn 1: I'm holding off on settler production/founding cities. As a whole they seem to be suboptimal atm. Some cities grow.

Turn 1 EOT: Feudalism is in. Guilds next (7 turns @ current rate)

Turn 2:

Turn 2 EOT:{forgot city name} builds lighthouse, begin courthouse.

Turn 3:

Turn 3 EOT: Yekaterinberg builds forge, library started. Capital builds monastery, market queued.

Turn 4:

Turn 4 EOT: Phyrigian, Whaling Station grow. CHristianity spreads to Diamond Colony.

Turn 5:

Turn 5 EOT: Rostov finishes monastery. Begin market.

TUrn 6: Caesar willing to trade Construction now. MEtal casting to him for Construction + 60 gold.

Turn 7:

Turn 7 EOT: Guilds come in. Gunpowder next in line. Cyrus requests that we switch to his religion and I refuse. Phrygian builds work boat that'll head for Whaling Station. STart another workboat. GReat Scientist is born in Novgorod

Turn 8: Put growth back on Novgorod for now and build an academy there, cuts gunpowder research from 8 to 7.

Turn 9:

Turn 9 EOT: Mao Zedong comes demanding something like 130 gold. I check and confirm he doesn't know anyone else yet...and tell him to get lost. Capital finishes market and begins on Knight for now. Phrygian finishes 2nd workboat and starts on...meh, Granary. Diamond Colony grows to 11.

Turn 10: Diamond Colony seems to have reached its happiness limit, so..I now assign 3 scientists to it, with excess of 1 food.

Note I've still been holding off on the active settler, preferring to build up existing infra a bit more during my turns. Besides don't we start getting heavier upkeep penalties once we go beyond our 10 cities? Now I'm going to save the game while leaving the settler idle and leave it up to the next player.

I think it was worth it though; we're so far ahead right now in GNP it's not even funny:

View attachment 111101

Back to #2 on production as well. We're well on our way to dominating once we get military tradition. Gunpowder, Nationalism, Music (maybe able to trade for it by then? I know Mao has it right now) are all that stand in its way (I think).

View attachment 111102

 

[ThERat]

good turns, I will play right now...

on to our target tech and then we will rock the boat.

 

[Dimy]

Eh....wouldn't it be better to have build the Academy in Moscow? Or whatever city was producing most beakers?

 

[goraemon]

Curses, I could've sworn I saw the capital already had an academy..might've gotten mixed up w/another savegame oh welll, not the end of the world. We'll build more of those specialists eventually

 

[ThERat]

save

Pre-Turn
it's still the same, nobody knows each other except Cyrus and Caesar
send settler down south so we can found that fish town
set moscow on LB to accompany that settler
generaly emphasis growth again.

I think the academy should have been built in Moscow

1. 1155AD
settler moving south
renegotiate wine with Cyrus and get 6gpt instead of 4gpt
do the same stunt with Caesar
give Hatty crabs for 5gpt

2. 1160AD
zzz

3. 1165AD
connect whales for another happy bonus
set Diamond colony back on growth

4. 1170AD
transfer the settler to that Island

IT gunpowder is in

5. 1175AD
found Yakutsk
Mao has music, but won't trade it, sell him HBR for 100gold, it doesn't help, so go for it in 2

6. 1180AD
zzz, Judaism spreads to our new city, I actually think we should later go for free religion

7. 1185AD
Music is in, nationalism next in 9

8. 1190AD
Novgorod goes back to work boat after finishing a court

9. 1195AD
zzz

10. 1200AD
nationalism is due in 5, then we go for mil tradition
keep in mind that we need galleons and astronomy for transporting the units overseas

so suggested research is nationalism, mil trad, calendar (maybe can trade) and astronomy
I would like to hit Cyrus even though relations are very good but we might get Caesar to ally
currently that options is not red for him

currently everything is set on growth, thus we have few shields
Moscow is set on mil units all the way, but we need more cities later on
Novgorod is building work boats for the new town

we might want to set up another city, we can currently run 80% science at -11gpt

the demographics

 

[ThERat]

our latest city

Roster:
ThERat
Xarathas - up
Dimy
Greebley
goraemon

 

[Xarathas]

Hmm... I don't know if it's a good idea to go for Calvary so early. We really should focus on keeping our tech advantage by going with Education/Liberalism first, which we can then get astronomy as the freebie (would have to get calendar before this too) and or another expensive tech that we need. It really doesn't turn out to be that much of a detour, imo, when you consider the free tech, universities & the 10%/happiness bonus you get from free religion.

I'll do more assessment when I can actually access the game file after work.

 

[ThERat]

there is an alternative I was thinking of. Since Astronomy obsoletes the Colossus, we should maybe delay that.
We could still go for mil trad and build up a sizeable force of Cossacks (at least 10) and other mix like cats + pikes, LB's. Then ship them to Cyrus using galleys (they have capacity 2 instead of 3 for galleons). It would be slow but meanwhile we can reseach to liberalism and get a free tech.

What does everyone think of that?
We might also ask Caesar to fight Cyrus now, maybe that would prepare the path for us.

As for civics, I was thinking we should go for free religion as we already have quite some reiligious spread and once we aquire more cities, this will go up.

 

[goraemon]

I think we're far enough tech-wise that we can afford to push the advantage straight-up. Depending on what the international relations are like later on, I was thinking we take care of Caesar (he's kind of pushing into our Colony) or even Mao. Hell we can probably still be first to liberalism even after prioritizing Mil. Tradition like this

 

[Xarathas]

Yup, I definately like that idea better. I'll take a look in game to see if we can afford to military traditions before going down the liberalism route later then decide.

I don't really think we even need galleons to fight Cyrus. As long as we maintain open borders with Caesar, all we need is a couple of galleys shipping units from mainland to diamond colony. We are very likely to be able to maintain good relations with caesar (and thus open borders), and 3~4 galleys tops would be plenty to ship units across the strait especially since we have the circumnavigate bonus. Then, we can just move calvary by land across caesar's lands right up to Cyrus' borders. Wouldn't that put us in a much better position to attack instead of having to land on Cyrus' coast, then attack?

 

[Xarathas]

I'm really against warring Caesar before Cyrus, as we really should be warring from the top down barring distance problems. No matter what you do, teching will always be slowed when you are warring because while you're producing military, the nations in peace are making infrastructures and what not to boost their tech. Also, right around where nations get Astronomy/Education/Printing Press is where you'll see a tech jump in many AIs.

In addition, as opposed to completely wiping out the first couple of nations we war, we should just prune them to a point where they are no longer a threat for space race. Spending time to chase down every last city of theirs is too costly at this point. That can be saved for later. Our main goal right now shouldn't be to wipe out nations but to stop AIs from being able to complete a spaceship.

As for Caesar and Mao, they can push into our colony all they want IMO, as we have already took the best spots we can in our area. If they want a tundra city here and there, I don't really mind. those cities would be pretty much cut off from their main forces when we go to war so it'll just be no more than a simple mop up job. The way computer settles those cities, they'll have no more than 1-3 garrison troops and can't really produce units efficiently. Thus they are in no way a threat to our backside.

 

[ThERat]

Agreed, Xarathas.

I feel the top down approach is needed. In the last game we tried the other way round and ended up facing super strong enemies in the end.

We won't make that mistake this time round. It's either Cyrus or Mao. Maybe you can really get Caesar to fight Cyrus now with a cheap tech. this usually helps a lot. Then we can ship our units down south and raze more.

By the way, do you guys know that pillaging neutral land gives the $ bonus as well? This can be very powerful as LoTR18 showed. Pillage cottages to keep the $ flowing for deficit research.

I didn't mention, but the AI is still not knowing each other by now. What are they doing?

 

[goraemon]

Xarathas, by Caesar pushing into our Colony, I meant that our ocean resource is actually at some sort of a jeopardy near Diamond Colony, and not that I'm worried about them founding tundra colonies or whatnot. Distance is also a concern when it comes to capturing cities. Still, since we're still a ways off from declaring war we probably can discuss our victims in more detail once we're ready.

 

[Xarathas]

Ahh, I see Goraemon (by the way, I don't suppose your user name has anything to do with Doraemon, does it?). I'll take a look at it later. I think we should be okay though, may have to just focus on building culture buildings in Diamond Colony faster.

and yup, pillaging neutral lands yields cash, I've found that out because I've often ended up pillaging an AI's surrounding areas after I take their city (not because I wanted to remove that imporvement, per se, but to take out the road underneath it). Though, applied to the point where you are building your own cottages to pillage, feels like an exploit to me. I wonder if they can fix that by coding the maker of an improvement into the game so that you can't actually get cash yields from pillaging your own improvements.

 

[goraemon]

I don't even know what Doraemon is I think the Colony is competing with Rome for culture and obviously losing atm