RB1 - Cuban Isolationists

[kryszcztov]

@ Zed-F & Sullla :
Now, I really buy into your point which says that there isn't a best strategy for all the games. That wasn't really the case in Civ3, and apparently a lot less in Civ4 (good ). I agree with you, but this was not what I was talking about, or so I think.
I was commenting the "discussion" (TM) between Sullla and Sirian, who were debating about what to do next, in a game already started and well advanced !! That is different. So I feared (and still do) that there would be many different strategies that would be equivalent in terms of result throught the game (at any important crossroad, if you want). Comparing to chess, this doesn't mean that I'd start and play 2 games of chess the same way given 2 different initial positions, it means that I could play the same position through 2 (or more) different ways. Which is quite the opposite.
Now, I like the idea of having multiple paths to victory (since it makes the game more interesting, especially at higher levels), but saying that they're all equivalent has piqued me, to say the least. Maybe you don't play the game as well as you'll do in the future, and thus you can't find out the best solution given a situation yet ? Which would make the process of discovering the game interesting of course. That doesn't mean that you won't win or perform well, I'm not denying that of course. But if you choose the all-religion approach here, and someone tries the current situation with another approach and wins the game 30 turns before you, that could mean that your strategy wasn't the best (regarding the finish date) ? And maybe Civ4 is so well designed that nobody will eventually discover the best strategy given any complicated and uncertained situation ? If this is what Sirian means, then I'm glad to hear it, because it would mean that the game has a huge replay value (how to get better wouldn't only be about counting beans on a definitive strategy, it would also be about choosing the right strategy at many important points during the game, something that Civ3 wasn't very good at). But then could we stay humble and not pretend that all the different decent strategies are all equivalent, and instead say that we lack intelligence and experience ? We're humans after all, and tell me if I exaggerated some stuff, and good luck with the game. Should be easy here.

 

[Double Stack]

Lurker's Comment: Not to off-shoot some of your discussion but since you have the Hyra(TM) going. I noticed you could build "Super Temple"(TM) such as the Islamic Mosque or the Christian Catherdals. I think it very useful to build them in Havanna for cultural value (+50% per Super Temple). This would be very useful to get toward cultural victory in the long run. While the effects are useless if the religion is not State Relgion but it is useful in cultural value.

 

[Talamane]

Hmm, [ALT-F] gives me "Satellite camera enabled." Vertical only view. Excellent for zoomed-in screenshots.

[CTRL-F] Flying camera is a bit touchy. There's a nice "orbital" effect where you see the earth's curvature. Rotation doesnt work with the [CTRL L-R] arrow keys--i have to fuss with it a bit to look at the back side of my cities.

What a fun toy!

 

[Sirian]

1150AD: I conduct a few bits of micromanagement. Big item will be to swap to Vassalage.
We don't have an military units due to complete this turn so I hold off on that for one more turn.
Sulla also said we need more workers, and Slavery is sort of in a lull.
We could stand to crack the whip in a few places, but none of them are really ready yet.
I'm going to go to Serfdom, too, as that will speed some of our tile improvements.
(Spiritual is a fun trait, because you CAN blow in the wind from one round to another!)

I also remove the Priests at Havana and run high food to grow the city.

1160AD: Saint Bob starts on a Barracks. I pull the Civics Switcheroo.

TABC pops an archer.

1170AD: Havana completes National Epic, starts Jewish Monastary.
M-City trains Longbow, starts Longbow, gets forest chop.
Barbarian Archer goes SOUTH, toward our lone remaining Warrior unit.

1180AD: M-City trains Longbow, starts Longbow.
Saint Bob completes Barracks, starts Swordsman.
Barbarian Archers discover the toughness of Spanish fighters.

1190AD: Our Axemen clean out the last of the Tribal Villages.

1200AD: Havana builds Jewish, starts Jewish. (Monastary->Temple)
Saint Bob produces Swordsman. Start Swordsman.

1210AD: Swordsman enters barbarian lands.
TABC pops another archer. They attack!
Barbarian Archer "trains" our sword unit. Minor casualties.

1220AD: Our sword @5.3/6.0 - PROMOTE, PROMOTE, now 5.6
City Raider II Swordsman vs Archer in unwalled, cultureless town =

Saint Bob trains Swordsman, starts Longbow.
Our worker in the area boldly constructs roads right up to the enemy gates!
(They only had one unit left in the city, and if they leave, our sword WALKS in. They weren't going to do that.)

1230AD: Swordsman #2 follows newly laid road directly in to combat!

TABC has fallen.

 

[Sirian]

1230AD: Havana builds Jewish, starts Buddhist. We have met Tokugawa. Santiago trains Settler, starts Work Boat.

1240AD: Caesar switches away from Theocracy!

Our religion EXPLODES immediately in to his back lines! Talk about "pressurized contents!"

Ooh. Notice that Greek Caravel?

1250AD: The explosion continues. JC converts to Judaism!

Santiago trains Work Boat, starts Library. Work boat sent northward to La Rouge. (Sulla, "The Red(TM)" has a specific meaning to me, which you can't know about, but anybody who knew me from childhood WILL know, and the funniest part is... Well, never mind. Maybe another time.)

Havana builds Buddhist, starts Market.
Rosa builds Monastary, starts Monastary.
Trade Monotheism + Construction to "Alex the G" for Compass.

OK, OK, OK. So I did not train so much as a single Missionary. I am long on talk and short on action, sometimes. However, I put the good mojo on JC and bent him to our will, met some new civs, captured TABC and opened the eastern frontier, and set us up the bomb. Here's hoping that you can get around to a few more Missionaries. (Why do all the cities end up being founded on your turns? Oh well.)

 

[Sirian]

Our northern interior... We need farms on all the green dots.
For that, we need Bureaucracy, still a ways off.

We could spare the white dot plots for cottages, though.

We NEED more commerce, that's for sure.

Number 1 in food, shields, and population, number 6 in commerce!
Number 7 in troops. We need more Longbows!

We especially need two longbows in Havana, because if Vicky gets itchy...
She could launch two galleys across the bay. Could... get... ugly...

Look at how far above average we are on production, though. Wowsers.


Saying hello to the Nipponese sailors:

Globe View:

City Stats:

- Sirian

 

[Sullla]

With regards to the question of Double Stack above, we do plan on building a lot of cathedrals down the road (we'll have plenty of temples!) but we don't have the technology for that. It requires Music, and we're heading for Guilds/Banking first. Banking is, like, THE tech for the Cuban Isolationists: banks to help solve our money woes and Mercantilism civic to run, since we can never have foreign trade routes anyway!

That looks like a very solid turn there Sirian (although after admonishing me to go heavy on the missionaries, you turned San Roberto into a military depo and didn't train a one! ) But it was worth it of course to take out TABC (also known as Alemanni). Oh, and Caesar going to Judaism:

One question if you read this: why Vassalage? Very expensive civic, and do we really need the extra experience at this point? Or did you swap for the extra unit support? I like the move to Serfdom, I don't think we were going to get much more value from Slavery, and we were worker-poor for certain. If you get a chance, could you explain the rationale behind the Vassale swap?

Also, by the way for readers: those Demographics explain what the AI does with regard to its workers. The AI builds a LOT of cottages, probably more than it should, so it tends to be very competitive in technology, and be rather poor in terms of production. Since the AI gets production cuts on the higher difficulty levels though, it makes it quite challenging when you crank up the settings!

 

[Sirian]

Vassalage is getting us two promotions out of the gate. This allowed me to take TABC without risk, using just two units, and it has put City Garrison II on our four new Longbows, with a catapult due soon, too.

If we had Bureaucracy, we might want to switch to that, but I am -very- fond of extra experience for units. You may see me run some Theocracy at some point, too.

You can switch out of it if you aren't building units, but frankly, we're in need more MORE units, not a period of no unit building, so consider carefully. Ideally, we could alternate between periods of unit training and construction, and wobble between Vassal/Theo and Bureau/OrgRel. You may even want to go back to Slavery somewhere in there, since the tale of the Whip is not yet fully written.


- Sirian

 

[Own]

lurker's comment: Great turnlog Sirian, keep those coming!

 

[insydr]

Hmm, [ALT-F] gives me "Satellite camera enabled." Vertical only view. Excellent for zoomed-in screenshots.

[CTRL-F] Flying camera is a bit touchy. There's a nice "orbital" effect where you see the earth's curvature. Rotation doesnt work with the [CTRL L-R] arrow keys--i have to fuss with it a bit to look at the back side of my cities.

What a fun toy!

Hey, did you have to add a line to the .ini file? I tried the hotkeys but they don't do anything for me... and I know it was mentioned earlier that the .ini had something to do with it.

 

[Talamane]

Hey, did you have to add a line to the .ini file? I tried the hotkeys but they don't do anything for me... and I know it was mentioned earlier that the .ini had something to do with it.

I changed this from a 0 to a 1:

[CONFIG]

; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 1

 

[insydr]

^^^

 

[Sullla]

(0) 1250AD Overall, I like the situation I find us in. Sirian has beefed up our defenses quite a bit, and our western frontier is nicely stacked with longbows now. Several archers there that could also be upgraded in a pinch too. We're pretty safe over there now, IMO. There's another settler in place to found a city up in the north next turn, and San Roberto has another settler due in 3 turns. I'd like to pop out another worker or two, and then set at least one city back on missionary duty. Still quite a few cities lacking Judaism, and we could use the shield boost from Organized Religion if nothing else. Spiral Minaret is actually helping our finances more than I expected (temples are so cheap to build with a Spiritual civ, we can pop a Jewish one in each city easily!) With a Great Prophet due on my turn, we'll have another shrine in place shortly too.

Here's the downside of running Vassalage - the cost. Don't get me wrong, it's a very powerful and useful civic, but that High upkeep pricetag is indeed costly. There are only 3 "High" cost civics in the game, and we're running two of them right now! Not to mention our maintenance costs from having all these cities. At least the power of the monk economy from our religions is keeping us afloat!

(1) 1260AD Deserta founded with the settler on hand. It drops our income by TEN gold per turn! That's the end result of across-the-board increases in maintenance and inflation. I know we've said this before, but we really have to STOP expanding for now and build up our economy a bit. The cities are just getting a little TOO expensive at the moment. I'll found one more with the settler in production at that choice spot in the east, but after that I really think we need to cool off for a while until we can get some more money rolling in.

(2) 1270AD Matanzas finishes catapult, I start it on a courthouse. We have so many cities by now, each one is costing us 4 or more gold. We'll need courthouses as well as religion spreading to make the monk economy work!

(3) 1280AD Alex pops up and proposes trading us Drama for Theology. Uh, how about no, buddy? The AI generally suggests good trades in Civ4, but every now and then a clunker like that comes along. Caesar requests Open Borders, which we of course decline, being Cuban Isolationists and all that. San Roberto finishes a settler for that nice spot in the east, starts on a worker (2 turns) since we need a couple more. Madrid finishes its worker and starts on a Jewish monastery (science and gold!) Uh oh, our axe heading up to the north to make sure no barbs pop up finds... a barb axeman already there!

The AI civs have Optics and would be willing to trade it to us, but I don't see any deal that would make sense for us. The only things we can trade are Theology/Divine Right, and the first is too cheap and the latter too expensive to make a good deal.

(4) 1290AD Our axeman survives the battle with the barbs. Sometimes it's good to have the Combat I promotion! Christianity spreads on its own to TABC - err, Alemanni. Even better, Judaism pops up in another Roman city!

We can, like, almost see part of their continent. Who says we need to wait for Satellites before being able to see the world? The original Cuban Isolationists would have loved this kind of scouting! (By the way, note again how the AI configures its cities: four cottages and a windmill. Tons of commerce, little production!) Rio de Oro founded in the east - let's hope that it brings us some gold! (Treasury sags further with this city founding, we're bleeding cash out all over the place at 50% science.)

Sirian, I'm vetoing the barracks in Santa Rosa in favor of some more missionaries (Santiago really could use Judaism). We definitely do want a barracks there, but I think we can delay it at the moment. Just so you get an idea of how much more cash we're spending here just to maintain our empire, here's an updated picture of our finances:

That much worse in 4 turns? Si, senor! The citizens are about to run El Presidente Sullla out of town unless he can improve the financial situation pronto!

 

[Sullla]

So our expenses jumped from 79 gold/turn to 113 gold/turn in just 4 turns. Um, that's an increase of almost 45%! Now you know why the citizens were about to run Sullla out of town. How to fix this mess?

(5) 1300AD Well, this should help a bit:

In the short term, the Hindu shrine only gets us 4 gold/turn. Long term, however, as we spread the religion around that will become a much bigger deal. We'll also get a huge jump in 2 turns when that market finishes in Havana. (Once we have all three shrines built, and all three religions spread around, plus a market/grocer/bank, and Wall Street, and running Bureaucracy... well, then we shall see what we shall see! )

Down to bleeding out 8 gold/turn at 50% science. That's a lot better than -15/turn, which is where we were just last turn!

(6) 1310AD More missionaries go into production. I'd like to finish up with the Jewish ones first, then concentrate on Hindu missionaries after that. We get the final one of the seven religions in El Rojo:

Taoism pops up there. Now we're got at least one city with all seven. I don't see much reason to spread Taoism though, as it would only help out Vicky. Of course, it might be fun to have all seven religions in Havana just for kicks later on, when we have resources to spare.

(7) 1320AD Behold the power of Markets! Havana finishes one and our income goes from -7 to +5!!! (Knew something like that would happen, but still, wow. The monk + secular economy is something to behold!) Havana goes to Hindu monastery, which will take 2 turns and then we can follow that with a grocer (Guilds due in 2 turns). Santa Rosa now goes to barracks (it just produced a Jewish missionary for Santiago). Matanzas to market (it's getting 12 gold/turn, so we'll see a nice boost there too). San Roberto onto more missionaries.

(8) 1330AD Judaism spreads successfully in both Santiago and Hydrata this turn via missionaries. We may actually be close to turning this around - banks should get us permanently into the black. But don't forget about missionaries either! Havana is getting almost 20 gold/turn just from its shrines!

(9) 1340AD Guilds discovered! Havana finishes a Hindu monastery, starts work on a grocer immediately (btw, anyone else noticed that Firaxis got the graphics backwards on the city icon for the market and grocer in the final release version? Bet that'll get fixed in a patch soon! ) We have actually recovered financially enough to increase the science rate to 60% (Banking due in 7 turns). Who'd have thunk it?

Guilds is pretty widely know (only Alex and Tokugawa lack it), so I make the above deal to Alex. It's almost exactly even in beakers, and it will save us having to research two older techs. Sirian will let me know if it's a weed decision, but I can't see anything wrong with it... yet.

(10) 1350AD And that's that, mostly. No builds completing on the final turn, if I remember correctly.

Watch out for an incoming barb archer in the east - it shouldn't be a problem because we have a Cover-promoted axe right there, but you never know. The extra shrine and the market in Havana appear to be the start of turning around our finances - at least until we found our last few cities! Feel free to sneak another settler in San Roberto once you think we can handle it (I didn't feel comfortable with our finances until the last few turns). We'll get Banking and Mercentalism on your next turn, and then we'll really be rocking. Naturally Civil Service will be the way to go next...

And don't forget missionaries! Lots of Jewish and Hindu missionaries. Plenty of cities can still use both of them. Keep the monk ecnomoy rolling!

 

[Sullla]

And a large, zoomed out map. Hey, we're like almost making money at 60% research. Fiscal responsibility, here we come!

 

[Rik Meleet]

lurker's comment: Could you please upload a save so us lurkers can have a look at how 2 experienced players handle a game ?
Thx.

 

[Sirian]

We're planning to upload a file pack of saves when the game is complete.

 

[Sirian]

1350AD: Swap Civics from Vassalage to Barbarism. (Not going to be training units in the next few turns. Sulla has everything on buildings.)

Change Saint Bob to a Library. Got to have a library in my town, OK? And it must contain lots of science fiction!

1360AD: Victoria adopts Mercantilism? She's five turns ahead of us to Banking!

1380AD: Saint Bob builds Library, starts SETTLER.

Sulla thinks we need to stop expanding, but I disagree. We are right at the cusp when we should be expanding the most. There are four and a half dots left to grab! I'm not a whack-job nutcase. Just stay tuned.

1390AD: We meet the Incans. I trade them Guilds for Calendar and Horseback Riding and 60g. As this trade slightly favors them, and it is a First Contact Trade(TM), a major relations boost is obtained. (If you are going to make a sweet trade, do it on first contact! You never get a second chance to make a first impression!)

1400AD: The wisdom of Jefferson:

Havana builds Grocer, starts Bank.

"You say you want a Revolu-u-ution..."

Barbarism->Vassalage
Serfdom->CasteSystem
Decentralization->Mercantilism

Every town = one free specialist.
Every town = can produce Merchant, Scientist, or Artist castes.
Time to do a little strategizing.

Set Priest in Havana.
Set Engineer in cities with Forges.
Set Scientist in cities that do or will have a Library soon.
Set Merchants everywhere else.

Longbows are training in the west. More settlers are also in training.

1410AD: Close but no cigar.

We want another forest on the GREEN dot. Oh well. Still time left. Actually, that new forest will come in handy for Crab City.

Workshops have their role. It's often a bit part, but it's there.

One day I'm going to try a massive "Commie Pinko Warmongering Strategy(TM)" and run massive workshops galore along with Police State and State Property, and go cracking heads all over the globe with some Cossacks.

 

[Sirian]

1430AD: Saint Bob trains Settler, starts Settler. (I hope this doesn't push Sulla in to apoplexy! )

1450AD: Pureto Principe founded up by all the Spices.

Here's why we're ready to found the rest of our cities:

Check it out! 5gpt in city maintenance costs, but the burg is already making 7 commerce per turn, net!

There is still a slight cost, as we drove up Per City costs at other cities, but there is a point in the game at which new cities much more quickly pay for themselves.

ICS is not completely wiped out. It is still a viable path. It is just not the "one right choice" any longer, but one valid choice from among many, and requires actual strategizing instead of just throwing your settlers at the board willy nilly. How to make ICS your game-long strategy? Not today, and not from me. Someone else can put the pieces together.


We have three settlers in production, and three dots waiting for them.

Black Dot needs to wait a little longer, but the others are ripe. Pluck them!

Once again, I did not train a single missionary. But what's a guy to do? If I don't train MILITARY and SETTLERS on my turns, it may never happen.

17 cities with Judaism, only four with Hinduism? Man. Sulla's going to be cross with me, I think.


Oh, and by the way... We -STILL- don't have enough military! If an AI comes wandering along with two Galleons full of troops and lands in the east, we are so incredibly toasty that it isn't even funny.


- Sirian

 

[Sullla]

I work on building up our economy because Sirian has been focusing on expansion and our military. Then Sirian works on expansion and the military build I've been popping out missionaries and infrastructure. Then I work on our economy...

Despite appearing to see-saw back and forth, I think we've actually managed to achieve a nice balance. In the future, we'll need to try and work on maintaining that balance WITHIN our own turns, instead of shifting goals violently with each new player! (I just see us bleeding out cash left and right in maintenance costs and want to fix that, while Sirian sees all those empty dots on the map and starts thinking "need... more... settlers!")